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A ringing silence bloomed like a nuclear explosion, giving her time to wonder if she’d gone too far.
And … yeeeeeaaah. She’d probably gone too far.
Jaws dropped. Heads swiveled in her direction. Wide-eyed looks were exchanged. Even Dudley raised his brows and gave her an are-you-crazy glance.
She waited with a growing sense of foreboding.
The bully paused, cocked his head as though he wanted to make sure he’d heard right, and then wheeled around, facing her for the first time. His attention zeroed in on her, the big mouth, and she’d almost swear that everyone else ducked and scurried away so as not to be caught in the oncoming path of destruction. In that pregnant moment, she had a wild image of the indigenous people tying Ann Darrow to her sacrificial post and then sprinting back to the other side of that primitive gate, where it was safe from King Kong.
Only this was no King Kong. Not by a long shot.
Oh, man. The breath leaked out of her lungs in one quick whoosh, and she found herself caught in the fierce gaze from a pair of furious but extraordinary brown eyes. He had long lashes and straight brows that showcased a burning intensity and a keen intelligence. His dark skin was flushed. One edge of his full lips pulled back in a disbelieving sneer, which revealed a hint of both white teeth and a bracket of what would be dimples, if and when he ever smiled.
He was, in a word, stunning.
Shock hit Lia like the leather thong of a cracked whip.
In two long strides he was on her, right in her face. “What did you say to me?”
Locking her knees in place, Lia stood up to him because no one else had. “I said that if a student isn’t learning, it’s generally the teacher’s fault.”
A collective gasp, quickly stifled, rippled through the crowd of avid onlookers, all of whom were probably wishing they had an ICEE and a large buttered popcorn to go along with the show.
His eyes—his unforgettably amazing eyes—widened with shock, probably because no one had challenged his arrogance in the last decade or so. Recovering quickly, he looked her up and down with cool disdain.
“Are you a licensed physician?”
“No,” she admitted.
Triumph gleamed in his expression. “Then you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, do you?”
With that, he gave Dudley a curt nod and strode off, sucking all the air out of the area with him. His departing back posed a real challenge to her. She wanted to hurl just the right comeback and prevent him from having the last word, but her mouth was dry and her brain was empty.
Best to just leave well enough alone. For now.
“In case you were interested,” Dudley told Lia, flashing her an amused grin, “that was Dr. Bradshaw. The youngest ever head of surgery here and the best we’ve got.”
Oh, she knew who he was, even though they’d never met. He bore a remarkable resemblance to someone very close to her, but now wasn’t the time to get into personal details about her life. Soon, but not now.
“Hmm.” Badly shaken and acutely aware of both her burning face and Dudley’s curiosity, she tried to get her head back in the game. She’d confront the arrogant Dr. Thomas Bradshaw soon enough. Until then, she had a job to do and a role to play with her new boss. “Too bad no one ever taught him to be a kind human being.”
“He’s only kind on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said a new, male voice behind her. “So it looks like we’re all out of luck today. Jerome Stubbs, RN. I just wanted to meet the woman who confronted the dragon in his lair. And you are … ”
Bracing for the worst—she was wrung out already, and her first day at this godforsaken hospital wasn’t even halfway over yet—Lia turned to discover a grinning young man extending his hand to her. Relief hit her in a wave. Here, at last, was the friendly face of someone who didn’t appear to be a jerk or have an agenda.
So she shook his hand, discovering that Jerome had a firm grip, which was another sign of trustworthiness as far as she was concerned.
“Lia Taylor. Computer security expert. Nice to meet you.”
Jerome reached out and slung his arm around the shoulders of another man nearby, this one with dark skin and a mustache with goatee, scooping him into the conversation as well. “This is Dr. Lucien De Winter. Say hello to the dragon slayer, Lucien.”
They all laughed, including Dudley, and Lia felt some of the seething tension of the last few minutes leach away from her.
“He’s not so bad, you know,” Lucien told her. “Thomas has standards that are exceptionally high. But he’s not terrible once you get to know him. Bad, yeah, but not terrible.”
“I’m not convinced,” Lia said. “But you two seem perfectly nice. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“We know. We’re a delight,” Jerome assured her.
Still laughing, he headed back to the nurse’s station. Lucien, meanwhile, waved his goodbye and disappeared into the cafeteria. Lia turned back to Dudley and discovered him watching her with a glimmer of amused respect in his eyes.
“What?”
Dudley grinned. “You’re a piece of work. You should fit in just fine around here. If you don’t commit any more felonies, that is.”
Okay. She’d about had it with the male medical personnel around here.
“Don’t we have a tour to finish?” she reminded him.
Dudley checked his watch and then held his arm wide, gesturing her toward the cafeteria. “We might as well get some coffee while we’re here.”
“Great,” Lia agreed, but her troubled thoughts were already spinning in other directions.
Back to Thomas Bradshaw. Back to her son. Back to her dwindling options and growing desperation. Back to the twisty and uncertain path she’d chosen and would continue on until its end, whatever that end turned out to be.
She would walk this path, for Jalen.
Anything to save her son.
Chapter 2
“Hello, dearie.” Thomas’s receptionist looked up from her computer as he walked into the waiting area of his suite in the medical office building and shut the door against the dull roar outside. Sunny as usual, her blue eyes bright and her weathered, peaches-and-cream complexion flushed with the apparent thrill of another afternoon spent fielding patients for him, she slid her beaded bifocals down the bridge of her nose and gave him a critical once-over. “You haven’t eaten lunch again, have you? Determined to wither away to the size of a tadpole, I suppose. Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make the dumb bastard drink, can you?”
Thomas had to smile. “Good to see you, too, Mrs. Brennan.” Though she’d been with him for the eight years since she stepped off the plane from Dublin to live with her daughter’s family here in Alexandria, and he knew her first name full well—Aileen—he’d never dared use it. It seemed disrespectful somehow, and he was pretty sure she’d drop kick his ass into next week if he ever tried it. He, on the other hand, had to submit to dearie, love, young Thomas or whatever other silly nickname that she felt like bestowing on him. Not that he minded. Much. “How was your weekend? How’s the grandbaby?”
“Oh, well, she’s the little heart of my heart, now, isn’t she? Working on one teeny little tooth in the front. Here’s a picture.”
She flipped around the digital frame on her desk, showing him a chubby and smiling green-eyed baby with yellow fuzz and a smear of what looked like spaghetti sauce across her face and, sure enough, the hint of a white tooth on her bottom gum.
Oh, man. What a beauty.
Staring at the child, he felt … a pang. Of … something.
Probably nothing more than hunger, not that he’d admit it to Eagle Eyes here.
“You’re very lucky,” he said.
“That I am.” She spun the frame back into place and nailed him with that concern again. “And don’t think that you’ve managed to distract me from your dietary habits, either, young man. Oh, is that coffee for me? Cream and two sugars?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
“I don’t think so.” He held the Starbucks cup just out of reach of her grasping hand, determined to get this bargain struck as soon as possible. “By accepting this beverage, you agree not to comment on my personal life. Deal?”
Mrs. Brennan glowered until her white brows ran straight across her forehead. “For how long?”
“The whole week.”
“Go on, then,” she said, snatching the cup out of his hand and drinking long and deep. “Nothing but trouble, you are. Here. Eat a protein bar. Get some nutrition.”
She tossed him a bar from the inner depths of her desk drawer. God alone knew what all she kept in there; one of these times he meant to ask for a walleye fishing lure just to see if she could produce it.
He caught it with gratitude because he was still hungry, although he felt compelled to point out a pertinent fact. “I’ll have you know I ate a turkey croissant on the elevator just now.”
She didn’t look remotely impressed. “A grown man like you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself calling that a meal. Eat the bar, and just say thanks.”
Well, she had him there.
“Thanks. I’m going to see how many calls I can make before the meeting at one.”
“Sign the letters on your desk for me.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” He started down the hallway, ready to collapse into his chair and rest for a minute. Every one of his thirty-six years was really starting to show. Used to be he could stand and operate all day, see patients, handle meetings, go for a run, do paperwork into the wee hours and then collapse into the bed of his woman of the moment before getting up and doing it all again the next day.
Now all he wanted was a two-week nap.
And, come to think of it, a life.
“How were the residents this morning?” she called after him. “Giving you fits?”
Brown and his hapless stammering flashed through Thomas’s mind, quickly followed by his beautiful defender. She’d been interesting, that one. There’d been something about her that almost distracted him from her unfortunate tendency to butt into the conversations of perfect strangers.
“Giving me fits?” His mind’s eye focused in on the woman’s smoky voice … the breasts that were plumped against the lacy white top she wore under that severe suit … the wide hips and shapely bare legs … the startling intensity in her brown eyes. His skin prickled with remembered awareness, and he could swear that the faint scent of her perfume, which was sophisticated and spicy, had followed him all morning. That was a neat trick, considering all the other, less pleasant smells the hospital had to offer. “You have no idea.”
Inside his office, he collapsed into his chair, rested his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands. Man, he was tired. He’d been on last night, and then removed the diseased left lung of an unrepentant, forty-year smoker, which was the medical equivalent of redecorating the staterooms on the Titanic. Then he’d had rounds and the unfortunate run-in with Brown before he’d had a meeting with some of the other doctors in his practice group.
But that Brown thing … it bothered him.
Partially because the kid had been at the tail end of a thirty-hour stint, a point when it was hard for the best of them, even a perfectionist like himself, to fire on all cylinders. Partially because Brown was a competent physician and Thomas hadn’t meant to let loose his temper and humiliate him like that. Partly because it dinged his ego to be read the riot act for his bad behavior by a stunning and undaunted woman, especially when he was at his most daunting.
Especially when he deserved it.
Who was she? Why was he still thinking about her?
He didn’t know, but there was only one way to find out: he’d ask Dr. Dudley about her and track her down. Something was telling him he’d regret it for a good long time if he didn’t.
His phone beeped, and Mrs. Brennan’s voice came over the intercom. “Your da’s on line one.”
Brilliant. Just what he needed to make his day even more of a nonstop thrill fest.
And why did the woman insist on referring to his father as Da when she knew damn good and well that, as a retired admiral, the man would never appreciate or answer to anything as pedestrian and affectionate as Da, Dad or, God forbid, Pops.
He stared at the phone, wondering if he could pretend he hadn’t heard.
“I know you heard me,” Mrs. Brennan’s voice said.
“Why would you think I’d want to talk to my father?”
“Don’t be a twit, dearie. You can always talk to the man who gave life to you.”
The man who gave life to him. That much was true, Thomas supposed, and the man had reared him—when he wasn’t at sea, anyway—and instilled his relentless discipline in him. So, for that, Thomas was grateful.
On the other hand, they’d always had a prickly relationship punctuated by periodic disownings, most notably when Thomas turned down his commission to the Naval Academy in favor of college and medical school, which were inferior enterprises as far as the Admiral was concerned.
Still. The man was the only blood he had since Mom died two years ago.
“Put him through,” he said grudgingly, and the next thing he knew, the Admiral was booming over the speaker at him. The Admiral always boomed.
“I saw the full exposé in the paper this morning. All the details are finally coming out. Two-inch headline, Hopewell General Downplayed Drug Scandal—Fired Intern. Nice. What the hell kind of Mickey Mouse operation are you people running up there? And who’s in charge of your PR? Donald Duck?”
“Thanks for calling.” Thomas balanced the phone on his shoulder, found the stack of letters and started signing. “Nice of you to be concerned.”
A snort from the Admiral. “Someone’s got to be concerned. First the drug thing, then your buddy Lucien De Winter had to step down as chief resident because he was hooking up with one of his interns—”
Unbelievable. “They weren’t hooking up,” Thomas interjected. “They’re engaged. As you well know.”
As usual, the Admiral trampled right over Thomas’s half of the conversation. “You folks are about to run a perfectly good hospital right into the ground with these scandals—”
“The hospital will recover.”
“—and if you’d followed in my footsteps like you were supposed to do, you wouldn’t have these kinds of issues.”
There it was. The inevitable reminder of the greatest of Thomas’s alleged failings. His accomplishments, including his scholarships to Dartmouth and then Columbia for medical school and subsequent spectacular career as a surgeon, never made their way into these conversations.
“Good point,” he said. “The military never has scandals.”
“Don’t you get snippy with me, boy,” the Admiral began, but a commotion out in the reception area diverted Thomas’s attention.
“I don’t know who you think you are, missy.” Mrs. Brennan’s voice, outside his office and closing in now, sounded harassed and shrill, which was a disturbing first in all the years he’d known her. “But you cannot just march into Dr. Bradshaw’s office and—”
“Watch me,” said another woman’s voice.
Wait a minute, Thomas thought, his heart rate kicking into overdrive as determined footsteps stopped outside his door. I know that voice.
And then, there she was, standing in his doorway.
Brown’s defender, a woman who was, he now realized, as beautiful as any he’d ever seen.
