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She eyed the watch again, then made up her mind. Her endless shift was just about to finally come to an end. It would be no great hardship for her to drop this off on her way home—provided that the man didn’t live in Connecticut, she mused.
Tania laughed softly to herself. If he did, this was definitely going into the mail. She was not about to go out of her way for any man, even if that man happen to be drop-dead gorgeous. That sort of thing no longer carried any weight with her.
Just the opposite was true.
Rising from the desk and dropping the watch back in her pocket, she went to outpatient registration to get Jesse Steele’s home address.
He didn’t live in Connecticut, or any of the other outlining states, either. As it turned out, when Sally Richmond “conveniently” turned away from the computer screen to let her look without actually saying she could, Tania discovered that Jesse Steele lived right here in Manhattan, just the way she and her sisters did. Jotting the address down on an index card, she whispered, “Thank you” to Sally and slipped away from the outpatient registration area.
Hanging up her lab coat in her locker and resuming her civilian life, Tania took the crosstown bus to the address she’d written down. She’d taken care to write it in big block letters because she had just as much trouble reading her own handwriting as everyone else did. And given the choice of winding up in the wrong part of town or not, she’d choose “not.”
It wasn’t that much of a ride. Had she had more energy, she would have walked and probably gotten there faster, but by the end of her second shift, she was more or less drained. It had been a hell of a grueling sixteen hours.
So what are you doing playing messenger girl?
She had no answer for that.
After getting off the bus, Tania walked one block over until she reached the address on the card. She and her sisters had grown up in Queens, but they’d all made the trip into Manhattan, to take in the sights and wander the streets every chance they got. She knew the city like the back of her hand. Better.
While on the bus, she’d made up her mind to leave the watch with the doorman if there was one.
There wasn’t.
The wide glass door leading into the modern high-rise was unattended.
Doormen were swiftly going the way of the elevator operators of the last century. Into the mist.
As luck would have it, someone was just entering the building. Not wanting to ring bells at random, Tania slipped in behind the woman before the door closed again.
There was a bank of mailboxes along the far wall. Crossing to them, she scanned the names and apartments until she found “Jesse Steele, 10E.” His was the only name listed. He lived alone.
Or maybe with someone who hadn’t put up her name yet.
That made no difference to her, she insisted silently.
Tania pressed for the elevator. It must have been on the floor above because it arrived almost immediately.
She’d just leave his watch on his doorstep, she decided. Just before she’d left P-M, she’d taken an envelope with the hospital logo on it and placed the watch inside. Taking the envelope out of her purse, she sealed it as she rode up the elevator. There was no harm in leaving the watch on his doorstep. It’d be safe until he got home—provided he was out. The building was in the better part of town and it looked very respectable.
Stepping off the elevator, she began reading the numbers on the doors. The floor was tastefully done in subdued blues and grays, with paintings of flowers scattered through spring meadows hanging every few feet. It made for a pleasant, soothing atmosphere.
Apartment 10E was at the end of the hall.
Since she was just going to leave the watch on the floor directly in front of the door, Tania really couldn’t explain what made her ring the doorbell at the last moment.
Even as she pressed the button, she turned away and started to retrace her steps to the elevator.
As it turned out, Jesse must have been on his way out, because she’d only managed to take three steps before the door to his apartment swung open.
Jesse had trained himself to look through the peephole before opening the door. It wasn’t his way, but better to be safe than sorry. Technically, he no longer had to be on his guard like this. The restraining order was in force and would continue to be for some time. And there hadn’t been any incidents for a while now, not since he’d moved. For a while there, though, he’d found out firsthand exactly what a buck had to feel like during hunting season. And, granted there hadn’t been any incident since the restraining order had been taken out, but he still wasn’t a hundred percent at his ease. Someday, he hoped, he could reclaim his life and go back to being laid back, or at least not feel edgy every time he heard the doorbell ring.
But for now, he had to remain vigilant.
And surprised.
The woman’s back was to him and she wasn’t wearing a lab coat, but he recognized the soft sway of her hips immediately. It was part of what had caught his attention to begin with.
“Dr. Pulaski?”
Tania turned around, forcing a bemused expression to take over her features. She made a point of appearing nonchalant, so much so that no one except her family would have even remotely guessed at the tension she lived with every waking moment.
To the untrained eye, the smile was warm, perhaps even a little inviting. “Hi.”
What was she doing here? Not that he minded, of course. This spared him the chore of coming up with a reason for going back to the hospital to try to see her again before he was scheduled to have his stitches rechecked.
“I thought house calls had gone the way of the dinosaur—or is there a problem with my insurance?” he joked.
She’d been on his mind, off and on, since he’d fought his way past the camera crew, shielding the jeweler while he was at it. The people he worked with were far more interested in having him retell the events of what had happened than they were in his contributions to the meeting he’d ultimately wound up missing. And then he’d had to stop at the precinct to give his statement. All the while, his thoughts kept straying to the woman who had tended to his wounds, vacillating between wondering if he’d ever see her again to wanting to see her again.
“No, no problem that I know of,” she qualified. “But you did leave without your watch,” she told him. She indicated the envelope on the floor.
“My watch.” A look of astonishment slipped over his face as he looked at his wrist. Running behind all day, he’d chosen not to look at his watch, confirming just how late he was. If he had, he would have realized that it was missing.
And remembered where he’d last seen it.
Now that would have been a legitimate excuse to see her again.
“I didn’t even know it was gone,” he confessed, opening the envelope. “I’m so used to it being there, I thought it was. What do they call that, phantom something or other?”
“I think you’re trying for ‘phantom pain’ and that only involves amputated limbs, not missing wristwatches.” She didn’t bother suppressing an amused smile.
He put the watch back on, then looked at it, relieved and satisfied all at the same time. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“Obviously a lot.” Which made her glad she’d gone out of her way to bring it back to him.
“It belonged to my father,” he told her.
She’d already figured out that it was old. “That would explain the winding stem,” Tania commented.
“My mother gave it to me when I graduated high school, said she knew he’d want me to have it.” Not ordinarily an emotional person, he remembered fighting tears when he’d opened his gift and seen the watch. “It belonged to my grandfather before him.”
“So passing it on is a family tradition.”
The thought made her smile, not in amusement but with a feeling of empathy. Despite the fact that they had come to this country from their native Poland with hardly anything more than the clothes on their backs, her parents were very big on family tradition.
She needed to get going. She’d promised Kady to help her decide on wedding invitations. “Well, I’m glad I could reunite the two of you.”
Tania paused for a moment longer. Everything told her she had to leave, but there was something about him, something warm and inviting that had her lingering just a second more.
To keep from looking like some kind of idiot who said one thing but did another, she asked, “By the way, how’s your head?”
She looked even better without her lab coat. And probably excellent with less on than that. Jesse squelched the thought.
“It hurts,” he admitted.
“That’s what the prescription for the painkillers is for,” she reminded him. Had he forgotten to get it filled?
But Jesse slowly shook his head, the way someone would if they were afraid their head would fall off. “I’d rather not take them if I can help it.”
Oh, another one of those, she thought. “Macho, huh? I have a father like that. Do yourself a favor, take the pills.” She second-guessed his reasons for doing without. “A few doses aren’t going to make you slavishly dependent on them.”
His best friend in high school had succumbed to addiction. And then just succumbed. Life was long and he intended to enjoy it. Unencumbered. But he had no desire to get into that now. So Jesse merely shrugged it off.
“I know, but it’s really not that bad,” he told her. Realizing that he was still standing in the doorway, he opened it a little wider and stepped back. “Can you come in for a minute?”
It was Tania’s turn to shake her head. For all intents and purposes, he seemed nice. But no one knew where she’d gone and there was no way she was about to walk into his domain.
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
Jesse Steele didn’t come across like a spider, but then, neither had Jeff. There was absolutely no way she was ever going to be anyone’s fly again, anyone’s victim. Everything was always going to be on her terms, or not at all.
“I can’t,” she answered. “I need to get home,” she added. “I just thought you might miss your watch and I wanted to drop it off.”
He seemed disappointed, but didn’t push. “I would like to pay you back for going out of your way,” he told her. “Dinner?”
“Not tonight,” she began.
He’d already assumed that. “Tomorrow?” he queried, then asked, “The day after?” when she didn’t answer.
Despite her efforts to the contrary, she was amused. “If I say no, are you going to keep going?”
He nodded, crossing his arms before him. “Pretty much.”
“What if I have a jealous husband?” she asked with a straight face. Did a little thing like marriage make a difference to him? Or was he accustomed to getting his way whenever he wanted something?
She saw him looking at her left hand, then raise his eyes again. “Do you?”
It was the perfect excuse, the perfect out. All she had to do was say yes and walk away. Something inside of her played devil’s advocate and kept her from cloaking herself in the lie.
It was almost as if she was daring herself, seeing how far she would go. To see how far she would inch along the plank before it would bend beneath her weight, threatening to make her fall into the water. It was her usual modus operandi. She’d always scramble back to safety, but it seemed that each time she pushed herself a little harder, a little further.
Someday, she was going to hit that water.
No, she wasn’t, she thought with confidence just before she answered his question.
“No, I don’t.”
“Good, then I’ll just keep going.” He thought a moment. “I think I was up to Thursday. Thursday night?” he asked.
She tried not to laugh. “I—”
Jesse just kept going. “Friday, then. Or Saturday. Saturday work for you?”
She gave up and laughed, shaking her head. “Okay, okay, dinner. Wednesday evening. You pick the place, I’ll meet you there.”
“I could pick you up,” he offered.
“You could meet me there,” she countered.
He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you sure there’s no husband?”
“Just two nosy sisters.”
He was an only child who had grown up longing for siblings. “You have two sisters?”
“Four, actually,” she corrected. “Three older, one younger.” And then she added with the same touch of pride that everyone in her family felt, especially her parents. “All doctors at Patience Memorial.”
Now that was unusual, he thought, not to mention impressive. “Sounds like a really nice family.”
Had he planned it, he couldn’t have said anything better to her. Her family was everything to her. “It is. So, which restaurant?” He gave her the name of one and she nodded. “Expensive. Dinner there will probably cost more than that watch did when it was new.”
“Some things,” he told her, “you can’t put a price on.”
It was the sincerity in his voice that finally won her over. Part of Tania still felt that she might be making a mistake, since she really knew nothing about him except what he’d told her, but then, a man who comes to the aid of a stranger couldn’t be all bad.
Right?
Chapter 4
Tania found herself looking at Kady as the latter threw open the door to the apartment she, Kady and Natalya shared.
“Well, it’s about time. I was all set to fill out a missing person’s report on you,” Kady told her, one hand on her hip in a gesture that fairly shouted Mama. Apparently her older sister had flown to the door the second Kady’d heard her putting her key in the lock.
“Not me,” Marja offered carelessly.
She came walking in from the kitchen after having foraged through her sisters’ refrigerator. Her search had yielded a half-empty carton of chicken lo mein and she was well on her way to making it a completely empty carton.
Marja paused to render a wide, wistful smile. “I was all set to put my stuff in your room and move in.”
“Antsy to get out from underneath Mama and Daddy’s protective eye, are we?” Natalya laughed.
They’d all been there, all but smothered in genuine affection and concern. Not a one of them would have traded either of their parents in for any amount of riches. They all knew how very rare a couple Magda and Josef Pulaski were. Selfless, willing to work twenty hours a day if necessary to put them all through college and medical school.
Her father had said more than once that education was a blessing, which made it a family affair.
But right now, Marja was apparently focusing on the downside and she rolled her eyes in response to Natalya’s teasing question.
“God, yes.” The words were accompanied by a dramatic sigh. The drama she got from her mother. “I love them both to pieces, but they still think of me as a child,” she wailed.
