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Wallace looked at him sharply. “And maybe you should do your job and I’ll do mine.” Wallace didn’t appreciate being told what to do by a man who knew nothing about the situation they were in. “Her father pays me to be her bodyguard. I can’t exactly accomplish that from my apartment.”
Reese didn’t care for the man’s tone or his attitude. “Seems to me you didn’t ‘exactly’ accomplish it earlier, either, and you were a lot closer then.”
To his surprise he saw the anger on the other man’s face give way to a flush of embarrassment. His remark had been uncalled for. Reese chastised himself; he was civilized now, at least moderately so, and was supposed to know better.
He chalked it up to his being tired. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was a reason.
“Sorry,” Reese said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He wasn’t up on his celebrities, but it seemed to him that someone so young wouldn’t normally need to have her own bodyguard. Her name didn’t ring a bell for him, but that, too, was nothing new. For the most part, except for his small circle of friends or his mother, he tended to live and breathe his vocation. “Why does she need a bodyguard?”
The wide shoulders beneath the rumpled brown jacket straightened just a fraction. That was all there was room for. The man had the straightest posture he’d ever seen outside of a military parade, Reese thought. He’d had Grant pegged as a former military man.
“You can ask her father that when he gets here,” Wallace told him, his tone formal. “It’s not my place to tell you.”
Guarded secrets. Definitely a former military man, Reese decided. He shrugged. Whether she had a bodyguard or not didn’t really matter to him, as long as the man stayed out of the way.
“Just an idle question. Don’t have time for many of those,” Reese confessed, more to himself than to the man in front of him. Before he left, he stopped at the nurses’ station and looked at the middle-aged woman sitting behind the bank of monitors, each of which represented a patient on the floor. “Page me if the patient in room seven wakes up.” He leaned in closer to her and lowered his voice. “And don’t forget to tell our semifriendly green giant here, too.”
Slanting a glance at the man who had resumed his vigil in the hallway, the strawberry blonde raised a silent brow in Reese’s direction.
He grinned. “Call it a mercy summoning,” he told her just before he left.
Reese was in the doctor’s lounge, stretched out in a chair before a television set showing a program that had been popular in the late eighties. He must have seen that particular episode five times, even though he’d rarely watched the show when it was originally on. Murphy’s Law.
He wasn’t really watching now, either. The program was just so much white noise in the background, as were the voices of the two other doctors in the room who were caught up on opposite sides of a political argument that held no interest for Reese.
For his part, Reese was contemplating the benefits of catching a quick catnap, when his pager went off.
Checking it, he recognized the number. He was being summoned to the ICU. He wondered if the nurse was just responding to his instructions, or if London had taken a turn for the worse.
“No rest for the wicked,” he murmured under his breath. Rising, he absently nodded at the two physicians, who abruptly terminated their heated discussion as they turned toward him in unison.
“Hey, Reese, you up for a party tonight?” Chick Montgomery, an anesthesiologist who knew his craft far better than he knew his politics in Reese’s opinion, asked him enthusiastically. “Joe Albright’s application to New York Hospital finally came through, and he’s throwing a big bash at his beach house tonight to celebrate.”
His hand already on the door, Reese shook his head. He didn’t feel like being lost in a crowd tonight. He had some serious sleeping to catch up on. “I’m not planning to be upright at all tonight.”
The other doctor, an up-and-coming pediatrician, leered comically. “Got a hot date? Bring her along, the more the merrier is Joe’s motto, remember?”
Reese didn’t even feel remotely tempted. “No hot date,” he told them. “I’m booking passage for one to dreamland tonight. Maybe I’ll actually manage to start catching up on all the sleep I lost while I was in med school,” he cracked.
That was the one thing he missed most of all in this career he’d chosen for himself. Sleep. When he was a kid, weekends were always his favorite days. He’d sleep in until ten or eleven, choosing sleep over watching early Saturday-morning cartoon programs the way all his friends did. Sleep had been far more alluring.
It still was.
Trouble was, he didn’t get nearly enough anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep. If anything, life after medical school had gotten even more hectic for him. There was always some emergency to keep him at the hospital or to drag him out of bed early.
You asked for it, he thought, walking down the first-floor corridor toward the front of the building.
The ICU was located just beyond the gift shop. As he passed through the electronic doors that isolated the intensive care unit from the rest of the hospital, Reese absently noted that the hulking guardian wasn’t hovering around in the vicinity.
He wondered if the man had finally decided to take a break and go home for a few hours. Diligence could only be stretched so far.
“Jolly green giant on a break?” he asked Mona, the strawberry blonde who’d paged him.
The woman shook her head and pointed toward room seven.
Apparently, Reese thought, diligence could always be stretched just a wee bit further. The man he’d just asked about was now hovering over London Merriweather’s bed. To his surprise the booming voice the bodyguard had earlier used on him had been replaced by a voice that was soft and pleading.
A gentle giant, Reese mused. Who would have thought it?
“Promise me you won’t do that again, London,” he was saying. “I’m only here to look out for you. I’m the good guy.”
London only sighed in response, but to Reese it sounded like a repentant sigh. But then, maybe he was reading things into it. He didn’t really know the woman. She might just be placating the big guy.
Sensing his presence, Wallace glanced toward the door. The look he gave Reese clearly labeled him as the intruder, rather than the other way around.
Since only five minutes at an ICU patient’s bedside was allowed, Wallace had taken to peering periodically into London’s room when the nurse’s back was turned. Each time he did, he saw that London was still sleeping. His agitation grew with each unfruitful visitation. As did his concern.
So when he’d looked in this time and found that her eyes were open, his heart had leaped up like a newly released dove at a wedding celebration. He’d lost no time in coming in and peppering the young woman for whose safety he was responsible with questions and admonishments.
“You gave me some scare,” he’d freely confessed, saying to her what he would never have admitted to another man. “When I saw your car hit that pole, I thought my heart stopped.” A small smile had curved his lips. “I found out I still remembered how to pray.”
She’d looked at him ruefully then and he could see that she was sorry. When she had that look on her face, he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with her, even though they both knew that she’d pulled a stupid stunt by taking off at top speed like that, trying to lose him. London was alive, and that was the bottom line. That was all that counted. The rest could be worked out somehow. He’d make sure of it.
Wallace had said his piece and didn’t want London to be upset, with him or with herself so he’d smiled shyly at her and added, “Bet the Big Man Upstairs was surprised to hear from me after all this time.” He’d placed his hand over hers, dwarfing it. Letting her know that he would always be there for her. That there was nothing to be afraid of. “But you’re going to be okay. The doc who operated on you told me so.”
She’d nodded, as if she knew she was going to be all right. Because Wallace had told her so. “Sorry. I just wanted to get away.”
And he’d looked at her, his dark eyes pleading once more. The next time could prove fatal. “Not from me, London. Not ever from me. I’m not just your bodyguard, I’m your friend. I’m the guy who’s supposed to keep you safe, remember?”
She’d bitten her lip and nodded. He’d almost gotten her to promise never to take off like that again when the doctor had walked in on them.
Self-conscious about his lapse in protocol, Wallace quickly lifted his hand from London’s.
“She woke up,” the bodyguard told him. There was a touch of defensiveness in his voice, and the soft tone Reese had heard just a moment earlier was completely gone, vanishing as if it had never existed.
Reese nodded as he approached the bed. “So I see.”
His eyes shifted to the woman in the bed. He looked at her with a discerning eye. London still looked very pale, but there was a brightness in her eyes that had been absent earlier. She was definitely coming around, he thought.
“Let me check your vital signs.” Reese’s tone was light, conversational as he took the stethoscope from around his neck and placed the ends in his ears.
“Vital signs all present and accounted for, Doctor,” London cracked. She would have saluted him, but her arms still felt as if they each weighed more than a ton.
“You don’t mind if I check for myself.” He picked up her wrist and placed his fingers on her pulse. Mentally he began counting off the seconds and beats.
“Feel free.” She watched him for a moment. He looked so cool, so calm. Was that just a facade? What did it take to light a fire under him? “Did you know that in some cultures, if you save a person’s life, that life belongs to you?”
His eyes met hers briefly. “Makes a casual birthday present seem a little ordinary and rather insignificant, doesn’t it?”
Taking a pressure cuff that was attached to the wall, Reese wrapped it around her arm, then increased the pressure until the cuff was tight along her arm. This was something the nurses did periodically, but he liked checking for himself. Nothing like hands-on experience whenever possible.
He kept his eye on the readings as the air was slowly let out. Her blood pressure was excellent. And she was no longer speaking in fragments, which meant that she wasn’t having trouble taking in deep breaths. She had amazing recuperative powers.
Satisfied, he removed the cuff, then made a notation in her chart. He was aware that the giant standing on the other side of her bed was watching his every move. “How do you feel?”
She almost felt worse than when she’d first come in on the gurney. But then, she reminded herself, she’d probably been in shock.
“Like Humpty-Dumpty.”
He laughed under his breath. “Well, lucky for you we’re staffed with something other than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.” He smiled at her. “So we were able to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.” Reese replaced the cuff in its holder on the wall. “Your vital signs are all strong. You keep this up and you can move into the suite that Grant, here—” he nodded at the giant “—insisted on reserving for you.”
He was referring to one of the rooms located in what the hospital staff referred to as the tower. Large, sunny rooms that could have easily been mistaken for hotel suites, made to accommodate VIPs who came to the hospital with their own entourages. CEOs, movies stars and, on occasion, politicians made use of the suites whenever circumstances forced them to stay at the hospital.
At present only one of the four rooms was in use. While checking London in, Wallace had insisted on reserving the largest suite for her once she was well enough to leave the ICU. The tab had begun the moment he’d made the request formally.
London tried to raise herself up on her elbows and discovered that it was yet another stupid move. Pain shot all through her, going off through the top of her head. She winced and immediately chastised herself. She didn’t like displaying her vulnerability.
Reese was at her side, adjusting the IV drip that was attached to her left hand. “You feel pain, you can twist this and it’ll increase the medication dosage.”
She frowned. “I don’t do drugs.”
“You do for the moment,” Reese informed her mildly, stepping back.
London sighed. All she’d wanted was a little control of her life, and now look—she was tethered to a bed, watching some clear substance drip into her body and listening to an Ivy League doctor tell her what to do.
She looked at him. “I don’t want a special room. I want to go home.”
“Then you shouldn’t have tried to break the sound barrier using a Jaguar,” Reese informed her mildly, ignoring the glare that was coming from the woman’s bodyguard. He replaced her chart, then sank his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat as he regarded his newest patient. He offered her what he deemed was his encouraging smile. “We’ll try not to keep you too long.”
She sighed. It was already too long. She knew it was her own fault, but that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to be here. That being in a hospital made her uneasy, restless. She wanted to get up out of bed, walk out the door and just keep walking until she hit the parking lot.
But being tethered to an IV and feeling as if she had the strength of an anesthetized squirrel wasn’t conducive to her going anywhere. At least, not for the moment.
She tried to shut out the sadness that threatened to blanket her.
“I called your father.” Wallace had been wrestling with the way to tell her since he’d put through the call to the embassy.
They both knew he had to, but he also knew how much she didn’t want him to make the call.
London sighed again, more loudly this time. Great. This was just what she needed on top of everything else. To experience her father’s disapproval coming down from on high. They hardly had any contact at all, except when her father felt the need to express his disappointment about something she’d done or failed to do.
In the past year she had turned her hand—and successfully at that—to fund-raising for charities. There hadn’t been a single word of commendation from her father even though the last affair had raised so much money that it had made all the papers.
She looked at Wallace. She had thought she could trust him. In the past eighteen months, while he’d been heading the security detail for her father that she thought intruded into the life she was still trying to put together, they had become friends.
Obviously, salaries transcended friendships.
“Why?” she asked sharply. “There’s no point in worrying him.”
Wallace didn’t care for the fact that the doctor was privy to this exchange, but he had no say in the matter. Reaching for the newspaper section that was folded and stuffed into his overcoat pocket, he tossed it onto her bed.
“He’d be plenty worried if I hadn’t. This was on the bottom of page one in the L.A. Times. I figure a story just like it is bound to turn up in the papers or on the news in Madrid.” The small brown eyes bored into her. “You know how much your father likes to watch the news.”
Almost against her will she looked at the paper. Ambassador’s Daughter Nearly Killed In Car Accident.
London frowned. Stupid, stupid. She shouldn’t have given in to impulse. But she’d been so tired of having her every move shadowed, of feeling isolated but not alone.
“Yes, I know.” Well, there was no undoing what she’d done. She was going to have to pay the piper or face the music or something equally trite. London pressed her lips together. Her eyes shifted toward Reese. “Wallace, I’d like to talk to the doctor alone.”
Wallace opened his mouth in protest. The doctor should be the one to leave, not him. But there was clearly nothing he could do. Reluctantly he inclined his head. “I’ll be right outside.”
Because none of this was his fault, London mustered a smile, resigning herself to the inevitable. And, she supposed, in light of everything, there was a certain comfort in knowing Wallace was around. “Yes, I know.”
“Right outside,” he repeated, this time for Reese’s benefit just before he left the room.
For a moment there was no sound except the gentle noises made by the machines that surrounded the upper portion of her bed, monitoring her progress, assuring the medical staff that all was going as it should.
Reese had places to be, patients to see. He didn’t have time to dance attendance on a headstrong young woman who hadn’t learned how to curb her desire for speed. “You wanted to say something to me?”
“Yes.” She’d never been very good at being humble. Maybe because it made her feel as if she were exposing herself, leaving herself vulnerable.
Finally she said, “Thanks.”
She made it sound as if it pained her to utter that, Reese thought. “Like I said earlier, it’s my job. And if you really want to thank me, get better.” Finished, he began to walk out.
“I don’t like hospitals.”
The statement came out of nowhere. Stopping just short of the door, Reese turned around to look at her.
For some reason she suddenly looked smaller, almost lost in the bed. He remained where he was. “Not many people are crazy about them,” he acknowledged. “But they serve their purpose.”
She knew that. Knew that she’d probably be dead if Wallace hadn’t summoned the paramedics to get her here in time. But that still didn’t change the feelings that were clawing inside of her.
“My mother died in a hospital,” she told him quietly.
Reese took a few steps toward her bed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She barely heard him. Only the sympathy in his voice. She didn’t know doctors could be sympathetic. She thought they were supposed to be removed from things like death. “In Brussels. It was a car accident. She wasn’t even thirty.”
Each halting word brought the incident closer to her. Standing alone on a hospital floor with a large, black-and-white checkerboard pattern, feeling abandoned. Feeling alone. Watching a tall man in a white lab coat talking to her father. Watching her father’s proud, rigid shoulders sag. Wanting to reach out to him in her anguish, but being restrained by the woman who had been placed in charge of her.
Something started to make a little sense. “Is that why you—”
She wasn’t going to come up with any analogies. She had no death wish. She had a life wish. She wanted to find one. A life she could be content with, if not happy. “No, I was just trying to get away.”
He glanced toward the closed door. “From the jolly green giant?”
Wallace was harmless, even though he was an expert marksman and had been the head of security for Donovan Industries before being wooed away by her father when her old bodyguard had retired.
