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CHAPTER TWO
Three months later
“WE DISCUSSED moving Katie to my team ages ago.” Dr. Cecil Nelson, seated on a bench in the doctors’ shower room, turned away from the lockers, toward Ford and lifted a small, red-and-green gift-wrapped package, weighing it so carefully in his hand that it could have been a gold nugget on the scales of justice. After a lengthy moment’s consideration, he set it aside. “Ford,” he continued, “what’s gotten into you?”
“Be kind, Cecil. ’Tis the season.”
Hardly looking ready to spread donated gifts and good cheer throughout the hospital, Cecil offered a grumpy “Humph,” shot Ford a surly look, then pinched a lint speck from the Santa costume he was about to put on. Staring at Cecil’s beefy hand, Ford shook his head, and Cecil suddenly laughed, holding the hand up for inspection. “People swore I’d never make it through med school.”
“You showed them.”
“Ay-yeah, young man,” Cecil agreed, his slow drawl elongating vowels and slurring consonants. “These hands might look more suited to manual labor than precision surgery, but I graduated top of the class. Showed them, indeed. Was born poorer than a son of a gun, too.” White-haired and burly, Cecil was just a year from retirement, and being the sort of wily Southern doctor who was far smarter than his manner of speech might indicate, and who always meandered before making his point, he only now added, “I look more like Santa than a cardiac specialist, too, Ford, but when I get a gift as good as Katie Topper, I don’t give her away. That little spitfire’s joining my team when she gets back to town.”
“Little spitfire,” Ford repeated with a chuckle. “If she heard you call her that, she’d serve you up on a platter.”
Cecil’s bushy white eyebrows drew together. “What’s wrong with little spitfire?”
“It’s right up there with little lady, Cecil. You’re an educated man, you ought to know better.”
Cecil’s lips twitched. “Feel free to sue me. I’m both Texan and male, and if anybody thinks I can still disturb a young nurse as pretty as Katie Topper at the ripe old age of sixty-four, I’d be more than flattered. Anyway, the point is that she’s my favorite nurse.”
“She’s everybody’s favorite nurse.”
“Maybe, but she’s mine when she gets back. I need her.”
“Not like I do.”
“What do you need her for?”
Plenty. Ford needed her the way a man needed a woman. Nearly three months had passed, but his mind drifted to her at the strangest times. At night he’d find himself painfully aroused, the sheets damp and twisted on the floor, his head full of Katie’s sweet moans. Before that night, Ford had accustomed himself to cool, distant women with too much eastern education and too little down-home desire. Women who, if the truth be told, had eyes that generally strayed to one place—a man’s wallet—and who viewed sex as an inconvenient requirement that came with marrying the right kind of man. Women like Blane Gilcrest, who had been trying—and failing—to arouse Ford’s interest ever since her daddy, the attorney for the Carrington Foundation, had gotten close to Ford’s father. Lanky and blond, Blane prided herself on being the kind of woman Ford needed, but he knew her beauty only went skin deep. She was all smooth polish, transparent as glass. Totally unlike Katie.
Katie had been glorious in her passion, her milk-pale silken skin damp and on fire, creamy in places most men didn’t see, as mouthwateringly sweet as honeysuckle where her freckles ended and as fresh as dew where sun and skin never met. Her plump pink mouth, always so sassy, had slackened with release, and her upturned green eyes, always so sharp, had glazed like boiling sugar. She’d given as good as she got, just as she did in the OR, and she’d turned Ford on as he’d never been before. Just as she’d tested his horses that night in the stables, finding their weakest spots, she’d tested him and discovered secrets no other woman had ever bothered looking for. It wasn’t because Katie was so experienced, either, but because she made love the way a woman should, with her heart.
“So, what do you say, Ford?”
“What, Cecil?”
Cecil squinted, then suddenly slapped his thigh and loosed a belly laugh. “Hope you’re done for the day.”
“All I’ve got left is the insertion of a feed tube.”
“Good. ’Cause you’re definitely not playing with a full deck at the moment. While you were busy thinking, I said maybe Katie can shift back in another few months, but I need her now. About a week ago, when she called, I could tell she’s done great things in Houston. Fact is, I think that little spitfire knows more about the human heart than I do at this point, and since my team covers heart and lungs, we want to see what she learned. Some of the other nurses are considering enrolling in that Houston program, too.”
Ford’s mind, usually as sharp as spurs, hadn’t quite caught up. “You talked to her?”
Cecil nodded. “She called last week. They loved her there, even offered her a job. Scared me, since we need her.”
Katie had phoned Cecil? She was thinking of taking a job in Houston? Ford had considered calling her for months, but every time he picked up the phone, he’d visualize her lying across his bed—short-winded, her chest heaving and lamplight from his upstairs hallway shooting streaks of gold through her tight red curls. He wished that he hadn’t, in the last breathless minute before he’d removed her clothes, reiterated the reasons they wouldn’t make a good couple—that he was too rich, too much older than she was, too caught up in a world unlike her own. At the time, he’d meant it. Women like Blane, not Katie, peopled his life.
But the body had a mind of its own, and now he’d crawl right out of his skin if he didn’t make love to her again. Unfortunately, after sex that had taken the back of his head clear off, he’d awakened to find her gone—as if she couldn’t leave fast enough. No note. No panties he might keep in his drawer to remember her by. Nothing.
Because he was a gentleman—at least sometimes—for three months, he’d left the ball in Katie’s court. Now he’d started thinking that if she worked with him in the OR again, she might decide to date him. Maybe they could just start off slow and easy. Grab a bite to eat. See a movie. See what happened.
“She didn’t take the job, right?” Ford asked casually.
“I assume she didn’t. She would have said otherwise.”
Ford’s mind turned over, playing the options. “But there’s a chance she’ll move to Houston?”
Cecil’s blue eyes were as intrusive as scalpels, and his powerful shoulders suddenly shook with merriment. “About five minutes ago I said I wasn’t positive, Ford. But I guess you quit listening.”
“When did she call?”
“Last week. Keep it up and I’ll think you want to move Katie to your team for personal reasons.”
“Oh, you’re swift, Cecil,” Ford said. “You caught me.”
Cecil laughed. “You’re crazy.”
Ford thought about the night they’d spent together. It had been crazy. Hot, sweaty and wild. They’d shared the kind of sex people only dreamed about.
“I’d forget about her if I was you, Ford.”
Since there’d be no forgetting that night, Ford decided the older surgeon was starting to get on his nerves. “Why?”
“Your lives couldn’t be more different. You’ve got a fancy East-coast education, money, family, power. If you want the best table in Austin, any maître d’ will move the governor of the state to give it to you. But Katie Topper?” Cecil’s chuckles got the best of Ford, darkening his mood, mostly because he knew what the elderly man was thinking: for once, Ford Carrington, who’d been born chewing a silver spoon, was going to have trouble getting something he wanted.
But there was a lot Cecil didn’t know.
Like most men who’d pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, Cecil couldn’t imagine the wealthy having any hardships. He’d never guess what it had been like for Ford—a lone child in a big house who, at the age of ten, had felt blamed for his little brother’s death. Cecil would never guess how, despite his professed hatred for medicine, Ford had become a surgeon to win family approval that never came, or that to this day, the cold withdrawal of parents for whom he professed not to care had left a core of anger burning in Ford, just as strongly as the desire to find love. Inside him was an empty hole that no one had ever really filled. But just for a second, on a night three months ago, he’d felt satisfied, maybe even loved. No woman had ever touched him the way Katie had, which was why he was still single at thirty-six.
No, a man like Cecil wouldn’t understand. Maybe Katie Topper wouldn’t, either. Ford hadn’t forgotten how her eyes had assessed his house, and while he’d sensed her ability to love a man not for what he did or owned but for who he really was, Ford knew she was put off by wealth. He’d noted it in the OR, when they teased each other. Like Cecil, she seemed to think that silver spoons bought the end of trouble. But the truth was, money always had a price.
Cecil was still laughing. “Sorry, Ford, but even if Katie had been secretly in love with you for years, you’d never get hold of an Irish spitfire like that without a fight.”
“Fine by me.” Ford smiled easily. “You know I live for the challenge.” Difference was, where Katie would come out swinging, Ford was the type to apply slow, silent pressure. He’d win, too. Cecil was right. The all-powerful Carringtons had everything at their command, including wealth, charm, connections and good looks.
Ford Carrington had everything but Katie.
And while he’d probably never be the marrying kind, he’d decided months ago that she was coming back to his bed.
THE PHONE RANG, and for a missed heartbeat, she was sure the caller was Ford. “If it is, don’t be a wuss, Katie Topper!” she coached nervously, pacing around her apartment. “Just tell him the truth, hear what he says, and if he blows his stack, calmly tell him you’ll think things over and get right back to him.”
Slipping an anxious hand over her belly, she felt her heart pull with a bittersweet mix of excitement, joy and worry for which there was no name in the English language. Then, startled into action, she began quickly tossing aside empty boxes and lifting couch cushions, muttering, “C’mon, where are you, phone?”
Before she’d left for Houston, she had sublet the apartment furnished but had packed her breakables, and since she’d spent Christmas at her papa’s farm, she’d only now gotten around to unpacking. Not the most thrilling New Year’s Eve she’d ever spent, she thought, wishing her brothers hadn’t had dates and that her papa hadn’t left town for a few weeks, as he often did, to do a contracting job in Dallas. Of course Katie had lived through worse. Yeah, like the past three months when you didn’t so much as see Ford Carrington.
It took six rings to unbury the phone and another to take a very deep breath just in case it was Ford. Why Katie bothered, she didn’t know. It had been a one-night stand, pure and simple. No man could have been clearer about wanting only sex. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Trouble was, every blessed second had been pure, delicious fantasy, as if Ford Carrington had looked into her mind and then done everything she’d imagined. It had been three o’clock before common sense and pride kicked in and Katie bolted, heading to the farmhouse and sneaking into bed. How could she have given herself so brazenly to a man who so clearly didn’t want more from her? Sure, she’d said she didn’t want a relationship, but she’d been lying.
“And you still are, at least by omission,” she snapped as she punched the talk button, still wondering what she’d say if it was him. Just a quick, Hi there, Ford. I’m pregnant. Or, Remember how I said I liked dining at Pok-E-Jo’s? Well, it’s all ice cream and pickles now, cowboy. Maybe she should have taken the job in Houston and solved the problem by simply vanishing. “Happy New Year,” she found herself saying, nervously tapping her bare foot on the wood floor. “So far, it’s shaping up to be a doozy. Katie speaking.”
“I hope you don’t have plans tonight, sweetheart.”
Realizing how tightly she was clutching the phone, Katie relaxed. A relieved sigh whooshed from her chest. “Sue? Is that you?”
“Yes, aren’t you lucky,” the nursing coordinator from Maitland Maternity said in a rush. “It’s me. And I’m majorly glad you’re home. You’re not due at work for a couple of weeks—I know that—but I gave as many people as possible the night off since it’s New Year’s Eve, and now we’ve got an emergency. We need another nurse and a surgeon and—”
She fought it, but the name escaped. “Ford?”
“Dr. Carrington’s cohosting a party at Blane Gilcrest’s. You know, that socialite he dates who’s always in the papers? She’s got that mansion on Lakeview? Anyway, I’m looking for Cecil Nelson. He’s on call.”
Katie barely heard. Jealousy had come to her in a quick, unwanted mental flash of Ford dancing with Blane under soft, fuzzy lights. Or whatever. Who knew what wealthy people did on New Year’s?
Katie’s eyes slid to the TV, where, just an hour shy of midnight, the ball was dropping on Times Square, and she calmly reminded herself she had no right to the murderous feelings coursing through her. What happened between her and Ford, while magical for her, was a one-time thing. That was the deal.
Of course there was a small hitch now.
Which meant she’d somehow have to look straight into the dark irresistible eyes that had drunk in her naked body and forget the moment she’d conceived. She felt herself flush as she recalled the coarse hair of Ford’s legs and chest, how she’d soared when his mouth locked over her breasts and how she’d whimpered when his fingers curled possessively between her thighs. Katie exhaled a shudder.
She’d been a fool to think making love with Ford would get him out of her system, or that she could deny her feelings and chalk the night up to an excess of the fancy wine from his friend’s vineyard. If she was honest about it, she’d only had one sip, anyway.
Even if Ford expressed interest now—which he wouldn’t—she couldn’t sleep with him again, not ever. He was high-society Austin, and she was a farm girl. He’d said he wanted sex, not a relationship, and Katie had too much self-respect to let herself be accused of trying to trap a rich man with a pregnancy.
“Can you get over here?” Sue was saying. “I’ll keep looking for Dr. Nelson. But we’ve got a week-old girl in trouble. We thought we could wait until tomorrow to correct a blockage in her esophagus—”
“On my way.” Katie switched off the phone, shoved her feet into cowboy boots and grabbed her keys. She flicked off the TV, then ran for the car, realizing when the sharp January night air chilled her that she’d forgotten a coat. Not that she’d go back. A baby was in trouble.
Later, she’d think about the new life inside her and whether she should have contacted Ford before now. She was a nurse and prided herself on practicality; nevertheless, for two months she’d convinced herself her missed periods were due to the temporary move to Houston. Just female pheromones adjusting to her new coworkers, she’d kept thinking…until she’d administered the pregnancy test that proved she was pregnant and in plain, old-fashioned denial. She simply didn’t understand how it happened. They’d used condoms. “Plural,” she whispered with a sigh.
At first, the knowledge of her pregnancy burned inside her, but she’d only broken down once, confiding in her friend Hope Logan without identifying the father. Hope would be flabbergasted if she knew. But Katie wanted this baby desperately, though she had no illusions of receiving help from Ford. He was thirty-six and a confirmed bachelor by his own admission. Not even the polished social butterflies who flocked around him had caught his interest, so Katie figured she didn’t have a prayer.
“How am I going to tell him?” she muttered, stomping her foot and inadvertently making the car lunge forward. “Well, whatever he says, I’ll take him on.”
Her papa, too. She couldn’t tell him before Ford, but she was worried about how he’d react. Jack Topper was sternly religious, yes, but he was a contractor and old-fashioned Texas farmer, too, which meant he’d either head for the prayer rail at New Flock Baptist or grab the first handy rifle, point it at Ford and try to force him to marry her. Telling Jack it was the twenty-first century and that people no longer solved things with double-barreled blue steel wouldn’t deter him one bit, either.
“Concentrate, Katie,” she whispered as she sped toward Maitland Maternity. “And thank fate for small favors.” At least she’d probably be working with Cecil Nelson tonight, which meant she’d been granted another reprieve, however brief, before she told Ford Carrington she was pregnant with their baby.
SHE’S PREGNANT.
It was an instinctive, gut reaction, entirely unfounded but born of years spent working around pregnant women. That, and remembering the broken condom he hadn’t told Katie about. Only years of medical experience allowed Ford to separate the personal and professional and throw every ounce of his energy into fixing up a newborn. “Pressure?”
“Stable,” Katie said.
“Oxygen? Saline? Drips?”
She read off strings of numbers.
The professional tone left Ford feeling faintly murderous, even though he knew she, too, needed to dissociate from her emotions in order to get this job done; without that skill, people could never accomplish tasks that, anywhere outside an OR, would be considered barbaric. What was barbaric was Blane’s New Year’s party, Ford thought. Beach theme. Drinks with umbrellas. Mascot in diapers. He’d felt as if he was still a frat boy, back in college, and he couldn’t have been more relieved when the hospital called, saying they were still looking for Cecil.
Ford glanced at Katie again. Surely, his initial impression that she was pregnant was unfounded, but in the heartbeat before she’d pulled on her mask, he’d noted the deepening skin color and rounding of her face. Lord, was wishful thinking making him imagine she’d come back from Houston, her belly filling with their child? Always emotionally unattached, his only model the family in which he’d grown up, he’d never considered having a baby. But with a woman like Katie, could things be different?
Her eyes were still evading his, settling everywhere else in the crowded room full of milling nurses and technicians, making his mind run wild. Didn’t seeing him for the first time in three months affect her at all? He’d expected at least a glimmer of awareness, a rekindled spark. Was she embarrassed, since they’d been in his bed the last time they’d spoken?
“Scalpel.”
Their fingertips met. Even through gloves, he felt her quickening pulse, the sudden, sensual tremor of her skin. Fearing she might not feel it, too, he silently cursed her for making him want her so much. He forced himself to look away and continue working, but it was hard to concentrate. He kept seeing the wrecked living room and the faint lip-gloss smudge on a wineglass, both of which had told him the night with her hadn’t been his imagination. Why had she left him nothing? Not even a lipsticked message on a mirror. Or a scribbled note in a sport coat pocket for him to find weeks later.
He focused, needing to connect two blocked ends of a malformed esophagus. Simple but delicate, the operation served as a reminder of how much people took for granted. Things like tasting and swallowing nourishment, or pulling life’s sweetest scents all the way down into your lungs. That one night, Katie had been exactly like this, simple but delicate. And by damn, he was getting her back into his bed, one way or the other.
Only when he finished the last stitch did he look at her again. “When you’re done, can I speak with you outside?”
Her green eyes looked worried. “In the hallway?”
He figured whatever they had to say to each other didn’t belong to the gossip mill of Maitland Maternity. “No. Outside. The parking lot.”
FORD LEANED against the driver’s door of Katie’s car just in case she decided to hop in, speed off and evade him, the way she used to after work. Damn it, was he simply acting like a possessive, rejected fool? The idea soured his mood. As he stared toward the OR doors, waiting for her, he realized he didn’t take kindly to being thrown off stride. That was the good thing about women like Blane. He knew how to handle them. He glanced around. Katie had parked under a streetlight, but otherwise, the lot was dark and empty, and the night was cold, even for December in Austin.
“January,” he corrected, since the clock had ticked over into the new year while he and Katie were working. The operation had gone well, so where was she? Changing into party clothes, as he had? Had she been celebrating the new year with a lover? The father of the baby? Maybe it wasn’t his….
“She’s not pregnant,” he muttered in angry exasperation, wishing his mind would let go of the ludicrous thought.
Unfair as it was, he felt relieved to see her come outside wearing hospital greens and carrying folded jeans, which probably meant she hadn’t been anywhere. Not wanting to appear anxious, he kept leaning against the car, watching her, listening to the hard, solid connection of her boot heels on the pavement until she stopped in front of him. Somehow, he expected three months to have changed her, but she was the same familiar Katie. His eyes drifted hungrily over red coils of hair that had grown a fraction, and he recalled trailing fingers down the vibrant strands to smooth, now winter-pale cheeks, and how he’d played connect-the-dots with the freckles on her shoulders.
Anxiously, she cleared her throat. “Uh…hi, Dr. Carrington.”
She probably hadn’t planned that opening line, any more than he planned the traitorous tightening of his body when the soft Texas slur of her words churned his blood into a wild current. Hi, Dr. Carrington. It seemed a damn funny thing to say, since the last words she’d said to him were, Please, Ford, can’t we sleep like this? She’d meant with their naked bodies still hot, damp and joined. He’d smiled, informing her that sleep wasn’t in her future. And it hadn’t been.
“Told you I’d be waiting, Katie.” Before she could answer, he added, “And I really think you should call me Ford.”
“I guess I should,” she returned, swallowing hard. “Yes…I really guess so.” Her bright green eyes skated to where he was leaning against the car, and she peered at him through a fringe of red eyelashes. “I said I’d meet you. I wasn’t going anywhere, you know.”
Maybe not, but she sounded as if she wished she were, something that further darkened Ford’s disposition. Hadn’t she had the slightest interest in seeing him again? “Did I say you were leaving? Anyway, where’s your coat?”
She dropped her stacked clothes on the hood. “Sue said it was an emergency, so I just ran out the door.” Her eyes flicked over his tux and gray wool overcoat. “But I take it you were ringing in the New Year somewhere special?” Leaving him to wonder if she was jealous, she quickly added, “Sue assured me she was looking for Dr. Nelson.”
Assured? Ford guessed that meant Katie no longer wanted to work with him. “Well, Sue got me.” And Katie was biding time, alluding to the party at Blane’s, where, Ford didn’t exactly feel inclined to tell her, he’d been bored out of his mind. Shrugging from the topcoat, he said, “Here.”
Katie tossed her head, and nothing more than the mild reminder of her fiery independence threatened to set him off. Watching her crisp curls glint under the lamplight seemed such a travesty, too, when he wanted to feel them wrapping around his fingertips like springs of raw red silk.
“Thanks, but I don’t need a coat.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Really.” She shivered. “I’m fine.”
“Right.” The ungiving cotton of the short-sleeved greens tightly hugged her breasts, making plainly visible what the chill air was doing to her. He glanced away, but not before getting a good look at how she was affected. He waved the coat at her. “Katie. C’mon. Take it.” If she didn’t and he took another good look at her, he might do something he’d regret.
“I said I don’t need it.”
