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The sunset was particularly vivid, as if it were a canvas worked by a madman in fiery colors with black highlights, slicing down to the horizon like a bloody knife. He sighed as he stared at it and listened to the sweet watery whisper of the surf near his bare feet. How poignant, to hold such sights in the heart and have no one to share them with. He was alone. How he longed for a loving wife and plenty of children playing around him on the beach. Perhaps it was time he started thinking of the future instead of the past. Two years was surely long enough to mourn.
He went back to work with a vengeance, taking on a bigger workload than ever before as time passed. He was operating on a private patient at O’Keefe City Hospital, across the street from St. Mary’s. It was just after a particularly rough operation that he was called to the cardiac care ward to check a patient the night nurse wasn’t too happy about. He had three patients in this hospital, in addition to patients at St. Mary’s and Emory.
He wasn’t happy when he discovered who the night nurse was. Noreen, in her usual white slacks and colorful long jacket, with a stethoscope around her neck, her hair in a bun, gave him a cool look as he paused at the circular nurses’ station.
“I didn’t think this was the night you worked at O’Keefe,” he said shortly, still in his surgical greens.
“I work whenever I have to, and what are you doing at O’Keefe?” she asked.
“I had a patient who requested that his surgery be performed here. I’m on staff at three hospitals. This is one of them,” he replied, equally coldly.
“I remember,” she said. Her hands went into the pockets of her patterned jacket. “Your Mr. Harris is throwing up. He can’t keep his medicine down.”
“Where’s his chart?”
She went to the doorway of the patient’s room and produced it from the wire basket on the wall, handing it to him.
He scowled. “This nausea started on the last shift. Why wasn’t something done about it then?” he demanded.
“Some of the nurses are working twelve hour shifts,” she reminded him. “And there were four new cases added to the ward this afternoon, all critical.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Yes, sir,” she said automatically, handing him a pen. “Could you do something about it now?”
He scribbled new orders, and then went in to check the man, who was pale from his ordeal.
He came out scowling. “The catheter was taken out last night and put back in this morning. Why?”
“He didn’t void for eight hours. It’s standard procedure…”
He stared her down. “He’s been throwing up and not drinking very many fluids. The longer that catheter stays in, the more risk there is of infection. I want it taken out and left out until and if he complains of discomfort. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Who had the catheter taken out?” he asked abruptly.
She only smiled at him.
“Never mind,” he said heavily, knowing that torture wouldn’t drag a name out of her. His eyes went over her oval face. Her cheeks were red but the rest of her face was pale and rather puffy. He scowled. He’d never noticed that before. It was the sort of look he often found in heart patients.
She put the chart back up. “The technicians are run off their feet on this shift. I wish we had someone staying with him who could give him cracked ice. That would stay down.”
“Hasn’t he any family?” he asked, touched by her concern.
“A son, in Utah,” she replied. “He’s on his way here, but he won’t arrive until tomorrow.”
“Tough.”
“Very.”
He glanced toward one of the patient’s wives who was trotting down the hall with a foam cup and a plastic pitcher. “Where’s she going?” he asked.
Noreen actually smiled, her eyes lighting up. “The Jamaican technician, Mrs. Hawk, told her where the ice machine and the coffee machine were. She’s been saving everyone steps ever since. She even gets towels and washcloths and blankets when she needs them, instead of asking anyone.”
“This is unusual?”
“Well, there are three other women who come to the door and ask us to give their husbands water when they’re thirsty—about every five minutes, after they’re brought in here after surgery.”
“Nurses used to do those things,” he reminded her.
“Nurses used to have more time, fewer patients, less paperwork and not as many lawsuits to worry about,” she returned, and sighed.
He searched her face and the frown came back. “Do you feel all right?” he asked with evident reluctance.
Her face closed up. “I’m a little tired, like everyone else on this shift. Thank you for seeing about Mr. Harris, sir.”
He shrugged. “Let me know if he has any further bouts of nausea.”
“Yes, sir.” She was polite, but cool, remote.
His dark eyes narrowed as they met her gray ones. “You don’t like me at all, do you?” he asked bluntly, as if he’d only just realized it.
She laughed without humor. “Isn’t that my line?”
She turned without meeting his gaze and went back to work, apparently dismissing him from her mind.
He left the ward, but something was nagging at the back of his mind, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was uneasy, and he didn’t know why. Vacations, he thought, were supposed to relax people. His seemed to have had an opposite effect.
Behind him, Noreen was trying to calm her renegade heartbeat, forcing herself not to look after the tall, dark man to whom she’d secretly given her heart so long ago. He’d never known, and he never would. Isadora had brought the tall man home and Noreen’s heart had broken in two. Not for her, the dark warm eyes, the sensuous smiles. Isadora, the pretty one, the flirting one, married the man Noreen would have died just to kiss. She’d kept her painful secret for six long years, through the four years of Ramon’s marriage, through the past two searing years of accusation and persecution. Her heart should have worn out by now, but it kept beating, despite its imperfection that grew worse daily.
The time would come when she might not have time to get to a doctor. Not that it mattered. Her life was one of sacrifice and duty. There had been no love in it since the death of her parents. She’d felt lost going to the big, lonely house that accepted her only reluctantly. She’d been Isadora’s private servant, her aunt’s social secretary, her uncle’s gofer. She’d been alone and lonely most of her adult life, hopelessly in love with her cousin’s husband and too proud to ever let it show.
He hated her now, blamed her for something that wasn’t really her fault. Even in death, he still belonged to beautiful Isadora. Noreen turned her mind back to her chores, shutting him out, shutting out the past and the pain. She accepted her lot, as she always had, and went about her work.
Chapter Two
Noreen went home to her lonely apartment and wished, not for the first time, that she had a cat or a dog or something to keep her company. But the apartment house had strict rules about pets. None were allowed, period. It was a lovely old Southern home, two story, with antiquated plumbing and peeling paint on the walls. But its four residents considered it home, and it boasted a small garage maintained just behind it for the residents who drove.
Fortunately Noreen and a medical student seemed to be the only people in residence who owned cars. There was a MARTA bus stop on the corner, and here in midtown, everything was accessible. Noreen, however, liked the freedom her car gave her. It was small and old, but it managed to keep going, thanks to the mechanic down the block who charged only a tiny fee to tinker with it when necessary. While she made a good salary at the hospital, Noreen still had to cut corners to make ends meet.
She’d never lacked for material things when she lived with her aunt and uncle and Isadora, but her life had been emotionally empty. Here, with her few possessions around her, she was at least independent. And if she lacked for love and companionship, that was nothing new. She wondered occasionally if her aunt had minded having to hire a housekeeper and social secretary after Noreen’s expulsion from the family home. She’d never had to pay her niece for these services. It would never have occurred to her.
Ramon had moved to a new apartment, she recalled, after Isadora’s tragic death. He hadn’t been able to face going home to the scene of his beloved wife’s last hours, for which he still blamed Noreen. She’d tried and tried to make him listen to the truth, just after it happened. But, maddened with grief and pain, he’d refused to let her speak. Perhaps he preferred the heartless image he’d endowed her with since their first meeting. God knew, he’d never really looked at her anyway.
She recalled with pain her first sight of him, getting out of a stately Jaguar in front of her aunt and uncle’s huge, sprawling mansion. His black hair had shone in the sun. His tall, athletic form in a staid gray suit had made him seem leaner, more imposing. As he entered the house, the impact of his liquid, coal black eyes in a handsome, blemishless dark face had caused Noreen’s heart to stop dead for an instant. She’d never known such sensations in her life. She’d flushed and stammered, and Ramon had smiled almost mockingly at her momentary weakness. It had been, she recalled painfully, as if he knew that her knees had gone weak in that instant. He was worldly, so perhaps her reaction was one to which he’d become accustomed. But God knew, amusement had been his only expression. He’d turned right away from Noreen after the quick, indifferent introduction, right back to his beautiful Isadora.
“Don’t think that he noticed you at all,” Isadora had said mockingly that evening, “despite the calf’s eyes you were making at him. Imagine a man like that looking twice at you!” she’d added, laughing.
Noreen hadn’t been able to meet those demeaning blue eyes. “I know he belongs to you, Isadora,” she’d said quietly, tidying up after her cousin.
“Just remember it,” came the curt reply. “I’m going to marry him.”
“Does he know?” Noreen couldn’t resist asking the dry question.
“Of course not,” her cousin murmured absently. “But I’m going to, just the same.”
And she had, only two months later, with her aunt as matron of honor and one of her set as bridesmaid.
Ramon, courteous to a fault even to strangers, had puzzled over the selection. Two days before the wedding, while Isadora enthused over her bridal gown with her mother, Ramon had paused in the doorway of the kitchen, where Noreen was taking tiny tea cakes out of the oven, to ask why she wasn’t participating in the wedding.
“Me?” Noreen had asked, sweating from the heat of the kitchen, where she’d been sent to make pastries for afternoon coffee.
He’d frowned at her appearance. “Do you never wear anything except jeans and those—” he waved an expressive dark hand “—sweatshirts?”
She’d averted her eyes. “They’re comfortable for working around the house,” she’d replied.
She could feel him watching her while she slid the cakes onto a china plate and placed the cookie sheet into the stainless-steel sink for washing.
“Isadora doesn’t like to cook,” he murmured.
“I imagine you won’t mind having someone else do it,” she replied uncomfortably. She hated having him even this close, she was so afraid of giving herself away. “Anyway, Isadora’s much too pretty to waste time on domestic chores.”
“Are you jealous of her,” he’d asked, “because she’s pretty and you aren’t?”
The mocking tone of the question had brought her pale gray eyes up flashing. She almost never talked back, but he seemed to bring out latent temper in her that she hadn’t realized she possessed.
She remembered standing up straight, glaring at him from a face flushed with heat and temper, her dark blond hair hanging in limp ringlets from the bun atop her head. “Thank you so much for reminding me of the qualities I lack. I don’t suppose it would occur to you that I’m capable of looking in a mirror?”
His eyes had sparkled, for the first time, at her. His eyelids had come down over that glitter and he’d stared at her until her unruly heart had gone crazy in her chest.
“So you’re not quite a doormat, then?” he’d prompted.
“No, no soy,” she replied in the perfect Spanish she’d been taught in school, “y usted, señor, no es ningún caballero.”
His eyebrows had gone up with her assertion that he was no gentleman. “Que sorpresa eres,” he murmured, making her flush again with the intimacy of the familiar tense—only used between close friends or relatives—when she’d used the formal. What a surprise you are! he’d said.
“Why, because I can speak Spanish?” she asked in English.
He smiled, for once without sarcasm. “Isadora can’t. Not yet, at least. I intend to teach her the most necessary words. Of course, those aren’t used in public.”
From a distance of years, she looked back with faint curiosity at the way he’d taunted her with his feelings for Isadora. It had been that way from the beginning. It grew much worse as the couple celebrated their first anniversary.
Noreen hadn’t ever been sure why she was invited to the party. She hadn’t planned to go, either, but Ramon had sent a car for her.
Hal and Mary Kensington welcomed her enthusiastically in front of their guests, and then ignored her. Isadora seemed furious to see her there and had pulled her to one side during Ramon’s brief absence, with curling fingers whose nails had almost broken the surface of her skin.
“What are you doing here?” she’d demanded furiously. “I didn’t invite you to my anniversary celebration!”
“Ramon insisted,” Noreen said through her teeth. “He sent a car.”
The other woman’s delicate blond brows arched. “I see,” she murmured. She dropped her cousin’s arm abruptly. “He’s getting even,” she added with a harsh laugh. “Just because I had Larry over to dinner while he was away operating in New York.” She shifted abruptly. “Well, he’s never home, what does he expect me to do, sit on my hands?” Her eyes ran over Noreen angrily. “Don’t imagine that he sees stars when he looks at you, sweetie,” she continued hotly. “He only made you come so that he could make me jealous.”
Noreen had caught her breath. “But, that’s crazy,” she’d said, choking. “For heaven’s sake, Isadora, he doesn’t even like me! He cuts at me all the time!”
The other woman’s deep blue eyes had narrowed. “You don’t understand at all, do you?” she’d asked absently. “You’re such a child, Norie.”
“Understand what?”
Ramon had come into the kitchen then, his face hard. “Why are you hiding in here?” he asked Isadora. “We have guests.”
“Yes, don’t we?” she replied with a pointed look at Noreen. “I should have asked Larry,” she added.
Ramon’s eyes had flashed furiously. Isadora darted under his arm and back to her guests, leaving Ramon with only Noreen to take his burst of temper out on.
And he had.
“The charlady, in person,” he’d commented coldly, glaring at her eternal jeans and sweatshirt. “You couldn’t wear a dress for the occasion?”
“I didn’t want to come,” she replied furiously. “You made me!”
“God knows why,” he returned with another cold survey of her person.
She couldn’t think of anything to say to him. She felt and looked out of place.
He’d moved closer and she’d backed away. The expression on his face had been priceless. Sadly, her instinctive action had led to something even worse.
“Do I repulse you?” he’d murmured, coming closer until she was backed to the sink. “Amazing, that such a shadow of a woman would refuse any semblance of ardent notice on the part of a man, even a repulsive man.”
She’d shivered at his tone and crossed her arms across her sweatshirt defensively. “A married man.” She’d hurled the words at him.
His hands had clenched by his side, although the words had the desired effect. He made no more movements toward her. His eyes had searched hers, demanding answers she couldn’t give.
“Maid of all work,” he’d taunted, “cook and housekeeper and doer of small tasks. Don’t you ever get tired of sainthood?”
She’d swallowed. “I’d like to go now, please.”
His chest had risen sharply. “Where would you like to go? Away from me?”
“You’re married to my cousin,” she’d said through her teeth, fighting down an attraction that made her sick all over.
“Of course I am, house sparrow,” he’d replied. “That beautiful, charming woman with the saintly face and body is all mine. Other men are sick with jealousy of what I have. Isadora, bright and beautiful, with my ring on her finger.”
“Yes, she is…lovely.” She’d choked.
His fury had been a little intimidating. Those black eyes were like swords, cutting at her. He hated her, and she knew it. Only she didn’t know why. She’d never hurt him.
He’d moved aside then, with that innate courtesy and formality that was part of him.
