скачать книгу бесплатно
“You have people who need you,” she said. “I’d better be on my way. Thank you for taking care of me, Dr…uh… I’m sorry. What was your name again?”
“Where did you find out those very personal things about me?” he demanded, not budging an inch.
She did her best to look confused. “What things?”
“My ethnic background, coloring, height, weight, age, favorite color, favorite—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted with a regretful shake of her head, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You expect me to believe you don’t remember what you said?”
“I have no memory of meeting you before today, Doctor. When am I supposed to have said these things?”
“You said them while lying on this bed not five minutes ago. And you know it. You’re not leaving here until you tell me exactly where you learned those personal details of my life.”
She could see he damn well meant it, too. There was only one choice left.
Third-best defense—scare the hell out of the opponent so he runs to the nearest exit.
Emily plastered a look of excitement on her face. “I told you about personal details in your life? And they were accurate? Well, well. That hasn’t happened in quite a while.”
“What hasn’t?”
“When I’ve been in semiconscious states before, I’ve shown…well, that is, people have told me I display very strong psychic powers.”
For a fraction of a second, something that looked like discomfort flashed across his stoic features.
Emily settled farther back on the bed, no longer making any attempt to leave. As a matter of fact, she was doing her best to convey the impression that she planned to stay awhile.
“Once I collapsed in a store and before I came to, I’d told the owner all about the affair he was having with his bookkeeper,” she lied blithely. “Of course, he was a little upset at me since his wife was standing right next to him at the time. But that’s one of the drawbacks of being a semiconscious psychic.”
Brad’s eyes darted toward the phone on the wall. Debating whether he should call for restraints or a psychiatric consultation?
“This is really exciting, Doctor. You don’t know how glad I am you told me. So many people are afraid of acknowledging any sense beyond the mundane five—especially people from the so-called scientific disciplines. Why most doctors wouldn’t dream of repeating what you did for fear of being ridiculed.”
His eyebrows inched so tightly together, they were about to meet.
“Please, you must give me the details of everything you said and what I told you,” she begged. “When I tell people about this, they’re going to want to be sure you didn’t give me any hints. Not that I blame them for being skeptical. There are so many fakes out there. Do you mind if I borrow some paper and a pen to take notes?”
To his credit, he didn’t so much as flinch. But he was clenching the hospital chart so hard, his knuckles were white. It took an effort of will for Emily to keep a straight face.
A nurse rapped once on the door, then stuck her head into the room. “You want the concussion or the bleeder?”
“The bleeder,” he said. “Ms. Barrett is ready to be released.”
He shoved the paperwork in the nurse’s hands and was out of the room so fast that Emily could feel the gust of air displaced in his wake.
She let out a sigh of relief. Well, she’d managed to dodge that bullet. But only just. On paper, Brad Winslow had been very impressive. In person he was one formidable son of a gun.
“ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY, EM?” Dorothy Mission asked for the umpteenth time as they worked together to prepare dinner in her kitchen.
Dumping the romaine lettuce she’d chopped into a large salad bowl, Emily sent her friend a look of exasperation. “If you don’t stop asking me if I’m okay, I’m going to throw this salad at you.”
Dorothy smiled. “Could you wait until you slice in the tomatoes? A green outfit always looks more festive with a nice splash of red.”
Emily chuckled as she went back to her task. “Truth is, I nearly had a heart attack when it dawned on me that I’d unconsciously blabbed all that stuff to Brad Winslow.”
“Imagine the jolt he must have felt hearing what you said.”
“At least he made sure I was okay and everything that was medical had been attended to before he tried to nail me to the wall on it.”
“Em, I know you said you never wanted to meet him, but now that you have, are you glad?”
She gave the question some serious thought as she chopped the carrots. “I admit it did satisfy a certain curiosity.”
“Is he everything that you…hoped?”
Emily glanced over at the speculative look on her friend’s face. “Forget it, Dot. He’s just a man like any other. And, as far as I’m concerned, good for one thing and one thing only.”
“Oh, I think they might have one or two other uses,” her friend said with a mischievous smile.
“I can open tight jars and take out the trash myself, thank you,” Emily said, knowing perfectly well that was not what Dot had been referring to.
“Come on,” Dorothy persisted. “You selected Brad Winslow out of the hundreds you could have picked. You must think he’s special. What stood out most strongly when you met him today?”
“That he’s no one to fool around with. If I hadn’t lied my head off and known what button to push, he’d have found me out, and I’d be in serious trouble now.”
“Em, I respect your wishes on this, really I do. But you’re such a nice person that… I mean even after all you’ve been through, I guess I still hope you’ll…oh, forget it. You’re right. I can’t pretend to understand what I haven’t experienced. And people who say they know how someone else feels are irritating.”
“On that we agree wholeheartedly,” Emily said.
“You two are agreeing?” Holly Mission said as she entered the room. “Oh, this can’t be good.”
Dorothy gave her daughter a hug. Holly was both smart and sweet—a seventeen-year-old version of her mom.
“So, is Lester gone?” Dorothy asked Holly.
“Yeah, Josh and I stuck around until he got his stuff together and drove off.”
“Did you get his key to the maintenance gate?”
“Oh, hell, Mom. I forgot.”
“Key?” Emily repeated.
“Lester quit,” Dorothy said. “When I went to bawl him out about the leaf blower incident sending you to the E.R. this afternoon, I found him loading sacks of organic fertilizer into his pickup.”
“He was stealing them?”
Dorothy nodded. “First story he gave me was that he was moving the sacks to the other side of the Gardens so they’d be in place when he fertilized next week. But when I pointed to some of your new rose hybrids in between the sacks of fertilizer in his pickup, he had no convenient lie ready for why they were there.”
Emily shook her head. “I’ve been wondering why so many of our supplies seemed to be missing lately.”
“His father has opened a small nursery on the outskirts of town,” Dorothy said. “No doubt Lester’s been taking the supplies from the Botanical Gardens over to him. I told him he had a choice. Either quit or I’d see to it that you fired him.”
“That must have been hard for you, Dot.”
“I never should have suggested you hire him in the first place. I love my cousin but her kid is a loser. I swear he got all of his father’s genes and not one of hers. When Lester was thirteen, I caught him stealing from her purse so he could buy marijuana from another kid pushing it at school. Supposedly, he got himself clean. But clean or not, ten years later and he’s still a thief.”
“I’m sorry about forgetting the key, Emily,” Holly said. “But I don’t think Lester will come back. I watched closely to make sure that he didn’t try to put anything that wasn’t his into his pickup. Josh was right beside me, scowling at him the whole time he was getting his stuff together. And when he started to drive away, Josh yelled at him not to come back.”
“Well, good for our Josh,” Dorothy said. “He seems to be working out okay despite his grandfather’s claim that the boy’s clueless.”
“Josh is a very good assistant,” Emily said. “He simply needs a little time to find his direction in life.”
“Speaking of time,” Holly said, “Josh asked me to remind you to meet with the crane guy today.”
“I have. The sundial has been prepped and readied for tomorrow.”
“Do you need my help on anything?” Dorothy asked.
“Thanks, but I took care of the other last-minute details before coming over. Gardens, dignitaries and media are all in line. We are good to go, Mission Control.”
Dorothy smiled as she set a plate of sliced roast beef on the kitchen table. Emily put the mixed-salad bowl between the beef and a basket of steaming baked potatoes. The fact that her friend still insisted on eating in the kitchen when Emily joined them always made her feel like one of the Mission family.
“Smartest thing I ever did was to convince my fellow board members to put you in charge of the Founders Day Celebration. It’s going to be a smashing success, Em.”
“Okay, what are all you smashing women smashing now?” Ted Mission asked with a grin as he came rustling in the back door, keys and briefcase jangling by his side.
Dorothy immediately stopped what she was doing and went to greet her husband.
Ted and Dorothy Mission had been married more than twenty-five years, were past fifty and packed a dozen extra pounds of good living around their middles. But the embrace and kiss they shared were as hot as young lovers’.
“They’re at it again,” Holly said, shaking her head, but wearing a smile.
Emily watched her friends as she always did—with undisguised envy. Dorothy and Ted had it all—rewarding careers, a long-term love match and a brainy daughter headed for Harvard in the fall.
Once Emily had dreamed of having it all. Now she knew that fulfilling work and a precious baby to love would be enough.
For men might come and go. But a child was forever.
ATTENDING PHYSICIAN Alec Giroux was going over charts when Brad walked by his office on his way out. He waved Brad over.
“You certainly had your share of crazies today,” Alec said as he gestured to the stack of charts in front of him. “Nice save on that chest wound.”
“We were lucky we didn’t lose anyone,” Brad said as he folded his arms and rested his leg against the desk.
Alec leaned back in his chair, the expression on his face conveying the fact that he knew luck had nothing to do with it. “You’re going to ace those board exams next month.”
Brad appreciated the vote of confidence. From the moment he’d begun his residency in emergency medicine at Courage Bay Hospital four years before, Alec had been far more friend and supporter than supervisor.
“You going to take Guy up on his offer of a permanent position here when the exams are over?” Alec asked.
Brad wanted to. In his first month on the job he’d learned more from Alec and his brother, Guy, their chief of emergency medicine, than he’d learned in all his years at medical school. They were the best.
But the money at the community hospital was not. He hadn’t paid off all of his eight years of staggering school loans.
“I’m giving it some thought,” he said, honestly.
Alec nodded. As a single father, he probably knew how difficult it could be to catch up on bills and make ends meet.
“I was reviewing Emily Barrett’s chart,” he said. “Surprised to see it among the bunch of wackos we had walking the halls today.”
Even hearing her name was enough to get Brad to un-cross his arms and plant both feet firmly beneath him. “You know Emily Barrett?”
“My sister, Natalie, says she’s a regular in the pediatric and geriatric wards upstairs.”
Yeah, Brad figured knowing someone at this hospital was how Emily had really learned that personal stuff about him.
“Emily brings flowers and potted plants to the patients who don’t get visitors,” Alec continued. “Nice lady.”
“Certifiable kook,” Brad said beneath his breath.
“I pulled her hospital records,” Alec went on, not having heard the comment. “I was hoping they might shed some light on her prolonged unconsciousness today, but no clues there. You were right to suggest more tests. Shame she refused them. All we can do is trust that she’ll follow up with her obstetrician.”
Brad took a step forward. “She didn’t tell me she’d been admitted to this hospital.”
“Outpatient in the OB-GYN clinic for her artificial insemination eight weeks ago,” Alec explained as he handed over the record. “Dr. Jill Crispin does all of her inseminations and deliveries here.”
Brad started, not sure he’d heard right. “Are you telling me Jill Crispin from the Crispin Fertility Clinic is Emily Barrett’s doctor?”
“You know Dr. Crispin?”
“I’ve heard of her,” Brad said as he quickly read through the hospital record of Emily Barrett that he held in his hands. This had to be a coincidence. The transactions were absolutely confidential. No way either party could learn about the other.
Except as his eyes fixed on Emily Barrett’s maiden name, he suddenly saw that there was one way.
“Brad, is there something wrong? Brad?”
CHAPTER TWO
“WHY DID YOU DO IT?” Brad demanded, working hard to control the anger that seethed beneath his surface calm.
Ed Corbin looked his friend squarely in the eye, took a sip of his beer and swallowed hard. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You damn well did have a choice.”
Brad’s raised voice turned a lot of curious heads in his direction. Ed pulled some bills out of his pocket and slapped them on the bar. “You’re pissed. I don’t blame you. Give me a chance to explain outside, where we don’t have an audience.”
