Kitabı oku: «Mills & Boon Showcase», sayfa 17
“What was different about that night?”
“I’m not sure.” She raked her hand back through her hair and looked down at the table as if she would find the answer she was looking for in the grain of the wood. “She really loved him and he loved her. I saw it between them in the emergency department, true love. Then within hours it was gone and I couldn’t put together what would happen next. She was so lost without him already and all I could remember was what it felt like to lose the person you love. I remembered that feeling and knew that my love and pain were only a tenth of what she was experiencing, and I didn’t know how to help her.”
The most remarkable woman he had ever met looked defeated and it was enough to break his resolve. He didn’t stop to question whether she was referring to her mother, him, or Tate Reed in her memories of pain and loss. He rose from his chair and crossed around to her, the drive to hold her in his arms breaking through his common sense. She looked up as he drew her up from her chair, her lips parting in shock. He didn’t mean to kiss her, his intent, brief as it had been, had been to comfort and hold her, but one look into the depths of her eyes and the sweet fullness of her lips was enough to change his mind.
It was an experience in contrasts. The softness of her lips to the hardness of his mouth; the surprise in her reaction to the deliberate intent that drove him; the sweetness within her to the ruthlessness of the man he had become. She didn’t pull away and the small surrender drove him harder. He explored her, reminding his mind and body of the places he had once been and had never forgotten. His tongue teased hers while his hands roamed her body in his embrace. Her hands clung to him, grabbing handfuls of the fabric of his shirt until the moment was broken and he felt her step back from the kiss and push him away.
She was staring at him, her eyes wide. “You want me.”
His arms were still holding her and he was unwilling to let her move further away. He also wanted to make it clear to her who she was with and who was responsible for the dilation of her pupils, her parted moist lips, and the points of her nipples, which were pressing against the fabric of her long-sleeved cotton shirt.
“Why?” she whispered, the word coming at the end of a gasp to find her breath.
“Why what?” His brain had been robbed of its blood supply and his ability to comprehend her question was inhibited by the physical desire he was struggling to restrain.
“Why are you really back?” It was the question that had been in the background of their every interaction and had remained unasked and unanswered between them.
“Code Orange. Code Orange, Emergency Department. All available personnel.” The hospital intercom sounded within the room, the intrusion startling both of them. His arms dropped and she moved away. He had no idea what the announcement meant, but as he watched her face change from the intimacy of her question to immediate business, he realized it was serious.
“That’s a mass casualty code. I need to go.” She went back to her spot at the table, shoved her textbook into her shoulder bag and then left without another look at him.
He was torn between anger at the interruption and relief that he didn’t have to answer the question he didn’t have an answer for.
He knew why he had left her but had no explanation for why he was back. He paced around the room, the motion helping him to organize his thoughts. It wasn’t the first time he had thought it through. It was an argument he had had over and over again, and never once had he come to a different conclusion. Kate was special. She was beautiful, selfless, and genuine in her feelings and actions. She was everything he wanted and he had loved her enough to let her go before his world ruined her and robbed her of everything that made her the woman he loved.
Why was he back? He had asked himself a thousand times since coming to Boston. Why, after nine years of being apart, had he finally given in to the temptation to return to her? It wasn’t that he had forgotten her. In the beginning it had taken every ounce of his willpower to break away from her. When she’d called and emailed he had forced himself to erase the messages before listening to or reading her words.
He had begun filling his life with women and alcohol, neither providing any comfort. For a time he’d actually thought he was losing his mind, because out of the corner of his eye he would think that he saw her across campus or heard her voice in a crowd. One afternoon he had walked into a campus coffeehouse and seen a woman that could have been her. The long brown hair, the way she had been bent over a textbook, intensely concentrating, reminding him so much of Katie that when she had started to look up he’d had to turn and leave. He had been unable to face the crushing disappointment that would have come when he discovered it was not her.
After that he realized he needed something in his life that reminded him of her without being with her. That was when he discovered medical defense law. It brought out the best in him, just as Kate had. The ability to defend and protect physicians who dedicated their lives to caring for others brought a purpose to his life that he desperately needed. It was also the first step in breaking free of his family’s self-serving dysfunction.
After finishing law school, it had been understood that he would join the firm and he did, but with one condition—he wanted to specialize in medical defense. When faced with the prospect of having his grandson work for another law firm, his grandfather relented and let him start a separate division for medical defense within the family firm. Matt was the best at everything he did, but as a medical defense lawyer he excelled. Within two years the firm’s value had tripled and Matt was made a partner. By twenty-eight, Matt was a millionaire, having channeled his share of the firm’s profits into successful investments.
Despite being born into privilege, Matt became a self-made man, and with that came insight into the family dynamic that had dominated his life. He loved his family, but that feeling was marred by the sense of responsibility he felt toward them and disdain for their way of life. They judged and treated people entirely according to wealth and background with no regard for true character. They would have eaten the old Katie alive, and Matt knew that, despite his best efforts to protect her, his family’s resentment of who she was and her position of importance in Matt’s life would have slowly eroded her spirit and the small amount of self-confidence she had.
But now things were different. New money was no longer vulgar, not when Matt had accumulated more wealth than the rest of his family combined. He had also learned to draw some hard lines surrounding his personal life and they no longer dared to interfere in his relationships or other choices.
If his ability to control his family was the reason he was back in Kate’s life, he would have found her years ago. He could more easily explain why he’d stayed away than why he’d returned. He’d stayed away out of guilt. No matter how noble his reasons had been for ending their relationship, he had done it horribly, his mind reacting instead of thinking.
To avoid her sacrificing who she was and wanted to be for him, he had sacrificed his own character. He had stayed away because after all these years He knew he couldn’t offer her what they had once had—trust. If she asked him again why he was back, he would be honest. He was back because she needed him and after nine years apart he finally had something to offer her, and he wasn’t going to let her refuse.
CHAPTER FIVE
KATE REACHED THE emergency department within minutes of hearing the overhead call for help. A code orange was one of the most rare codes and in her entire career she had never heard one called. A code blue was called when a patient stopped breathing. A code red when there was a fire in the hospital. A code orange was reserved for when some sort of disaster occurred and the emergency department was overwhelmed and unable to cope with the patient load.
She wasn’t working, she wasn’t even supposed to be in the building, but that didn’t matter. She had been trained to care for the sick and no office hours applied to that duty.
She threw her bag into the locker room, exchanging her shirt for a scrub top, not so much to protect herself but more to identify her in the sea of people that would be filling the department.
She walked to the trauma bay, coming alongside Chloe and her attending physician, Dr. Ryan Callum. They showed no surprise at her arrival.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes darting around the department, evaluating.
“Multiple vehicle collision in the tunnel, including a city bus, with an unknown number of casualties. The Boston fire department and medics have been on scene for at least fifteen minutes but they are having trouble extracting some of the passengers. We are the closest and the first-response site for all trauma cases, with County and other surrounding hospitals as overflow.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“The operating room has been notified and all nonurgent cases are on hold until we evaluate how much surgical trauma there is. Chloe and the other emergency residents are going to triage the victims according to their injury severity score. If you could be on hand for the critical and severe patients and work with the trauma team to decide who goes to the operating room and in what order, that would help immensely.” He didn’t elaborate further as the team poured into the ambulance bay to meet the first arriving victims.
Within an hour, fifteen patients had been classified with severe and critical codes. Kate mentally ordered the surgical cases for the operating room, taking into account both the severity of their injuries and their readiness for the operating room. She picked up the phone and asked to be put through to the attending surgeon responsible for the trauma team.
“Jonathan Carter,” the surgeon answered, obviously waiting for this call.
“It’s Kate Spence. I have seen the critical and severe tracked patients from the tunnel accident. Nine are presenting as clear surgical cases and four need to go immediately. There is an obstructed airway, a rib fracture with flail chest, a compound femur fracture, and a penetrating trauma to the abdomen.”
“The operating room has four rooms available with nursing and anesthesia. Orthopedics has a team in place and can start with the femur and work through the orthopedics cases. I’m here and so is Dr. Reed, but we don’t have a third surgeon in-house on a Saturday and the nearest person is one hour away because of the tunnel closure.”
“Are you asking me which two of the three non-orthopedic cases we should take first?” she asked, knowing the wrong choice could lead to a patient’s death.
“No, I’m telling you that you are taking the penetrating abdominal wound to the OR without an attending surgeon.”
Her train of thought changed from patient triage to shock. She didn’t need him to repeat himself; he had been clear and his words were echoing in her mind.
“Dr. Spence, you are three months away from being a board qualified surgeon. I’ve worked with you, Dr. Reed has worked with you, and we both agree that you are more than capable of acting alone. The patient is better served with you now than waiting around for someone else.”
“Thank you.” She felt humbled and terrified and neither emotion was she going to allow to show in her voice.
“Don’t thank me. You’ve earned this. I’ve already notified the operating room that you will be doing the case solo. They are just waiting for the patient details and then will send for the patient immediately.”
The team moved quickly. She made the necessary call and then went upstairs to change into her surgical attire. Within ten minutes the patient was on the table, being anesthetized. She moved to the left-hand side of the table and waited for the signal from the anesthetist to start. She could hear the monitors firing, her patient’s heart rate racing, just as hers was. She knew she could do it. Knew they wouldn’t have let her if she couldn’t. But there was something about being the most qualified person in the room, with no one to help her if she got in over her head, that was terrifying.
She needed to set the tone. Everyone in the room was on edge because of the severity of the situation. The only way to bring people down was to lead by example, to stay calm. She could do that. She held out her gloved hand. “Knife.”
She worked meticulously, creating an incision extending from either side of the metal shard that was plunged into the center of the man’s abdomen. She couldn’t just pull it out, she needed the shard in place to act as a tamponade for the bleeding until she could identify which organs and vessels had been damaged. She worked through the layers of the abdominal wall until she was able to place a retractor to hold open the wound and give her the complete visualization she needed.
Damn, she thought to herself. The metal was extending into the transverse colon and the abdomen was completely contaminated, placing the patient at high risk for postoperative infection. Thankfully, the shard had stopped before reaching the aorta, which lay two centimeters below the tip.
Typically this was when her attending would ask her what she wanted to do. Did she want to repair the bowel or remove a segment of the damaged bowel, and if she chose the latter, did she want to do a primary or secondary repair? She knew the answer, but this was thefirst time she was taking one hundred percent ownership of the decision.
She called out to the circulating nurse and requested the necessary staplers and devices. Within an hour she was sitting in the recovery room with her patient, completing her postoperative orders and dictation.
Her emotions were mixed. On one hand she was proud of her surgical accomplishment; on the other, she felt for her patient, who still had a long road ahead of him to full recovery.
The automatic doors swung open and Dr. Carter walked in alongside the stretcher on which his patient was being transferred to the recovery room. He approached Kate, and she prepared to defend her decision to resect the bowel with delayed anastomosis.
“Dr. Shepherd has just arrived and is going to take over the third room until things are clear. Thank you for your help today. Your patient has been formally admitted under my care, but you should consider him yours until he goes home.”
“Thank you again.”
“Don’t thank me. You proved yourself long ago.”
She retraced her steps through the hospital, collecting her belongings from the various locations she had been. She had never questioned her decision to become a surgeon but in that moment she had never been more certain that she had made the right choice. She felt like the doctor and woman she wanted to be, confident and in control, and it was time for her to take control of all aspects of her life.
She dug through her bag in search of her phone and the business card the hospital’s lawyer, Jeff Sutherland, had left her after the initial meeting. She dialed the number and waited as it rang.
“McKayne.”
“It’s Kate. We need to talk.” It was the understatement of the year, but what she needed to say she needed to say in person. She wasn’t going to take the easy way out over the phone.
“I won’t dispute that.” His assuredness irritated her and she tried to stay on track.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m at my apartment—do you need the address?” Yes, she would need the address. Leaving a man’s apartment at three in the morning after an unexpected sexual encounter did not typically lend itself to remembering logistics, but it did remind her of the dangers of entering a lion’s den.
“No. I mean I don’t need the address because I’m not coming over. Can you meet me at Gathering Grounds on Beacon Street?” She held her breath, waiting for his response.
“I can probably be there in about an hour.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.” She pushed the off button, not wanting to prolong the conversation. She needed to keep every ounce of the confidence she had gained this afternoon for when she met Matt.
Almost exactly an hour later Matt entered the coffee shop. She knew he was there the moment he walked through the door, and she watched him get a coffee and then join her at her table.
“We need to speak quietly while we’re talking about the case.”
“I don’t want to talk about the case,” she said, still quietly, her personal life just as confidential to her as the details of the lawsuit.
“Okay, so what do you want to talk about?”
“Us.”
“You said you didn’t want to discuss the past.”
“I don’t. I want to make things clear now.”
“Kate, nothing is more clear. You want me and I want you.”
He was right. She wouldn’t deny it. How could she when he had witnessed her response to him? Even as he spoke the words her body flushed with the memory of him. She swallowed hard and forced herself to remain focused. “That doesn’t matter.”
“How can it not matter that every time we touch, neither of us can keep control?”
“Because I can keep control, Matt. I don’t know you, I never did. But I remember what it feels like to be hurt by you and those memories are way stronger than any physical attraction that still lingers between us.”
His face, which had been heated describing the passion between them, cooled, and she faced a steely expression before he spoke. “Do you want a different lawyer?”
“No. You need to fix this for me, because I know you can. But while you are doing that I want you to forget everything else that is between us. The only relationship we have is of lawyer and client.”
“The attraction between us isn’t going away, Kate, no matter how hard you try to control it or tell me to ignore it.”
“But you are, Matt. When this case is done you are going to move on back to your high-society life and you’ll forget that I ever existed.”
“And what if I can’t?”
“You can, Matt, and you have. You just need to do it again.”
Kate spent the remainder of the weekend trying to get caught up with life. Her work schedule made even basic life tasks seem like monumental challenges. Cleaning her apartment, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and sorting her mail were all luxuries saved up for a rare day off. Her student-loan statement was a grim reminder of the ruin she faced if they lost the case. She had no way to pay back that amount of debt, not to mention the money she owed her father, unless she was employed as a surgeon, and that was dependent on the case. Not to mention the pain of losing her chance to devote her career to women with breast cancer, women like her mother.
She moved through the apartment, trying to restore the same order to her home life as she had her personal life, and eventually she felt more herself than she had since Matt’s return. She had done it. She had taken the steps she needed to protect herself and her heart. She would never let him hurt her again, because if she did she knew she wouldn’t survive it.
Her sense of peace remained with her until Monday afternoon. Matt’s office called and scheduled a meeting for Thursday. The receptionist didn’t provide any details about why they were meeting. She could only assume it was to continue the conversation that had been cut short on the weekend. Two feelings filled her and neither was welcome. One was a sense of dread at having to relive the night of Mr. Weber’s death and her time with Mrs. Weber. The other was hurt that Matt hadn’t called her himself. The latter she resented deeply, despite it being what she wanted: lawyer and client, nothing more.
She operated all day Tuesday and took a call shift on Wednesday in order to be able to leave early for the meeting on Thursday afternoon. By that time her sense of peace had long left her. It was just fatigue, she lied to herself. That was why she felt so on edge about meeting Matt, because she was in control and had every intention of staying that way.
“Kate, are you okay?” Tate’s voice interrupted her thoughts as she made her way through the hospital atrium towards the building’s exit. It was jarring to hear his voice when she was thinking about Matt. She looked up to find him walking beside her, and she hadn’t even noticed.
“I’m sorry, Tate, what did you say?”
“I asked if you were okay.”
She wasn’t going to lie to Tate. “No, but I am going to be,” she said, with enough conviction to convince both of them.
“So where are you headed?” she asked as they left the hospital, his early departure as uncharacteristic as her own.
“I’m guessing the same place you are, to a meeting with Matt McKayne.”
She shook her head from side to side, the momentary lightness now gone. Who was she kidding? The only person in control was Matt. He had always been in control, it was one of the things that had drawn her to him, but now she was terrified. If he was in control then she wasn’t, and the small whisper of doubt she had over her ability to keep her emotional distance from him blossomed into fear.
“I don’t think you have to worry about the lawsuit interfering with your fellowship. McKayne seems to know what he is doing.”
Tate had assumed her anxiety was related to the lawsuit. She should have felt relieved at his assumption but instead she felt insulted. It felt like Tate was choosing Matt over her and it hurt. She couldn’t help her bitter response. “Looks can be deceiving, Tate.”
“You don’t trust him,” Tate replied, more as a statement than a question. Kate was glad they were walking, wanting to hide her face and blame her expression on the feel of the cold spring chill on her face.
“You do?” she countered, unwilling to divulge any information about whether or not she trusted Matt, because truthfully she still didn’t know herself.
“Yes, I do. I am not sure what it is about him. He’s arrogant and he likes to be in charge, but I can tell it comes from a driving need to succeed and do his job well. He probably should have been a surgeon.”
“Ha,” Kate scoffed, thinking about how Matt’s family would have taken a departure from the legal profession.
“What is it you don’t like about him?” Tate asked.
He broke my heart and abandoned me, Kate said inside her head. Out loud she simply said, “I think we are here.”
They walked into the lobby of the downtown high-rise and took the elevator to the top floor. Tate walked to the receptionist’s desk to check in while Kate took in her surroundings. Matt had done well if the office was anything to go by. There were floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the water. The office reception area was beautifully furnished with comfortable seating and a granite coffee bar. Tate handed her a warm mug. “I thought maybe you should avoid any more caffeine. It’s lemon tea.”
Kate looked down and noticed the small tremor in her hand that Tate had already taken note of. “Thanks.”
“Dr. Spence and Dr. Reed.”
She looked up and saw a middle-aged woman looking at her expectantly. Tate rose with Kate and they followed the woman through the open office area towards a corner office. “Mr. McKayne, Dr. Spence and Dr. Reed.”
They walked into the office and sat in the two large leather chairs across from Matt’s desk. Once seated, Kate took her first real glance at Matt. He was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit with a blue shirt and steel-gray tie that matched the cold look in his eyes. His jaw was clean-shaven and clenched. She couldn’t read him and that bothered her on multiple levels.
“You went to Brown?” Kate turned to look at Tate, who was looking past Matt at his framed degree hanging on the wall behind the desk.
“Yes, I did my undergraduate degree there, before going to Columbia Law.” She was watching Matt intently, waiting for him to change the focus and start discussing the case, but instead he was staring at Tate like she wasn’t even in the room. He wouldn’t, there was no way he would.
“Tate, as your lawyer, I need to disclose to you a potential conflict of interest I have in regard to this case.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
Kate tried to speak, to stop Matt from saying whatever he was going to say, but no words came out.
“Kate and I knew each other during our undergraduate degree at Brown. We were lovers.”
Everything was slipping away. She couldn’t focus. Not on Matt, not on Tate, not even on her own thoughts and feelings that were racing through her. Cruel. This was cruel to her and to Tate. After what seemed like an eternity Tate’s voice broke the silence.
“I would have appreciated that information much earlier. From Kate,” Tate said in a monotone, turning his head towards her as he spoke. It was the same look he had worn the night they had broken up, one of shock and disappointment. She wouldn’t look away, he deserved her attention, but maintaining eye contact did nothing to assuage her feelings of helplessness and shame. He was right: he had deserved the truth from her.
“Tate, I can explain,” she said, knowing nothing was going to make this better. She had already destroyed their relationship once, and just when they were finally getting back on track with being the friends they always should have just been, she had lied to him and allowed him to be made a fool of in front of Matt.
“You don’t need to explain anything to me, Kate. Your sexual relationships are no longer relevant to me, but I thought we were going to be honest with each other from here on in. I guess I was wrong.” He rose from the chair and turned, focusing his attention on Matt.
“Matt, at this point there is only one thing I want from you. I want this case and my connection to Kate over.” Then he walked out of the room, and the sound of the door slamming behind her made her jump.
“Kate, I had to tell him,” she heard Matt saying from across the desk with an air of authority and conviction that she didn’t appreciate. His tone only helped to fuel the deep sense of hurt that had been close to the surface since their reunion and now was ready to boil over.
“You have to do a lot of things, Matt. You have to be the perfect son, the perfect grandson, and now the perfect lawyer. But what you really are is the perfect coward, taking the easy way out, hiding behind all the grandiose responsibilities of your perfect, rich, high-society life, ignoring the real things in life you have to be responsible for.”
“What are you talking about, Kate?” He hadn’t yelled, but he might have, to look at him. Still, the look of Matt, his jaw clenched, his hands gripping the arms of his chair was not enough to stop the words that she had screamed in her head for years.
“That’s just it, Matt, you are so screwed up that you still haven’t bothered to figure out what is really important to you.”
“And Tate Reed? That is who’s important to you these days, is it, Kate?” He had left his chair, his hands bracing his body as he leaned across the desk towards her. Even though they were still feet apart, she felt him, his anger, his fire, and she drew back in her chair, pressing herself into the back of it.
“Yes, Matt. My friends are important to me and they deserve to be treated far better than what Tate got today.”
“You don’t think Tate deserved to know we were lovers?” His words were sarcastic, and everything about him reminded her of a hunter about to go in for his final attack, but she wasn’t about to concede to him now.
“We were never lovers, Matt. You never loved me. You may not remember that, but I do.”
She stood from the chair and was happy that she had kept her coat with her, feeling more than ready to leave this conversation and Matt’s office. She had turned towards the door when she felt Matt grab her hand and spin her back towards him.
“Kate, don’t go, we’re not done,” he ordered.
Grief tore through her and settled low in her stomach. “I didn’t go, Matt, you did. I trusted you once and I was wrong, and I have had to live with that. But we are done, Matt. You decided that years ago.” She backed away and he let her go.
She walked into the dimly lit establishment that was filled with the rich smell of wood and the sound of fiddle music playing in the background. Her eyes scanned the room until she found what she was looking for.
She went to the bar, ordered two eighteen-year-old single malt Scotches, and walked over to Tate’s booth, sliding in on the leather padded bench opposite and passing over the tumbler before he took notice.
“I should have told you about my past with Matt. I was wrong and you have every right not to forgive me, but I really hope you do because you are one of the few people in this world that I trust and I respect so much more than my actions have shown.” Her words tumbled from her with unmistakable sincerity.
“You have always had more guts than any other surgeon I know.” He picked up the glass she had brought him and took a fortifying mouthful. “That night six months ago you were right.”
“I know. We both did everything we could to save Mr. Weber but it was futile.”
Tate shook his head. “No, Kate, you were right about us. We were great friends and we loved each other, but we were not in love with each other. It took me a long time to admit that to myself. My pride was hurt when you rejected my proposal and the anger I felt towards you made it hard for me to realize that I was more angry than sad at what should have been the loss of the love of my life but wasn’t.”
“And now?” Kate asked tentatively, not knowing where the conversation was going.
