Alix nodded. For the good of the hospital, she affirmed.
He wasnt about to argue the point. Terrance couldnt help wondering how many people hed offended in the last hour. Where would I
Theres a facility directly behind the doctors lounge. Slightly bigger than a bread box, but if youre not planning to do any acrobatics while showering, itll do the trick.
Funny she should mention that. It brought back to mind the showers theyd taken together, fitting against each other in a tiny stall. Sometimes they would even remember to turn the water on.
Thanks. And Alix
She knew that tone, that pause. He was going to say something she was better off not hearingeven though part of her hungered to.
But that was her weakness, and she would deal with it. The way shed always dealt with everything else that life had thrown her way. Shed learned to savor the good moments, trusting the memory of them to see her through, like a bridge to the next good moment.
Go take your shower, she ordered. With that, she turned on her heel and walked away.
Terrance
raised his voice. Its good to see you again, he called after her.
Without bothering to turn around, Alix waved her hand at him, dismissing the words.
Dismissing him.
Telling himself he didnt feel stung, Terrance turned away. Like hed just told Riley, they werent here to fraternize or enjoy the scenery, they were here to bring the operation to a successful close.
On that thought he began to walk quickly to the doctors lounge.
Just behind him, he heard the rear emergency room doors opening and the sound of a gurney being hurried in. Turning around, he could see the blood even from where he stood.
The shower was going to have to wait.
Terrance broke into a run. He caught Alixs expression out of the corner of her eye as she approached from another direction. He wouldnt have been able to say why the unguarded look of approval pleased him the way it did, but it did.
Chapter 4
Things were going slower than he wanted. Hed been at Blair Memorial for almost a week and had learned nothing.
No, that wasnt strictly true, he amended silently. He might not have gotten anywhere in his investigation, but he had learned that his first career choice did hold an attraction for him, even after a self-imposed absence of six years.
Hed learned, too, that the woman who had been so important to him while he was studying to be a doctor most definitely still held an attraction for him. Time had done nothing to diminish that. But then, he hadnt left her because hed lost interest in her the way he had with medicine. Alix hadnt been the reason hed gone numb inside, becoming all but clinically dead yet still somehow going through the motions. Medicine had done that. Or rather, medicines failure had done that to him.
The inability of medicine to save his fathers life after Jake McCall had been shot during a DEA stakeout had shaken the very foundations of Terrances world, had made him question everything that he felt he was about.
The moment his father had taken his last breath, medicine had ceased to hold any allure for Terrance. He found he had to get away, to think, to somehow try to reinvent himself. That meant leaving his old life behind.
That meant leaving Alix behind, as well, because she deserved someone who was wholenot him. She deserved someone who could love her, and he no longer knew if he was capable of the kind of love she needed.
So hed left Bedford and Alix and refused to look back. Left her without saying a word. It was the cowards way out, the only time hed taken it, but it was the only way he could have walked away.
Now he wasnt so sure that he had done the right thing.
Too late for second thoughts now, McCall. Shes married to someone else.
That meant that hed lost the right to let that bother him, certainly lost the right to try to reaffirm his position in her life. Even if he were so inclined, which he wasnt.
He was what time and circumstances had forced him to become. A loner. In his chosen profession, that was viewed as an asset. No wife to worry about, no family to slip into his thoughts at the wrong moments, taking his edge off, blurring his focus. The best agents were the ones who were married to the job, not to a flesh-and-blood person.
He knew all that, and yet
And yet nothing, Terrance thought. He was here to try to get close to William Harris, the grandson of the founder of this hospital, not to conjure up regrets and fantasize over what might have been.
He was familiar with the hospital, the first in Bedford. Known then as Harris Memorial, the eight-story, multiwinged edifice had only recently been renamed Blair Memorial in honor of the woman who had bequeathed her entire fortune to the hospital upon her death.
Terrance smiled to himself. For a fifty-million-dollar bequest, he would have allowed himself to be renamed Shoe.
Mind if I join you?
Terrance roused himself from his thoughts.
Youre not doing your job, he admonished himself silently. Looking up, he saw the chief of staff standing beside his table, holding a tray in his hands. It contained a single plate of deep-dish apple pie.