Her Texas Rescue Doctor (5 page)

Double yes.
Grace wanted to pump a fist in the air in victory. He couldn't have been more crystal clear. They were grounded, stuck in Texas. Who needed Superman when Clark Kent was doing the job so perfectly? Oh, God—was she smiling?

Grace bit her lip. Karma was surely going to get her. She'd wanted to get away from LA and stay away, and now Sophia was both injured and ill—but neither too seriously. Perfect.

Yikes.
She was such a bad sister. To assuage her guilt, she pulled out a notebook from her trusty tote bag and started a new list. Flights would have to be changed. The hotel would have to be extended. She'd ask the concierge at their Hollywood condominium to hold the mail, or possibly deliver it here, depending on the length of their stay.

She looked up from her notebook. “How long are we staying here, then?”

“You should give the antibiotics a week. When she's breathing easier and her cough is better, you can fly.”

“A week?” Sophia closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her forehead, overplaying her role a bit, in Grace's opinion.

“It could take you a month or more to feel a hundred percent back to normal, so don't be surprised if the fatigue continues on well past a week.”

“A month?” Grace couldn't keep the happy anticipation out of her voice as she flipped to a fresh page in her notebook. “Oh, Sophie. I'll find us a real house, a vacation rental for a month. I'll get our clothes sent here, and line up some grocery service, and—”

“No.” Sophia opened her eyes and glared at her from under her fingers. “I already told you I didn't want to stay an extra day. I won't be able to stand a week. Don't make one of your damned lists for anything except getting me back to LA.”

Grace pretended she couldn't feel the disapproval Dr. Gregory was sending her sister's way. “We don't have a choice, Sophie. It will be good for you. You've been burning the candle at both ends.”

Sophia snapped her fingers. “Book Deezee a flight. He can come out here and keep me company.”

No, no, no!

“There's plenty of room in our suite.”

It would be a nightmare. There'd be bottles of tequila everywhere, a man who referred to women as his
bitches
ordering Grace to fetch food and find limos for the strangers he'd invite up to their suite. There'd be noise complaints and hotel security and charges assessed for property damage. Grace would be scrambling around the clock. She couldn't take it, she just couldn't do it.

Dr. Gregory, she realized, was watching her intently. Her hand was shaking. She pressed the pencil into the notebook to steady it, so it wouldn't give her away. If she got angry, if she said no, Sophia would be dead set on yes. She needed a new tactic. Quick.

The tip of the pencil broke, a little black scribble on her paper.

“Grace,” the doctor said, “could I speak—”

“Isn't pneumonia contagious?” She tried not to sound desperate.

His easy bedside manner was gone, but his stilted answer was still courteous. “Pneumonia isn't contagious, but the bacterium that causes it is. Someone who comes in contact with her might develop any type of infection from it. Sinusitis, bronchitis. Those could lead to pneumonia.”

“Are you kidding me?” But whatever else Sophia had been about to say was lost in a coughing jag.

Grace brushed the broken pencil lead off her notebook page. She could leverage this. She could tell Deezee that Sophia was contagious, although he was as bad as Sophia, doing the opposite of anything Grace suggested. She could tell their publicist. Sophia and Deezee both listened to Martina...

“Grace, could I speak to you for a minute?” Dr. Gregory asked.

She looked up at him. He was much taller than she was, so she'd been looking up at him all afternoon, but he seemed like a giant now as she sat in the chair. “Of course.”

“What for?” Sophia croaked, not quite done with her cough.

“Alone?” he added.

Sophia grabbed Grace's arm, making the pencil drag across the page. “You said you wouldn't leave me again.”

Sophia looked so genuinely distressed, Grace didn't have the heart to point out that she'd left her to fetch the cell phone and left to fetch the caramel non-van half-caff macchiato because Sophia had ordered her to. Right now, she looked like a little puppy that needed protecting.

Grace looked from her sister's blue eyes up to Dr. Gregory's. He seemed so solid, so calm. He had the authority to deny air travel, to order medical tests, even to protect a woman from an abusive spouse.

He could help her.

She stood. “Don't worry, Sophie. I'll be back in a minute.”

With a slide of metal curtain rings, she left with Dr. Gregory.

Chapter Six

A
lex was dazzled by the sight of Grace in the bright Texas sun.

Being dazzled was, of course, the temporary effect of walking from the windowless emergency room into the bright sunlight of the ambulance bay.
Light adaptation
was the medical term. He watched Grace blink, a reflexive move to relieve the visual discomfort as the retinas chemically altered to favor cones over rods.

Or maybe she was just a pretty girl, shading her eyes on a sunny spring afternoon, and he was just a guy who wanted to get to know her better.

Life was only that simple in Hollywood movies.

Alex's life had never been charmed. He was starting to suspect this woman's life wasn't quite the American dream it appeared to be on the surface, either.

He couldn't grill her about her apparent anxiety when it came to Sophia Jackson. As he had with his young soccer-playing patient, he started with something that he knew wouldn't cause pain. “I wanted to let you know that Mrs. Burns has decided to use the services we offered her. She's got an advocate with her now who will escort her to a women's shelter when she's ready to leave.”

“That's wonderful.” Grace's smile dazzled him in a way that had nothing to do with the chemistry of the retinas. The fine tension she carried in her shoulders eased a fraction. With a firm touch, he could eliminate the rest, smoothing his thumbs from insertion to origin point on each tight muscle.

Alex put his hands in the pockets of his white coat.

“And the children?” Grace asked. “What happens to them?”

“They'll be picked up and brought to the safe house with their mother.”

“That is really, really good news. Thank you so much for telling me.”

“Of course.”

He realized he was staring into her eyes—warm and brown and gold, like her hair—when she looked away. Just how long had that silent bit of gazing between them lasted?

She made a gesture, a small wave at nothing in particular. An equally delicate worry line appeared between her brows. “Are you going to get in trouble for breaking a privacy rule or something? Is that why you brought me outside?”

“No. You volunteered to be a witness if necessary. It's reasonable for me to let you know that the patient is speaking up for herself, so you don't have to.”

Her compassion extended to him, then. She was kind to worry that he'd be in trouble. Maybe she was too compassionate, though. If she didn't guard her heart, she would always be worrying about others.

She smiled again, another bit of tension leaving her shoulders. “I'm so glad to hear that. Can you keep me updated? I want to know if everything turns out okay.”

“That probably would be crossing a line when it comes to privacy laws. I doubt I'll ever get an update, either. I don't see most of my patients more than once.”

That little frown of worry appeared again. “You don't get to find out how your patients are doing?”

“Not often. I do my best while they're here and discharge them with instructions and prescriptions and referrals. Whether they use them or not is up to them.”

She touched him. There was no purpose to it, not like there was when he touched someone. She just laid her hand on his arm, not pressing, not squeezing, not demanding. “You must be a very special kind of person, then. I couldn't do your job. I'd go crazy wondering how everyone is.”

He'd brought her out here because he was concerned about her anxiety, the hand wringing and the pencil breaking. If she worried for the whole world like this, then he supposed she must always need an outlet for her emotions. He hadn't meant to add himself to her list of people to worry about.

He'd been on his feet for hours, and he was ready for a break. The unexpected influx of afternoon patients was under control. He could take a few minutes now, with her. He nodded toward the empty metal bench that was usually occupied by a paramedic or firefighter whose emergency vehicle was parked outside the ER's portico.

The curved steel of the bench couldn't have felt better after hours of standing. The woman by his side couldn't have been more beautiful to look at. The sun was shining, the weather was perfect...

Life was never that simple. He'd brought her out here for a reason. Something about her relationship with Sophia Jackson was setting off his suspicions.
I'm sorry for being mean to you
her boss had said to her, but of course, Jackson had almost immediately excused her own bad behavior by bringing up the pneumonia.
It won't happen again. I'll make it up to you.
How many times had a woman with a black eye heard that from the man who'd hurt her?

He doubted Sophia Jackson physically hurt Grace, but she was still pulling some emotionally manipulative stunts. Why did Grace put up with it? There had to be other jobs, other people she could work for. He'd brought her outside because he was concerned about all these things, but now she was concerned for him.

“Don't all these people weigh on your mind? How do you handle the not knowing?”

Maybe she was hoping he'd give her some advice on controlling worry. He rubbed his jaw and looked past a red ambulance to focus on a green cypress tree. The solitary evergreen pillar thrived in its allotted space in a median strip, surrounded by the concrete of the hospital parking lot. “I've found it helps if you choose their fate. Use your imagination. I helped a little girl with significant respiratory distress yesterday. I did everything I could to educate her family about asthma triggers. Today, I wondered if that family filled their script for the asthma inhalers. Did they stop smoking for her sake?” He fell silent, knowing the odds that smokers faced. Nicotine was as addicting as narcotics.

Grace prompted him with her gentle voice. “And you decided yes, the parents must have done the right thing and given up smoking?”

“I'm not so vain to think I can convince people to give up a lifelong addiction with one conversation.” He glanced at her face, at her hopeful expression. “But I decided I was good enough at my job to persuade that family to never again smoke while that child is in the car with them. That's something.”

“You're an optimist, then. I wouldn't have guessed that was hidden behind your—those—ah, never mind.”

“Behind my what?”

She was blushing and utterly charming to him. She made a little gesture toward his face and shrugged.

“Behind my glasses? Are you afraid I'm insulted by that? I know I have glasses on.” He took off his glasses. “Contacts are tough when shifts run into the next day without warning.”

He looked at her as he wiped the lenses with a corner of his white coat, and thought the softer focus suited her.

Grace blinked again. Adapting to what? Surely her chemistry had settled down.

She cleared her throat. “I was going to say I didn't think you were an optimist behind that poker face. You don't give much away when you're in there, being a doctor.”

He put his glasses back on, sliding them into place with one knuckle. He hoped his poker face didn't slip. He wasn't an optimist at all, but he didn't want to add to Grace's apparent worries. He couldn't tell her about the patients whose fates he did learn, the little girls who returned to the ER with blue lips, gasping for air, smelling like the cigarettes their families still smoked around them, triggering their asthma attacks for which the inhaler prescription had never been filled. Reality was too often bitter. It made a man hard.

An optimist wouldn't meet a movie star and assume her personal assistant was somehow trapped by her.

“When I discharge Sophia Jackson, what kind of living situation will she be in?” It was a legitimate question, one he asked every patient to be sure they could follow their treatment plan. What he really wanted to know was Grace's living arrangements. He had no professional justification for investigating this. He was just...

Abusing my position to satisfy an unhealthy curiosity about this woman?

It didn't matter. He wanted to know that Grace was going to be okay when she walked out of the ER and out of his life. He wanted to be able to imagine a better fate for her than fetching and carrying for a diva, having her self-esteem chipped away with each selfish demand.

“Will you be with her, or will Miss Jackson be living alone?”

Grace seemed to sink a little bit, without slouching or changing her posture at all. “I'm her personal assistant. Where she goes, I go.”

“Even at night? You live together?”

At Grace's nod, he felt a distinct disappointment. It was almost like finding out she belonged to another man. Spoken for. Unavailable.

Again, he was annoyed with himself. It was absurd to be disappointed that all her time was devoted to another person. It wasn't like he'd intended to ask her out for dinner.

He needed to behave like a doctor. “It's good that she won't be alone, because she's going to have a hard time getting around. Even with the hard boot, she won't be able to touch her foot to the ground without pain for at least twenty-four hours. She'll need assistance getting in and out of the shower, for example. Do you feel comfortable giving her that kind of aid? If not, I can write orders for a visiting nurse who can help her with personal care.”

Grace turned her face away, looking as he had toward the distant cypress tree. “She taught me how to brush my teeth. We've been sharing a bathroom our whole lives. Sophia Jackson is my sister.”

Family.

All the pieces fell into place. A bright angel, subjecting herself to servitude. A movie star, bossing around a valuable employee without fear that she'd quit. Sisters... Of course.

I really took it out on you. It won't happen again.

No one could hurt you like family could hurt you.

Papa. Mama.

He firmly pushed the memories back where they belonged.

There were no bruises on Grace. Her sister might be using the same soundtrack that most abusers used, but Grace wasn't
physically
scared of her sister. When it came to emotional manipulation, Alex was too pragmatic to believe he could help her unravel any knots of family power struggles, not during a five-minute break on a metal bench. His own family was so fractured, he had no advice to give.

As for his attraction to her, it was irrelevant. She lived in Hollywood; he lived in Texas. She chased fame; he helped the injured. There was no reason for him to invest energy and effort when there was no possibility of a lasting relationship.

But he wouldn't let his moment with Grace end yet. He needed to find out what she was going back to—what his patient was going back to, as well—what was behind the white lips and broken pencil when the name Deezee was mentioned. Sophia might not be hurting her sister, but someone named Deezee could be.

Who was he, and why was Grace scared of him?

* * *

Dr. Gregory had fallen silent next to her.

Grace had said she'd help her sister in and out of the shower, and now he had nothing to say. Perhaps he'd been struck speechless at the image of Sophia Jackson in the shower. That was pretty typical of most guys. He didn't have a smile on his face, though, not even the ghost of a smirk.

Grace had also told him she was Sophia's sister. She resigned herself to the more likely possibility that he was quiet while he, like everyone else, studied her face, looking for the resemblance.
Sisters? I never would have guessed.

Being told she didn't look like her own sister was a fairly new phenomenon in the overall course of her life. As little girls, they'd worn matching dresses and been declared darling. Even during her first two years of high school, every time she'd had a teacher that Sophia had already had, Grace had been told how she looked so much like her sister. It was only the stardom of the last few years that had begun separating them.

Sophia had acquired the polish and appearance of a star, that indefinable something that made people do a double take. Some of it was professional makeup, professional hair, and hours and hours of professional fitness training. Yet even without those things, Sophia still had a wow factor that Grace just didn't have. Sophia had been born with that charisma. She'd also been in the drama club, taken theater classes in college and developed a stage presence, but some gifts couldn't be taught, and Grace had always been proud to have such a gifted sister.

She was still proud of Sophia. This was only a phase. Grace just had to get Deezee out of their lives. Would Sophia ever consider Clark Kent?

Maybe, if they stayed away from LA long enough. Maybe, but no one could fall in love with someone they only met once. Grace needed to arrange more time between Dr. Gregory and Sophia.

“We're at the Hotel Houston,” she said, before she could chicken out. “In Austin. It's called Houston, but it's not far from here.”

“I know it. Very nice. I'm sure the concierge will help you get some chicken soup for your sister. Hot beverages and hot, steamy showers will help loosen up the debris in her lungs.”

Back to the shower fantasy, then. Grace felt glum about that, although it boded well for the hope that he might become a future brother-in-law. But Sophia wouldn't give the doctor or anyone else a chance, not if Grace couldn't keep Deezee away. “And she's contagious, and definitely can't be around other people right now, right?”

“That's the second time you've asked that. Are you afraid you'll catch something, or are you afraid of someone else?”

A little shiver threatened to go down her spine. He was looking at her so intently as he asked.

“Afraid? I guess I should be. Sophia Jackson causing an epidemic would be a terrible headline to try to spin.” Grace sighed, realizing her plan to replace Deezee with this serious man was a laughably long shot. She couldn't explain how her sister needed saving and then expect him to turn into Superman and sweep her away to safety. Grace couldn't dictate who Sophia fell in love with, and she couldn't prevent her from throwing her life away on a selfish jerk like Deezee.