The Boss and Nurse Albright (12 page)

He looked far too sympathetic with his soft gray eyes as he walked around her desk, and sat on the edge. She
tensed and sat back farther in her chair. If he touched her again, she might not have the strength to fend him off. And if he wasn’t capable of reaching out emotionally, then she didn’t want to start something that was bound to end badly. She’d be his friend and associate. That was her mantra and she was sticking to it.

“You can’t catch everything, and you’ll never be able to stop people from hurting themselves,” he said softly.

How ironic the statement coming from Jason’s beautifully formed lips, and she was on the verge of calling him out on it.

Someone tapped on the door. “Claire?” Her nurse. “Our first afternoon patient is here.”

J
ASON
unlocked his condo door. After the accident, he’d moved here from the luxurious family home set high on the hillside above Santa Barbara. He couldn’t bear to live in the place filled with memories in every room. He’d been in shock at the time and could hardly function. Jon, Phil, and René had arranged everything: Found the condo; listed his house for sale; packed and moved him. In a daze, he’d followed along.

Even the spacious two-bedroom ocean-view condo felt too big for him to rattle around in. He’d lived here, if you could call it that, for the last three and a half years.

He tossed his jacket over the back of a chair, eased off his loafers, and padded across the hacienda-styled tiles to the kitchen. He poured some of the coffee left from the morning and warmed it in the microwave. As a bachelor, he could do that, not giving a damn how bitter it tasted. Heading straight to the terrace, he opened the French windows and sat at the glass and wrought iron table to sort through the mail he’d brought in.

His eyes were drawn to the coast and out to sea, the
only constant thing in his life. How many times had he considered sailing off and never coming back?

Lately, the thought had less appeal. Since meeting Claire.

As it often did, his mind drifted to Claire. She’d been willing to give herself to him. The thought of her, topless and vulnerable, waiting for his touch, made him crinkle then wad up an advertising flyer.

I’m not ready to move on
, he remembered telling her. And if by chance he were ready to get involved with her, was he ready to take the risk? Rationally, he knew Lupus wasn’t deadly, that people lived with the autoimmune disease for years and years. But it affected the quality of life and, if not controlled, it could shorten hers. If he allowed himself to care for her, could he survive losing her? If a flare-up attacked an organ like her kidneys, she’d have to go to extreme treatment like chemotherapy to ward it off—a risky process. Was he ready for any possibility if he allowed himself to become involved with her?

Instead of only thinking of himself, he should consider her feelings. Was he a better man than her ex-husband?

He palmed his eye sockets and rubbed vigorously.

Would he look back at fifty and wonder why he’d squandered a chance at something real with a living breathing woman, when all he had left of Jessica was faded memories?

Opening up to Claire would be hard enough, but being around Gina made him ache so much for Hanna he could barely keep from tearing up at times. He remembered the wondrous look in his daughter’s eyes
whenever he’d taken her to the zoo, and he’d seen the exact same look on Gina’s face the other day. His heart had twisted and cramped the entire afternoon Saturday.

It all felt too familiar. Claire and Gina. Jessica and Hanna. Maybe if Claire wasn’t a parent. Maybe then easing back into a relationship wouldn’t feel so daunting.

Right. And blink three times to make everything different and achieve world peace.

The child was just another excuse to stay living the life of a monk who preferred the sea to human beings.

After he’d finished his coffee he went back inside and, halfway down the hall, he stopped outside the guestroom door. He hadn’t planned on coming here; he’d been heading for his bedroom. Yet here he was. All Jessica and Hanna’s belongings that he couldn’t bring himself to part with were stored inside. He thought of it as his torture room, the place he went to grieve and rent the air with painful moans and curses. Every leftover trace of their existence had been stored in this room. Things. Objects. Doodads. Jewelry. It was the room he entered when in a masochistic state, to sniff the few favorite dresses he’d kept of his wife’s and mourn for their lost life and love. Again and again.

As if he thrived on punishment, a too-familiar routine, he turned the handle and went inside. The room was dim with drawn shades, and smelled stuffy. There was a stack of empty boxes Jon and René had left for him, and he’d kept promising to fill and give them away. He’d put it off for over three years.

He opened the closet door, where several dresses hung neatly in storage covers. He unzipped one and
fingered the fabric, smooth and silky, tried to remember his wife wearing it, but couldn’t. He sniffed the sleeve, but her scent had long vanished from the material.

A shelf of stuffed animals, everything from monkeys to cats to teddy bears, stared out at him from brightly colored faces and button eyes. He reached for a giraffe, one of Hanna’s favorites. Its long neck had bent with time, and he thought how Gina might like it because of the giraffe they’d seen at the zoo, and set it aside.

He remembered how much he’d wanted to put his arms around Claire today when she’d been hurting, to offer her some support, but the threads from this tomb had held him back. He tilted his head at the notion that he’d never thought about anyone else before when he’d been in this shrine to his lost life. Yet Claire and her shining work ethic and heartfelt concern for one of the clinic patients had just woven its way into his thoughts.

He couldn’t live out in the world if his heart was locked in here. The room closed tightly around him. The stale air made it difficult to breathe.

He’d begun to think about a better life. The kind of life he’d once shared with his wife and daughter, filled with laughter and love. And brightness. He glanced around the ever darkening room at the slowly disintegrating objects, and switched on the light. Jessica and Hanna were no more in this room than was Gemina the giraffe from the zoo.

Did he really want his memories to depend on disintegrating material and dust-covered toys?

No.

Jessica and Hanna would remain forever in his heart, but not here.

The irony hadn’t gone unnoticed. He’d mentally chastised Claire’s husband for walking away from a living, breathing, wonderful woman, and here he was doing the exact same thing by shutting up his heart in this stagnant room and keeping her at a distance.

Jason looked over his shoulder at the boxes and back at the objects that could never bring his wife and daughter back, and scooped up most of the toys, then deposited them into the nearest box. Next he gathered Jessica’s shoes, her clothes and almost all of her jewelry. An hour later, feeling an odd burden lift from his shoulders, he placed a call to the local rescue mission to arrange for them to pick up everything but one small box.

Thursday evening, after making a brief hospital visit to Mrs. Densmore, who remained stable, Claire rushed to the babysitter’s to pick up Gina. Her daughter’s bright eyes and beaming smile made up for all the frustration and self-doubt she’d harbored from the day. They hugged and giggled and Gina told her all about her adventures with her new “bestest” friend, Emily.

Their daily routine of dinner, bath, reading a book, sometimes a second book, and bedtime, helped distract her thoughts from Jason. He’d been on her mind a lot all week. It was just her luck to accidentally find an intelligent, appealing and sexy man, only to discover he was incapable of having a relationship.

OK, she got the point. She’d finally learned her lesson about closed off men. They couldn’t be changed
and they only brought heartache. She wasn’t going to beat her head against any walls on Jason’s behalf. She’d done her share of wishing things could be different with her ex-husband, and it had only proved one thing. Things didn’t change. People didn’t change.

The next time she let herself get involved with a man, it would be with a guy who was crazy about her, an open and caring guy whose only desire was to make her happy.

Didn’t she deserve it? And, more importantly, did that guy exist?

Friday morning, Claire saw a routine ear infection on the verge of perforating in a six-year-old boy, and prescribed the pink bubblegum-flavored medicine to ensure he’d take all of it as indicated. By late that afternoon she got word that the child was in the E.R. with anaphylaxis. She wanted to cry. The mother had assured her the child didn’t have any allergies to medicine, yet he’d had a life-threatening reaction to what should have been a harmless and helpful antibiotic.

What else could go wrong?

She threw a book across the room in frustration, then flinched when it inadvertently shattered a vase. She grimaced, and rushed over to pick up the glass.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she grumbled.

“What’s going on?” Jason had caught her at her worst. Again.

“I seem to have a knack for almost killing our patients!” The events and surprising outcomes of the last couple of days had made her lose confidence. A sudden whirlwind of emotions ranging from anger to fear took hold and made her eyes sting, and soon she couldn’t
control the release of tears. Why did Jason have to see her crumbling in defeat like this?

He rushed toward her, concern furrowing his brows. “Don’t touch the glass, you’ll cut yourself.”

“It would serve me right,” she said, sounding petulant.

“I’ll call the janitor to clean this up, but first you have to tell me what’s wrong,” he said, and placed his hands on her shoulders to steer her back to her desk chair. There it was, the little surface explosion on her skin whenever he touched her, even now.

“I ordered antibiotics for a peds patient who turned out to be allergic.”

“It happens. We can’t predict how our patients are going to react.”

He handed her a tissue, called Gaby to alert Mr. Hovanissian about the problem, then placed his hands back on her neck and started a gentle rolling massage. Unlike her patient, she
could
predict how she was going to react.

“Please don’t touch me,” she whispered.

He immediately backed off. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Claire. I’m not an acupressure expert, but I thought a neck massage might help you relax.”

She wanted to be snide and say,
and just when I start to like it you’ll stop,
but swallowed instead.

“You’re as tightly strung as one of the jam cleats on my boat.”

“I don’t have a clue what that is,” she said.

“Sounds like reason enough to bring you out on the boat sometime. Trust me, it’s tight. Tight enough to snap. I’d be remiss if I let that happen to you.”

Claire heard both concern and sincerity in his tone.

“Look, you’ve had a tough week, and I hate to see you like this,” he said as he rubbed his hands together. “They’re nice and warm. Why don’t you give it a try?” His silver eyes almost twinkled with goodwill.

She remembered his warm hands on her body and how incredibly good they’d felt.

Whether poor judgment or unadulterated weakness, she swiveled in her chair so he could rub her neck. At first she tensed more, but realizing how she’d let her job affect her body, which could set off her Lupus, she allowed Jason to continue. He had magic fingers, and she let him knead and stroke her aching neck and shoulder muscles. The raised hairs on her skin, and the accompanying goose bumps, would have to be dismissed as a side-effect of stress relief, nothing more. She hoped he’d buy that lame excuse.

Claire was grateful when the janitor appeared and Jason removed his soothing hands. He might not want to have a relationship with her, and she’d vowed for sanity’s sake to be nothing more than a friend, but his mere touch had made her damp and wishing she had a pullout bed in her office. So much for her resolve.

One more thought occurred to her as Mr. Hovanissian swept up the shards of glass. Now that she’d given up on Jason Rogers, he seemed to be the one person at her side at the first sign of a crisis.

That evening at home, Claire had changed into her sweats to do laundry when she heard a tapping on her door.

It was Jason, with a sheepish look on his face. He nodded, rather than say hello.

Unsure of what else to do, Claire invited him in.

From behind his back he pulled a huge-eyed, gangling giraffe with a bent neck.

“What’s this?”

“I thought Gina might like to have it.”

“That’s very sweet, but she’s already asleep. I think you should wait and give it to her yourself. She’d really like that.”

“Is that an invitation to stay the night?”

Claire went still.

“That was a joke, Claire.” He nodded again, and seemed to hesitate about leaving. “I’ve been doing some house cleaning,” he said. “That belonged to my daughter.”

The fact he’d been clearing out his daughter’s belongings sent a clear message: he was trying and, as a friend, she needed to be supportive of his efforts. Trying? Hell, his efforts were monumental.

Her thoughts felt so clinical, yet she had to protect herself. A knot bunched in her chest. The gesture of giving Gina one of Hanna’s stuffed toys was beyond kind. It made her want to cry. The man had a good heart. A wounded and healing heart. He just wasn’t sure how to use it anymore.

And he had a body which would waste away without benefit of touch or love because he couldn’t let go of his lost family. She gazed at him standing there looking gorgeous as always. He’d even attempted a dorky joke about staying the night. That was definitely progress on the Jason Rogers front.

“Come in and sit for a while,” she said. “Tell me about this.” She held up the giraffe and he followed her to the living room, though neither of them sat.

“Last night, I cleared out an entire room of ‘things’ that belonged to Jessica and Hanna. I’d been hoarding them, as if I could scrape off their DNA and make them come back to life.” She could see the familiar pain in his eyes, but he communicated something else, too. Something had definitely changed. Maybe he’d had some kind of breakthrough. Her whirling thoughts kept her from uttering a sound.

“Someone at the rescue mission is going to get a whole new wardrobe,” he said, making a rueful smile. “Even if some of the clothes are out of date.”

Claire had been wallowing in guilt and self-doubt over Mrs. MacAfee’s problem, and for sending a child into anaphylaxis. She’d been self-centered. This beat-up giraffe quickly reminded her again of the oppressive grief Jason must have had to endure every day of his life for the past four years. It made her problems seem infinitesimal. Being reminded again of his devastating loss made her want to weep.