The Colors of Love (15 page)

"Do you notice how much Danny's speech has improved?" Paula asked Alex.

"He's turning into a real chatterbox," agreed Alex.

"I'm trying to get him to use full sentences, but so far he won't."

"It's normal for children to use telegraphic speech when they first learn to talk, building sentences from the essential words. Don't worry, he's doing great." Alex smiled reassurance at his sister, and Jamie saw her relax visibly. Did he have the same effect on his patients' parents?

He had the opposite effect on Jamie, antagonizing instead of soothing.

Finally, Alex said, "We'd better get going. I've got work to do tonight."

"It was a wonderful dinner," said Jamie, recognizing in her own voice the party manners her mother had taught her so many years ago. "Thank you for inviting me."

"We'll have a look at that showing of yours," said Dennis. "How long is it running, Jamie?"

"Until Saturday, then another artist will take my place, but Liz will still have my paintings in the gallery."

"We'll get down for a look."

"Thanks." She smiled at him, then tried to hold the same warmth in her smile as she said good-bye to Paula.

Outside, the air was cool.

"No coat," said Alex. "You should have brought a coat."

"A bit of cool air isn't going to hurt me." She had to bite off her words to stop from saying more. She thought of the way he'd sat at dinner, listening, watching her. The way he'd stood at the fireplace earlier, not talking except for comments about her looking like a child, playing with Danny.

He beat her to the passenger door of his car, opened it, and waited until she got inside to close it. Then he opened the back door and slid his briefcase in behind the front seat. He hadn't carried the briefcase when they arrived, so he must have got it from Dennis. A briefcase he planned to work on tonight. Important papers. Perhaps about the treatment center Paula had mentioned?

She rubbed her arms with her hands through the fabric of her blouse. It was a chilly night, but fury tingled along her arms, not cold.

Chapter 9

When Alex stopped his car in front of her house, Jamie sat motionless, staring through the windshield. The ride home had been silent, without even the music he'd played earlier. He hadn't spoken, perhaps he hadn't wanted to. Jamie couldn't remember when she'd felt such a storm of rage swirling inside her, and knew that when she spoke, there would be no stopping it.

"Don't get out," she said when he unfastened his seat belt. "I'll get my own door, unlock my own house."

He turned his head and she turned hers, facing him.

"Before I leave, I want to know exactly why you took me there." She felt her breath coming in short, shallow pulses she fought to keep silent. "It wasn't a date." She had thought it was, more fool she. "You certainly didn't want to
talk
to me, because you haven't said more than two dozen words all night. Why, Alex?"

"Does there have to be a reason?" She recognized in his voice the tones he'd used to calm Sara in the emergency room, realized he'd been using that voice to her all night. Distancing himself.

"Oh, yes, there is a reason, because
you,
Alexander Kent, do nothing without a reason. You plot every move, every strategy. I'm sure that makes you a good doctor, but it's far from your most attractive trait in my eyes!"

She realized she was talking wildly, saying nothing. In a minute he'd throw cold reason on her like water. She gulped air, then said coldly, "You had a reason, and after putting in an evening that would have been unbearable if it hadn't been for Dennis and Danny, who acted like human beings, I'm entitled to know what the hell it was all in aid of."

He rested one hand on the top of the steering wheel, the other along the back of the seat, too close to her shoulder. "I wanted you to meet my sister."

She shook her head, trying to clear it. "Your sister? She hated me on sight. Is that what you wanted? Why on earth would you—" A reason flashed into her mind and she said, "You
planned
it that way? Paula, she's a model mother, isn't she? So organized, little Danny so obviously well cared for. Is that why you wanted me to meet her?"

"I wanted you to understand what's involved in looking after a child."

"To understand?" She watched his fingers close around the steering wheel, wondering if the inhibitions of a lifetime would be enough to stop her striking him. "You wanted to shove her in my face? To contrast us, because the moment you saw me, you decided I was unfit to be within ten feet of any child?"

"You're hysterical, Jamila."

"Hysterical?" Her laughter was wild enough to prove his point. "You're damned right I'm hysterical. And furious! How
dare
you! My relationship with Sara is none of your business! Sara's not really your patient, is she? Just that emergency visit. You're not her regular doctor, damn it! And you're not a social worker. You know
nothing
about me. Nothing!"

"Jamila—"

"Don't use your warped logic on me! I've had enough of you, Alexander Kent. I made the mistaken judgment that you were a
nice
man, a good man, if a bit stodgy. But, damn you, I may make unfounded judgments, but I can bloody well revise them when I realize I'm wrong!" She leaned forward and jammed her finger into his chest. "Can you, Alexander? I doubt it. You're made of the same cloth as your sister, assuming the worst on no evidence."

His hand touched her shoulder and she jerked away. "Get your hands off me!"

He froze at her shouted words, giving her time to tumble the door open. Her seat belt snapped back as she unfastened it and she backed out of the car, her eyes on him as if she thought he'd reach for her again.

With her feet on the pavement, she found her breath and leaned down to shout though the open car door, "I've had enough of your judgments and prejudices, Dr. Alexander Kent! Get off my back!"

She swung the door, slamming it closed. Then, somehow, her keys were in her hands and she ran to the front door, opened it, and escaped inside.

When her breath had quieted enough, she listened through her locked door for the sound of his car driving away. She would
not
let him catch her peering out, checking if he'd gone yet.

Damn him! Damn, damn, damn!

She'd been a terrible fool, thinking he'd called her because he
couldn't forget the feel of her lips any more than she could forget the way his hands had burned her flesh, teaching her the meaning of hunger. Believing—against all reason—that an invitation to dinner with his family meant something.

Oh, it meant something, all right. It meant he was a complete bastard, a man who would stoop low enough to humiliate a woman simply because he disapproved of her, because it was the next move in his campaign to keep her away from Sara.

For God's sake, why? Why should he hate her so? How could his kiss—Oh, God! Could his kiss have been somehow
plotted?
Part of some terrible plan of humiliation that went beyond tonight's dinner?

She tore into her studio, grabbed the still-wet painting on her easel, and carried it to the wall, where she placed it on the drying rack with caution that was automatic even in her turmoil.

She grabbed a canvas with a gray wash and carried it to the easel. She heard a meow and bent to pick Squiggles up. The cat felt uncomfortable in her arms, purring loudly but restlessly.

"Food," she muttered. "I'll get you food," and she carried the squirming kitten to the kitchen. When she saw there was still kitten chow in the bowl, she forked out a small amount of tuna, then left the cat eating and returned to the canvas.

Dinner, she thought. Dinner, all of them at that table. She uncapped a tube of paint—not oils tonight, but quick, hard acrylic colors—and began to mix the colors of white oak darkened with an emotional storm.

Why so many abstracts lately?

Because she was afraid to paint Alex. Because whatever she felt or learned in painting each canvas, the truth of it would be concealed from others.

Tonight, she would paint people.

She worked timelessly into the night, mixing colors with quick, angry strokes, applying brush to canvas in a frenzy that held her tight in its compulsion. The people she drew around the table were surreal, unrecognizable in terms of skin and bone, cruelly accurate in temperament and manner. Above them, a storm waged, a hot swirl of unspoken accusations.

The paint flowed in a rage, and finally, sometime near dawn, left her empty and exhausted.

She stepped back stared at the painting blindly, uncertain what she saw, knowing it was complete—for now at least—because there was nothing more inside her.

She dropped her brushes into solvent, for once too tired to clean them. Nothing mattered except sleep. The painful emotions were gone, emptied onto canvas, and in their place she felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Squiggles lay on the chair he had adopted, apparently asleep. Jamie picked him up and felt him stretch without waking, then settle in her arms. She carried him to the bedroom and set him on her bedspread. Then she stripped, leaving her clothes to lie where they fell on the floor, and fell into bed.

In minutes, she was asleep.

* * *

By eleven o'clock at night, the children's ward at All Saints' General Hospital was shrouded in shadows, only one bulb burning in each section of corridor, enough to guide the nursing staff to any child or adolescent who needed tending.

The nurse typing on a computer behind the counter looked up as Alex stepped up to the chart storage racks.

"Dr. Kent—?"

"It's all right. I just stopped to check in. Go back to what you were doing."

She shrugged and turned back to the computer, leaving Alex to flip through the charts for his kids. Jason had seen both a counselor and a dietitian this afternoon, and his blood sugar levels had tested in the safe range. He'd be discharged tomorrow, although both Alex and the counselor were uneasy about the boy's attitude.

Jason needed the treatment center's services now, not a year from now as projected by the pro forma statements Alex had emailed Diana earlier this evening. The boy needed constant medical monitoring, extensive counseling, life skills training, and regular contact with other children who shared his special needs.

What he really needed was at least a month in a residential treatment center where he would receive all of these things, but Jason didn't have wealthy parents, or medical insurance generous enough to cover such a center, Somehow, he would have to get through with visits to weekly groups, and whatever other services Alex could arrange.

Alex knew it might not be enough. He felt the familiar frustration that the needs were so clear, and the solutions so difficult to create. If only his treatment center were here, now.

Quietly, he moved along the darkened corridor and slipped inside Jason's room.

Three sleeping adolescents, the fourth bed empty. It would probably be filled by morning. Jason slept in one of the beds by the window, his mouth slack and peaceful, showing none of the surly attitude that signaled yet another careless risk taken with his health and his life.

* * *

When Alex left the hospital, he went to his office and spent two hours clearing up paperwork, then another searching out journal articles he wanted to study before he finished the paper he'd been asked to do on juvenile diabetes for the
American Journal of Medicine.

Eventually he arrived home, exhausted, and found his message light flashing. He stood in front of the machine, emptying his pockets as the messages played.

"It's Paula. Call me."

Paula would want to ask questions about Jamila, and he was doing his damnedest not to think of Jamila's rage as she'd stormed at him earlier that night.

Had he been harassing her? Misjudging her?

Diana's voice filled the room with clear, crisp tones from across the ocean.

"Alex, we need to talk. Call me."

He glanced at his watch. Two-thirty in the morning. In Venice it would be... He frowned and calculated, deciding that Diana would be halfway between breakfast and lunch about now.

He dialed the overseas number for her hotel, ended up telling the hotel's voice mail system, "Sorry I missed you. I just got in and I'm heading for bed now. It's two-thirty here. I'll try to get through tomorrow."

When morning came, Diana was out again, probably dining somewhere. It would be midafternoon Seattle time before he could call her again. Since it was Friday now, that meant another weekend before the proposal went to the Thurston Foundation.

Three months ago, when Diana Thurston told him she was willing to put her efforts behind his proposal, he'd envisioned a decision within days. He should have known the wheels of the Foundation would move as slowly as every other bureaucratic organization. With every day lost, children were at risk, yet he knew of no way to speed the process. So he'd gone through the paces: charity events, projecting the future with pro forma financial statements, sending emails and making phone calls, attending endless dinner meetings with the board members.