“Where’s your bodyguard?” Reese asked. “Isn’t this where he bursts in, whisks you behind the door and slams it in my face?”

“His job is to protect me from kidnappers, not people I choose to be with,” London told him. “I still have some say in my life.” She walked into the elegant apartment, flipping on the lights. Reese followed her in. “I made it clear that he’s to perform his ‘duties’ tonight at a distance. Besides—” turning around, she watched him close the door “—I told him I’d be safe with you around.”

Reese wasn’t altogether sure about that.

He picked up a strand of her hair. The softness unsettled him. Aroused him. “And what’s to keep you safe from me?”

She raised her eyes to his in a clear invitation. “Who says I want to be safe from you…?”

M.D. Most Wanted
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

To

Dr. John G. Miller,

who answers all my questions,

and

is the perfect example of everything

a doctor should be

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

There were some days that Reese Bendenetti felt as if he just hit the floor running.

This was one of those days.

He’d been up, dressed and driving before he was fully awake. Normally punctual, Reese was running behind, thanks to an asthmatic alarm clock that had chosen this morning to make a sound more like a cough than a ring when it went off. The sound had barely registered in his consciousness, and he’d fallen back to sleep only to jerk awake more than half an hour later.

When it came to getting up, Reese had been cutting time to the bone as it was, setting the clock to give him just enough leeway to shower, shave and have breakfast—provided he moved at a pace that could easily be mistaken for the fast-forward speed on a VCR.

That had been before his fateful early-morning encounter with the “little alarm clock that couldn’t.” Consequently, the shower had lasted all of two minutes, his hair had still been wet when he’d gotten behind the wheel of his ’94 ’Vette—the single indulgence he allowed himself—and his face was fated to remain untouched by a razor until he could find some time at the hospital in between rounds, emergency room patients and whatever else the gods chose to throw at him this morning.

Eating was something he couldn’t think about until he came within coin-tossing distance of a vending machine at the aforementioned hospital, Blair Memorial.

Reese knew he only had himself to blame. No one had made him become a doctor, no one had told him to go into general surgery or to specialize in internal medicine. Those had been his own choices. His mother, bless her, would have been satisfied if he’d become a part-time sanitation engineer. As long as he was happy—that was her only criterion. Rachel Bendenetti never placed any demands on him, only on herself.

But healing was the only thing that did make him happy. It was in healing others that Reese felt as if he were healing himself, renewing himself. Building a better Reese Bendenetti.

He never quite understood why, he just knew that making someone else’s life a little better, a little easier, always managed to do the same for him.

That was why whenever Lukas Graywolf, a cardiac surgeon, returned to the reservation where he’d been born and raised, Reese always volunteered to go along with him and provide services to people who would otherwise not be able to afford them. The way he saw it, the rewards were priceless. It had never been about money for Reese.

He’d been enamored with medicine ever since he’d applied his first Band-Aid. Almost twenty-five years later he could still remember the circumstances. After calling him a name, Janet Cummings had turned and begun to run away, only to trip on the sidewalk. She’d scraped her knee badly and it had bled. Without hesitating, he’d run into the ground-floor apartment he and his mother were living in at the time, gotten a Band-Aid and peroxide out of the medicine cabinet—the way he’d seen his mother do—and run back outside to come to Janet’s aid.

He never stopped to think that she deserved it because she’d been nasty to him, all he could think of was to stop the bleeding. Watching him, Janet had stopped crying. When he was finished, she’d shyly kissed his cheek.

Reese remembered lighting up like a Christmas tree inside. Janet had been six at the time. He’d been almost seven.

It was a feeling that he wanted to have again, and he did. Each time he worked on a patient.

Working on Tomas Morales’s perforated ulcer was a little more complex than applying peroxide and a Band-Aid to a scraped knee, but the feeling of satisfaction was still the same.

Taking off his mask, he tossed it into the hamper and sighed, bone weary. The operation had taken longer than he’d expected. As he ran a hand through his hair, holding the green cap he’d just removed in his other hand, his stomach growled. Fiercely.

“I heard that all the way over here,” Alix DuCane cracked. She was standing by the sink, putting lotion on her freshly scrubbed hands. The gloves she’d just taken off chaffed her flesh. If she wasn’t careful, she thought, she was going to wind up with skin like a lizard.

As if in response, his stomach growled again. One of the orderlies chuckled to himself.

Reese shrugged, tossing the paper towel he’d just used to dry his hands into the wastebasket.

“That’s what happens when all you’ve had for breakfast is a small candy bar.” It’d been stale at that, he thought. Hazards of war.

Having removed her own surgical cap, Alix shook out her short, curly blond hair as she crossed to him. “It was at least a granola bar, I hope.”

Reese grinned and shook his head. “Nope. Chocolate bar. Pure sugar in a sticky wrapper. I think the candy in the vending machine down the hall is melting.”

She tended to agree, having hit the machine more than once for an energy surge in the past week. Alix frowned in mock disapproval. “Shame on you, Dr. Bendenetti. What kind of an example are you setting for your patients? You’re supposed to know better.”

His shrug was careless, loose-limbed. The movement hinted that there was an ache there somewhere, waiting to emerge and make him uncomfortable. He needed a new mattress, he thought. And the time in which to purchase it.

But first things first. “Know where I can get a reliable alarm clock?”

Alix smiled to herself. She knew of several women on staff at the hospital, including two physicians, who would have been more than happy to volunteer to wake Reese up personally, any hour of the day or night. So long as they could occupy the space beside him in the bed right before then.

There was no denying it, Alix thought, looking at her friend with an impartial eye. Reese Bendenetti was one desirable hunk, made more so by the fact that he seemed to be completely unaware of his own attributes. To her knowledge, he rarely socialized. When he did, it was to catch a beer or take a cup of coffee with a group from the hospital. Never one-on-one, except with her, and theirs was a purely platonic friendship. They had a history together, going back to medical school. He’d known her when she was still married to Jeff. Before the boating accident that had taken him away from her.

Alix knew firsthand what a solid friend Reese could be. It seemed to her that it was one of life’s wastes that Reese didn’t have anyone in his life who could truly appreciate the kind of man he was.

Sometimes, she mused, dedication could be too much of a good thing.

But there was still time. Reese was young. And you never knew what life had in store for you just around the next corner.

“Is that what happened this morning?” she asked as they walked out of the room connecting two of the operating rooms. He raised a brow at her question. “I happened to see you peeling into the parking lot.”

Reese smiled ruefully. Driving too fast was a vice of his, and he was trying very hard to curb it.

But this morning there’d been a reason to squeeze through yellow lights that were about to turn red. He absolutely hated being late for anything, most of all his work at the hospital.

“My alarm suddenly decided to turn mute,” he confessed. “I woke up fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be here.”

She’d been to his apartment on several occasions and knew he lived more than fifteen minutes away from Blair Memorial.

“You can really fly when you want to, can’t you?” His stomach growled again. Rotating her shoulders, Alix smiled. “Join me in the cafeteria if you feel like it. I’m having a late breakfast myself. Julie was up all night, cutting a tooth to the sound of the Irish Rovers singing ‘Danny Boy.’” She’d played the CD over and over again in hopes of putting Julie to sleep. As it was she’d spent half the night pacing the floor with the eighteen-month-old. “In the meantime I’ll see if I can scrounge up a rooster for you.”

“You do that.” But instead of following her, Reese began heading down the corridor toward the back of the hospital. “I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes,” he promised. “There’re some people in the E.R. waiting room I have to talk to first.”

She nodded. There was protocol to follow. She knew how that was.

Her own stint on the other side of the operating arena had been a negative experience. Reese had been there with her, to hold her hand when the surgeon told her that everything humanly possible had been done, but that Jeff had still expired. Expired. As if he’d been a coupon that hadn’t been redeemed in time, or a driver’s license that had been allowed to lapse. Each time she’d had to face a grieving family since—which mercifully was not often—she remembered her own feelings and tempered her words accordingly. Neither she nor Reese believed in distancing themselves from their patients. That’s what made them such good friends.

“I’ll save a bran muffin for you,” she called out to Reese.

He made a face. Bran muffins were just about the only things he didn’t care for. Knowing that, Alix laughed as she disappeared.

Reese continued down the hall to the emergency waiting room area. This was the part he liked best. Coming out and giving the waiting family good news instead of iffy phrases. Tomas Morales had been to his office late last week. Choosing his words carefully, Reese had cautioned the man that playing the waiting game with his condition was not advisable. Morales hadn’t wanted to go under the knife, and while Reese understood the man’s fear, he also understood the consequences of waiting and had wanted to make the man painfully aware of them.

Painful being the key word here, he thought, because Morales had been in agony when he was brought into the hospital. His oldest daughter, Jennifer, and his wife had driven him to the emergency room.

This morning, as Reese had run into the hospital, he’d come through the electronic doors just in time to hear himself being paged.

And the rest, he mused, was history.

Mother and daughter stood up in unison the moment he walked into the waiting area. Mrs. Morales looked painfully drawn. There was more than a little fear in her dark eyes. Her daughter was trying to look more positive, but it was clear that both women were frightened of what he had to tell them.

Reese didn’t believe in being dramatic or drawing the spotlight to himself, the way he knew some surgeons did. He put them out of their misery even before he reached them.

“He’s going to be just fine, Mrs. Morales, Jennifer.” He nodded at the younger woman. Jennifer quickly translated for her mother. But it wasn’t necessary. The older woman understood what the look in her husband’s doctor’s eyes meant.

She grasped his hand between both of hers. Hers were icy cold. The woman kissed the hand that had held the scalpel that had saved her husband’s life before Reese had a chance to stop her.

“Gracias,” Ava Morales cried, her eyes filling with tears. Then haltingly she said, “Thank you, thank you.”

Embarrassed, but greatly pleased to be able to bring the two women good news, Reese gave Jennifer the layman’s description of what had happened and paused after each sentence while she relayed the words to her mother. He ended by telling them that they would be able to see Mr. Morales in his room in about two hours, after he was brought up from the recovery room.

“Maybe you and your mother can go down to the cafeteria and get something to eat in the meantime,” he suggested. “It’s really not bad food, even for a hospital.”

Jennifer nodded, her eyes shining with unspoken gratitude. Quickly she translated his words to her mother.

As he began to walk away, he heard the older woman say something to her daughter. He gathered from the intonation that it was a question.

“Please, Dr. Bendenetti, where’s the chapel? My mother wants to say a prayer.”

“He’s out of danger,” Reese assured her. Of course, there was always a small chance that things might take a turn for the worse, but the odds were negligible, and he saw no reason to put the women through that kind of added torture.

“The prayer is for you,” Mrs. Morales told him halting. “For thank-you.”

Surprised, he looked at her. And then he smiled. The woman understood far more than he thought.

Reese nodded his approval. “Can’t ever have too many of those,” he agreed. Standing beside Mrs. Morales, he pointed down the corridor. “The chapel’s to the left of the front admitting desk. Just follow the arrows to the front. You can’t miss it.”

Thanking him again, the two women left.

And now, Reese thought as he walked out of the waiting room, it was time to tend to his own needs. His stomach was becoming almost aggressively audible. He was just grateful that it hadn’t roared while he was talking to the Morales women.

He took a shortcut through the emergency area itself. As he passed the doors that faced the rear parking lot where all the ambulances pulled in, they flew open. Two paramedics he knew by sight came rushing in, pushing a gurney between them.

Instinct and conditioning had Reese taking the situation in before he was even aware that he had turned his head.

There was a woman on the gurney. The first thing he noticed was her long blond hair. It was fanned out about her like a golden blanket and gave almost a surreal quality to the turmoil surrounding her. She was young, well-dressed and conscious. And it was quite obvious that she was in a great deal of pain. There was blood everywhere.

So much for finding time for his stomach.

Reese fell into place beside the gurney. “Exam room four is free,” he pointed toward it, then asked, “What happened?” of the attendant closest to him.

The name stitched across his pocket said his name was Jaime Gordon. The dark-skinned youth had had two years on the job and was born for this kind of work. He rattled off statistics like a pro, giving Reese cause, effect and vitals.

“Car versus pole. Pole won. Prettiest jag I’ve ever seen.” There was a wistful note in his voice as he flashed a quick, wide grin. “If it’d been mine, I would have treated it like a lady. With respect and a slow, gentle hand.”

It was then that the woman on the gurney looked up at him. Reese caught himself thinking that he had never seen eyes quite that shade of green, a moment before the education he’d worked so hard to attain kicked in again. He began seeing her as a physician would, not a man.

The woman was conscious and appeared to be lucid from the way she looked at him, but there was grave danger of internal bleeding. He needed to get her prepped and into X-ray as quickly as possible.

As he trotted alongside the gurney, he leaned in close to the woman so she could hear him above the noise. “Do you know where you are?”

London Merriweather’s thoughts kept wanting to float away from her, to dissolve into the cottony region that hovered just a breath away, waiting to absorb her thoughts, her mind.

Ever word took effort. Every breath was excruciating. But she couldn’t stop. Don’t stop. You’ll die if you stop. The words throbbed through her head.

“I know where…I’m going to be…once…Wallace…catches up to me,” she answered. Her eyes almost fluttered shut then, but she pushed them opened. “Hell.”

It had been a stupid, stupid thing to do. But all she’d wanted was a few minutes to herself. To be free. To be normal.

Was that so wrong?

She hadn’t seen that pole. She really hadn’t.

Officer, the pole just jumped up at me, honest.

Her mind was all jumbled.

It would be so easy to slip away, to release the white-knuckled grasp she had on the thin thread that tethered her to this world of lights and sounds and the smell of disinfectant.

So easy.

But she was afraid.

For the first time in her life, London Merriweather was truly afraid. Afraid if she let go, even for a second, that would be it. She’d be gone. The person she was would be no more.

She was twenty-three years old and she didn’t want to lose the chance of becoming twenty-four.

And she would. If she slipped away, she would. She knew that as surely as she knew her name.

More.

Stupid, stupid thing to do. Wallace was only doing his job, guarding your body. That’s what bodyguards did. They guarded bodies.

They hovered.

They ate away at your space, bit by bit until there wasn’t any left.

Trying to fight her way back to the surface again, London took a breath in. The pain almost ripped her apart. She thought she cried out, but she wasn’t sure.

London raised her hand and caught hold of the green-attired man beside her.

Doctor?

Orderly?

Trick-or-treater?

Her mind was winking in and out. Focusing took almost more effort than she had at her disposal.

But she did it. She opened eyes that she hadn’t realized had shut again and looked at the man she was holding on to.

“I don’t want…to die.”

There was no panic in her voice, Reese noted. It was a bare-fact statement she’d just given him. He was amazed at her composure at a time like this.

She found more words and strung them together, then pushed them out, the effort exhausting her. She forced herself to look at the man whose hand was in hers.

“You won’t let…that happen…will…you.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a mandate. A queen politely wording a request she knew in her heart could not be disobeyed.

Who the hell was she?

Reese had the feeling that this wasn’t some empty-headed joyrider the paramedics had brought to him but a woman accustomed to being in control of any situation she found herself in.

This must be a hell of a surprise to her, then, he decided.

“No,” he told her firmly. “I won’t.”

He noticed the skeptical look in Jaime’s dark eyes, but Jaime didn’t command his attention now. The young woman did.

He’d told her what she’d wanted to hear. What he’d wanted to hear, too. Because, to do was first to believe it could be done. That was his mantra, it was what he told himself whenever he was faced with something he felt he couldn’t conquer.

Just before he conquered it.

The woman smiled at him then. Just before those incredible green eyes closed, she smiled at him. “Good,” she whispered.

And then lost consciousness.

The next moment the rear doors burst open again. A man came running into the E.R. The unbuttoned, black raincoat he wore flapped about him like a black cape. He was at least six foot six, if not more, relatively heavyset with wide shoulders that reminded Reese of a linebacker he’d once seen on the field. The man had looked like a moving brick wall.

So did this one. And he moved amazingly fast for someone so large.

“Who’s in charge here?” he demanded in the voice of a man who was accustomed to being listened to and obeyed. The next moment, not waiting for an answer, the man’s eyes shifted to him. “Is it you?”

“I’m Dr. Bendenetti,” Reese began.

The man was beside him in an instant. His face was pale, his eyes a little wild. Reese had no doubt that the man could probably reach into his chest and rip out his heart if he took it into his head to do so.

“This is Ambassador Mason Merriweather’s daughter. I want the finest surgeons called in for her. When this is over, I want her better than new, Doctor.” A good five inches taller, the man had to stoop in order to get into Reese’s face. He did so as he growled, “Do I make myself clear?”

Threats had always had a negative effect on Reese. Now was no different. Disengaging his hand from the unconscious woman, his eyes never left the other man’s face. They’d brought the gurney to the swinging doors of room four. He waved the team that had clustered around the rolling stretcher into the room.

When the man started to follow, Reese blocked his way, placing his hand on the bigger man’s chest. There was no way he was going to allow the other man into the room.

“You’ll have to wait outside while we decide what’s best for her.” Stepping inside, Reese turned away from the man and toward his patient.

The swinging doors closed on the man’s stunned, outraged face.

Chapter 2

The next moment, the doors were pushed opened again. The bang as they hit the opposite walls resounded through the room.

“There’s no way you’re going to keep me out,” the man informed Reese, his voice commanding even more obedience than his presence.

His hands already in surgical gloves, his attention focused on the unconscious accident victim before him, Reese’s back was to the doors. He didn’t even bother looking around toward the other man.

Instead, he directed his words to the dark-haired orderly on his left.

“Miguel, call security,” he instructed calmly, cutting away London’s suit from the site of the largest pool of blood. “Tell them to hurry.”

The man stood with a foot inside the room, wavering, immobilized by indecision. A guttural sound of frustration escaped his lips. And then, struggling with his rage, his demeanor became deadly calm.

“I hope for your sake that your affairs are in order, Doctor. You lose her, you don’t leave the hospital. Ever.” With that, he pushed the doors apart again and stepped outside.

Rose Warren, the senior surgical nurse shivered at the quietly uttered prophesy and glanced toward Reese. “I think he means it.”

“I know he does.”

Reese finished cutting and examined the wound exposed beneath the blood-soaked material. There was no doubt in Reese’s mind that the hulking man behind him could easily snuff out his life if he so chose, but there was no time to consider the situation. He had a patient to try to save, whether or not his own safety had just been put on the line.

He began processing the information coming at him from all sides and issuing orders in conjunction with the findings.

The man scowling just outside the swinging doors, peering through the glass and glaring at their every move, was temporarily forgotten.

The X rays confirmed what Reese already suspected. Miraculously, there were only two fractured ribs. But there was a great deal of internal bleeding going on. If the situation wasn’t corrected immediately, it would turn life threatening in less time than it took to contemplate the circumstances or even to explain them to her not-so-silent guardian.

They had to hurry.

The instant the doors parted, the hulking man came to rigid attention. Surprised that they were on the move again, he fell into place beside the gurney, trotting to keep pace.

“How is she?” he demanded. “Where are you taking her?”

“There’s internal bleeding,” Reese told him.

He took care to keep his own reaction to the man out of his voice. Stress took many forms, and Reese figured that the man’s concern might have been expressed in bullying behavior because of the nature of his work. He’d already seen the hilt of the gun the man wore beneath his overcoat and surmised that he was connected to some kind of bodyguard detail associated with the young woman. Either that or the man was her wise guy/hitman/lover.

“We have to stop it,” he continued. “We’re taking her to the main operating room.”

As they turned a corner, Reese glanced toward the man beside the gurney. He saw deep lines of concern etched into his otherwise smooth face. His expression wasn’t that of a man who was concerned about his job, but of a man who was worried about the fate of a person he cared about.

Reese wondered what the real connection between the two was and decided in the same moment that it was none of his business. All that mattered to him was doing whatever it took to save the woman’s life. Anything beyond that was out of his realm.

Moving swiftly beside the gurney, Wallace Grant took London’s small, limp hand into his. This was all his fault.

His fault.

Damn it, why had she driven away like that? It was almost as if she had been playing some elaborate game of chicken, daring him to catch her.

He was supposed to keep her safe, not jeopardize her life.

The ache in his chest grew. He wasn’t looking forward to calling her father and reporting this latest turn of events. The man had hired him to make sure that what had happened to the Chilean ambassador’s daughter didn’t happen to London.

The anger was gone, temporarily leeched out, when Wallace looked up at the man he was forced to place his faith in.

“Is she going to—?”

“Pull through?” Reese supplied, guessing the end of the man’s question. “I made her a promise that she would. I like keeping my promises.” They’d come to another set of doors. Reese suddenly felt sorry for the man who had threatened him. For a moment the bodyguard looked like a lost hound dog. Compassion filled Reese. “You’re going to have to stay outside.”

Wallace didn’t want to be separated. The irrational fear that she would die if she was out of his sight crowded into his fevered brain. He licked his lips as he looked past the doctor’s shoulder into the pristine room that lay just beyond.

“Can’t I just…?”

Reese firmly shook his head. There was no room for debate, no time for an argument. “No.”

Wallace dragged his hand through slicked-down brown hair. He knew the longer he stood out here arguing, the less time the doctor had to do what needed doing. Saving the ambassador’s daughter. Saving the woman he had sworn to protect with his very life.

“Okay,” Wallace said breathing heavily, as if dragging his bulk around had suddenly become very difficult for him. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”

“There’s a waiting room,” Reese said, pointing down the hall toward the cheerfully decorated area that was set aside for the families and friends of patients in surgery.

“Right out here,” Wallace repeated, stationing himself in the corridor against the opposite wall. From his position he would be able to look directly into the operating room.

Reese shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Maybe the man was a relative, Reese thought. Or connected to the woman on some level that went far deeper than first noted. Or maybe the man was one of those people who took their jobs to heart. If so, Reese couldn’t fault him. He fell into the same category himself.

The next moment Reese entered the operating room, and all extraneous thoughts about missed breakfasts, silent alarm clocks and strange personal connections were left out in the corridor.

Along with the man with the solemn face and worried eyes.

Three hours later it was over.

The freshly made openings had all been sutured closed, the bleeding had been stopped, the ribs had been taped. She wasn’t, as her bodyguard had demanded, better than new, but she would be well.

The woman’s vital signs had never faltered once. They’d remained strong throughout the lengthy procedure, as if her will to live was not to be snuffed out by whatever curve life and the road had thrown at her.

He wished all his patients were that resilient.

Weary, hungry, relieved, Reese stripped off his surgical mask and cap for the second time that day. Now that this newest crisis was over, he became aware again of the deep pinched feeling in his gut. It felt as if his stomach was stuck to his spine. He still hadn’t had a chance to take in anything more substantial than a stale candy bar.

This time, he promised himself, he didn’t care if the paramedics brought in Santa Claus and his eight tiny reindeer laid out on nine stretchers, he was determined to go get something to eat before he literally passed out from hunger.

At this point freshness would no longer play a part in his selection. He didn’t care what he ultimately got to eat. His only criterion was that it remain relatively inert long enough for him to consume it.

Even the bran muffin was beginning to sound pretty tempting.

But first, he knew, he had to go out and face the sentry out in the hall. The man who had remained steadfast throughout the entire procedure, standing there like an ancient gargoyle statue, guarding the door and watching the surgeon’s every move. Reese hadn’t had to look up to know that the deep-set brown eyes were taking in everything that was being done in the small, brightly lit operating room.

“How—” The single word leaped out at him as soon as Reese pushed open the door.

“She’s fine,” Reese said quickly, cutting the man off. He didn’t want to stand around for any more threats or whatever it was that the man had in mind now that the operation was over. “Like I said, she had some internal bleeding, but we found all the openings and sutured them. She had a couple of fractured ribs as well—”

Wallace stopped him right there. “Fractured?” he demanded. “You didn’t mention them before.”

Reese chose to ignore the accusatory note in the other man’s voice. Instead, he cut him some slack. It was pretty clear that they were both a little over-wrought, he thought.

“It could have been a great deal worse. The paramedic who brought her in said her car was totaled.” Reese saw guilt wash over the wide face. Had that somehow been his fault? he wondered.

“Yeah, it was.” And then, just as suddenly, the guilt left his eyes. His expression turned stony. “How soon can she be moved?”

“Why don’t we wait and see how she does first?” Reese calmly suggested. The next twenty-four hours would decide that. “In the meantime, maybe you should go to admitting and give them any information you can about her. Administration has forms to keep your mind busy for a while.”

“I don’t need to have my mind kept busy,” the man snapped.

“But I do.” With that, Reese turned on his heel and began to walk away.

“Hey, Doc.”

For a moment, Reese debated just continuing to walk away. There was no sense in encouraging any further confrontation. But if there was going to be another scene, he might as well get it over with now.

Suppressing a sigh, Reese half turned and looked at the larger man. “Yes?”

There was what passed as a half smile on the man’s face. He suddenly didn’t look the least bit threatening, but more like an overgrown puppy whose limbs were too big for his body.

“Thanks.”

Surprised, it took Reese half a beat to recover. He nodded. “It’s what I do.”

Mercifully, Reese’s stomach had the good grace to wait until he was well down the hall before it let out with a fearsome rumbling.

Each eyelid felt as if it was weighed down with its own full-size anvil.

Either that, or someone had applied glue to her lashes.

Maybe they should apply the same compound to the rest of her, London thought giddily, because she felt as if she had shattered into a million pieces.

A million broken, hurting pieces.

Breathing was almost as much of a challenge as trying to pry her eyes open. It certainly hurt a great deal more.

And right now there was a herd of drunken African elephants playing tag and bumping into one another in her head.

London heard a deep, wrenching moan echoing all around her, engulfing her. It sounded vaguely familiar.

It took her a beat to realize that the noise had come from her.

The pain was making her groan. And why did it feel as if there was a steel cage wrapped around her upper torso?

London opened her eyes or thought she did. The only thing that seemed to be filtering through was white. Lots of white.

Heaven? It didn’t feel hot, so it couldn’t be hell.

No, it felt cool, very cool.

Was she dead?

Where was the light everyone had always talked about? The light that was supposed to lead her to a better place. Or was that just a lie, a myth like unconditional parental love?

She thought she heard a male voice.

St. Peter?

Lucifer?

Batman?

Her mind jumped around from topic to topic like a frog attempting to reach safe ground using lily pads that kept sinking beneath his weight.

The male voice spoke again. This time she heard real words. A question. “How are you feeling?”

Was he talking to her?

With one last massive effort, London concentrated on pushing her lids open. This time she succeeded and saw—a man.

Not Batman, Superman, she amended. No cape, no blue tights that showed off rows of muscles, but definitely Superman. Right down to the chiseled chin and blue-black hair falling into brilliant blue eyes.

She swallowed. Her throat felt like rawhide. He’d asked her something. What? London searched the vacant caverns that comprised her mind and finally found the words, then laced them together.

Feelings, he’d asked something about feelings. No, wait, he’d asked her how was she feeling, yes, that was it.

It was a damn stupid question. How did she look? If she looked half as bad as she felt, Superman had his answer without her saying a word.

“How are you feeling?” Reese repeated for the third time.

He bent over close to her so she could hear him. He had been in twice before, only to find her still sleeping. This time, as he’d checked her chart, he saw her eyes flutter slightly. She was trying to come to.

London took a breath before answering. It felt like someone had shot an arrow into her ribs. “Like…I’ve been…run over…by…a…truck.”

Was that breathy, scratchy voice coming out of her? It didn’t sound like her, London thought. She tried to read Superman’s face and see his reaction to the pitiful noise. Was he recoiling in horror?

No, his eyes were kind. They were smiling.

She liked that. Smiling eyes.

“Not quite a truck,” Reese told her. “They tell me a pole did this.”

The single word brought with it a scene from somewhere within her brain. She and her parents, sitting at a long, white table, watching blond girls in native costumes with wide skirts, black corsets, red boots and wreaths of flowers in their hair, dancing.

Poland, her parents and she had been in Poland.

Poland, the last place her mother had been before she couldn’t be anyplace at all.

“Pole?” she echoed. She didn’t remember hitting a Polish national.

Reese saw the confusion in her face and wondered if she was suffering a bout of amnesia. Her airbag had failed to deploy and she’d hit her head against the steering wheel. Amnesia wasn’t unheard of.

“The one you tried to transplant by running into,” he told her gently, taking her pulse. The rhythm was strong. She had a good constitution. Lucky for her. “The paramedic almost wept over your Jaguar.”

The words were filtering into her brain without encountering matching images. Her jaguar. A pet cat? No, car, her car. The man was talking about her car.

Oh God, now she remembered. It all came rushing back at her as fast as she had raced her car to get away from Wallace.

She’d lost control and totaled her beautiful car.

London groaned, the loss hitting her between the eyes—the only spot on her body that didn’t hurt.

She raised her eyes to look at him as he released her wrist. “Is it totaled?”

“Like an accordion.”

The paramedic, Jaime, was still shaking his head and talking about the colossal waste of metal to anyone within earshot. He drove a small, secondhand foreign car whose odometer had gone full circle twice, and he looked upon the other vehicle as if it was a gift bestowed by the gods. He periodically drooled over Reese’s Corvette.

Reese studied London’s pale complexion for a moment. There was a bandage on her forehead where flesh had met wheel, but apart from that, she was a gorgeous woman, possibly the most perfect specimen he had ever seen. She could have been forever disfigured. Why had she risked losing all that in the blink of an eye?

“What were you trying to prove?”

“Nothing,” she answered quietly. She would have turned her head away if the effort hadn’t hurt so much. So she just looked at him steadily, meeting his probing gaze. “Just looking for space.”

He laughed shortly under his breath. The woman had intelligent eyes, and she certainly didn’t look stupid, but then, looks could be deceiving.

“You very nearly got it. Six feet by six by six,” Reese told her, pausing to write a notation in her chart. “A final space in the family plot.”

Beside her mother, she couldn’t help thinking. Maybe it would be peaceful there and she could finally find out who she was.

A flicker of rebellion rose from some faraway quarter that hadn’t been banged around relentlessly, and London looked at her intrusive surgeon with as much defiance as she could muster.

“A lecture? Save your…breath, doctor…I’ve heard…it all.”

She’d certainly heard more than her share. From her father, from Wallace, although she preferred the latter because at least Wallace was her friend. Her father, well, she didn’t really know what Ambassador Mason Merriweather was or how he figured into her life, other than to impose restrictions on her for as long as she could remember. Even Wallace and the other two bodyguards, Kelly and Andrews were part of her life because of him.

“Not a lecture, a fact,” Reese told her mildly. He slipped her chart back into its slot at the foot of her bed.

She was tired, very tired and there was this wide, soft, inviting region just waiting for her to slip into it. Its pull was becoming irresistible, but London struggled to ask one more question.

“Did you do it?”

The question caught him off guard. Reese looked at her. She appeared to be drifting off again. In another moment she’d be asleep, and the keeper at the gate would have to continue to wait before he would have the opportunity to talk with her.

“Do what?” Reese asked.

Every word was a struggle. Her mind was shutting down again. “Save…my…life.”

What he had done was utilize his training, his education and his instincts, not to mention the up-to-date technology that a hospital like Blair Memorial had to offer. There was no doubt in his mind that twenty years ago she would already have been dead. But even now, with all this at his disposal, there remained at bottom the x-factor. That tiny bit of will that somehow triumphs over death.

He allowed himself a small smile, though he doubted she could even detect it. “You saved your own life. I just put the pieces together.”

“Modest.” The single word came out on a labored breath. “Unusual…for…a…man.”

He began to say something in rebuttal, but it seemed that at least for now, his side wasn’t to be heard. His patient had fallen asleep again.

Just as well, Reese thought, standing at the foot of the bed and regarding her for one long moment. He didn’t feel like getting embroiled in a debate right now.

Not even if the opposing team looked like an angel. An angel, he mused, slipping out of the room, who had gotten banged up falling to Earth.

Very quietly he closed the door behind him.

Chapter 3

The moment Reese stepped out of the ICU, he found himself accosted by the big man who had stood vigil in the hallway all this time. He’d been told that Wallace Grant had been hovering around the nurses’ station ever since London had been brought out of recovery. To his credit, he had tried not to get in anyone’s way.

The question in the man’s eyes telegraphed itself instantly to Reese.

“She’s asleep,” Reese told him.

Wallace frowned as he sighed, frustration getting the better of him. He’d already put in a call to London’s father. The ambassador was scheduled for a meeting with a highly placed official in the Spanish government, but he’d canceled it and was catching the first flight from Madrid to LAX that his secretary could book for him. Wallace wanted to have some good news to give the man who signed his paychecks when he arrived.

Laying a large paw on Reese’s shoulder to hold him in place, Wallace blocked his exit.

“Is that normal?” he wanted to know. “I mean, shouldn’t she be waking up around now?”

Reese knew for a fact that the man had been looking in on London for his allotted five minutes every hour on the hour. The day nurse had told him so. But it was obvious that each time he did, he’d found the young woman unconscious.

“She did,” Reese told him. Surprise and relief washed over the other man’s face, followed by a look of suspicion. Wallace was a man who took nothing at face value. “For about five minutes,” Reese elaborated. “She’s going to be in and out like that for most of the day and part of tomorrow.” Very deliberately he removed Reese’s hand from his shoulder. “Maybe you should go home.”

Wallace looked at him sharply. “And maybe you should do your job and I’ll do mine.” Wallace didn’t appreciate being told what to do by a man who knew nothing about the situation they were in. “Her father pays me to be her bodyguard. I can’t exactly accomplish that from my apartment.”

Reese didn’t care for the man’s tone or his attitude. “Seems to me you didn’t ‘exactly’ accomplish it earlier, either, and you were a lot closer then.”

To his surprise he saw the anger on the other man’s face give way to a flush of embarrassment. His remark had been uncalled for. Reese chastised himself; he was civilized now, at least moderately so, and was supposed to know better.

He chalked it up to his being tired. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was a reason.

“Sorry,” Reese said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He wasn’t up on his celebrities, but it seemed to him that someone so young wouldn’t normally need to have her own bodyguard. Her name didn’t ring a bell for him, but that, too, was nothing new. For the most part, except for his small circle of friends or his mother, he tended to live and breathe his vocation. “Why does she need a bodyguard?”

The wide shoulders beneath the rumpled brown jacket straightened just a fraction. That was all there was room for. The man had the straightest posture he’d ever seen outside of a military parade, Reese thought. He’d had Grant pegged as a former military man.

“You can ask her father that when he gets here,” Wallace told him, his tone formal. “It’s not my place to tell you.”

Guarded secrets. Definitely a former military man, Reese decided. He shrugged. Whether she had a bodyguard or not didn’t really matter to him, as long as the man stayed out of the way.

“Just an idle question. Don’t have time for many of those,” Reese confessed, more to himself than to the man in front of him. Before he left, he stopped at the nurses’ station and looked at the middle-aged woman sitting behind the bank of monitors, each of which represented a patient on the floor. “Page me if the patient in room seven wakes up.” He leaned in closer to her and lowered his voice. “And don’t forget to tell our semifriendly green giant here, too.”

Slanting a glance at the man who had resumed his vigil in the hallway, the strawberry blonde raised a silent brow in Reese’s direction.

He grinned. “Call it a mercy summoning,” he told her just before he left.

Reese was in the doctor’s lounge, stretched out in a chair before a television set showing a program that had been popular in the late eighties. He must have seen that particular episode five times, even though he’d rarely watched the show when it was originally on. Murphy’s Law.

He wasn’t really watching now, either. The program was just so much white noise in the background, as were the voices of the two other doctors in the room who were caught up on opposite sides of a political argument that held no interest for Reese.

For his part, Reese was contemplating the benefits of catching a quick catnap, when his pager went off.

Checking it, he recognized the number. He was being summoned to the ICU. He wondered if the nurse was just responding to his instructions, or if London had taken a turn for the worse.

“No rest for the wicked,” he murmured under his breath. Rising, he absently nodded at the two physicians, who abruptly terminated their heated discussion as they turned toward him in unison.

“Hey, Reese, you up for a party tonight?” Chick Montgomery, an anesthesiologist who knew his craft far better than he knew his politics in Reese’s opinion, asked him enthusiastically. “Joe Albright’s application to New York Hospital finally came through, and he’s throwing a big bash at his beach house tonight to celebrate.”

His hand already on the door, Reese shook his head. He didn’t feel like being lost in a crowd tonight. He had some serious sleeping to catch up on. “I’m not planning to be upright at all tonight.”

The other doctor, an up-and-coming pediatrician, leered comically. “Got a hot date? Bring her along, the more the merrier is Joe’s motto, remember?”

Reese didn’t even feel remotely tempted. “No hot date,” he told them. “I’m booking passage for one to dreamland tonight. Maybe I’ll actually manage to start catching up on all the sleep I lost while I was in med school,” he cracked.

That was the one thing he missed most of all in this career he’d chosen for himself. Sleep. When he was a kid, weekends were always his favorite days. He’d sleep in until ten or eleven, choosing sleep over watching early Saturday-morning cartoon programs the way all his friends did. Sleep had been far more alluring.

It still was.

Trouble was, he didn’t get nearly enough anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep. If anything, life after medical school had gotten even more hectic for him. There was always some emergency to keep him at the hospital or to drag him out of bed early.

You asked for it, he thought, walking down the first-floor corridor toward the front of the building.

The ICU was located just beyond the gift shop. As he passed through the electronic doors that isolated the intensive care unit from the rest of the hospital, Reese absently noted that the hulking guardian wasn’t hovering around in the vicinity.

He wondered if the man had finally decided to take a break and go home for a few hours. Diligence could only be stretched so far.

“Jolly green giant on a break?” he asked Mona, the strawberry blonde who’d paged him.

The woman shook her head and pointed toward room seven.

Apparently, Reese thought, diligence could always be stretched just a wee bit further. The man he’d just asked about was now hovering over London Merriweather’s bed. To his surprise the booming voice the bodyguard had earlier used on him had been replaced by a voice that was soft and pleading.

A gentle giant, Reese mused. Who would have thought it?

“Promise me you won’t do that again, London,” he was saying. “I’m only here to look out for you. I’m the good guy.”

London only sighed in response, but to Reese it sounded like a repentant sigh. But then, maybe he was reading things into it. He didn’t really know the woman. She might just be placating the big guy.

Sensing his presence, Wallace glanced toward the door. The look he gave Reese clearly labeled him as the intruder, rather than the other way around.

Since only five minutes at an ICU patient’s bedside was allowed, Wallace had taken to peering periodically into London’s room when the nurse’s back was turned. Each time he did, he saw that London was still sleeping. His agitation grew with each unfruitful visitation. As did his concern.

So when he’d looked in this time and found that her eyes were open, his heart had leaped up like a newly released dove at a wedding celebration. He’d lost no time in coming in and peppering the young woman for whose safety he was responsible with questions and admonishments.

“You gave me some scare,” he’d freely confessed, saying to her what he would never have admitted to another man. “When I saw your car hit that pole, I thought my heart stopped.” A small smile had curved his lips. “I found out I still remembered how to pray.”

She’d looked at him ruefully then and he could see that she was sorry. When she had that look on her face, he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with her, even though they both knew that she’d pulled a stupid stunt by taking off at top speed like that, trying to lose him. London was alive, and that was the bottom line. That was all that counted. The rest could be worked out somehow. He’d make sure of it.

Wallace had said his piece and didn’t want London to be upset, with him or with herself so he’d smiled shyly at her and added, “Bet the Big Man Upstairs was surprised to hear from me after all this time.” He’d placed his hand over hers, dwarfing it. Letting her know that he would always be there for her. That there was nothing to be afraid of. “But you’re going to be okay. The doc who operated on you told me so.”

She’d nodded, as if she knew she was going to be all right. Because Wallace had told her so. “Sorry. I just wanted to get away.”

And he’d looked at her, his dark eyes pleading once more. The next time could prove fatal. “Not from me, London. Not ever from me. I’m not just your bodyguard, I’m your friend. I’m the guy who’s supposed to keep you safe, remember?”

She’d bitten her lip and nodded. He’d almost gotten her to promise never to take off like that again when the doctor had walked in on them.

Self-conscious about his lapse in protocol, Wallace quickly lifted his hand from London’s.

“She woke up,” the bodyguard told him. There was a touch of defensiveness in his voice, and the soft tone Reese had heard just a moment earlier was completely gone, vanishing as if it had never existed.

Reese nodded as he approached the bed. “So I see.”

His eyes shifted to the woman in the bed. He looked at her with a discerning eye. London still looked very pale, but there was a brightness in her eyes that had been absent earlier. She was definitely coming around, he thought.

“Let me check your vital signs.” Reese’s tone was light, conversational as he took the stethoscope from around his neck and placed the ends in his ears.

“Vital signs all present and accounted for, Doctor,” London cracked. She would have saluted him, but her arms still felt as if they each weighed more than a ton.

“You don’t mind if I check for myself.” He picked up her wrist and placed his fingers on her pulse. Mentally he began counting off the seconds and beats.

“Feel free.” She watched him for a moment. He looked so cool, so calm. Was that just a facade? What did it take to light a fire under him? “Did you know that in some cultures, if you save a person’s life, that life belongs to you?”

His eyes met hers briefly. “Makes a casual birthday present seem a little ordinary and rather insignificant, doesn’t it?”

Taking a pressure cuff that was attached to the wall, Reese wrapped it around her arm, then increased the pressure until the cuff was tight along her arm. This was something the nurses did periodically, but he liked checking for himself. Nothing like hands-on experience whenever possible.

He kept his eye on the readings as the air was slowly let out. Her blood pressure was excellent. And she was no longer speaking in fragments, which meant that she wasn’t having trouble taking in deep breaths. She had amazing recuperative powers.

Satisfied, he removed the cuff, then made a notation in her chart. He was aware that the giant standing on the other side of her bed was watching his every move. “How do you feel?”

She almost felt worse than when she’d first come in on the gurney. But then, she reminded herself, she’d probably been in shock.

“Like Humpty-Dumpty.”

He laughed under his breath. “Well, lucky for you we’re staffed with something other than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.” He smiled at her. “So we were able to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.” Reese replaced the cuff in its holder on the wall. “Your vital signs are all strong. You keep this up and you can move into the suite that Grant, here—” he nodded at the giant “—insisted on reserving for you.”

He was referring to one of the rooms located in what the hospital staff referred to as the tower. Large, sunny rooms that could have easily been mistaken for hotel suites, made to accommodate VIPs who came to the hospital with their own entourages. CEOs, movies stars and, on occasion, politicians made use of the suites whenever circumstances forced them to stay at the hospital.

At present only one of the four rooms was in use. While checking London in, Wallace had insisted on reserving the largest suite for her once she was well enough to leave the ICU. The tab had begun the moment he’d made the request formally.

London tried to raise herself up on her elbows and discovered that it was yet another stupid move. Pain shot all through her, going off through the top of her head. She winced and immediately chastised herself. She didn’t like displaying her vulnerability.

Reese was at her side, adjusting the IV drip that was attached to her left hand. “You feel pain, you can twist this and it’ll increase the medication dosage.”

She frowned. “I don’t do drugs.”

“You do for the moment,” Reese informed her mildly, stepping back.

London sighed. All she’d wanted was a little control of her life, and now look—she was tethered to a bed, watching some clear substance drip into her body and listening to an Ivy League doctor tell her what to do.

She looked at him. “I don’t want a special room. I want to go home.”

“Then you shouldn’t have tried to break the sound barrier using a Jaguar,” Reese informed her mildly, ignoring the glare that was coming from the woman’s bodyguard. He replaced her chart, then sank his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat as he regarded his newest patient. He offered her what he deemed was his encouraging smile. “We’ll try not to keep you too long.”

She sighed. It was already too long. She knew it was her own fault, but that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to be here. That being in a hospital made her uneasy, restless. She wanted to get up out of bed, walk out the door and just keep walking until she hit the parking lot.

But being tethered to an IV and feeling as if she had the strength of an anesthetized squirrel wasn’t conducive to her going anywhere. At least, not for the moment.

She tried to shut out the sadness that threatened to blanket her.

“I called your father.” Wallace had been wrestling with the way to tell her since he’d put through the call to the embassy.

They both knew he had to, but he also knew how much she didn’t want him to make the call.

London sighed again, more loudly this time. Great. This was just what she needed on top of everything else. To experience her father’s disapproval coming down from on high. They hardly had any contact at all, except when her father felt the need to express his disappointment about something she’d done or failed to do.

In the past year she had turned her hand—and successfully at that—to fund-raising for charities. There hadn’t been a single word of commendation from her father even though the last affair had raised so much money that it had made all the papers.

She looked at Wallace. She had thought she could trust him. In the past eighteen months, while he’d been heading the security detail for her father that she thought intruded into the life she was still trying to put together, they had become friends.

Obviously, salaries transcended friendships.

“Why?” she asked sharply. “There’s no point in worrying him.”

Wallace didn’t care for the fact that the doctor was privy to this exchange, but he had no say in the matter. Reaching for the newspaper section that was folded and stuffed into his overcoat pocket, he tossed it onto her bed.

“He’d be plenty worried if I hadn’t. This was on the bottom of page one in the L.A. Times. I figure a story just like it is bound to turn up in the papers or on the news in Madrid.” The small brown eyes bored into her. “You know how much your father likes to watch the news.”

Almost against her will she looked at the paper. Ambassador’s Daughter Nearly Killed In Car Accident.

London frowned. Stupid, stupid. She shouldn’t have given in to impulse. But she’d been so tired of having her every move shadowed, of feeling isolated but not alone.

“Yes, I know.” Well, there was no undoing what she’d done. She was going to have to pay the piper or face the music or something equally trite. London pressed her lips together. Her eyes shifted toward Reese. “Wallace, I’d like to talk to the doctor alone.”

Wallace opened his mouth in protest. The doctor should be the one to leave, not him. But there was clearly nothing he could do. Reluctantly he inclined his head. “I’ll be right outside.”

Because none of this was his fault, London mustered a smile, resigning herself to the inevitable. And, she supposed, in light of everything, there was a certain comfort in knowing Wallace was around. “Yes, I know.”

“Right outside,” he repeated, this time for Reese’s benefit just before he left the room.

For a moment there was no sound except the gentle noises made by the machines that surrounded the upper portion of her bed, monitoring her progress, assuring the medical staff that all was going as it should.

Reese had places to be, patients to see. He didn’t have time to dance attendance on a headstrong young woman who hadn’t learned how to curb her desire for speed. “You wanted to say something to me?”

“Yes.” She’d never been very good at being humble. Maybe because it made her feel as if she were exposing herself, leaving herself vulnerable.

Finally she said, “Thanks.”

She made it sound as if it pained her to utter that, Reese thought. “Like I said earlier, it’s my job. And if you really want to thank me, get better.” Finished, he began to walk out.

“I don’t like hospitals.”

The statement came out of nowhere. Stopping just short of the door, Reese turned around to look at her.

For some reason she suddenly looked smaller, almost lost in the bed. He remained where he was. “Not many people are crazy about them,” he acknowledged. “But they serve their purpose.”

She knew that. Knew that she’d probably be dead if Wallace hadn’t summoned the paramedics to get her here in time. But that still didn’t change the feelings that were clawing inside of her.

“My mother died in a hospital,” she told him quietly.

Reese took a few steps toward her bed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

She barely heard him. Only the sympathy in his voice. She didn’t know doctors could be sympathetic. She thought they were supposed to be removed from things like death. “In Brussels. It was a car accident. She wasn’t even thirty.”

Each halting word brought the incident closer to her. Standing alone on a hospital floor with a large, black-and-white checkerboard pattern, feeling abandoned. Feeling alone. Watching a tall man in a white lab coat talking to her father. Watching her father’s proud, rigid shoulders sag. Wanting to reach out to him in her anguish, but being restrained by the woman who had been placed in charge of her.

Something started to make a little sense. “Is that why you—”

She wasn’t going to come up with any analogies. She had no death wish. She had a life wish. She wanted to find one. A life she could be content with, if not happy. “No, I was just trying to get away.”

He glanced toward the closed door. “From the jolly green giant?”

Wallace was harmless, even though he was an expert marksman and had been the head of security for Donovan Industries before being wooed away by her father when her old bodyguard had retired.

She shook her head and instantly regretted it. “From being London Merriweather, Ambassador Mason Merriweather’s wild daughter.” That was how her father thought of her, she knew. And how the headlines had once viewed her.

She didn’t seem so wild right now, Reese thought. She looked almost frail and vulnerable, although he had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate that observation. “Simpler ways of doing that.”

The streak of rebellion that had become her constant companion since the day she lost her mother raised its head at his words. “Such as?”

Seemed obvious to him. “Such as you could do away with the wild part.”

Everyone seemed to have an opinion on how she was to live her life. “Will this lecture be itemized on the hospital bill, or does it fall under miscellaneous?”

He had better things to do than spar verbally with a spoiled brat who happened to be very, very lucky as well as extremely gorgeous.

“It falls under common sense.” Reese turned and once again began to walk away. “You might think about getting some.”

“I don’t like people who insult me,” she called after him.

He stopped by the door. “And I don’t like people who are careless with their lives. Especially when they have everything to live for.”

Where did he get off, saying things like that to her? He knew nothing about the pain in her life. Nothing about the emptiness. “How would you know that?”

Reese didn’t know why he was bothering. Except that she was his patient and she was in pain. Pain that went deeper than the lacerations and bruising she had sustained in the crash.

“Because most people have everything to live for, Ms. Merriweather. The alternative is rather bleak and, to my knowledge, completely nonreversible.”

With that he left the room.

Chapter 4

He’d almost lost her.

For a long moment, his soul troubled, he stared at the mural that dominated one wall of the small studio apartment where he lived. The mural was comprised of all manner of photographs in all sizes, both black-and-white and color. There were newspaper clippings, as well, though those were few.

His eyes lovingly caressed the face he saw before him. The photographs were all of the same woman.

London Merriweather.

London, the daughter of the ambassador to Spain. The daughter of the former ambassador to England. It was there that she was born twenty-three years ago.

Returning to the task that he had begun, he shook his head in mute sympathy as he cut out the latest clipping from the Times. It was a relatively small article describing the accident that had almost taken her out of his world. He had larger articles, and better pictures, but he kept everything, every scrap, every word, every photo. They were all precious.

Because they were all of her.

What kind of father names his daughter after a place he’s living in? he wondered not for the first time. After something that was associated with his line of work? Where was the love there?

It was simple. There wasn’t any.

Her father couldn’t love her the way he could. The way he did.

No one could.

He tossed aside the newspaper, smoothing out the clipping he’d just liberated from the rest of the page.

Very carefully he taped the clipping with its accompanying photograph in one of the last free spaces on the wall.

The mural was getting larger. It was taking over the entire wall.

Just like his feelings for London were taking over everything in his life. His feelings were evident in every breath he took, every thought he had. They all revolved around London, around his possessing her.

Loving her.

She was going to be his.

Some way, somehow, she was going to be his. He knew it, sensed it, felt it in his very bones.

He just had to be patient, that was all. Once she realized, once she saw how much he loved her, how he could make her happy, she would be his. And everything would be all right again.

He sat down in his easy chair and felt her image looking at him from all angles, all sides. He returned her smile, content.

Waiting.

The feeling of oppression hit Reese the moment he stepped off the elevator onto the top floor of the hospital tower.

He was already annoyed. He didn’t get that way often, but having his professional authority circumvented was one of the few things that was guaranteed to set him off. His orders had been countermanded by the hospital chief administrator, Seymour Jenkins, because Mason Merriweather had come in and demanded that his daughter be taken out of the ICU and placed in the tower suite that the head of London’s bodyguard detail had already reserved for her.

Granted, the woman was getting better and he was about to order the transfer of rooms himself, but he didn’t appreciate being second-guessed, or more to the point, ignored, because a VIP was on the scene making demands.

Seymour Jenkins didn’t ordinarily interfere in any of his doctors’ cases, which was what made this such a complete surprise.

He’d looked infinitely uncomfortable when Reese had burst into his office after having gone to the ICU and found London’s bed vacant.

“I would have understood if you’d needed the bed,” he’d told Jenkins. “But it was empty. Why the hell did you move my patient without first checking with me?”

A dab of perspiration had formed on Seymour’s upper lip. He’d run his hand nervously through the thin strands of his remaining hair. “The ambassador got on the phone himself—”

Reese watched the man’s Adam’s apple travel up and down his throat like a loose Wiffle ball.

“And what? He threatened to huff and puff and blow the hospital down if you didn’t instantly obey him and put her in the tower suite?”

Jenkins rose from his desk and crossed to Reese in an effort to placate him. He was more than a foot shorter than the surgeon. “Please, be reasonable. Look at it from my point of view. Ambassador Merriweather is an influential man, he has connections, and we’re a nonprofit organization—”

Why did things always have to come down to a matter of money rather than ethics and care?

Thinking better of approaching him, Jenkins decided to keep a desk between them. “I’ve never seen you like this,” the man protested nervously.

Even though not completely seasoned, Reese Bendenetti was still one of the finest surgeons on the staff at Blair Memorial, which was saying a great deal. The ninety-year-old hospital, which had recently undergone a name change from Harris Memorial because of the generous endowment from the late Constance Blair, prided itself on getting the best of the very best. The last thing Jenkins wanted to do, for the sake of the hospital’s reputation as well as for practical reasons, was to alienate the young physician. But neither did he want to throw a wrench into possible future contributions from the ambassador and any of his influential friends.

“There’s a reason for that. I’ve never been completely ignored before.” Reese leaned over the desk, bringing his face closer to the other man’s. “She’s my patient, Jenkins.”

The man drew himself up, finding a backbone at last, albeit a small one.

“Yes, and this is my hospital—and yours,” he pointed out. “Ambassador Merriweather is a former captain of industry.” Merriweather’s company had made its mark on the stock market before he had resigned from the board to take on the responsibility of a prestigious foreign embassy. “He hobnobs with kings and presidents, not to mention some of the richest people in the world. We can’t have him unhappy with us,” Jenkins insisted. “Besides, we’re not endangering his daughter with the transfer.” He’d made a point of checking the Merriweather woman’s record—after the fact. “You noted yourself in her chart that her progress is amazing. And we sent up monitors with her, just in case.”

Which in itself had probably required a great deal of juggling, Reese surmised. He had said nothing in response to the information meant to placate him. Instead he’d turned on his heel and walked out, heading straight to the tower elevators and straight to London’s floor.

Where the wall of noise hit him.

The area appeared to be in the middle of being cordoned off. Men in gray and black suits were everywhere. Reese looked sharply at the nurse who was sitting in the nurses’ station.

“What the hell is going on?”

The older woman turned her head and covered her mouth so that only Reese could hear. “Ambassador Merriweather’s landed, and from the looks of it, he’s brought half his staff with him.”

He could see that. That still didn’t answer the question. “Why?”

The woman shrugged her wide shoulders. This was causing havoc on her usually smooth-running floor. “Something about keeping his daughter safe.”

Reese felt his anger heighten. Maybe he was over-reacting. His quick temper went back to the days when he was growing up and was regarded as someone from the wrong side of the tracks, someone whose opinion—because his mother’s bank account was represented by a jar she kept in a box beneath her bed—didn’t count. But if his patient’s life was in jeopardy from something other than the injuries she’d sustained the other day, someone should have taken the time to inform him.

“What room did you put her in?”

The nurse didn’t even have to look. “Room one.” She pointed down the hall toward where the activity grew more pronounced. “The largest of the suites.”

He was vaguely familiar with it. He remembered thinking that the room was somewhat larger than the first apartment he’d lived in.

Reese nodded his head and made his way down the corridor.

Besides being on the cutting edge of medicine, Blair Memorial prided itself on being uplifting and cheerful in its choice of decor. The tower rooms were designed to go several steps beyond that. Here patient care was conducted in suites that looked as if they were part of an upscale hotel rather than a hospital.

Reese supposed there was no harm in pandering to patients who could afford to waste their money this way, as long as playing along didn’t get in the way of more important matters, such as the health of the patient.

As he approached suite one, a tall, unsmiling man stepped forward, his hand automatically reaching out to stop Reese from gaining entry to the room he was guarding.

“I’d put that hand down if I were you,” Reese told him evenly. He’d had just about enough of this cloak-and-dagger VIP nonsense.

Wallace turned from the man he was instructing to see what was going on. Recognizing Reese, he crossed the room to him. “He’s okay,” he told the bodyguard who was part of his detail. “He’s the main doc.” His brown eyes shifted to Reese. “This is Kelly. He’s on midnight to eight,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Well I’m on round-the-clock when it comes to my patients,” Reese replied. He looked at Kelly coolly, waiting. The latter dropped his hand and stepped out of the way.

But as Reese started for the unblocked door, Wallace shook his head and moved to stop him.

“I wouldn’t go in there just yet if I were you,” he advised.

Was someone in there, brightening up her room, giving her a pedicure? He was in no mood to be dealing with the very rich and their self-indulgence.

“And why not?”

Wallace glanced toward the door, lowering his voice. “The ambassador’s in there. He’s talking to London, and I think they’d rather keep it private.”

Wallace was willing to place bets that London did. If he knew her father, the man was probably giving her a dressing-down for being so reckless. For his part, Wallace would have liked to be there to shield her, but it wasn’t his place and he knew it. Still, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

It was going to take more than a private chat between the ambassador and his daughter to keep Reese out. He figured he’d wasted enough time as it was.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Reese said to the other man as he walked by London’s primary bodyguard and into the room.

Mason Merriweather narrowed his piercing blue eyes. He wasn’t happy about this. Not happy at all.

He had no idea what to do with her.

Damn it all, being a father shouldn’t be this difficult, especially at his age.

He could negotiate contracts and peace treaties that were advantageous to people on both sides of the table, get along in several languages with a host of people and was known for his ability to arrange compromises and defuse the hottest of situations, be they global or, as they were once upon a time, corporate.

But when it came to his own daughter, he hadn’t a clue how to behave, what to do, what to say.

It was his considered opinion that he and London had never gone beyond being two strangers whose photographs just happened to turn up in the same family album.

Perhaps part of the problem was that she behaved and looked so much like her late mother. It was like receiving a fresh wound every time he laid eyes on her. Because London made him think of Anne, and Anne wasn’t here anymore.

She hadn’t been for a very long time.

And now this, a car accident that brought all the old memories back to haunt him. Because Anne had died behind the wheel, taking a turn on a winding road that hadn’t allowed her to see the truck coming from the opposite direction—the truck that had snuffed out her vibrant young life and taken the light out of his own.

Anne had never gotten the hang of driving on what she termed the wrong side of the road. And it was he who had paid the price for that.

But now it was London, not Anne, who was the problem. Just when he thought she was finally settling down. After all, she’d acquiesced to his wishes regarding the bodyguard detail. He’d thought—hoped—that this was a sign that she was finally coming around, finally learning not to make waves in his life.

He should have known better.

The initial words between them when he’d walked into the room had been awkward. They always were. She looked a great deal more frail than he’d thought she would. The IV bottle beside her bed, feeding into her hand had thrown him.

Anne had looked that way. Except her eyes had been closed. And she was gone.

But London wasn’t. Thank God.

“How are you feeling?” he managed to ask in a tone he might have used to an underling or even a complete stranger.