Lana had made the right choice by breaking their engagement.

He looked like an urbane city man now, a business tycoon in a Savile Row suit, but that scar on his chin revealed the man he'd been. Lana knew him, under that suit.

Under that suit, he was …

Warm skin and hard muscle. Every inch of him.

For God's sake, Lana. You're the department chair. Pay attention.

More than a million dollars were at stake. West Central was counting on her to achieve one simple goal: renew PLI's contract.

Perhaps she ought to set a second goal. She was going to keep her heart well guarded from the dreamy Dr MacDowell.

* * *

The Brothers MacDowell: Doctors who have never taken time for love —until now!

The Doctor’s

Former Fiancée

Caro Carson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate and US Army officer, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. After reading romances no matter where in the world the army sent her, Caro began a career in the pharmaceutical industry. Little did she know the years she spent discussing science with physicians would provide excellent story material for her new career as a romance author. Now, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in the great state of Florida, a location which has saved the coaster-loving, theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

For my mother, Kay Clark, who fed me books along with my veggies

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Excerpt

Chapter One

It was the part of his job Braden MacDowell hated most. Turning down requests. Telling someone their work was not going to pay off.

Killing dreams.

Braden pushed through the hospital’s double doors with more force than was necessary. Nurses stared. Perhaps no one expected a stranger wearing a business suit rather than doctor’s scrubs to be walking purposefully through a treatment area, but Braden knew this was a shortcut to the conference room.

Perhaps they thought he looked familiar. Braden knew he shared his brothers’ physical features. Dr. Quinn MacDowell was the medical director here. Dr. Jamie MacDowell had left the battlefields of the Middle East to serve the city of Austin in this hospital’s emergency department.

Braden nodded curtly at the staff as he kept walking down the corridors, the endless hospital corridors.

Perhaps they stared because the man he resembled the most strongly was his father, whose life-sized portrait hung in the lobby. He’d founded the hospital. Two of his sons healed the sick here. But Braden, the eldest, had traded in scrubs and cowboy boots for a suit and Testoni shoes. He’d taken his medical degree and left Austin for the high-stakes world of corporate America.

The staff might be wondering which MacDowell he was, but they’d know soon enough. He was the MacDowell returning home to kill someone’s dream.

Braden took two flights of stairs rather than wait for the elevator. This hospital was still as familiar to him as the back of his hand. He’d practically lived here during his residency, which was how he knew this shortcut would let him avoid the hospital’s chapel.

He’d face that memory later.

Not before this meeting. His emotions didn’t need to be churned up before he wreaked havoc with someone else’s. Braden had killed dreams before, and he’d do it again for as long as he was in the biotech industry. Eliminating this program would free up millions of dollars for more promising research. For his own sanity, he kept the end goal clearly in mind: better health for all patients, everywhere.

Scientists of all disciplines patented new theories, new molecules, new devices. However, the kind of mind that came up with potential medical solutions rarely had the business acumen to turn those ideas into reality. Millions of dollars were required to fund the years of studies that were needed to prove that an idea would actually help the average patient.

The overwhelming majority of the time, it didn’t. Then the hopeful inventor—and Braden’s company—were out millions of dollars and years of effort, and had nothing, not one thing, to show for it.

At what point was it nearly certain that the gamble was not going to pay off? Plaine Laboratories International relied on Braden to make that call. He was the man expected to know when to cut PLI’s losses, when to halt the studies under way, when to give up looking for a cure down that particular alley.

And then, on days like today, Braden got to inform everyone involved that he’d decided their dream was over.

Renovations and new wings had been added to the hospital during his six-year absence, so at the conclusion of his shortcut, Braden had to rely on a sign to point him down a new corridor. The old conference room had apparently made way for an entire conference center.

Maybe the hospital chapel had been renovated or relocated. A pang of regret hit him. Maybe he wouldn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

Impatient with himself for wasting his energy on nostalgia, Braden followed the signs through the new wing. A visit to the chapel would have been only a symbolic goodbye today. His first engagement was long over, and Braden was ready to move on. Ready to propose to his current girlfriend. Saying goodbye to the memory of his former fiancée wasn’t strictly necessary.

Pulling his company’s funding for this project was.

The new wing made West Central feel as strange to him as every other hospital he’d been to. He’d called on too many hospitals to count, flying from coast to coast, living in airports as he’d once lived in this hospital. But PLI rewarded him, raising his pay often and substantially, to keep him from being tempted by rival companies who tried to lure him away. There weren’t many executives who held both an M.D. and a Harvard MBA, so Braden was on the radar as a potential executive for practically every global biotech corporation.

As president of research and development for PLI, Braden flew less often now. He allowed his handpicked regional directors to screen the applications and research sites. He let them build the thick skin they needed to cut failing programs.

Braden personally flew in when the stakes were at their highest. Only the biggest investment. Only the biggest potential for return. Now his career had brought him full circle, back to where he’d started. Back to Texas.

Today, he’d kill a dream at the hospital where his own most valuable, most precious dream had died.

* * *

Dr. Lana Donnoli had been given less than an hour’s notice for this meeting. Her predecessor, the esteemed Dr. Montgomery, had once been the faculty adviser during her residency in this hospital. He’d survived a myocardial infarct weeks ago, a common heart attack that must have caused him to reconsider his career. From his hospital bed, he’d called her office at the Washington, D.C., hospital where she worked and had offered her his position. It was an opportunity she couldn’t refuse, a chance to skip a few rungs to get higher on her career ladder. For that, she could face Texas again.

She’d given her two-week notice, packed up her apartment’s meager contents in a do-it-yourself moving van and driven from the mushy snow on the gray Potomac River to the cool and dry hill country of brown Central Texas. Dr. Montgomery had welcomed her with a brief handshake, announced that he was leaving before the job gave him another heart attack and literally walked out the door.

This morning. Monday. Her first day as the new chair of the Department of Research and Clinical Studies at West Central Texas Hospital had started with a bang.

West Central. It was a fine hospital with a crazy name.

Is it west or is it central? You’re either in the west or in the center; you can’t be both. Every time she saw the hospital’s name on a sign, she heard the lightly mocking question in her mind. The voice that posed the question was always the same: always masculine, always affectionate. Always her ex-fiancé’s.

It had been a running joke between them, becoming so ingrained in her psyche that the thought played automatically, even six years after he’d left his medical training behind and moved to Boston. Six years after he’d traded in his white coat and stethoscope for an MBA from the prestigious Harvard University. Six years after he’d left her, his supposedly beloved fiancée, behind. Alone.

Still, she could hear his laughter: Is it west or is it central?

She pushed open the double doors with more force than necessary. The nurses stared, perhaps surprised at the amount of force coming from someone as petite as she was. Her Italian-American grandfather had fallen in love with her Polynesian grandmother in the South Pacific during World War II. Lana could have inherited her very black hair from either grandparent, but her grandmother’s genes had given her hair its straightness and her eyes just a touch of an almond shape—and the petite height that came with both Polynesian traits.

If I can be an Italian-Pacific-Asian-American, why can’t the hospital be West Central? Are you saying I’m an oxymoron?

No, you’re a perfect combination. Hands down the sexiest, brainiest, beautiful-est—

Beautiful-est?

Beautiful-est, unique-est woman on earth, and I’m smart enough to make you mine.

Braden had tapped the diamond she’d worn on her finger, the proof of his undying love.

He’d given her the ring in the middle of their third year of medical school. On their way to the surgical suite where they’d been interning, he’d taken her by the hand and pulled her into the quiet, dim light of the hospital’s small chapel, gotten down on bended knee and popped the question. She’d floated through their shift that day—her ring tucked into her bra so it wouldn’t poke through her latex gloves—feeling happy even when her arms had ached from holding retractors for hours while a thoracic surgeon repaired someone else’s damaged heart.

For the next year, just a glance at the ring had made her feel good, even when she was on the eighteenth hour of her day, walking down these same corridors to yet another patient.

With an impatient smack of her file against her thigh, Lana stopped her memories. She’d known coming back here would trigger them, not that they’d ever completely stopped. But she’d long ago acknowledged that the past was the past, and it shouldn’t prevent her from taking advantage of this new position. The desire to avoid memories of her former fiancé wouldn’t prevent her from grabbing the best opportunity she—or anyone in her field—could hope for. It was a great step toward her future, as the single but successful Dr. Lana Donnoli, a woman on the cutting edge of research, bringing new cures and new hope to patients across the country.

There was nothing wrong with being single. There was nothing wrong with being successful.

Wasn’t that what you told Braden when you broke your engagement, that you understood his dedication to his career?

She was using this corridor only as a shortcut to the conference room, not to circumvent the hospital chapel.

The conference room was dead ahead. Money for the hospital—for her hospital—was at stake, but she knew very little about this research project. If the study was failing to show results, it could be canceled. They’d lose over a million in funding. That much, she’d been able to learn in the hour since her administrative assistant had told her this meeting was on her morning’s schedule.

She was going to have to think fast to keep up with the representative from Plaine Labs International who’d come to hear the status of the study being conducted at West Central.

Is it west or is it central? You can’t be both.

She wouldn’t have time for memories.

Thank God.

Chapter Two

Braden tapped his fingers impatiently on the conference room’s table while a senior resident fumbled with the projector for her laptop. She’d told him three times that Dr. Montgomery, Braden’s former faculty adviser, had asked her to present the study’s midpoint data.

When the laptop’s screen was finally, successfully projected on the wall, Braden took advantage of that awkward moment before the young doctor clicked on the icon that would start the slide show. He’d become an expert at gathering all kinds of intelligence in those seconds. File names that looked personal indicated that any PLI-provided laptops were not being used strictly for research. The name of any file often indicated how many versions existed. Always, Braden would note the amount of total slides before the first one ballooned up to fill the full screen—in this case, slide one of forty-three.

Forty-three.

Death by PowerPoint. It looked as though this resident planned to make it a slow, painful death.

Braden would cut it short after a polite amount of slides had passed. He’d already received the raw data from the midpoint of this study. He’d done the statistical analysis himself. While there was some trend toward the treatment group having a better outcome than the placebo group, there was no statistical difference. Plaine Labs International was not going to sink another 1.2 million dollars and another eighteen months of time into this study, not with such weak results at the midpoint.

It was a shame, because Braden had a soft spot in his heart for the subject: a new medicine for migraines, something his father had suffered from. The man had been a force to be reckoned with, but Braden had been awed as a child at seeing his indefatigable father laid low within moments of a migraine’s onset. This particular molecule wasn’t going to work, though. It was time for PLI to cut its losses and move on.

Time to kill someone’s dream.

The door behind him opened with a hard push, and the PowerPoint physician looked up from her laptop and exhaled in relief. “Ah, Dr. Donnoli is here—our new department chair. She’ll be able to field any questions after the presentation, I’m sure.”

Dr. Donnoli? Dr. Donnoli was in West Central Texas Hospital? It couldn’t be. She was in Washington, D.C., adding more impressive credentials to her curriculum vitae. He knew, because he knew where all the key research physicians in America were. But he swiveled his chair to look, and it was her.

The beautiful-est girl in the world.

Damn it all to hell.

* * *

Lana crossed the beige carpet to the conference table, taking care to walk as if she were as confident as she hoped she looked in her high heels and her dark blue coat dress.

“Dr. Donnoli?” A young woman in a lab coat addressed her. “Would you like to make the presentation to Mr. MacDowell?”

MacDowell? Lana’s gaze darted from the woman to the man in the dark suit. He’d been sitting with his back to the door when she’d walked in, but now he was facing her. Braden MacDowell. Her Braden MacDowell.

For a moment, she was frozen. Confused. It was as if being in this hospital had not only refreshed all her memories, but actually conjured her ex-fiancé in the flesh. Quite a magic trick—an unwelcome, unwanted trick of the mind.

Her administrative assistant, a compact ball of energy one would hesitate to label “elderly,” burst through the door behind her.

“Sorry I’m late,” the gray-haired Myrna said. “Oh, good. I see you’ve got that projector working.”

Lana barely processed the words. Every brain cell was occupied with Braden. He looked just the same. It took only one glance for her to recall the feel of his skin, every angle of his jaw, the texture of his dark hair sliding through her fingers. Myrna kept talking as she placed notepads around the table. Lana was grateful for the valuable seconds it provided to regain her composure.

“You must be the president of Plaine Labs,” Myrna was saying, making small talk and saving Lana. “Cheryl called me this morning to say you’d be here. I didn’t realize you were already in the building. Welcome to our conference center. May I introduce our new chairperson, Dr. Lana Donnoli?” She gestured at Lana. “Dr. Donnoli, this is Mr. Braden MacDowell.”

Braden stood and nodded at Lana politely. Impersonally. How did he manage it? Was she nothing more than a past memory, an old college girlfriend?

“Dr. Donnoli,” he said, and the bored formality in his voice went straight to her heart. And it hurt.

That he could still have that kind of power over her, six years after leaving her behind, made her angry. She extended her hand to shake his, determined to show him the professional she was, not the heartbroken girl he probably remembered sobbing over a phone line.

“Mr. MacDowell?” she asked, with a skeptical lift of her brow. “Isn’t it Dr. MacDowell?”

“I don’t use the title.” He shook her hand firmly, once, and let go.

“Why not? You earned that much.” She knew she’d made it sound as if it wasn’t much at all.

“I’m well aware that it’s an academic title only. Since I don’t practice medicine, I don’t choose to use it.”

Myrna stopped in the middle of placing her pens. “Do you two already know each other?” She sounded a little confused, and a little hopeful.

“Not at all,” Lana said tersely at the same time that Braden said, “Very well.”

“Ah,” Myrna said, looking confused but obviously too smart to explore that topic further. Instead, she gestured toward the senior resident, who was standing by her laptop, finger poised on the enter key. “This is Dr. Everson. She joined our department this month.”

“My card,” Braden said, offering Lana a small rectangle of pressed linen paper.

“Thank you.” She should have offered him her card, of course, but she hadn’t had a chance to get any made. Instead, she asked the very young-looking Dr. Everson to please begin the presentation and took a seat directly across from Braden, on the opposite side of the narrow table.

As the resident began with slide number one, Lana glanced down at the card in her hand. The initials of the corporate giant formed the familiar PLI logo in gold and burgundy ink. Very expensive ink, as she recalled from the days she’d spent at stationery stores, choosing wedding invitations. She and Braden, up to their necks in med school student loans, hadn’t been able to afford colored engraving like this. They’d planned to send their wedding invitations in plain, formal black ink, like his name on this business card:

Braden MacDowell, M.D., MBA

President of Research and Development

His business card was very impressive, if one admired money-making over life-saving. She did not. She never had. It had crushed her when Braden had decided he did.

Lana pretended not to look at Braden as he patiently listened to the resident explain slide number two. Braden’s tie was a subtle symphony of colors on silk. His watch was worth as much as her worn-out car, she was certain. But his face no longer reflected enthusiasm for life, and his mouth no longer lifted in an easy smile. Chasing the almighty dollar had not been a happy way for him to spend the past six years, apparently.

Lana had made the right choice by breaking their engagement. She could not have been the right wife for this executive. He’d been heading in that profit-driven direction then; she wasn’t going to regret it now.

No—she was going to ignore him for the duration of the PowerPoint presentation, because she needed to read every slide and learn all she could about this study. Her one goal, her only goal, was to keep PLI’s funding coming into this hospital.

She slid another look at his painfully familiar profile. He was handsome, classically handsome, but her eye went to the imperfections, the ones she’d known and loved. His eyes had some crinkles at the corners, as they’d had even six years ago, from a youth spent ranching in the relentless Texas sun. His chin had a scar from being cut open too many times for him to recount them all to her. Being thrown from a horse. Getting sacked in high school football. Attempting some prank with his brother. He looked like an urbane city man now, a business tycoon in a Savile Row suit, but that scar on his chin revealed the man he’d been. Lana knew him, under that suit.

Under that suit, he was...

Warm skin and hard muscle. Every inch of him.

For God’s sake, Lana. You’re the department chair. Pay attention.

More than a million dollars were at stake. West Central was counting on her to achieve one simple goal: renew PLI’s contract.

Perhaps she ought to set a second goal. She was going to keep her heart well guarded from the dreamy Dr. MacDowell.

* * *

“Thank you for that thorough presentation,” Lana said.

She would coach Dr. Everson later about making her presentations less lengthy. In front of PLI’s president, however, Lana would point out only the positive for the sake of West Central Hospital. Thankfully, the study in question had turned out to be for a medicine she’d also been studying in Washington. Lana felt a little more secure in her knowledge. “It’s exciting that pentagab has met the midpoint goals.”

Which meant it’s exciting that we’ll be extending our contract with PLI.

“I regret that PLI will not be continuing this study.” It was the first thing Braden had said in forty minutes. Lana heard that familiar voice, still masculine, but no longer infused with affection for her. It took a moment for his words to sink in through the miasma of emotional memories.

“You’re not continuing this study?” she asked. “But this drug shows such promise.”

“I don’t believe it does.”

“But the numbers—let’s go back to that last graph—”

“The graph looks impressive, yes, but it’s just drawn cleverly. The raw numbers make the treated group appear to be doing better than the placebo group, but where is the p-value? There is no statistical significance.”

Startled, Lana looked at the screen. The bar graph looked straightforward, but sure enough, the standard line that stated the p-value between the groups was missing. The p-value was a mathematical calculation used to determine if the difference between two groups mattered. If one hundred patients responded to a medicine but ninety patients responded to a placebo, that ten-patient difference was not really a difference. Not in the world of science.

“The statistical analysis was on another slide,” she said, stalling for time. It was on one of forty-three slides. Lana flipped through her paper copies of the PowerPoint presentation, doing some frantic speed-reading. “Here it is,” she said with relief. “P equals point-zero-five. Statistically significant, and it looks like the data are trending toward a more robust end point.”

Still, she’d have to ask Everson why the p-values hadn’t been clearly listed on the graph itself, where they typically were in medical studies.

“Those numbers are wrong,” Braden said in a tone as certain as if he’d said the sky is blue.

“How can you say that off the top of your head?”

Braden only raised an eyebrow.

Of course, he knew that she knew he was a math whiz. He probably could look at a bar graph and come up with a p-value without touching a calculator, let alone performing a page of equations.

“Never mind.” Lana turned to Dr. Everson, who was looking younger and less reliable by the minute. “Who prepared these slides? Who ran our numbers?”

“Uh, well, I was instructed to do some preliminary work, and then Dr. Montgomery finalized it.”

Dr. Montgomery, who couldn’t stay one more hour to take this meeting. Lana had a sinking feeling. Had Dr. Montgomery been so desperate to keep this funding that he’d do something unethical? Surely not. This had to be an honest mathematical error. An error that just happened to be in their favor.

One that, had it gone unchallenged, would have kept more than one million dollars coming into the hospital.

How badly in debt was her department? How hard would the cancellation of this study hit them? Her?

She was determined not to find out; she was going to save this study.

“Myrna, Dr. Everson. If the two of you could excuse us, I’d like to take the rest of this meeting one-on-one with Dr. MacDowell.”

Chapter Three

Lana had never groveled to Braden, not even when she’d so desperately wanted him to stay in Texas instead of moving across the country to Boston. Now she groveled. Begged.

“Please, give me a day to run these numbers again. I just left Washington, where I was involved in the sister study to this one, the pediatric study. Our results were clearly significant. If the pediatric results were good, then odds are that the adult results are as well, so if you’ll just give me time to calculate—”

“I ran the numbers myself, Lana, before I came here. Personally.”

An old, defensive feeling resurfaced. “Because you knew I’d be here? It’s been years since I needed your help to pass statistics class. I know how to interpret data.”

He cut her off before her indignation could build more steam. “I always run the numbers myself before committing millions of research dollars.”

She couldn’t stay impersonal; the memories were just too bitter. “I should have known it would come down to making a profit for you.”

His expression stayed impassive, but she caught the movement of muscle as he clenched his jaw.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you—or feeds West Central Hospital.

Lana buried her personal feelings. “I was running that pediatric study in D.C. To be studying migraines in pediatrics was rare enough, but even more unusual, the results were positive. Please, Braden, I’m pleading for a second chance here. Let the second half of the study go forward.”

“There’s no gain in—”

“We’ll gain knowledge. Practically every study has shown that adult migraine medicines work poorly in children. This could be the exception to the rule. Even if the adult trial fails, the significance of a drug working for pediatrics but not adults will be novel and worthy of further research.”

She could recall the individual faces of children enrolled in the Washington study. How miserable they were, in pain. How much happier they were when the drug started working. As their pain receded, their personalities emerged, happy kids who made her laugh. She couldn’t let them down. Losing the adult study here at West Central would hurt her professionally, but keeping the pediatric one funded was personal. Those children, her patients, mattered. Not profits.

“Even if the results are novel, who is going to fund that further research, Lana? PLI isn’t going to.”

“Why not?” She wanted to pound the table in frustration. “I’m telling you, the data in peds is rock-solid.”

“Because there’s no money in treating pediatric migraines.”

No money in it?

She’d told herself a hundred times that the man she’d once loved cared only about profits. That he’d chosen not to practice medicine with her because he’d wanted the bigger dollars offered in the business world. She’d clung to that as her justification for ending their engagement.

Always, he’d protested that money wasn’t his motive for going to Harvard Business School instead of staying with her at West Central. He’d denied that the need to excel in the corporate world was the reason he no longer wanted to open a husband-and-wife family practice in Texas. Some part of her must have believed him after all, because now, to hear him say it himself—there’s no money in treating pediatric migraines—was devastating.

Even after six years.

* * *

Braden watched the light in Lana’s eyes die, the passion in her expression fade. It was the same look he’d seen on the faces of other hopefuls whose dreams he’d had to kill. The fact that it was Lana this time didn’t make it any different.

Braden felt very tired. Too old, too wise to the ways of the world.

“This is the reality of the marketplace,” he said. “Pediatric migraineurs are only a fraction of all patients.”

“You saw these slides. They estimate over twenty-nine million Americans suffer from migraines. Even if only a few percent are pediatric, that’s still a million or more patients. That’s huge.”

“No, it’s not. Only half of your twenty-nine million even know their headaches are migraines to begin with. Only half of those will seek help from a physician, and less than half of those might be prescribed a drug like this one. Another percentage will never fill the prescription. There are barely enough adult sufferers to make a new migraine drug viable. There are not enough children.”

“To make the medicine viable? You mean profitable.”

“I mean viable. Can it begin to recoup the millions—the hundreds of millions—that were spent on bringing it to the local drugstore? I estimate that only one in five drugs that makes it to the public sells enough pills to cover the cost of inventing it in the first place.”

“I’m talking patients here. There may not be a lot of them, but there are children out there who suffer terribly from migraines. They’re in pain, Braden. They can’t play and go to school. What about them?”

At the moment, Braden hated his job with a passion. Why did he have to be the one destroying Lana’s dreams? Let someone else disillusion her.

She kept championing her cause. “The adult medicines don’t work well to relieve the pain for children. Most of the treatments aren’t even FDA approved for pediatric use—”

“As it should be. They don’t work well in pediatrics. Lana, step back and look at the big picture. When the first one or two migraine medicines ran pediatric studies, they failed. They didn’t work. Why should the other drugs in the same class throw time and money down the same drain?”

“Money. Always money. What about the patients?”

“I am thinking about patients. There is only so much money out there. What should we spend it on? Who needs it most?” He’d heard her words a dozen times before. She’d always maintained that if he cared about people, he’d be a physician, not a corporate executive.

He felt himself sucked into a time warp of sorts. Felt himself once more losing the woman he loved as she accused him of placing money before all else.

As he had a dozen times before, he tried to make her understand. “This is what I do, Lana. These are the life-and-death decisions I make now. Should I fund a pediatric migraine study that might—and I emphasize might—improve the quality of life for a fraction of a percent of all children? Or should I take those same funds—because by God, there are only so many dollars out there—should I take those same funds and invest them to develop a cardiac medicine that could prevent millions of deaths?”

He was standing, he realized, as was she. They were glaring into each other’s eyes, battling for supremacy. Again. Always.

“You make that call, Lana. Should I help three million kids who have episodes of pain, or should I help eighty million adults, the parents and grandparents of those children, who are facing death? You choose, because I don’t have enough money to do both.”

She stayed silent, but she didn’t back down, not in her body language, and not in her glare. Why had he thought this time would be different?

Braden berated himself for letting her bait him into this debate. None of it mattered. Their entire conversation wasn’t going to change the fact that PLI was withdrawing further funding. He wasn’t going to throw more money at an unlikely solution to what amounted to a rare problem in the universe of medical crises.

And Lana was not going to understand him now any more than she’d understood him then. He’d had six years to stop wanting her to understand him. Wanting her to respect his career. Wanting her to trust him, to support him.

Wanting her.

She was so damned vibrant, so passionate, so beautiful. The temptation to end this match with a crushing kiss was overwhelming. That physical attraction had become a crutch for them, toward the end. They couldn’t agree on their careers and their future, so they’d fall into bed and have silent, soul-searing sex.

In Lana’s opinion, they’d had sex one time too many. The last time had had consequences neither of them had been ready for.

Still, he found himself craving the smoothness of her skin, the curves of her body, the surrender of herself. Six years hadn’t been long enough apart. He needed another six to kill his desire for Lana Donnoli—and he wasn’t going to spend it waiting for absolution and understanding in this conference room.

“I regret to inform you that Plaine Laboratories International has decided to end all trials of NDA zero two one zero six one. West Central’s contract will expire in accordance with our prior arrangements, and no renewals will be pursued. Goodbye, Dr. Donnoli.”

* * *

Braden’s decision was final. Lana knew it; she watched him close his laptop case with a single click of a lock.

He’s leaving, and I failed.

The expression on his face was no longer fierce, no longer focused on her. He looked withdrawn. Remote. He was already gone, although he was still in the room with her. Then he picked up his briefcase and was gone for real. The door closed after him with a firm, controlled click.

I failed him.

Him? Not only the hospital, but him?

Somehow, he’d been disappointed in her, yet Braden had no right to expect anything from her. What had he wanted?

Professionally, her failure was simple to define. She’d failed to keep this hospital’s study going. Failed in her new responsibility to get financing for the research branch of West Central Texas Hospital.

Is it west or is it central? You can’t have both.

She couldn’t have the migraine trials, but could she have something else instead? They had the facilities. They had the staff, the patient flow—there must be other studies that PLI needed a site like West Central for. There were other funds she could secure for her department.

She stopped debating with herself and started walking after Braden. Quickly. She needed to talk to him today, before he walked out of the hospital completely, like he’d once walked out of her life.

Breathless from catching up to his much longer strides, she followed him to the bank of elevators. The doors started to slide open before she could reach him.

“Braden, don’t go!”

The back of his head jerked up, just a bit. He turned her way and stood still, not moving away from the elevator, but not stepping into the car, either. She was suddenly so afraid he might leave without her, she jogged the last few steps to him and put her hand on his sleeve.

“Don’t go yet. Please.”

He placed his warm hand over hers. There was a clear question in his eyes, a concerned tilt of his head, a softening of the hard mask of his face. “Why not, Lana?”

“I want a second chance. I want to talk to you about PLI.”

He removed his hand to stab the button to recall the elevator. “The decision is made. I can’t explain it any better. If you don’t understand, that’s your problem.”

“No—no, that’s just it. I do understand. PLI only has a limited amount of research dollars to go around. But I want a second chance.”

The elevator doors opened and Braden walked into the waiting car, away from her. She followed, grateful that the car was empty.

“Listen, Braden, please. I just got into town. Dr. Montgomery walked out, literally, minutes after I arrived this morning. I haven’t had a chance to get my bearings or take stock of what we have here, but I know West Central has a lot to offer in the way of research facilities and staff, far more than it did when we were residents here.”

She made her best case while she had him trapped in the elevator. “Give me the rest of today to review my department. PLI and West Central can use each other, I’m sure of it. You must have dozens of studies under way, and there is always a need for another enrollment site.”

He didn’t agree or disagree. He only watched her as she pleaded.

She touched his sleeve again. “Will you give me a day? If I find out what I still have to offer you, would you be willing to consider me again?”

He let several seconds of silence tick by before he spoke. “Will I consider what you have to offer? That’s one hell of a question, coming from my former fiancée.”

Whatever answer she’d expected, it hadn’t been that. Not that personal. They’d kept everything strictly professional to this point. It felt as though he’d violated some invisible boundary by bringing up their intimate past so bluntly.

The elevator stopped to let an elderly couple on. The man was in a wheelchair; the woman was pushing him with the ease of long experience. He made a gesture to his right, and she picked up the paperwork that was tucked under his right side and placed it in his hand. Effortless communication.

Had anything been as easy between her and Braden?

Yes—making love.

And they’d conceived a baby. Too easily. Without trying. Without wanting to.

She’d miscarried that pregnancy the same way.

The memory threatened to completely breach any wall she’d maintained to this point. Before it could overwhelm her, she spoke quickly and quietly to Braden.

“You know perfectly well that West Central has excellent resources to conduct research. You need facilities and patient bases and sites. Just give me a day to get my bearings, and we can meet again to find out how we can help one another’s companies.”

The elevator reached the lobby level. Braden maintained his silence.

She didn’t. “You know I need to replace the funds you just withdrew. I’ll be offering West Central to other biotechs and pharmas.”

She had seconds to convince him as he courteously waited for the wheelchair couple to exit. “If you don’t want what I have to offer, someone else will. I’m giving you the right of first refusal.”

Braden cut his gaze to her. She stayed where she was, silently demanding an answer.

He walked out of the elevator instead.

“Braden,” she called after him. Damn it all, she was losing him. Losing PLI’s funding.

Braden turned around and looked her up and down, just once, as she stayed in the elevator.

“I’m returning to New York. Now. The PLI representative for the state of Texas is Cheryl Gassett. I’m sure your assistant knows her and has her contact information. If you find that you can make PLI an offer, call Cheryl.”

The elevator doors slid closed, separating them with finality.

Alone, Lana knew she could cry without embarrassment. She could punch the door with impunity. She could collapse in a heap of exhaustion.

None of it would change the past. She pushed the button that reopened the doors, exited the elevator and walked in the opposite direction that Braden had taken, toward her office. Toward her future.

Braden’s rejection had changed the course of her life once. She couldn’t let him derail her again.

Chapter Four

Braden needed to leave the hospital. He was done here. Done. There were too many emotions. Too many bad memories.

Too much Lana. Here, in the flesh. Not a memory of her, which he’d come ready to bury. No, the woman herself was here. Vibrant. Passionate. Real.

He was too old to be blinded by sexual attraction. Chemistry had never been their problem, so it shouldn’t surprise him now that it still existed at some level.

A level a little too dammed close to the surface...

He walked past the chapel without slowing, without stopping, without so much as throwing a glance at its doors. The entire reason he’d bothered himself with flying to West Central personally had been to stop in that chapel. He’d proposed to Lana there, and he’d had some idiotic notion that by saying goodbye to the memory of that promise, he’d be free to propose to another woman, elsewhere.

God, he was a fool. What an idiotic, sappy idea for a man of science and business to entertain, let alone act upon. If he was ready for a permanent relationship, then he’d make a commitment to the woman of his choice, and damn his youthful college engagement to hell. Lana certainly had. She’d dumped him over the phone and mailed his engagement ring to his Harvard address in an empty tongue depressor box.

Six years ago. He was over it. He was dating Claudia St. James now, a woman who could make a perfect wife for a professional man like himself, but damn it, seeing Lana in person had been a shock. Braden, don’t go, she’d practically shouted, and the plea in her voice had kept him from stepping on the elevator. His response had probably been an old reflex, a bad habit ingrained long ago. Still, it had been damned disconcerting.

He stopped abruptly at the corner of a garden fountain, disoriented for a fraction of a second. There was a fountain in the lobby now? Yes, and he’d nearly walked into it, distracted by thoughts of Lana.

He should not be distracted by his past. He’d come here to begin his future, and he’d already picked out the right woman to spend the rest of his life with. Claudia never caused him to walk into fountains, thank God.

Braden kept walking, past the paintings of his father and the other founders, not breaking his stride as he threw a glance at the modern domed ceiling. The renovated lobby looked more like it belonged to an elegant hotel than a hospital. It was a far cry from the single-story construction his father had begun. Would his father have approved of the changes if he’d lived to see them?

Braden imagined that patients who were sick and worried would appreciate the welcome this new lobby extended. It had an air of grace and authority that could be reassuring when patients arrived with serious health concerns. They’d probably feel hope, as though they’d come to the right place. His father, Braden decided, would have approved of the modern West Central. He would have approved of the job his son was doing.

That son being Quinn, of course. Quinn was the only MacDowell on the hospital board.

Dad had not approved of the job I was doing.

His father had always expected him to follow in his footsteps. Braden had tried. He’d tried for his father’s sake, and then he’d kept trying after he’d met Lana, but by his last year of residency, he’d known the life of a family-practice physician was not for him.

He’d wanted to show his father and his fiancée that his life could be a different kind of success. He had shown them, really. He’d graduated magna cum laude from arguably the best graduate school in the country, perhaps in the world. He’d gone on to be a key player in the biotech industry, working to contribute valuable medicines and devices not just to the city of Austin but to all people, all around the globe. But his dad had died before that first patent had made it to the marketplace, before he’d been able to prescribe any of the drugs his son had chosen to develop.

And Lana? Hell, she’d mailed his ring back before he’d even graduated.

Still, Braden was one of the most successful men in America, if only someone besides his accountant appreciated it.

Claudia St. James appreciates success.

Exactly. He needed to keep his thoughts in the present. Braden realized his steps had taken him to the former main entrance of the emergency department. An involuntary smirk lifted one corner of his mouth despite his bitter feelings. Not even the resurrected emotions of a broken engagement and a disapproving father could disengage his mind completely. His day’s agenda had included a quick visit to his younger brother, another physician, of course. Jamie worked here in the emergency department. Without trying, Braden had stayed on schedule.

This entrance to the E.R. was now a shortcut for staff only, and the heavy double doors were unlocked when personnel waved a badge in front of the security box on the wall. A man in scrubs stepped up to the box and lifted his name tag. A tiny light blinked from red to green, and the doors swung open slowly. The man nodded at Braden deferentially, probably assuming he was an off-duty physician.

Technically, Braden was a physician, one who was not on duty. The man had made an accurate assumption, then. Braden returned the man’s nod and followed him into the treatment area. He stopped at the centrally located wraparound desk. “Where can I find Dr. MacDowell?”

The nurse he’d addressed frowned at him slightly. “And you are...?”

From long practice, he smiled at her with just the right amount of professional friendliness. “Please tell Dr. MacDowell that Dr. MacDowell is here to see him.”

Her frown lifted into a smile. “I should have guessed from the resemblance. He’s just back from his honeymoon, but you must be one of the bachelor MacDowells.” She tilted her head at an attractive angle and winked at him.

Braden returned her smile with very little effort. The world was returning to normal. Women liked him. He liked women. It was only Lana Donnoli that made him feel irritated. Angry. Vaguely dissatisfied with his life.

“Is that you, Braden? Can’t be. That would make three times in one year that you’ve come to Texas.”

Braden turned at the sound of his brother’s voice. Jamie was the youngest son, Braden the eldest. They shook hands, which quickly morphed into a one-armed hug. More of a slap on the shoulders, really. They were exactly the same height, something that never failed to catch Braden by surprise. Jamie had only been in middle school when Braden had left for college. Somehow, Braden always expected him to still be the runt baby brother.

“What’s the occasion?” his six-foot-tall runt of a brother asked. “Is New York City finally wearing on you? Don’t tell me you missed me.”

Braden should have had a quick comeback for that one, the kind of jokingly derogatory comment brothers would exchange, but he was startled into a momentary silence by the realization that he had, in fact, missed Jamie. It had been good to see him at a charity event in the fall. Even better to see him for a few days in December, when he’d carved out some holiday time to get to know Jamie’s new wife and his baby. Jamie’s family.

Family. Braden hadn’t spent much time with his family after turning his back on practicing medicine. He’d avoided Texas for years after his broken engagement, if he was honest with himself, but that was about to change. Whether Lana would be here or not, it was time to come back home.

Braden would soon announce that PLI was investing millions in a new research center. It had taken all the business savvy he’d gained over the years to pull it off, and he’d cashed in every chip he’d been owed, but Braden had convinced PLI’s board to build the facilities in Austin. Just as his father had contributed this hospital to the community, Braden would contribute a major biotech research and development site to his hometown.

Look, Dad, I’m following in your footsteps.

The tension in his shoulders eased. Had he lived to see it, his father would have been unconditionally proud. Braden knew that. He expected his mother and brothers would feel the same way when they found out.

Braden couldn’t tell them yet. The Securities and Exchange Commission had strict rules against corporate presidents leaking that kind of information too soon. For now, he’d have to content himself with giving his baby brother a hard time.

“As if your ugly mug would be enough to drag me across the country,” he said, resisting the urge to throw a fake slo-mo punch at Jamie. Those childhood habits died hard. “But your wife’s pretty face, that’s another matter. Is Kendry working today?”

“She’s home, studying for an exam. Nursing school is no cakewalk. Better her than me.”

“Beautiful and smart. Driven. My kind of woman.”

“She’s all that and more, but since married women aren’t your thing, to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“This trip was strictly business,” Braden lied. He wasn’t about to confess his idiotic notion of visiting the chapel to formally end the promise he’d once made. “I was expecting to meet with Dr. Montgomery.”

“Montgomery? That old bastard is the reason you flew across the country? Now I am offended.”

“I wouldn’t have wasted the jet fuel if someone had bothered to inform me that Montgomery was no longer the head of research.”

“Until yesterday, I was basking in the sun under a coconut tree with Kendry. Good thing your company can afford the plane ticket.” To the nurse, Jamie gave orders for the patient whose cubicle he’d just left. “Nebulizer in four. Call me when the azithromycin IV is finished. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Braden followed Jamie into the kitchenette that the staff used during their round-the-clock shifts.

“I could have done without the surprise,” Braden said, once they were alone. He still felt off balance after seeing Lana.

“What surprise?”

“Dr. Montgomery’s replacement. Lana Donnoli.”

“That’s your Lana? From med school?”

“You didn’t know?” Braden crossed his arms over his chest and eyed his brother skeptically.

“I told you, I was on a beach. On my honeymoon.”

“The decision wasn’t made yesterday.”

“I’m just a lowly E.R. doc. You want to get pissed off at a brother, go find Quinn. He joined the board.”

Braden shook off the offer of the cup of coffee Jamie had just poured, so Jamie drank it himself, settling against the counter. “It sucks being back on my feet after spending a week in bed.”

“Yeah, life’s rough.” Braden’s sarcastic answer was automatic, but he knew his younger brother deserved every bit of happiness that came his way. While serving the country as an army physician in a war zone, Jamie had lost the first woman he’d loved. He’d come a long way since that dark period, and Braden was glad to see it. Still, he didn’t want to hear about honeymoon bliss. “In all seriousness, I’m glad civilian life is treating you well.”

“Don’t get all mushy on me. The coffee’s decent. Have some.”

Braden poured a cup and sat down in a plastic chair that looked like a waiting-room reject. “Lana’s too young to be the department head at a hospital this size.”

Jamie had the nerve to grin. “We’re still on that topic? Like I said, Quinn’s on the board, not me. But I noticed this morning that her name’s been added to the E.R.’s coverage list. I wondered if it was your Lana.”

“She hasn’t been my anything for years. I sure as hell hope Quinn didn’t give her this position out of some misguided idea that he’d be helping out an old family friend.” He drank the coffee black. No cream, no sugar to hide the true flavor.

Jamie was watching him closely. As the youngest, he’d been away at college during Braden’s engagement. He probably knew very little about the whole affair.

Braden explained. “Lana’s the one who called it off. Mailed the ring to me at Harvard and never spoke to me again.”

“And then you walked into the boardroom today and there she was?”

Braden rejected the sympathy he heard in Jamie’s tone. “That wasn’t an issue. I just don’t want you or Quinn thinking she’s some kind of family friend who deserves special consideration.”

“I don’t see Quinn letting your love life influence decisions about this hospital. He treats this place like Dad did, like it’s some kind of gift to the community.”

Hearing Jamie voice his own earlier thought out loud was both discomforting and reassuring. As children, they’d all competed with the hospital for their father’s attention, Braden supposed, although he’d always felt pride in knowing the medical complex was a MacDowell legacy.

One which he, the eldest son, had left behind. One from which he’d just pulled a million dollars of funding.

The coffee tasted like hell. Braden dumped his coffee down the sink and crushed the paper cup in his hand. “It’s good that Quinn takes it seriously. A nonprofit hospital is a gift to the community.”

By Valentine’s Day, the PLI deal would be final, and Braden would be legally able to tell his family about the research facilities, his own contribution to the city. He looked forward to proving that he was still loyal to his hometown. The project was proof that Braden hadn’t abandoned his family or his father’s ideals, despite the way it may have seemed on the surface for the past six years.

Until then, what were another four or five days of misunderstanding? That subtle condemnation, that distrust, that assumption that he preferred to be a loner in the big city had started when he’d left Austin for Boston. When he’d left doctoring for big business. When he’d left Lana for—

For no one. He’d never left Lana. She’d done all the leaving.

Braden, don’t go. I want a second chance.

Her words today had shaken him, although she’d been talking about a second chance with his corporation, not with him. After she’d broken their engagement, he’d heard nothing but silence. If she’d spoken those words six years ago—or five, or four—he would gladly have taken her back, to be honest. But not now.

Now Braden was moving on. This Valentine’s Day, he intended to stake his claim as a MacDowell in Austin’s medical community. He also intended to announce the next phase of his personal life. He anticipated introducing Claudia St. James to his family, then proposing marriage to seal the deal.

After a six-year absence, he’d have a wife and an office in Austin, just as he’d always planned, although the office wouldn’t be a doctor’s office, and the wife wouldn’t be Lana.

He tossed his cup into the trash can. PLI and Claudia St. James would suit him just fine. Just fine.

Jamie tossed his cup in the bin, as well. “You don’t have to tell me the hospital is a gift. I know it is. Quinn knows it is. It’s possible that he was opposed to Lana’s appointment, but the rest of the board voted for it. You’ll have to ask him, since you suddenly give a damn about who chairs which department here.” Jamie pushed away from the counter and looked him in the eye.

Yeah, his baby brother was all grown up.

“Think about it, Braden. Your Lana is young enough to be called in to work the E.R. when we’re shorthanded. Financially, I gather from Quinn that times have been tight for the hospital.”

It was Braden’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Finances were his area of expertise. West Central looked prosperous on the surface, but it was possible the accounts didn’t paint the same rosy picture.

“Lana’s age might have been a bonus,” Jamie said. “She’s young enough to have the stamina to cover for docs like me, and despite her years in research, she’s still considered inexperienced enough to not expect a salary like Montgomery was pulling.”

“If she does his job, she should get his salary. Just because she’s young doesn’t mean she isn’t competent.” Competent was a lukewarm word to describe the woman Braden remembered. She’d been the sharpest person in the residency program—except for himself. They’d been in hot competition, vying for the best ratings, competing for the highest evaluations. She’d kept him on his toes. She’d been his match in more ways than he could count.

“Now she’s competent and not too young after all?” Jamie laughed a little. “Quinn’s not an idiot. Even if Lana is getting Montgomery’s salary, the hospital gets extra coverage for the E.R. out of the deal.”

Braden didn’t want to stand here and discuss Lana Donnoli, not when he should be preparing his family to meet Claudia. A change of subject was in order, and as brothers went, he was being a lousy one by not asking after his new nephew. “You’ve got a point. So, how’s Sammy?”

“Fine. Better than fine, making up for lost time now that all his surgeries are behind him. He’s walking now. When you feed him, he tries to grab the spoon out of your hand to feed himself.” Jamie’s love and pride came through with every word. His infant son had been facing medical hurdles when he’d first arrived in the States, but Jamie and his wife had helped their son leap them all.

Braden was glad to hear it. He liked kids, and he’d always expected to be a father someday. Just because it hadn’t happened with Lana didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. Surely Claudia would want to have children after they married.

“I think taking care of the baby while we were on our honeymoon was more than Mom could handle,” Jamie said. “Call me after you see her. I want to know if she’s still fatigued. Tell me if you think she’s exhibiting muscle weakness—or anything else you notice.”

The worry in his brother’s voice was as unmistakable as his earlier pride in his child had been. Braden was instantly worried, too. Worried, but on a schedule.

“I’m flying back to New York now. This was just a fly in, fly out.”

“Nothing’s a ‘fly in, fly out’ anymore. Not when there’s a two-hour security wait before every flight.”

“PLI has a few private jets. Don’t give me that look. It’s a business necessity, not a luxury.”

Jamie whistled softly. “You flew here in a private jet just to see Dr. Montgomery? It would have been a lot more interesting if you’d come to see Lana.”

“I don’t waste company resources.”

But he had. He’d come to say farewell to Lana. Not the real woman, of course, but the memory of her. He’d failed to execute that step, but the rest of his plan was still in place. “I was going to spend Valentine’s weekend at the ranch. Do you think Mom’s health is too frail?”

“You should check on her. Go back to New York tomorrow. You can sleep at my place, if Mom’s not up to company. My guest room’s empty.”

“No, thanks. The last thing I want is to be around a couple of newlyweds cooing over each other.”

“If marital bliss makes you queasy, then Quinn’s got a pullout sofa.”

Braden just raised an eyebrow in the way he knew made him look like their father. “I’ll be at the Four Seasons.”

Jamie raised an eyebrow in return. He could do the MacDowell look as well as Braden could. “The Four Seasons in New York?”

“In Austin.”

“Good.”

Braden left the hospital through the ambulance portico as he phoned his executive assistant. She would contact the hotel and the pilot. There was always a packed suitcase on board the plane, one which would be delivered to the Four Seasons with no inconvenience to himself. Braden mentally adjusted his schedule before his assistant could answer. He would use this unexpected layover in Austin to execute another key step in his plan.

He wanted to use an Austin jeweler to create the perfect engagement ring for Claudia. Nothing in New York had seemed appropriate. But first, he’d visit his mother to be sure her health would allow her to meet the perfect potential daughter-in-law.

Valentine’s Day. He was a businessman who set goals and timelines. His life would finally move on, come Valentine’s Day.

Chapter Five

Lana couldn’t focus on the pink paper hearts that Myrna was sticking on the door to their office. She watched Myrna painstakingly frame the square window that made up most of the top half of the door. Hopefully, a ten-second break from her computer screen was all Lana’s eyes needed.

It didn’t work. When she looked back at the monitor, the numbers quickly began jumping on the screen once more. They blurred before her tired eyes. Maybe she needed reading glasses. Maybe Dr. Montgomery had left an old pair behind.

Her hand reached for the desk drawer even as her eyes filled with tears. The thought of needing reading glasses made her cry, even if Braden MacDowell didn’t.

“Am I that old?”

Lord, she felt it. Old and tired. It was a natural consequence, she was certain, from running for too many days on too little sleep. Packing up in D.C., driving halfway across the country and taking over a department in disarray left no time for rest. Of course she couldn’t focus. She was tired. Not old and tired. Just tired.

But she needed to focus on these numbers. She needed to win another research contract with PLI. Braden MacDowell’s company.

Braden. He was why she felt so old. Six years had passed, but they felt like sixty. Seeing Braden had been a shock, but it was already over, and Lana would be dealing with Cheryl Gassett from now on. Myrna already knew the PLI representative, in fact. It was quite possible that Lana might never see Braden again.

The thought almost made her sad. Braden was part of her lost youth.

Lost youth? She was only thirty-four. This pity party had to stop. She had a job to do.

Lana crammed her feet back into the pumps she’d kicked off. She sat up straighter in her chair and tugged her dress into place.

My completely unsexy, strictly business dress.

What had Braden thought of her severe appearance? Had he wondered what had happened to his former bed partner? Had he thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t been saddled with her as a wife after all?

God, she felt old.

She turned away from the monitor and flipped open the three-ring binder that held the paperwork for the patients in the migraine study. They’d have to be contacted, asked to return early, and their remaining pills—whether active or placebo dummies—would have to be retrieved. Lana ran her finger down the page of names. Instead of numbers, letters jumped and swam on the page. So many people, so little hope for them. How could Braden be so heartless?

He hadn’t always been. She’d been engaged to a man who’d been gentle with the patients in this hospital, gentle with the horses on his ranch, gentle with her when the grueling process of becoming a doctor consumed her life. Then he’d left her and their dream of working together behind, and she’d been heartbroken that her fiancé had been driven by the need to make money.

There was no money in treating migraines, he’d said. Lana trailed her finger down the page, seeing patient after patient who would not be helped because they couldn’t generate a profit.

One name, one name in the entire bunch, jumped off the page, crystal clear, in perfect focus.

Oh, Braden, how could you?

His own mother was about to lose her chance for pain relief. Marion MacDowell had been receiving the active medicine.

Lana glanced at Braden’s card. She’d set it off to the side of her desk. Lana was not supposed to deal with PLI’s president directly, but this Cheryl Gassett did not have the power to keep a study running. Only Braden did.

His mother’s involvement in the study might not be enough to sway him. One patient made no difference to a worldwide corporation, and Braden represented that corporation.

Then again, even Braden MacDowell in pursuit of the almighty dollar might not be able to ignore his own mother’s needs. Maybe Lana could keep the migraine study going.

I regret to inform you that Plaine Laboratories International has decided to end all trials. Goodbye, Dr. Donnoli.

No, that couldn’t be the last word between them.

Lana picked up the phone and dialed.

* * *

“Excuse me, Mom. I need to take this call.”

No matter where he was in the world, Braden’s assistant took all his calls, acting as his gatekeeper. She only picked up on the fifth ring, however, an arrangement that gave Braden the option of answering if he felt it was necessary. As his phone rang, Braden recognized the first digits on the caller ID as being from West Central. It could be Jamie calling. Or Quinn. Or...

“MacDowell,” he answered on the fourth ring.

“It’s Lana. I’d like to set up a meeting. I’ve got more information on that migraine trial.”

Or it could be his former fiancée, suddenly back in his life when he’d decided to let the last memory of her go.

“Go ahead,” he said, standing up from his mother’s dining-room table and walking into the kitchen.

“I’ve got availability every day this week. Is there a particular time that works best for you?”

“I meant, go ahead. I’m listening. Let’s hear your pitch.”

“Now?”

He let his silence answer her. Did the woman not know how business was done? On the spot. At the moment. Around the clock.

“I was calling to set up a future time. We can do this by phone, if you like, but I wasn’t planning on bothering you now, not while you’re traveling to Manhattan.”

“If I weren’t ready to conduct business, I wouldn’t have answered the phone.” He didn’t say he wasn’t on a plane. He did not tell her he was standing in front of his mother’s kitchen sink, watching through the picture window as twilight settled over the distant barn and the even more distant fence line.

Lana spoke evenly, although he was sure his terse response must have irritated her. “I didn’t call to give you a thirty-second canned speech. I am, however, ready to set up a time for the two of us to have an intelligent one-on-one discussion.”

Braden heard the steel in her voice. Lana refused to be intimidated by him. She’d never been intimidated by anyone, he recalled.

Good for her. She was going to need that backbone in her new position, but whether or not she had the chops to run West Central’s research was not his problem. In fact, West Central was not his problem, not directly. As president, he needed to deal with the big picture, not individual research sites.

“Then when you’re ready to present whatever information you feel is necessary,” he said, “call Cheryl Gassett. I’m sure her contact info is in Dr. Montgomery’s records.”

“I realize that the hospital your father founded is no longer worth your time, but I wanted to discuss something that I don’t think your regional rep needs to know.”

Braden almost smiled. He had to give her points for bringing up his father, a blatant but understandable attempt to stir his emotions. In negotiations, when someone was stonewalling, it was possible to break through that wall by engaging that person’s emotions.

Braden had always found it easy to stay detached during business negotiations. Emotions had no place in science. No place in research. Her attempt was useless.

Lana spoke when he did not. “I’m worried about your mother’s involvement in this study.”

Then again, his mother had no place in research, either. He glanced at her as she entered the kitchen. “My mother is ineligible for the study because she’s a relative of a PLI employee. She’s not enrolled in any study that I know of.”

His mother looked surprised. She pointed to her chest and mouthed the question, Me?

Braden raised an eyebrow in question, and she shook her head “no.”

“In addition to being a PLI relation, my mother doesn’t suffer from migraines, so she wouldn’t be enrolled in this study in particular.”

“Regardless, she is a patient in the study.” Lana’s tone was starting to reveal her irritation. Her emotions, at least, were engaged. “She was receiving the active drug, not the placebo. I’m asking you to reconsider. Don’t terminate a study that was benefiting your own mother.”

“The study is not viable whether my mother is involved in it or not. And she’s not.”

He looked toward his mother for affirmation, but this time she only used her hand to imitate a phone held to her ear as she mouthed, Lana?

Of course, his mother would have keyed in on the name Lana. Braden turned back to the window. He needed to concentrate.

“The address for this Marion MacDowell is your ranch, Braden. She does still live there, doesn’t she?”

Braden didn’t answer. His mind was racing ahead to the implications of his mother’s enrollment in the study.

“If she doesn’t suffer from migraines, then why else would she have been given this medicine?”

That was a million-dollar question, indeed. Braden was anxious to get off the phone and find out, but he wasn’t going to tell Lana that.

Lana continued probing. “Your parents were friends with Dr. Montgomery. Would he have been using this study drug to treat your mother for some other reason? What other conditions might it treat?”

Leave it to Lana to figure out the implications so quickly. Braden was burning with curiosity himself. “I’ll retrieve the records from your office tomorrow.”

“I thought you were in New York.”

“My plans changed. I’ll be there tomorrow. Eight o’clock.”

Braden disconnected the call and turned to his mother. She was quick on the trigger. “Was that Lana Donnoli? Are you two speaking again?”

“First things first, Mom. What kind of pills did Dr. Montgomery give you, and why?”

His mother used her hand to wave his question away, making a shooing motion as if his question were an annoying fly that had gotten in between them when she wanted to talk about something else. “Lana Donnoli, after all these years. I’m happy to hear you two have found each other again.”

“Lana and I haven’t found anything. We’re only speaking out of necessity. I need to know if Dr. Montgomery gave you any pills.”

“Out of necessity? What on earth does that mean?”

“It’s business,” he said firmly. “Let’s not get distracted from the subject.”

“Lana Donnoli is the subject. Watch your tone, young man.”

That did make Braden pause. He was the president of PLI. He set the agendas. If he said the subject was Dr. Montgomery, then that was the subject. One thousand employees of PLI would agree. But his mother?

Braden sighed and let himself lean against the sink. “Dr. Montgomery might have given you a medicine that my company was studying. As my mother, you aren’t eligible to be in the study at all. This is serious. Breaches in study protocol can be brought to the FDA’s attention.”

“By whom? I haven’t told a soul.”

“There are more people involved. Lana, for one.”

“Lana wouldn’t tattle on you.”

“It’s not tattling. This isn’t school. This is business. If Lana wanted to use it as a weapon against me—”

“Lana has always been crazy about you. She would do no such thing.”

Braden’s phone was on the third ring. He answered it. “MacDowell.”

“Yes, I know. You hung up on me, Braden.”

Lana sounded angry. Her emotions were engaged, so Braden should have the upper hand. There was, however, nothing to negotiate, certainly nothing that needed to be discussed while his mother glared at him.

“I didn’t hang up on you. We’d concluded our business and we’ll meet tomorrow.” He emphasized the word business for his mother’s benefit. Dang, but she could still give him a look that made him want to squirm. He had an angry woman standing in front of him and an angry woman speaking in his ear. The president of PLI was not quite in control of the situation, and he knew it.

“Braden, I cannot turn any records over to you at eight in the morning.”

“They aren’t your records. They belong to PLI.”

“I’m well aware that your company owns the data.”

“Then you’ll return it upon demand. That’s part of every contract.”

“You can demand all you like, but that won’t make my office door magically unlock at eight o’clock. My assistant won’t be in yet, and she’s the only one who knows where everything is, including the door’s key. I’ve only been in town for a day.”

That was an easy problem to solve. He couldn’t believe Lana needed instructions. “Tell her to come in early.”

He hung up, then rubbed his forehead, mostly to break eye contact with his mother.

“That was Lana again?” she asked. “Be nice. I told you that girl was crazy about you.”

“That girl is not crazy about me. That girl is only speaking to me because she is the head of research at West Central.”

“Since when?”

“Since this morning, apparently. I pulled a million dollars of funding from her today. A million dollars can make people desperate, Mom, and if she wanted to create problems for me with the FDA, she could.”

“She won’t.”

“I’m glad you have such confidence in my ex-fiancée.”

His mother narrowed her eyes.

He hoped he looked innocent. No, Ma, I wasn’t being a smart aleck. Honest.

Braden tried again. “Even if Lana keeps your involvement a secret to the grave, I still need to know why you were being given a migraine medicine.”

“I don’t get migraines.”

“Exactly. The salient question is, what do you get that Dr. Montgomery was trying to treat?”

“I know you are a doctor, but I’ll tell you what I’ve told your brothers. You are not my doctor.”

Despite the topic, his mother was smiling—or rather, trying not to smile. The corners of her mouth were twitching.

Braden’s bafflement warred with impatience. “What is amusing you? This is serious.”

“If you say so, son. Lana Donnoli is back in town, and you want to bring a guest out here for Valentine’s weekend.”

“Not Lana.” Good God, not Lana. Not that heartbreak. His mother had it all wrong.

“Grab a dish towel.” She started scrubbing the pan she’d used to make his chicken-fried steak. “Better yet, go on back to town and see your Lana.”

“It’s business. She can wait until morning.”

She only smiled. “No son of mine would ever be so rude to a lady over the phone.”

“I wasn’t rude. I was businesslike.”

“I’m sorry to spoil your surprise, but I can put two and two together. Lana calls, and you leave the room. When I follow, you pretend to be angry with her and hang up. Tonight, you can’t stay at the ranch, because you are sleeping at the Four Seasons. Here, give me that dish towel and go on to your hotel.”

“No, that isn’t—”

The mother who was supposedly so frail put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a shove toward the door. “I’m delighted that you and Lana are back together. Valentine’s will be wonderful. You don’t have to tell her I figured it out. I’ll act surprised.”

“You’ll be surprised because Lana Donnoli is not the woman I’m planning on marrying.”

She escorted him all the way to the front door, forcing him out of his own childhood home in the gentlest way possible. “Marriage? You’re going to announce a marriage? Sweetheart, that is so romantic. Now go. Lana’s waiting, and I can’t stand to listen to another of these fake fights on your phone.”

Braden realized his phone was ringing. He checked the screen. It was indeed Lana. He let it ring. She could chat with his assistant this time.

“Mom, don’t get your hopes up like this. You’ll be disappointed.”

“Right. Mum’s the word. I’ll be surprised, I promise. Good night, sweetheart.”

Braden had barely gotten his rental car started when his phone vibrated again. It was laughable that his mother thought he might need to fake a phone fight with Lana. They’d had plenty of real ones, burning up the line from Boston to Austin, back in the day. He waited for the fifth ring that would cue his assistant to answer, then enjoyed the silence while he began the long drive down the ranch road.

The phone rang again within seconds.

For the love of—

His emotions were engaged now. This negotiation was breaking down. Phone calls with Lana always had been disastrous.

He answered without taking his eyes off the long ranch road. “Give it a rest, Lana. I’m not going to argue with you all night. Those days are long over.”

There was a moment of silence, which Braden imagined meant Lana was suitably subdued by his show of temper.

A woman’s voice finally spoke. “Lana? Who is Lana?”

Braden let his eyes flick to the screen, although it was unnecessary. Of course, the name and thumbnail photo of Claudia St. James were displayed in full color.

“I’m sorry, Claudia. It was nothing. A business call.”

“It didn’t sound like a business call. Who is Lana?”

Braden sighed in defeat. The drive into Austin was going to be a long one.

Chapter Six

The patients enrolled in PLI’s migraine study might not suffer from high blood pressure, but Lana was pretty sure hers was going through the roof.

She glared at her phone’s screen. Braden wasn’t going to return her last call, obviously. His executive assistant had sounded excruciatingly cool and competent, so Lana knew her message hadn’t been lost. Braden’s workday was apparently over, although his assistant’s obviously was not. Poor woman.

Well, Lana was no slave driver. She wasn’t going to call her own assistant this late at night and demand that Myrna rearrange her schedule to be here at eight in the morning, no matter what Braden demanded. Her blood pressure hiked up another millimeter just thinking about it.

She ought to lock the office door and go home. Braden could show up tomorrow at the time of his choosing, but she wouldn’t be here. He could stew in the hallway, calling her number in vain. Since not-for-profit hospitals didn’t provide their department chairs with twenty-four-hour assistants like Braden had, he’d be stuck listening to her voice mail. Even better.

The whole scenario sounded wonderfully vengeful—but Lana knew it was a fantasy. She wouldn’t do it. This wasn’t about her personal irritation; this was about patients who were suffering.

She had some sleuthing to do, stat. It was nearing midnight, and she needed to find a link between Marion MacDowell and the other enrollees. All patients had listed their other medical conditions upon entering the study. Lana had sorted those lists every which way, but nothing striking had appeared, no similarities in secondary diseases beyond the migraines.

Her stomach growled. She’d intended to battle her exhaustion only long enough to call Braden, set up a future appointment and then go home. Her new apartment was full of cardboard boxes. The headboard and rails of her bed were propped against the wall, unassembled, so her mattress was flat on the floor. Her great ambition for the evening had been to locate the box containing her microwave oven, heat up an organic frozen dinner and then flop onto that mattress for the night.

Instead, Braden had insisted that West Central return its data to PLI. She would have to wait one more day before giving in to her exhaustion. Patients were counting on her.

The rush of adrenaline was welcome. Knowing she’d be seeing Braden again in a matter of hours made her feel energized. Not because she was looking forward to seeing him, but because she was in competition with him. She had to beat Braden at his own game. The challenge was better than coffee.

“All right, Dr. Montgomery,” she murmured into the silence of her office. “Why did you put Marion MacDowell on this drug?”

She tapped her pencil at the corner of her mouth. Perhaps she needed to look at Marion MacDowell’s involvement from a fresh angle. The medicine may have been designed to treat migraines, but an unusual side effect might have been reported. Sometimes, a prospective medicine had a side effect that turned out to be more beneficial than the original effect. A prospective asthma medicine, for example, might unexpectedly cause low blood sugar and become a diabetes medication. It was a rare occurrence, but it happened.

Perhaps Dr. Montgomery had noticed that PLI’s migraine drug was causing an unusual but beneficial side effect, one that could benefit Marion MacDowell in some way.

It was a long shot.

It was also nearly midnight.

Lana started looking for frequently reported side effects of the study. At least one hundred patients had been enrolled during the six months before Dr. Montgomery had given the last slot to his friend. Lana began sorting her list again, this time by date of enrollment, then copying the side-effect data for only the first six months’ worth of patients, then...

An hour later, she glared at her still-dark phone screen. So far, she’d found nothing. At this rate, it was quite possible she’d still be here at eight in the morning, still wearing the same dress from today’s meeting. Braden would know she’d pulled an all-nighter.

She doubted he’d be shocked. They’d pulled more all-nighters together than she could count during residency. Having Braden by her side had made those years an adventure. They’d met every challenge together. Lana and Braden versus the evil attending physicians. Lana and Braden conquering forty-eight-hour workdays. Lana and Braden slipping into the storage room.

She closed her eyes for a moment and let her head rest on the tall back of Dr. Montgomery’s oversized leather desk chair. When she opened her eyes again, Braden was there, standing on the other side of the glass door, framed by pink paper hearts.

She was dreaming.

Braden opened the door without knocking.

She was not dreaming.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Lana stood immediately. Her pumps had been kicked off long ago, so jumping to her feet didn’t do much for her, size-wise. Braden walked past Myrna’s desk to stand before hers, hands on his hips, glaring down at her as if she were a disobedient child.

She was no child. “This is my office. I’m the one who gets to ask what you’re doing here.”

“I was just walking past the door,” he said, frowning at her. “Your lights were on.”

“At midnight, you just happened to be walking down this hallway of West Central?”

“Yes. My brother had a late dinner break, so I came by to see him.” He crossed his arms over his chest. He’d changed into a soft knit shirt and jeans, she noticed, the same clothes he’d always preferred, even when she and all the other residents were living in scrubs.

Jeans or not, he hadn’t come to pull an all-nighter by her side. He was having dinner with his brother. It wasn’t his job to find a reason to keep pentagab viable. He got to sit back, relax and wait for someone else to make the case for him.

Must be nice.

“While you were having dinner, I was working on pentagab.”

He only raised one eyebrow at her. “That’s not a particularly wise way to spend your time. The drug is dead.”

The man was a broken record on the subject. She threw her hands up. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about why your mother was taking it?”

“You’re investigating my mother right now?”

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