Читать книгу Heartbreaker - Laurie Paige - Страница 10

The twin engines of Michael O’Day’s new plane purred steadily as he buzzed the field in preparation for landing at Mission Ridge, a “fly in, fly out” community on the outskirts of Mission Creek, Texas. A private shuttle was off to one side, passengers filing down the plane’s steps. No aircraft were on the runway, and none was heading in for a landing, other than his.

From the air, he could pick out the home he’d purchased last year. It was a big house for a bachelor, not yet completely furnished, but he was pleased with it.

With the private airstrip practically at his door and the Lone Star Country Club golf links nearby, he could indulge his two favorite pastimes: golfing and flying. He planned to retire here.

But not anytime soon. At thirty-four, he had a ways to go before riding off into the sunset. However, with the new, faster plane, it would be a piece of cake to fly the two hundred fifty miles back and forth to Houston where he had a penthouse and an office. As a heart surgeon, he kept a busy schedule.

He set the nimble four-passenger plane down on the tarmac and taxied off the runway, heading for his hangar at the back of his two-acre lot. Instead of pushing the plane inside when he arrived, he left it on the apron. He was running late for lunch with his friend and golfing buddy, Flynt Carson. He’d take care of the aircraft later.

He dashed across the back lawn, activating the remote to open the door of the garage attached to the house. Inside, he swung his legs over the car door and into the seat of the low-slung convertible he kept at Mission Ridge.

Another indulgence, he admitted, but he didn’t regret the cost. The time here in the heart of Texas ranching country gave him the necessary rest and relaxation to perform his surgeries with confidence. During his internship, a wise use of one’s time had been stressed, over and over by his mentor, one of the foremost cardiac surgeons in the country.

Usually Michael flew in on Friday afternoon, but he’d been delayed by emergency surgery yesterday, then had overslept this morning, making him late taking off.

Checking his watch, he grimaced and turned the ignition key. He drove out of the garage, hit the button to lower the door behind him, glanced to his left and, seeing no traffic, gunned the engine.

And immediately threw on the brakes.

The car came to a screeching halt about six inches from a tall, lithe beauty who was standing in the middle of the street. She turned flashing green eyes on him.

“You baboon!” she said in an angry, albeit melodious voice. “You shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel, driving like a maniac down a residential street.”

“Well, honey,” he drawled, amused and irritated by her lofty manner, “I didn’t expect some female”—translation: some ditz—“to be sashaying down the middle of the street.”

“I am not ‘sashaying’ down the middle of the street. I happen to be crossing it.”

He studied her, then glanced across the street and back to her. “You might not know it,” he mentioned in a helpful, philosophical tone, “but the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Going straight across the street gets you to the other side faster than ambling across at an oblique angle. It could also save you from getting run over.”

“And watching where you’re going could save you from killing someone and getting thrown in jail.”

“A point well taken,” he agreed, unable to kill the grin. In blue slacks and a knit top that outlined her to perfection, she was very easy on the eye. Besides which, he’d always been attracted to women with fire.

He watched her march on across the street, her head high, her light brown hair swinging about her shoulders. He’d never seen anyone move the way she did, with the grace and dignity of a fairy princess. And the righteous anger of a tent evangelist.

A name came to him. Susan Wainwright.

He’d never met her, but he’d seen her a few times onstage. She was a lead ballerina with the Houston Ballet.

Her sister had recently wed Matt Carson. A surprising affair, considering the Carsons and Wainwrights had been feuding for nearly as long as the Hatfields and McCoys, or so he understood. But Michael recalled hearing a rumor of a truce for the wedding.

Watching the delectable sway of her hips, he formed a new appreciation for a dancer’s grace of movement. To his surprise, a vision came to mind—him and her in a wide bed, long legs wrapped around him—

Whoa!

Shaking his head, he forced those thoughts aside. “Hey,” he called, “you need a ride somewhere?”

Susan gave him a drop-dead glance. “No, thanks. Someone is picking me up.”

A fleeting notion indicated he’d like the “someone” to be him. Forget it, he advised. That little gal was a heartbreaker from the get-go. Besides, he wasn’t looking for any lengthy entanglement. His life was fine just as it was.

Grinning at himself, he eased down on the pedal and left the enticing and oh-so-haughty beauty behind.

At the Lone Star Country Club, located deep in the heart of Lone Star county, he tossed the keys to the valet and dashed inside. The Yellow Rose Café was dark compared to the bright mid-September sunshine. He paused to let his eyes adjust.

“Michael, over here,” Flynt Carson called.

Michael had performed bypass surgery on Flynt’s dad five years ago. He’d visited their family ranch many times since then. He and the two Carson brothers, Flynt and Matt, had become good friends.

“Hey, man, what’s been happening?” Michael asked, taking a chair. A waiter hurried over with the menu and took his order for a tall glass of iced tea. “Not Texas style,” he added.

Texas tea could set a man on his rump after one glass of the potent blend of liquors with a smidgen of tea and fruit flavors to round it out.

Flynt grimaced when they were alone. “I guess you heard the news about Carl Bridges?”

“Yeah, I saw it on TV. Any more info on it?”

Flynt nodded. “Spence is keeping his cards close to his chest, but they have arrested someone.”

Spence Harrison was also a golfing buddy and the local district attorney handling the case.

“Anyone we know?”

“No. A member of the mob, I understand, but don’t quote me on that. It’s all rumor and conjecture at present.”

“Mob” referred to the infamous Texas Mafia that comedians loved to make jokes about, such as: Did ya hear about the Texas mafia bank robbery? When they stood back to back, their spurs got stuck. They would have gotten away, but they couldn’t decide who got to ride face forward on the getaway horse. Ha-ha-ha.

Murder was never a laughing matter, Michael mused, but this case had been particularly poignant. Only days before Carl Bridges’s murder, his estranged son, Dylan, had come home; days later, he’d been a suspect in the crime. Thankfully, he was cleared.

A waitress appeared—Daisy, it said on her name tag—a Texas blonde with big hair and a twang so thick it made Michael smile each time he heard her speak. He and Flynt gave their orders for the chef’s Saturday luncheon special.

Movement caught Michael’s attention. A lithe woman in a blue summer outfit walked into his field of vision. She was with an older woman. Her mother, he assumed, because of the similarities in their facial structure.

A ping of interest coursed through him, a tiny hum of electricity that warmed him in spite of the fan circling over their table. The two women were seated on the patio overlooking the famous golf course.

“Susan Wainwright,” Flynt murmured, looking at the women, then back at Michael. “Her mother, Kate Wainwright.”

“Hmm,” Michael said noncommittally. The Wainwright name reminded him of another event. “How’re the newlyweds?”

“Who knows? They haven’t come out of their house yet,” Flynt said with a straight face, then laughed.

Michael chuckled with his friend. “I was sorry to miss the wedding. I heard it was exciting.”

“Yeah, but the real action was in New York, at Rose’s aunt’s place. It was a standoff, you might say. Justin Wainwright was threatening to shoot Matt after finding Rose had been…compromised. And I was determined to save Matt from himself. Rose’s Aunt Beth distracted the warring parties while Matt and Rose slipped out and got hitched. Justin and I packed up our six-shooters and slunk home.”

Michael laughed, but he knew the Carsons and Wainwrights had once been great friends. Flynt’s great-grandfather had even started this very country club with his best friend and fellow rancher, J.P. Wainwright, but a falling-out over a family scandal and water rights had started a feud that had lasted three-quarters of a century.

The things people fought over, Michael reflected in disgust. If people could see the life and death struggles he saw, they’d view things differently.

No thinking about that, he chided himself. This was his fun time. However, there was one more problem to be discussed that had nothing to do with cardiac surgery in Houston. “Any word on Lena?” he asked.

The shock of his life had occurred while playing golf back in May. Right here at the posh country club, on the ninth green, in fact, the golfing foursome had found an abandoned baby. The shock had come when all four men had been suspected of being the father. Worse, they’d all admitted it was a possibility. They’d each been involved in a more or less brief liaison the previous year.

DNA testing had already proved neither Flynt, Spence nor Michael could be the sire. That left the last man of the foursome, Tyler Murdoch, to be tested.

Since Michael had been filling in for Luke Callaghan, Luke was also a possibility. The note left with the baby had gotten wet, blotting out any name of the father. The only legible part had been, “I’m your baby girl. My name is Lena.”

Someone, the police had concluded, had been observing them play and had chosen the isolated ninth hole, where bushes screened a maintenance shed. Footprints indicated that someone had hidden there while watching them find the baby.

Flynt felt he needed to be the one to take care of the baby. The four of them had chipped in and hired a private investigator to find the mother or father or somebody to claim the foundling.

“I do have some other news,” Flynt said, moving his hand when the waitress brought their food. “You recall we had to have Lena’s DNA tested when we took her in for a thorough checkup so it could be matched to the father’s?”

Michael nodded.

“They discovered she has some kind of anemia, thal—”

Daisy plopped Michael’s plate down with a hard thunk. “Thalassemia,” she said in a low voice.

Michael caught distress vibes from her. Reaching back to his medical school days, he came up with a stray fact. “It’s a type common to those of Mediterranean descent,” he explained to his friend. “Hereditary factors are definitely indicated.”

“Yeah, that’s what the doctor told us,” Flynt said. He looked at Daisy curiously. “How did you know about the disease?”

“I got this friend,” Daisy said in her brash Texas hill country accent. “She has it.”

“Josie and I have been concerned about the effects on Lena’s growth. Did your friend mention any particular difficulties with that?”

Flynt had hired Josie as a nanny for Lena, then ended up marrying her. Turned out, they were now expecting a little bundle of joy of their own. Fate was a funny thing, Michael thought with a silent chuckle at his friend’s expense.

His gaze was drawn to the Wainwright princess while Flynt and Daisy discussed the necessary testing that should be done regularly to watch for recurrences of the anemia in baby Lena.

Susan was listening to some male friend who had stopped by her table. From what Michael could discern, the man was posturing and showing off, bragging about his hole-in-one win over some friends. She was full of congratulations, smiling as if bestowing the gold cup on the guy. Michael suppressed a jab of irritation.

What did he care whom she talked to and flirted with?

He didn’t, he told himself firmly. Ah, but she was easy to look at…

“Who is that man you keep looking at?” Kate Wainwright asked. “The one sitting with Flynt Carson.”

Susan jerked as if caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. “No one.”

“An interesting nonentity,” her mother murmured. “He looks familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen him before.”

“I don’t know his name,” Susan admitted, “but he nearly ran me over on the street near the airstrip. I was on my way to the phone to give you a call and let you know I was in. We had words.”

Susan wished her mother wouldn’t study the man quite so openly. She didn’t want him to think they were interested in him in the least.

“Words?” her mother inquired.

“I called him a baboon and told him he shouldn’t be driving, or something like that,” she reluctantly admitted.

Her mother looked from the man back to Susan, amusement in her eyes as if she laughed at something only she could see. Susan tried not to be irritated.

“He and his friend are leaving,” Kate reported.

Susan deliberately turned her chair toward the golf green beyond the patio so she wouldn’t have to look his way. “Mmm,” she said.

“Oh, he’s coming over.”

Susan jerked around. Sure enough, the impolite stranger was approaching their table.

“My, he’s certainly good-looking,” Kate whispered. “Tall. And the bluest eyes. I’ve always liked blue eyes with dark hair. Such a handsome contrast.”

“Mother!” Susan whispered, reminding the other woman that the man was almost upon them.

“Hello,” he said, stopping by their table.

She nonchalantly glanced up at him. “The baboon.”

He laughed as if she’d said something witty, which made the heat rush to her face for some reason she couldn’t fathom. Nor did he take the hostile hint to leave.

“I came over to apologize for my lack of manners when we, uh, first met,” he continued. “My only excuse is that I was running late.”

“Is that your usual mode of operation?” she asked coolly, ignoring the increased beat of a pulse through her temple. She pushed a wisp of hair behind her ear.

“Susan, introduce me to your friend,” her mother requested, all smiles for the obnoxious man.

“We haven’t formally met,” he said, and held out his hand. “Michael O’Day.”

Kate shook his hand. “Won’t you join us?”

To Susan’s further chagrin, the big ape—he was easily a couple of inches over six feet tall—pulled out a chair and sat down. “Iced tea,” he said to the waiter who hurried over.

“I’m Kate Wainwright. This is my daughter, Susan.”

“Flynt mentioned your names,” he said in an affable manner, as if they were all the very best of friends.

His voice was deep, almost a bass, and it rushed along her nerves like one long, drawn-out note from a cello, quiet yet vibrant, as if nature itself whispered through his rich cadences.

An unexpected shudder washed over her. A faint but persistent pain pinged in her chest with each heartbeat. She pressed a hand there to still it.

“I know where I’ve seen you,” her mother suddenly exclaimed. “I mean, besides here. There was a write-up in the Sunday paper a few weeks ago. You performed miracle surgery on the head of state from some foreign country. You’re the heart specialist from Houston.”

Michael bowed his head briefly in acknowledgment.

So, he wasn’t falsely modest about his skill, Susan noted. He was one of the top five heart surgeons in the U.S., per her own doctor. “Bold, innovative and determined” had been said of him in the article her mother referred to.

“Susan,” Kate said, a plea in the word.

Susan shook her head, warning her mother not to say anything to the arrogant heart doctor. Her own physician wanted her to go to Dr. O’Day for a consultation. So far, she’d steadfastly refused.

“Susan,” her mother said, more sternly this time.

“I’ll see someone,” she promised.

Her mother wasn’t at all deterred by her tone. “This is like…like a nudge from God. You can’t ignore it.”

Susan could and was determined to do so. “Don’t be sil—” She broke off, unable to be rude to her mother. “I’ll see a doctor soon.” But not this one.

“This is a golden opportunity.”

“Is there something I should know about?” the irritating doctor wanted to know.

“Susan has a heart condition,” Kate answered before Susan could reply.

“Ah, I see.”

Susan felt his gaze on her, as incisive as a laser beam. “It’s nothing,” she said, and heard the stubborn denial in her tone. “I’m fine.”

“You collapsed on the stage at your last performance,” her mother reminded her sternly.

“I—I was tired.”

“Collapsed?” he questioned. “I’ve seen you perform. You were magnificent.”

Amazed, she stared at him. He looked sincere. Maybe he wasn’t such a baboon, after all, she conceded, since he obviously recognized her talent. She silently laughed at her own cockiness. She was as sure of her skills as the famous doctor seemed to be of his. “Thank you.”

“Did you have any symptoms before you fainted?” he asked, lifting the glass of iced tea the waiter had placed before him, his attention focused and sharp. “Chest pain? Shortness of breath? Tingling in the left arm?”

“I didn’t have a heart attack,” she informed him. “I checked out fine in that department.”

“She was born with a congenital heart condition,” her mother supplied. “In a nutshell, her heart is too small for her body. It was little to begin with and stopped growing before she reached adolescence.”

His gaze lasered into her again. “A child’s heart in a woman’s body. How old are you?” he demanded, a frown furrowing a deep groove between his eyes.

“Twenty-seven,” she replied, then was annoyed with herself. His forceful manner caused her to answer before she had time to consider that her age was none of his business.

“Hmm.” He spoke to her mother. “It’s a wonder she’s lasted this long.”

“I beg your pardon,” Susan spoke up. “My health is none of your concern. I have a competent doctor of my own.”

“Who?”

She was alert to his probing ways now. She paused as if considering, then told him the man’s name, a very prominent internist in Houston.

“He’s good,” the surgeon admitted. “Did he refer you to anyone for a checkup?”

This was a question she didn’t want to answer. She tried to think how to do that without lying.

“Susan?” her mother probed, her worry obvious.

“He referred me to you, if you must know.” She raised her eyebrows loftily. “I haven’t had time to make an appointment.”

“Why are you determined to stay in denial about this?” he asked softly. “It isn’t your fault.”

“I know that. Other than that one little dizzy spell, I’ve been fine. I just overdid it that week.”

“Could you make time to see her?” Kate asked.

“Mother, I’m sure Dr. O’Day doesn’t carry around an appointment book with him. His office would handle that.”

“Michael,” he told her almost sternly. “My name is Michael.”

“To your patients?” she challenged.

Her mocking tone didn’t seem to bother him at all. He simply nodded, his eyes studying her again. He made her uncomfortable, as if he could see all her doubts, her weaknesses, her furious questioning of God that she should have to give up the only thing in her life.

No. She wouldn’t give up dancing. Never! She would, quite literally, rather be dead.

“I’m heading back to Houston Monday morning. I could see you that afternoon, get an idea of how serious a problem you have.” He leaned close and looked her in the eye. “Isn’t it better to know the truth? Then you could deal with a certainty rather than an unfounded fear.”

She glanced at her mother, not wanting to upset her. “I’m not afraid. I’ve never been afraid of anything.”

He leaned back in the chair. She noticed his hands when he lifted his glass. They were incredible, the fingers long and very slender, like a world-renowned pianist’s hands, dexterous, capable of performing minute movements very fast and accurately.

She thought of those hands on her—and not in a medical context. Her heart suddenly pumped hard, and for a second, she was frightened. For a second, she thought of accepting his offer to see her.

But only for a second, then reason reasserted itself. She’d lived for twenty-seven years with her heart doing everything she demanded of it. She was fine, just fine.

“If you want a ride back to Houston, be at the airport Monday at nine.”

“Oh, how nice,” her mother cooed, fawning over the man. “Isn’t that convenient?”

“Very,” Susan agreed, with absolutely no intention of accepting either the ride or the examination.

His lazy smile said he knew every idea that flitted through her head. She understood him, too. He thought she was a silly, stubborn female refusing to face facts.

It would be a cold day in you-know-where before she’d get within a mile of him, his plane or his office.

“Excuse me,” her mother said. “I see a friend.”

Susan shifted warily at being left alone with him.

“Don’t worry. I’m not the big-bad-wolf type,” he murmured, again reading her accurately.

She forced herself to relax. She’d played these games before. It meant nothing. “What type are you?”

“Honest. Sincere. Basically harmless.”

To her surprise, she laughed. “No conceit in your family, right?”

His smile disclosed white teeth, even on top, but with one slightly out of line on the bottom. It made him more real, she observed, not quite so movie-star perfect.

She gasped when he laid a hand on her wrist.

“Easy.” He proceeded to take her pulse, then looked at her gravely. “Almost a hundred beats per minute.”

Jerking away from the incredibly gentle touch that spread fire through her skin, she informed him, “It’s none of your business. You aren’t my doctor. I’m not going with you Monday—don’t expect me to be at the airport.”

“So, you like causing your family concern. Because it keeps you the center of attention?”

“Oh,” she muttered. “You…you…”

“Baboon?” he supplied, lightly tossing the word out, his ego obviously not dented in the least.

Refusing to dignify the situation with an answer, she stared out at the eighteenth green where two couples completed their game.

A mist blurred her vision for a second. She swallowed hard as agony, which she could usually hold at bay, rushed over her.

“There are other things in life besides dancing,” he said softly, his fingers gliding along her forearm as if to soothe the troubling emotion.

She recoiled from any possible pity he might feel toward her. “Not for me,” she stated, staring him straight in the eye.

He shrugged and rose. “It’s your life. But my offer still stands.” He walked off.