Читать книгу Wild Honey - Veronica Sattler - Страница 9

TRAVIS SAT in his hospital bed, grinding his teeth. He was ready to climb the walls. These jokers were set on keeping him here “at least till the end of the week,” he’d been told this morning. By Dr. Wallace Reston, the physician in charge, when he’d made his Monday-morning rounds.

Reston knew his father. He’d gone to med school with the great Trent McLean and still played golf with him once a month. This had allowed him to invoke a familiarity with Travis he wasn’t entitled to, and ask too damned many personal questions.

Not that Travis had answered them. The people he counted among those entitled to ask those questions, let alone receive answers, could be tallied on the fingers of one hand. The rest could go to hell.

It had been a long time since he’d felt the need to justify his actions to anyone but himself. The chosen few who’d gotten any explanations at all had received them out of love. Not curiosity, not obligation and definitely not the misconstrued familiarity that came of playing golf with his estranged father!

Oh, Reston had been discreetly courteous about it all. Very polite, as a matter of fact. Old school, Southern-style. Probably thought he was being smoothly oblique, too….

“Heard they had to abandon another blast-off at the Kennedy Space Center yesterday,” the elderly doctor had mentioned all too casually. “Makes you wonder how all those scientists and technicians feel when that happens. You know, all that time and energy spent gettin’ ready. And then—nothin’. I wonder if it ever bothers them…” He’d looked pointedly at Travis when he said this. “‘Course, it isn’t as if they won’t have another go at it—not like it would’ve been for me, had I been talked into abandonin’ medicine after years of trainin’. Know what I mean, son?”

Despite the old man’s prying, Travis remained courteous to him. Not that he hadn’t been mighty tempted to tell him he hadn’t the right to call him “son.” That no one had that right anymore. Mighty tempted not to counter with a query of his own: “Is that the lie the old bastard’s put out to all and sundry these days—that I was talked into it?”

But he hadn’t of course. He was old school, too. The proper behavior of a Southern gentleman had been ingrained in him and his brother since the earliest days of their childhood. It was the foremost mark of the Tidewater gentry, their mother had always told them, and a true test of Southern manhood.

And because Judith McLean had a way about her and they loved and respected her, her children had never questioned what she said. Southern gentility might be occasionally threatened and a little ragged around the edges since the Civil War, he and Troy used to joke, but it wasn’t dead yet.

So Travis had smiled and gently changed the subject. Now he sat here, pampered like a pet poodle, because Wally Reston likely thought he was doing his old friend a service by mollycoddling the son Trent himself never spoke to. Never spoke to, never saw, never acknowledged as being alive.

Dead, that was what he was to Trent Cunningham McLean III. Just as he was supposed to be dead to Judith McLean and Troy McLean and Sarah. Dear feisty little Sarah…

Travis shifted restlessly on the bed. The agony of his separation from the sister he’d always been close to wasn’t something he normally allowed to penetrate the wall he’d built around it. Lord, he wanted out of here! He’d even settle for the chance to work off some of the steam that was building inside him like a pressure cooker. What he wouldn’t give for his shorts and running shoes right now!

He eyed the armchair near the window. He could get out of bed and use the chair, of course. But he’d been dumped here, out of state, as an emergency patient—minus toothbrush or robe or anything more than the clothes he came in. Which they’d taken away, the cagey bastards. And he’d be damned if he’d lounge around in a chair wearing nothing but a hospital gown and a bandage!

On the other hand, he could always do it without the gown. That’d get their attention all right. He doubted such a stunt was in him, though. It had been years since he’d even thought of cutting loose….

There’d been the ultraserious business of pulling A’s in prep school and then as an undergraduate in pre-med to assure him entrance into Harvard of course. Because nothing else would do for the son and grandson of two of its most renowned alumni.

And then had come the exhausting discipline of med school itself and—

His mind tripped on the one exception to that tightly reined discipline. The night he’d gone drinking with three classmates who weren’t as disciplined. Who’d convinced him he needed to cut loose a little. The night he’d accepted their dare to go to that clinic and—

Now what had brought that up? He hadn’t thought about that dumb stunt in years. Not since his little four-year excursion in the navy for Uncle Sam. More discipline. And after that, the Agency. The last place he’d have allowed himself to think about something like that. If you weren’t all business in the Agency, you weren’t in the Agency, period.

And now he was thirty-five. A little long in the tooth for the kid stuff, a time to put away childish things…

But the familiar passage from Ecclesiastes was erased when Travis found himself thinking, with a grin, that sitting on the chair in nothing but a bandage might almost be worth it. If it was Miranda Terhune who stumbled across him!

Fat chance, though. He’d seen neither pretty hide nor gorgeous hair of Nurse Randi since the ER. And suspected it was likely to remain so. Not just because the ward he was in wasn’t her beat. He’d begun to see what that young resident had meant when he’d called her an ice queen.

Except…those blushes had told him that somewhere under the ice, a lovely little fire burned. He’d bet on it. It was why he couldn’t resist those teasing probes, gentlemanly or not. That, and because a challenge was a challenge.

Yet his indulgence in that little byplay had likely ensured her giving him a wide berth for the duration of his stay. No, Nurse Randi wanted no part of challenges. She’d keep her distance.

There was something about the woman, though. Something more than her arresting beauty that nagged at him, had his mind returning to her. He wondered if he hadn’t seen her somewhere before. He rarely forgot a face. In his business, his life and the lives of others could depend on such recall. And Randi Terhune’s wasn’t the sort of face he’d be likely to—

The murmur of voices in the corridor intruded, and Travis lost the thought. Visiting hours. Scowling, he picked up the book a candy striper had brought him and found his place. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Fit reading for a hospital room? he mused darkly. Maybe not, but it sure fit his mood.

Settling in with the book, he ignored the muted sounds outside his door. He hadn’t had any visitors yet, and he wasn’t expecting any until tonight. Which was just fine with him.

Jason Cord had said he’d drop by, bring his shaving kit and a few other items Travis had told him where to locate in his apartment. And although Jason could be pretty surly these days, he was never boring, especially talking about the doings at the Agency.

Rafe O’Hara had called, of course, to see how he was, the smug bastard. OI’ Rafe was getting married today, though, so maybe Travis had the last laugh. For he firmly believed in one self-evident truth in this life: romantic love was for poets and fools.

Still, Rafe and Francesca looked so happy together that he’d briefly wondered if there might be an exception….

A low rumble of laughter resounded from the corridor just outside the door, and Travis slapped the book shut. Hell, weren’t hospitals supposed to be quiet?

Realizing how grouchy he’d become, he made a conscious effort to relax. If he were honest, he’d have to admit that a few noises wouldn’t faze him if he had visitors. But he didn’t right now, so visiting hours just increased his frustration. And boredom. Hell and damnation!

Suddenly Travis’s head snapped in the direction of his door as it opened. Then he froze.

The slender, elegantly dressed woman had also stopped moving, except for the clear blue eyes that swept over him, drinking in every detail. Eyes so like his own, although the rest of her patrician face had been passed on only to her younger children, missing Travis entirely.

“Hello, son.” She spoke quietly, in the soft Tidewater accent that would forever stir nostalgic echoes from his youth. “May I…may I come in?”

Travis found himself swallowing, unable to speak. He managed a nod, gestured to a chair near the bed.

He watched her as she found the chair, lowering herself into it with as much grace and poise as ever. Judith Paxton McLean was a year short of sixty, but she’d always looked at least a decade younger than her age. An active life that included daily horseback riding and tennis had preserved the girlish figure in the red Chanel suit; the youthful impression was aided by her expertly applied makeup and the smart beveled cut of her silver hair.

Only when she was seated and he saw her close up could Travis believe she would leave her fifties behind next May. The lines around her eyes, which had seemed faint in the dim light of the doorway, were more sharply etched than he remembered. The frown lines on her brow were new, too.

Well, five years was a long time. Damn the son of a bitch! Damn him to hell and then some!

“I suppose it was Reston who told you I was here?” he asked tightly.

Judith McLean nodded. “He…he said it was a gunshot wound! Oh, Travis, I—”

“It’s nothin’ serious, Mother.” How strange it felt to be addressing her like that. Mother. After all this time, like something alien on his tongue. “Just a simple flesh wound. I’ll be fine.”

She eyed the bandaged shoulder, the sling they’d used to immobilize his arm. “Are you certain? It looks as if it might be…You’re not in pain, Travis?”

“I said it’s not serious. Certainly nothin’ that’d require bravin’ the wrath of your husband by traipsin’ all the way up here to see the black sheep of the family!”

Her face went pale, and Travis felt instant remorse. Lord, he hadn’t meant to snap at her like that. He heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, Mother. It’s just that…”

Travis ran his hand through his hair in frustration, then sighed again. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”

Judith looked away and her reply was toneless. “No…no, he doesn’t.”

“So after five years of obeyin’ his dictates, of avoidin’ me, of not takin’ my phone calls or answerin’ my letters—five years, Mother!—a hospitalization has finally given you the courage to come see me. But only on the sly. What would it take, I wonder, to dredge up the courage to see me openly? My funeral?”

He saw her flinch, and remorse nagged at him again, but he shook it off. He was her son damn it! Her firstborn, on whom, along with his brother and sister, she’d lavished all the love and affection of a devoted mother. Yet she’d thrown him away—on the spiteful orders of a man she didn’t even love!

He still remembered the day she’d admitted that to him. The day he’d stumbled on her crying in the stables, where he later learned she often went when she was troubled. Wadded up on the hay-strewn floor was a lace-edged handkerchief. He’d retrieved it and begun to hand to her, thinking it was hers.

But it hadn’t been hers. Before she took it from him, he noticed the unfamiliar initials embroidered on one corner. And although he’d been only thirteen, he’d known. When he asked her, she’d told him that, yes, his father had a mistress.

“What’ll you do, Mother?” he’d asked next.

“Do, darlin’? Why, what can I do?”

“You can leave him! He can’t possibly love you if—”

“Love has nothin’ to do with it, Travis,” she’d interrupted.

“But he’s lied to you!” Travis had been outraged. “Lied to all of us! All those excuses ‘bout how he’s always tied up in surgery or goin’ off to lecture on—”

“Travis McLean, I’ll not have you speak of your father that way! Of course, he hasn’t lied to y’all. Your father does work long hours at the hospital, and his work most certainly takes him out of town to lecture sometimes. Your father is a world-famous heart surgeon!”

And then, with the uncanny perception of the young, he’d said, “That’s why you’re stayin’, isn’t it, Mother? It’s because of who he is, not because you love him. Isn’t that why you said love has nothin’ to do with it?”

Fresh tears welling in her eyes, his mother had nodded, then taken him in her arms. “But I was wrong to say it that way, son,” she’d murmured. “I may not love him, but I’d do anythin’ for you children. Love has everythin’ to do with that!”

Now, as he sat in this bland, sterile room, Travis wondered about that, too. Did she really love her children as she’d professed? Over the years he’d assumed they were the reason she stayed in a loveless marriage. But when the day had come when he’d dared his autocratic father’s wrath by choosing to follow his own path, she’d meekly aligned with her husband against him. Had let him cut Travis out of their lives.

As for their loveless marriage, Travis soon began to suspect it was nothing out of the ordinary. He’d spent a lot of time growing up amidst the privileged children of families where divorce was rampant; his prep school had been full of them. Soon he began to accept the fact that the love he thought was missing in his parents’ marriage simply didn’t exist.

Still, until five years ago, he’d believed in parental love. Now he wasn’t even sure about that.

With an irritated gesture, he steered the conversation to more certain ground. “Tell me about Sarah. Is she well? Happy?”

Obviously relieved by the shift in topic, his mother managed a smile and nodded. “She loves Georgetown. Doin’ splendidly there, too. Of course, we all know she would. Her adviser says she’s taken to pre-med like a duck to water.”

Unlike her long-lost brother. But Travis didn’t voice this. The bitterness was fading now. Maybe he’d exorcised it. “And Troy? He holdin’ up all right?”

His thirty-three-year-old brother had had to struggle for the grades that would get him into a decent med school. Or a career in medicine, period.

Troy had been the athlete in the family. A natural, who could have gone on to qualify for the Olympics in swimming, they’d been told. Or a career in tennis. He’d once beaten Bjorn Borg in a match at their club, and Borg had offered to sponsor him.

But that had been out of the question. In fact, Travis was the only one his brother had even told about it, and Troy’d insisted he keep it secret.

“Good Lord, Troy, why?” Travis had exclaimed. He could still recall his incredulousness at Troy’s request.

The brother he loved hadn’t been able to look him in the eye. “You know why,” he’d mumbled, staring at his Nikes as they sat on a bench in the club’s locker room.

And Travis had. Telling the family, or more specifically, their father, would only result in the same cold dismissal his swimming coach’s suggestion had brought the previous year: “You are a McLean, Troy. With a long and illustrious tradition of medicine to follow. Swimmin’ is a fine pastime, but it can’t be allowed to distract you from your career. From surgery as a profession. You’ll thank the coach and tell him no, of course.”

So Troy had acquiesced without a whimper, submitting to a regimen of tutors and summer schools to help him attain the grades necessary to enter medicine. And managing to graduate from a med school that, while not Harvard, was respectable enough for the father he tried so hard to please.

His mother’s sigh brought Travis back to the present. “Well, your brother does try hard, but sometimes I think he ought to have pursued another specialty. Your aunt Louise did suggest he join her at Stanford and go into research, you’ll recall. But as I told her, your father…”

And so it goes…

“Right.” Travis’s voice was tight with anger. “Nothin’ would do for his sons but to follow in his illustrious footsteps. No matter that the shape of those feet, as they tried to follow—tried so hard, Mother!—was so different. No matter that they longed to take another path.”

“Now, Travis, your father—”

“Is a cold, selfish bastard who never had time for any of us while we were growin’ up! And made it plain only one thing mattered to him—that we live our lives to please him. To be a self-perpetuatin’ testament to the great Dr. Trent McLean, heart surgeon nonpareil!”

“Oh, Travis, I know he’s hurt you, but try to understand. In his own way, your father loves you. I know you find that hard to believe. I didn’t believe it myself at one time. But in the last few years…well, I think he’s mellowed. And perhaps…perhaps even begun to realize what his unbendin’ ways have cost him.”

Travis’s smile was bitter. “Like a son, maybe? Well, that shouldn’t faze him, Mother. He has one to spare.”

“Travis, I don’t s’pose I can blame you for feelin’ bitter, but—”

“What do you want from me, Mother? Why’d you really come here? It wasn’t entirely to see how badly injured I was. Wally Reston could’ve given you all the particulars—and very likely did.”

Travis leaned toward her and didn’t let go of her gaze. “So what is it you really want from me?”

She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “I—I was hopin’ that maybe there was some way to…to put an end to this terrible estrangement. Maybe if you were to go to your father, Travis, and try to—”

“Forget it. He’d never listen, and I…” He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “Well, let’s just say I’m well past tryin’, okay? I have my own life now, and while it’s—”

“But what kind of life, Travis? A life where you’re constantly in danger? Where you’re shot at and could be gunned down at…at any moment? Dear heaven, sometimes I think I’ll go out of my mind, worryin’ ‘bout you! And missin’ you so!”

She’d begun to cry now, and Travis felt like a twenty-four-carat heel. He should’ve withheld his anger, done his best to soothe her.

And so it goes… Not exactly a banner day for Southern manhood, he thought, again echoing the famous phrase from Slaughterhouse Five. Shifting to the side of the bed, Travis put his good arm around his mother’s shoulders.

“Shh, don’t cry. It’s really not as dangerous as all that. A desk job more often than not, honest.”

Judith made an effort to pull herself together. Taking care not to jolt his injured side, she embraced him quickly, then groped for a handkerchief in her purse. She nodded gratefully when he handed her a tissue from the bedside box.

“You won’t even consider…?” she said tentatively after drying her eyes.

“What? Goin’ to see him? D’you recall how many times I tried to—unsuccessfully, I might add—five years ago?” Travis snorted. “I’m not in the habit of knockin’ my head against a stone wall, Mother.”

Judith bowed her head and sighed. “I s’pose that’s what I expected you’d say, but—’ she met his eyes again “—I hope you’ll understand that…that I had to try?”

He nodded grimly.

“And on the outside chance you’ll change your mind, I’ve taken a room at the inn across the street—just for this evenin’, that is. I’ll need to leave by—”

“Save your money, Mother. And your hopes. I won’t be callin’. I can’t.”

She nodded, silently rose from the chair and bent to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be leavin’ now, son. Get yourself well real soon now, hear? And remember, I do love you, no matter what I might’ve foolishly led you to believe these past five years.”

He wanted to ask her about that. About how she could have stayed away all that time, no matter what her husband threatened. But somehow he hadn’t the heart for it. What good would it do? Likely just hurt her more than he’d already managed with his less-than-genteel tongue. And so it goes…

“I love you, too,” he murmured softly, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. But as he watched her turn to leave, he saw the tears in her eyes, and the remorse was back.

A FEW MINUTES LATER Travis stood at his third-floor window looking down at the street facing the Johns Hopkins Inn. He’d managed, one-handed, to strip off the hospital gown, wrap a towel around his hips and secure it at the waist—all the nod to modesty he was willing to make at the moment; if any more unannounced visitors dropped by, he was more than ready to tell them to go to hell if they complained.

His mood was sour again, and he didn’t need to wonder why. A sardonic smile twisted his lips. At one time he’d reckoned a visit from his estranged mother would have made his day. He supposed he’d always been given to optimism in his life, and that had applied even to the one corner of it that rankled. But instead of heartening him, seeing her had only served to make him realize how hopeless it all was.

He caught a flash of red below, and he watched his mother walk toward the street. To a stranger she’d appear utterly poised, her head held gracefully erect, her carriage straight. But he could see things a stranger would miss. The suggestion of a defeated cast to her shoulders, a certain hesitance in her step as she approached the curb, the last lingering look she cast in the direction of his window before she entered the inn.

Sighing heavily, he was about to return to the Vonnegut novel when something else caught his eye. A blonde with a knockout figure emerging from the hospital. She headed toward a dark red Saab that had just pulled up out front.

Nurse Randi Terhune.

“Well, well, well.” Travis’s first genuine smile of the day accompanied the softly drawled syllables.

Her legs looked longer than ever in a pants uniform with a tunic top that stopped just where they began. Sunlight glinted off her honey-colored hair. Worn loose now and minus her nurse’s cap, it hung down her back nearly to her waist. Lord, Lord…

He was able to make out the Saab’s driver as she reached across the passenger seat and said something to Terhune. A brunette who bore a strong resemblance to Nurse Randi. He supposed they could be sisters, despite the difference in coloring. Beautiful features like theirs leapt out at you and—“God almighty!”

Travis sucked in his breath and closed his eyes, fixing on the image that filled his mind’s eye. An image from the past. Now he realized why the dumb stunt he’d pulled in Cambridge had been teasing his brain, just as Randi Terhune’s face had been nagging at him. He opened his eyes and gazed into space in stunned awareness. Terhune had been in the clinic that day! She was the nurse who’d admitted him!

His gaze shifted to the scene below. The passenger in the Saab was now opening the door and climbing out.

Travis hadn’t noticed him at first, and no wonder. This little guy stood only about three feet tall, if that. He was all tousled blond hair and energy about to explode as he gave Terhune a whopping big hug.

It became apparent the boy was giving up the navigator’s seat to Terhune, who opened the rear door; there was a car seat in back, and he took a step toward it. Then she said something to him, and he turned toward her, affording Travis his first clear look at the child’s face.

Great God in heaven!

Terhune fastened the boy’s seat belt, shut the rear door and got in up front, closing her own door. The Saab pulled away from the curb.

Travis was left with his jaw hanging open.

The kid in the car was the spitting image of himself when he was four or five years old!