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.
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