And what do you deserve? Alix thought as she approached the front of the room, her eyes fixed on Beauchamp and not Terrance. Certainly not to have my heart whacked around like a giant Ping-Pong ball at some phantom gaming table.
I’m over you, Terrance. I’m over you.
She silently chanted the refrain over and over again in her mind like a life-giving mantra as her steps brought her closer to the two men.
She wished she’d called in sick today. Played hooky and stayed home with her daughter. But that would have meant that Norma would have found out. The very woman who now baby-sat her child had once baby-sat her, as well. And if Norma knew something, it was only a matter of time before her father found out as well. The woman had been his housekeeper for forty years.
Daniel DuCane wouldn’t have said anything to her about her lapse, but she knew he would have been disappointed that she would flaunt the principles to which he had dedicated his life all these years. After all, it was because her father was a doctor that she had become one, too.
“Dr. Terrance McCall,” Beauchamp gestured from Terrance to Alix as he made the formal introduction, “This is Dr. Alix DuCane, and any compliment I could give her wouldn’t be nearly enough.”
“No, it wouldn’t be,” Terrance agreed, his voice a cross between being amiably impersonal and intimately warm—a trick, Alix felt, that only he could pull off.
It was time to turn the herd before it stampeded out of control and ran through the town, trampling the citizens, Alix thought. She turned toward her superior, ignoring Terrance.
“Dr. Beauchamp, I really don’t think I’m the best one for this assignment.”
“Did I mention that she was also modest?” Beauchamp asked Terrance. “Dedicated, skilled, modest, don’t know how we got so lucky. Nonsense, Dr. DuCane, you are most definitely the best one for the assignment. Besides, if only half of what I was told is correct, Dr. McCall won’t require much hand holding.” The older man, a grandfather five times over, chuckled to himself. “At least, not during official hours.”
Once the words were uttered, Beauchamp must have realized the way they could be construed. His eyes slid over Alix’s face nervously as if to see whether he had gone too far in his comment.
Alix knew the man meant no offense. Clarence Beauchamp wasn’t capable of making any lascivious comments. He was like everyone’s overly friendly, slightly addle-brained favorite uncle. Unlike his operating methods, the humor he subscribed to resided decades in the past where innocent comments were just that and carried no veiled meanings or hidden agendas. The hospital’s mandatory P.C. training had taught the older man to be cautious, but that usually kicked in only after he had said something that was jarringly out of sync with the times.
Alix had her mind on something more important than imagined incorrect statements. Survival. “I’ve got a full load, Dr. Beauchamp.”
“And you handle it beautifully,” he readily testified.
Alix tried again. “I’m on E.R. rotation this morning.”
If she’d hoped to deter the chief of staff, it back-fired badly.
Beauchamp clapped his hands together. “Perfect.” He turned to Terrance. “This’ll be your trial by fire, so to speak. Can’t ask for anything better than that. You’ll be hurdled into the thick of our operation here. Blair prides itself on its outstanding emergency room facilities.
“Of course,” the chief of staff philosophized, “Murphy’s law being what it is, the E.R.’ll probably be deadly dull and quiet this morning.”
Hardly that, Terrance thought, doing his best not to look at Alix as if he’d known her beyond these past five minutes. Trying not to look at her as if he knew every inch of her smooth, supple body and as if the memory of that body hadn’t haunted his days and nights in vivid detail.
Pushing the past into the small, steely box where it belonged and mentally slamming the lid shut, Terrance looked down at Alix and smiled. He did his best not to take note of the dark look in her eyes.
Did I do that to you, Alix? Did I take the light away? If I did, I’m sorry that I hurt you. Sorrier than you’ll ever know.
“It looks like you’re going to be stuck with me for a while, Dr. DuCane,” he said lightly. “I’ll try my best not to get in your way.”
Too late, Alix thought.
Resigned to her fate, she nodded at Beauchamp without really looking at the man. “All right, but I still think Dr. McCall would be better off with someone else. I’ve never been a very good teacher.”
“We teach by example, Dr. DuCane, and quite truthfully, you set the best example of anyone I can think of,” Beauchamp assured her.
“I guess I’d better say yes before you flatter me to death,” Alix replied.
There was affection in her voice. Clarence Beauchamp had several failings, but the ability to make a person feel good was not one of them. Though they were very different in their approaches, and her father was by far the more superior orator, Beauchamp did in some ways remind her of Daniel DuCane.
She barely spared Terrance a glance, not trusting herself.
“Follow me,” she instructed as she turned sharply on her heel. Shoulders squared, Alix quickly walked out of the room.
Chapter 2
“Alix, wait up.”
She gave no indication of having heard him as she walked quickly to the bank of elevators. With a sigh, Terrance lengthened his stride to catch up to Alix. He caught himself paraphrasing Bogart’s famous line from Casablanca. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, I walk into hers.
“When Dr. Beauchamp said you were to show me the ropes,” he told her as they reached the elevators, “I didn’t think he meant that we should be swinging from them at the time.”
She didn’t trust herself to look at him just yet, not when he was so close. She pressed the button for the elevator. Hard.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was moving too fast for you. I would have thought that moving quickly was something you were accustomed to.”
It was, he thought, like trying to ignore the elephant in the living room. You could only do it for so long. In this case, the sooner it was addressed, the better. “Alix, maybe we should talk.”
The extent of the anger that suddenly shot up inside her took Alix by surprise. It wasn’t easy to force it down. But she didn’t want to start shouting here, where everyone knew her. Shouting at him and demanding to know how he could have just walked away without a backward glance.
Alix took an even breath. “And maybe we shouldn’t. This is a hospital, Doctor, usually a very busy place. There isn’t time to sit and reminisce about old times that really didn’t exist except in the imagination of someone who was very young and very foolish.”
The heart he’d learned to keep on ice twisted a little. “You.”
Oh, no, no pity, Alix thought fiercely. She refused to be the object of his pity. “The operating word here is was. In case you don’t know, Doctor, that was past tense. And we’re in the present. For some people that means there is no past, there is no future, there is only now.” Her voice was crisp, brittle, her look cold. “I suggest that we turn our attention to now, shall we?”
Terrance looked into her eyes just before she averted them. He’d hurt her. Until this moment he hadn’t realized just how much. Somehow he’d pictured her getting over him, had ached at the thought even while he assumed it was reality. He’d convinced himself that the pain over their separation had been his alone. Now he knew better.
But this wasn’t the place to make apologies, even if he could fully explain to her what he’d done and why—which