Nikki,” he said and to his amazement she blushed, a deep shade of pink stealing up her cheeks.
“No problem. It comes with the job,” she said, then glanced down at his fingers and pulled away. With clipped steps she disappeared through a door marked Staff Only. Thorne watched the door swing shut behind her and fought the urge to ignore the warning and follow her. Why he couldn’t imagine. There was nothing more to say—the conversation was finished, but as he tucked his wallet back into his pocket, he experienced a foolish need to catch up with her—to catch up with his past. He had dozens of questions for her and he’d probably never ask one. “Fool,” he muttered to himself and felt a headache begin to pound at the base of his skull. Nicole Stevenson was a doctor here at the hospital, nothing more. And she had his number. Big time. She’d made that clear enough.
Yes, she was a woman; a beautiful woman, a smart woman, a seemingly driven woman, a woman with whom he’d made love once upon a time, but their affair was long over.
And she could be married, you idiot. Her name is Stevenson now, remember?
But he’d checked her ring finger. It had been bare. Why he’d bothered, he didn’t understand; didn’t want to assess. But he was satisfied that she was no longer another man’s wife. Nonetheless she was off-limits. Period. A complicated, beguiling woman.
He stepped onto the elevator, pounded the button for the floor of the maternity level and tried to shove all thoughts of Nikki Sanders—Dr. Nicole Stevenson—from his mind.
But it didn’t work; just as it hadn’t worked years before when he’d left her. Without so much as an explanation. How could he have explained that he’d left her because staying in Grand Hope, being close to her, touching her and loving her made his departure all that much harder? He’d left because he’d had a deep sense of insight that if he’d stayed much longer, he would never have been able to tear himself away from her, that he never would have gone out into the world and proved to himself and his father that he could make his own mark.
“Hell,” he cursed. He’d been a fool and let the only woman who had come close to touching a part of him he didn’t want to know existed—that nebulous essence that was his soul—get away from him. He’d figured that out a couple of years later, but Thorne had never been one to look back and second-guess himself. He’d told himself there would be another woman someday—when he was ready.
Of course he’d never found her.
And he hadn’t even worried about it until he’d seen Nikki Sanders again, remembered how it felt to kiss her, and the phrase what if had entered his mind. If he’d stuck by her, married her, had children by her, his father wouldn’t have gone to his grave without grandchildren. “Stop it,” he growled to himself.
* * *
Nicole let out her breath as she walked through the maze that was St. James. She was still unsettled and shaken. Used to dealing with anxious, sometimes even grieving relatives, she hadn’t expected that she would have such an intense and disturbing reaction to Thorne McCafferty.
“He’s just a man,” she grumbled, taking the stairs. “That’s all.”
But she met men every day of the week. All kinds from all walks of life and none of them caused anywhere near this kind of response.
Was it because he had been her first lover? Because he nearly broke her heart? Because he left her, not because of another woman, not because he had any good reason, just because she didn’t mean enough to him?
“Fool,” she muttered under her breath as she pushed open the door to the floor where her office was housed.
“Excuse me?” a janitor who was walking down the hall asked.
“Nothing. Talking to myself.” She offered the man an embarrassed smile and continued to her office where she plopped into her desk chair and stared at the monitor of her computer. The notes that had filled her head only an hour earlier seemed scattered to the wind and she couldn’t budge thoughts of Thorne from her brain. In her silly, very feminine mind’s eye she saw him with the clarity of young, loving eyes. Oh, she’d adored him. He was older. Sophisticated. Rich. One of the McCafferty scoundrels—bad boys every one, who had been known to womanize, smoke, drink and generally raise hell in their youths.
Handsome, arrogant and cocky, Thorne had found easy access to her naive heart. The only daughter of a poor, hardworking woman who pushed for and expected perfection, Nicole had, at seventeen, been ripe for rebellion. And then she’d stumbled onto Thorne.
She’d fallen stupidly head over heels in love, nearly throwing all of her own hopes and dreams away on the rakish college boy.
Blowing her bangs out of her eyes she shook her head to dislodge those old, painful and humiliating memories. She’d been so young. So mindlessly sophomoric, caught up in romantic fantasies with the least likely candidate for a long-term relationship in the state.
“Don’t even think about it,” she reminded herself, moving the mouse of her computer and studying the screen while memories of making love to him under the star-studded Montana sky swept through her mind. His body had been young, hard, muscular and sheened in sweat. His eyes had been silver with the moon glow, his hair unkempt.
And now he was some kind of corporate hotshot.
Like Paul. She glanced down at her hands and was relieved to see that the groove her wedding ring had once carved in her finger had disappeared in the past two years. Paul Stevenson had been climbing the corporate ladder so fast, he’d lost track of his wife and young daughters.
She suspected Thorne wasn’t much different.
When she’d moved back to Grand Hope a year ago, she’d known his family was still scattered around the state, but she’d thought Thorne was long gone and hadn’t expected to come face-to-face with him. According to the rumors circulating through Grand Hope like endless eddies and whirlpools, Thorne had finished law school, linked up with a firm in Missoula, then moved to California and finally wound up in Denver where he was the executive for a multinational corporation. He’d never married, had no children that anyone knew of, and had been linked to several beautiful, wealthy, career-minded women over the years, none of whom had lasted on his arm too long before they’d been replaced with a newer model.
Yep. Thorne was a lot like Paul.
Except that you’re still attracted to him, aren’t you? One look, and your gullible heart started pounding all over again.
“Stop it!” she growled and forced herself to concentrate. This wasn’t like her. She’d been known to be single-minded when it came to her work or her children and she found the distraction of Thorne McCafferty more than a little disconcerting. She couldn’t, wouldn’t fall victim to his insidious charms again. With renewed conviction, she ignored any lingering thoughts of Thorne and undid the clasp holding her hair in place. No doubt she’d have to deal with him later and at the thought her heart alternately leaped and sank. “Great,” she told herself as she finger-combed her hair, “Just…great.”
Right now facing Thorne again seemed an insurmountable challenge.
* * *
Twenty minutes later Thorne was still smarting from the tongue-lashing he’d received from a very sturdily built and strong-willed nurse who allowed him one glimpse of Randi’s infant, then ushered him out of the pediatric intensive care unit. Thorne had peered through thick glass to an airy room where two newborns were sleeping in plastic bassinets. Randi’s boy had lain under lamps, a shock of red-blond hair sticking upward, his tiny lips moving slightly as he breathed. To his utter surprise, Thorne had felt an unexpected pull on his heartstrings and he’d promptly advised himself that idiocy ran in the McCafferty family. Nonetheless Thorne had stared at the baby, so tiny, so mystifying, so innocent and unaware of all the turmoil he had caused.
As he’d left the pediatric unit Thorne wondered about the man who had fathered the child. Who was he? Shouldn’t he be contacted? Was Randi in love with