no matter what sacrifices she had to make. As of now, she was making a pact with herself. She was going to get through school on her own. Without any help.
From anyone.
“DOMINGO, SEGUNDA-FEIRA, Terça-feira, Quarta-feira…” Reciting the days of the week in Portuguese had always helped center her before. But as Tessa continued to enunciate each syllable of each word, the bubble of horror that was trapped in her throat refused to burst. Instead, it grew larger with every breath.
She stared at the huge cardboard placard propped on an easel in the lobby of West Manhattan Saints, the one welcoming the hospital’s newest orthopedic surgeon.
People swerved to avoid her as they made their way into the medical facility, and one man bumped her shoulder with a muttered apology about being late as he passed her. Tessa was running late, too, but at the moment she was powerless to do anything except stand there.
Clayton Matthews, a blast from the past—her past—sported the same lazy half smile she knew so well. The one that tipped up one corner of his mouth and made everything inside her liquefy. And he seemed to be aiming that smile squarely at her, and in turn at everyone who might stop to gaze upon him.
Ha! Gaze upon him. That made him sound like a god or something.
He had been godlike to her at one time. Before she’d realized exactly who had provided her “scholarship” to medical school. The one that had paid for almost her entire education.
Not him. But his parents. She had no idea why they had, other than the fact that her parents and Clay’s had become fast friends as her mom and dad worked on a huge block of Clay’s dad’s buildings. Her dad was still in partnership with them, as a matter of fact.
That partnership was how she’d met Clay in the first place. And the placard brought that last terrible scene on graduation night rushing back.
She swallowed. God. She did not want to face him. Especially now. Not with the second anniversary of her mother’s death weighing on her mind.
So she wouldn’t. This final part of her residency was in cutaneous oncology—another reminder of her mom’s courageous battle—while Clay was an orthopedic surgeon. They would be on different floors, even. How likely was it that they would really run into each other in the huge hospital?
Taking a deep breath, she let herself relax slightly.
“Wow, Tessa, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Holly Buchanan, one of the housemates at the Brooklyn brownstone where she lived, stopped beside her. Long brown locks shifted to the left as the other woman tilted her head and looked at the poster. “Ooh, although he’s not a bad-looking ghost. Is that the newest member of our happy family?”
Tessa’s mouth twisted in a wry grimace. Happy? With the grueling hours they were putting in on the final year of their residency, no one had much time to notice the general atmosphere around the teaching hospital. Harried and exhausted described most of the people Tessa knew. That included her female housemates, Holly and Caren, and her one male housemate, Sam, who lived in the other three units at the brownstone. The friends saw each other more at the hospital than they did at the house.
“I guess he is.” She did her best to stifle the bitter edge to her voice, but something must have come across.
“Do you know him?” Holly’s shoulder nudged hers.
“No.” Because it was true. The man she had thought she’d known had been nothing like the man he’d turned out to be. “No, I don’t know him. At all.”
It had been how long? A little over four years. Besides, he was married now, at least that’s what she’d heard.
A warm scent tickled her nose, just as a warning tingle lifted the fine hairs on her neck.
“I think ‘at all’ might be stretching the truth, don’t you think, Tess?” That voice. Mellow. Matching the half smile on the poster to a T. “Because I definitely know you.”
She wrenched her body around to face the newest threat, just as he held out his hand to Holly. “Clayton Matthews, Orthopedics, nice to meet you.”
Holly’s eyes widened as they flicked to meet hers, and then she accepted Clay’s proffered hand and murmured her own name and specialty. Tessa sent out a desperate plea to her housemate that was summarily ignored.
“Well, I need to get back to work,” her friend said, “before Langley takes me down. Again.”
The head of surgical residents, Gareth Langley didn’t suffer fools lightly, and somehow he and Holly had gotten off to a rocky start. Tessa steered clear of the man whenever possible.
Her housemate then slipped from between them and hurried down the hallway, blinking out of sight as she rounded the corner to the elevators. That left her alone with Clay. And his poster.
“Tessa, good to see you again. How are you?”
Really? That was the best he could do, after everything that had gone on between them? “Fine. You?”
“Surprised.” A flash of teeth accompanied that word. “I had no idea you were doing your residency at West Manhattan Saints.”
Didn’t he? Since West Manhattan was one of the biggest teaching hospitals in the city, how could he not realize this was where she’d wind up?
Unless he really had known and had come here to torment her.
Delusional, Tess. That’s what you are. He did not follow you to this hospital.
She decided to ignore his comment, nodding at the placard instead. “Nice likeness.”
The impulse to start counting days again winked through her head… this time in English. She fought the urge. And the picture was nice. It showed off his thick black hair, strong chin, those deep blue eyes that could slide over you and make you think you were the only person in the world.
Even when you weren’t.
At least it was only a head shot, because from the chest down he was no less mouthwatering than he’d been four years ago—something she was doing her damnedest not to dwell on.
He glanced at the picture. “You do what you have to. You should know that better than anyone.”
Yes, she did. Like continue working your heart out when you discovered your so-called free ride hadn’t actually been free at all. And that the man standing in front of her had known where things stood the whole time they’d shared classes… when they’d become an item. When he’d laid her down on the bed in his dorm room and become her very first lover.
Then had come the gifts. Small at first. Then more expensive, despite her protests.
It had all blown apart at her graduation ceremony when he’d handed her a flat jeweler’s box with a kiss and murmured congratulations. A half hour later she’d learned over a loudspeaker that the Wilma Grandon Memorial Scholarship had actually been named after Clay’s maternal grandmother and that Tessa had been its one and only recipient.
A thousand eyes had swiveled in her direction.
At that moment, she’d been transported back to her childhood bedroom and those sacks of used clothes. Only this was much, much worse. Once again, she was the poor immigrant girl from Brazil who had nothing. Waves of humiliation washed up her face and flooded her body. How could he do that to her?
The embarrassment ignited, turning into something else that scorched across her soul. Only this time the passion she’d inherited from her homeland turned everything inside her to a barren wasteland.
Tessa sent his parents a warm thank-you letter, expressing her gratitude. She sent Clay a completely