met. He bore a remarkable resemblance to someone very close to her, but now wasn’t the time to get into personal details about her life. Soon, but not now.
“Hmm.” Badly shaken and acutely aware of both her burning face and Dudley’s curiosity, she tried to get her head back in the game. She’d confront the arrogant Dr. Thomas Bradshaw soon enough. Until then, she had a job to do and a role to play with her new boss. “Too bad no one ever taught him to be a kind human being.”
“He’s only kind on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said a new, male voice behind her. “So it looks like we’re all out of luck today. Jerome Stubbs, RN. I just wanted to meet the woman who confronted the dragon in his lair. And you are … ”
Bracing for the worst—she was wrung out already, and her first day at this godforsaken hospital wasn’t even halfway over yet—Lia turned to discover a grinning young man extending his hand to her. Relief hit her in a wave. Here, at last, was the friendly face of someone who didn’t appear to be a jerk or have an agenda.
So she shook his hand, discovering that Jerome had a firm grip, which was another sign of trustworthiness as far as she was concerned.
“Lia Taylor. Computer security expert. Nice to meet you.”
Jerome reached out and slung his arm around the shoulders of another man nearby, this one with dark skin and a mustache with goatee, scooping him into the conversation as well. “This is Dr. Lucien De Winter. Say hello to the dragon slayer, Lucien.”
They all laughed, including Dudley, and Lia felt some of the seething tension of the last few minutes leach away from her.
“He’s not so bad, you know,” Lucien told her. “Thomas has standards that are exceptionally high. But he’s not terrible once you get to know him. Bad, yeah, but not terrible.”
“I’m not convinced,” Lia said. “But you two seem perfectly nice. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“We know. We’re a delight,” Jerome assured her.
Still laughing, he headed back to the nurse’s station. Lucien, meanwhile, waved his goodbye and disappeared into the cafeteria. Lia turned back to Dudley and discovered him watching her with a glimmer of amused respect in his eyes.
“What?”
Dudley grinned. “You’re a piece of work. You should fit in just fine around here. If you don’t commit any more felonies, that is.”
Okay. She’d about had it with the male medical personnel around here.
“Don’t we have a tour to finish?” she reminded him.
Dudley checked his watch and then held his arm wide, gesturing her toward the cafeteria. “We might as well get some coffee while we’re here.”
“Great,” Lia agreed, but her troubled thoughts were already spinning in other directions.
Back to Thomas Bradshaw. Back to her son. Back to her dwindling options and growing desperation. Back to the twisty and uncertain path she’d chosen and would continue on until its end, whatever that end turned out to be.
She would walk this path, for Jalen.
Anything to save her son.
Chapter 2
“Hello, dearie.” Thomas’s receptionist looked up from her computer as he walked into the waiting area of his suite in the medical office building and shut the door against the dull roar outside. Sunny as usual, her blue eyes bright and her weathered, peaches-and-cream complexion flushed with the apparent thrill of another afternoon spent fielding patients for him, she slid her beaded bifocals down the bridge of her nose and gave him a critical once-over. “You haven’t eaten lunch again, have you? Determined to wither away to the size of a tadpole, I suppose. Well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make the dumb bastard drink, can you?”
Thomas had to smile. “Good to see you, too, Mrs. Brennan.” Though she’d been with him for the eight years since she stepped off the plane from Dublin to live with her daughter’s family here in Alexandria, and he knew her first name full well—Aileen—he’d never dared use it. It seemed disrespectful somehow, and he was pretty sure she’d drop kick his ass into next week if he ever tried it. He, on the other hand, had to submit to dearie, love, young Thomas or whatever other silly nickname that she felt like bestowing on him. Not that he minded. Much. “How was your weekend? How’s the grandbaby?”
“Oh, well, she’s the little heart of my heart, now, isn’t she? Working on one teeny little tooth in the front. Here’s a picture.”
She flipped around the digital frame on her desk, showing him a chubby and smiling green-eyed baby with yellow fuzz and a smear of what looked like spaghetti sauce across her face and, sure enough, the hint of a white tooth on her bottom gum.
Oh, man. What a beauty.
Staring at the child, he felt … a pang. Of … something.
Probably nothing more than hunger, not that he’d admit it to Eagle Eyes here.
“You’re very lucky,” he said.
“That I am.” She spun the frame back into place and nailed him with that concern again. “And don’t think that you’ve managed to distract me from your dietary habits, either, young man. Oh, is that coffee for me? Cream and two sugars?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
“I don’t think so.” He held the Starbucks cup just out of reach of her grasping hand, determined to get this bargain struck as soon as possible. “By accepting this beverage, you agree not to comment on my personal life. Deal?”
Mrs. Brennan glowered until her white brows ran straight across her forehead. “For how long?”
“The whole week.”
“Go on, then,” she said, snatching the cup out of his hand and drinking long and deep. “Nothing but trouble, you are. Here. Eat a protein bar. Get some nutrition.”
She tossed him a bar from the inner depths of her desk drawer. God alone knew what all she kept in there; one of these times he meant to ask for a walleye fishing lure just to see if she could produce it.
He caught it with gratitude because he was still hungry, although he felt compelled to point out a pertinent fact. “I’ll have you know I ate a turkey croissant on the elevator just now.”
She didn’t look remotely impressed. “A grown man like you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself calling that a meal. Eat the bar, and just say thanks.”
Well, she had him there.
“Thanks. I’m going to see how many calls I can make before the meeting at one.”
“Sign the letters on your desk for me.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” He started down the hallway, ready to collapse into his chair and rest for a minute. Every one of his thirty-six years was really starting to show. Used to be he
