never would have thought she’d be late.”
Dr. Aston? No, he wouldn’t have pictured her the type to be late either. She seemed much too uptight to be anything other than punctual. Unless something had come up with one of her tiny patients and then Ty could see the dedicated pediatrician blowing this celebration altogether. He’d be hard-pressed to name a more dedicated doctor.
“It’s so difficult to believe she and Brooke Aston are really sisters.”
He’d have to live in another country not to know who Brooke Aston was. The media loved her. The image of a blonde bombshell came to mind. Yeah, accepting that the two women came from the same DNA pool was difficult to believe.
“Brooke was supposed to have been here to cut the ribbon, but she caught a virus or something while volunteering at some charity event for sick children,” the blonde prattled on. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
From the things Ty had seen about the infamous senator’s daughter, he had a hard time envisioning her getting close enough to sick kids to have actually caught something from them.
“Maybe one of them was adopted,” he suggested to make polite conversation. With the publicity for the new wing, he’d heard about the family connection prior to this evening. As Eleanor didn’t make a bleep on his possibility radar, he hadn’t paid much attention to the hospital gossip.
But something about her irked him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was about her, just that he’d decided to steer clear.
“Oh, my word!”
At her gasp, Ty’s attention jerked back from thoughts of a woman who crept into his mind more often than a woman who didn’t make a bleep on his radar should to the OB nurse. Her gaze was fixed beyond him to the hallway leading into the new wing. He turned to see what she was looking at and found his own breath catching in his throat.
It took him only a moment to realize who he was looking at. Even then he had to do a double take before he could convince himself that he wasn’t wrong. But once he realized that it was really her, his chest tightened, making him gulp for much-needed oxygen.
“I don’t believe it,” the nurse next to him muttered. Neither did Ty.
He didn’t believe he’d totally missed that Dr. Eleanor Aston had been hiding a killer curvy body beneath those baggy scrubs she wore. Wow.
Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.
Hell, what was his possibility radar doing? He was not interested in Eleanor. Not in baggy scrubs or in a body-hugging red dress that ought to be labeled lethal. Not with her gorgeous brown eyes wide and uncertain rather than hidden behind her glasses as she faced the crowd. Not with her glossy black hair flowing loosely down her back rather than tightly pinned to her scalp.
Only he was and maybe he had been all along.
Bleep.
CHAPTER TWO
“I’M SORRY I’M LATE,” Eleanor apologized to the hospital CEO, to the hospital medical director, to the NICU director and several other hospital bigwigs whose titles she couldn’t quite recall. “I—I worked, and then I had to shower and change.” She glanced down at her barely there dress and way-too-exposed body as if that explained everything. “And then my sister had …”
She stopped, realizing she was rambling, realizing that they all stared at her as if she’d grown a second head and spoke in foreign tongue. Or maybe they were all staring at her too-ample bosom overflowing out of Brooke’s idea of a sick joke.
Eleanor couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t see any of their faces clearly. Which was probably a good thing because she was pretty sure disapproval marred their expressions. They’d never take her or her suggestions for the hospital seriously again.
“Dr. Aston, how do you feel about your father donating the money for the new wing?” A man poked a microphone in her face.
Bile pooled in her stomach. The press. She’d known she’d have to deal with them, both at the ribbon-cutting and at the reception afterward. She wanted to shrivel up and become invisible in the hope they’d go away and not notice her.
Fat chance of that when she was essentially the guest of honor.
Not her, really. Just Senator Cole Aston’s daughter.
Which technically she was, but if someone had told her she’d been accidentally swapped at birth, she’d have no trouble believing them as she was so different from her socialite mother, power-hungry father and mediadarling sister.
She much preferred being Dr. Eleanor Aston, who was someone she was proud to be most of the time.
She didn’t feel proud at the moment.
She felt awkward and uncomfortable and like she might throw up.
She looked at the reporter, wanted to be like Brooke and deliver a smooth, witty line about how proud she was of her father for making such a wonderful contribution to the hospital and community.
But she wasn’t Brooke and under the best of circumstances she wasn’t witty.
Half-naked and surrounded by people who’d once dubbed her “Jelly Ellie” didn’t come close to being the best of circumstances.
Why had the bane of her childhood reared its ugly head now? For years she’d kept that much-used media label out of her head. She wouldn’t let it back in, wouldn’t let the slurs back into her mind, wouldn’t let them degrade the woman she’d become. So she wasn’t a skinny Minny and never would be. She was average, of healthy weight and her curves were fairly toned thanks to the hours she spent in the gym each week. The press could get over their craze for too thin.
Thankfully, the hospital CEO grabbed her by her elbow and whisked her toward the ribbon that partitioned the new wing from the rest of the hospital. A big bright red ribbon that perfectly matched her dress. Had Brooke planned that? Probably. Her sister had an eye for detail.
“We’re already a little behind schedule.” The CEO didn’t actually say that it was her fault but she felt the weight of his implication all the same. He was getting his slam in on Dr. Eleanor Aston being late, but wasn’t going to say anything specific to Eleanor Aston, daughter of Senator Cole Aston. “So we’ll get the show on the road.”
Fine. The sooner they got this started, the sooner they’d finish, the sooner she could go home and try to figure out how she was ever going to face her coworkers again.
Wondering if everyone could see how her legs were shaking, Eleanor stood next to the CEO while he droned on and on about the hospital and what a blessing it was in the community.
Then he did something horrible. He turned to Eleanor to give a welcome-and-thank-you speech.
Immediately, the full-blown panic attack she’d been fighting most of the day took over. Her heart picked up pace, doubling in tempo. A hot sweat broke out on her skin, making her palms immediately feel sticky wet. Her tongue attached itself to the roof of her mouth and refused to budge.
She took a deep breath, reminded herself that the rapid pounding of her heart was just anxiety
