what I just said.”
Not really. Her smile never shifted.
The man needed to work on his communication skills. She wondered if he was just as obscure and distant with his patients when he spoke to them. Heart patients, she would think, would want to have their hands held, would want to be comforted and put at their ease. They would want to know that their surgeon cared. There was absolutely nothing about this exceedingly handsome, exceedingly sexy, reserved man that came close to even hinting that he cared about the people he operated on. Was it a protective device? A mechanism he employed so that he couldn’t get close to anyone, just in case they didn’t make it?
Focus on what’s important. You’ve got bills to pay, Kennon. “Thank you,” she told him. “I can start tomorrow. Tonight if you like.”
He shook his head. Her eagerness made him feel tired. It was almost as if her energy was growing only because it was sapping his.
“What I’d like,” he informed her, “is to go to my study and get back to the paper I was working on yesterday. The paper with the quickly approaching deadline.”
She backed away quickly. It did no good to get a client stirred up about anything except color schemes. “Of course. So when can I speak with you?” she asked so she could plan accordingly.
“You just did,” he pointed out, rising from the table. “This was very good,” he told her, as if he was measuring out each word carefully, taking them out of some invisible bank account and leaving a deficit in their wake.
Kennon watched him leave the room, heading for the stairs. She did her best not to let her frustration show in her face. No matter what he thought, she was really going to need to speak to him about the house. Decorating was a matter of personal taste—in this case, his. She wasn’t about to impose her own aesthetics on him. Aside from perhaps a fondness for blue, she had a feeling that their individual preferences would most likely clash fiercely.
“He doesn’t mean anything by it, Miss. He’s just hurting.”
Edna’s voice floated in from the living room, cutting into her thoughts. Giving the girls a quick, fleeting smile, Kennon cocked her head and looked around the side into the living room.
Edna was sitting up on the sofa, propped up exactly where she and the girls had left her. The plate Kennon had brought out to her earlier lay on top of the black-lacquered folding TV tray, which she’d brought with her expressly for Edna’s usage until the nanny was literally back on her feet.
After first encouraging the girls to have another serving, she left them to finish their dinner and crossed over to the living room and Edna.
“I understand,” Kennon said, lowering her voice so that it wouldn’t carry. “But I need to know what Dr. Sheffield wants me to do with the house besides just ‘fill’ it.”
The girls had heard her anyway. “I’ve got pictures,” Meghan volunteered happily.
Kennon’s attention instantly shifted. Something was far better than nothing. “You mean pictures of your old house?”
Ignoring her older sister’s pointed scowl, Meghan nodded. “Daddy said to pack away our pictures, but I wanted them with me so I could look at them. Mama gave me the album. I didn’t want to throw it away or lose it,” she explained.
Gutsy little thing, Kennon thought with admiration. Simon Sheffield seemed as if he was capable of casting a large shadow over his children. Secretly defying the man took courage.
“Daddy didn’t want you to throw it away, stupid,” Madelyn chided. “He just wanted to put everything we wanted to keep into that big storage place.” Seeing that her sister still didn’t grasp the concept of what she was saying, Madelyn explained what storage was. “It’s a big room for all our stuff, but it’s not in the house.”
Meghan didn’t look as if she believed what she was being told. “Then where is it?”
“Someplace else,” Madelyn told her, this time letting her shortened fuse show.
Pictures would definitely help, Kennon thought. But she wasn’t sure just how much they’d help until she had a basic question answered. Did the surgeon want to get away from everything that reminded him of the life he’d lost, or would he want to recapture that feeling? Or would it be a blending of old and new?
She definitely needed help in coming to the right conclusion.
“Why don’t you two carry your plates to the sink?” she suggested.
The two were instantly on their feet, grabbing up their plates as well as the silverware they’d used. Both acted as if bussing a table was a treat rather than a chore. Kennon couldn’t help wondering if the doctor knew how lucky he was.
She turned toward Edna. She’d given the girls the chore so that she could talk to the nanny privately. The questions in her head were multiplying. “You said that Dr. Sheffield was still hurting. Over his wife’s death?” Kennon guessed.
“Yes.”
She could see by the look in the older woman’s eyes that this was not an easy subject for her either. The doctor’s wife must have been a very special person to merit such fierce love and loyalty.
“He blames himself,” Edna told her simply.
“Why?” Kennon could think of only one reason. “Was he to blame?”
“No!” Edna cried with feeling. “It’s because she took his place.”
“His place?” Kennon echoed. She tried to make sense of the answer. “You mean like on a plane?”
Taking a deep breath, Edna started at the beginning. “Dr. Sheffield belongs to Doctors Without Borders. He joined because Dr. Nancy wanted him to. He was supposed to go to Somalia but at the last moment, his last triple-bypass patient took a turn for the worse a few hours after the surgery. The doctor didn’t want to leave the man in someone else’s hands, so Dr. Patterson—that was Mrs. Sheffield’s professional name—told him not to worry. She said she’d go in his place.”
“Dr. Sheffield’s wife was a cardiovascular surgeon, too?” Kennon asked incredulously.
Edna smiled with pride, tears shimmering in her eyes. “My Nancy was a general surgeon. In a pinch, she could perform almost any kind of regular surgery that needed doing.” Edna’s voice grew very quiet as she added, “When the tsunami hit, she was one of the ones who was swept away.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that,” Kennon told her, genuinely feeling the woman’s pain. But Edna had caught her attention with what she’d said before recounting the abilities of the doctor’s late wife. “Excuse me, you said ‘your Nancy …'” Kennon’s voice trailed off as she waited for a clarification. The girls’ nanny couldn’t mean that the surgeon’s wife was her daughter. Could she? Dr. Sheffield wouldn’t be treating his former mother-in-law like one of the servants, would he?
The tears that shone in Edna’s eyes threatened to come spilling out. She blinked them back with effort, but a few fell, sliding down her cheek.
“I raised that girl from the time she was an infant. Both
