paused at the hotel lobby door. The look in that woman’s eyes as the elevator door closed stayed with him. As well as that huddled-shoulder stance that he saw so often in women when they were feeling shy or insecure. A gut instinct told him that he should have pressed further, made sure that she was all right. But she had said no. Any more interference would have been seen as aggressive.
Certainly the sour looks from that other man told him to back off. Michael’s lips curled. He knew the type: a real sleazebag out for a good time. Another reason why he didn’t feel comfortable leaving a seemingly naive girl with him. There was something about her. Not beauty. It was a shame about her chin…. She had lovely, silent-movie-queen eyes that spoke for her. And they spoke eloquently of an innocence that men like that creep preyed on. And that men like him defended.
Michael blew a steady, calming stream of air from his lips, trying to shake off the guilty feeling. She’d said no, he reminded himself. These days women knew their own minds and didn’t appreciate unasked-for chivalry.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” he muttered, closing the case in his mind and pushing open the glass doors.
He stepped straight into a frigid blast of wind that gusted from Lake Michigan. It took his breath away and whipped his long hair back from his forehead.
“Damn this Chicago weather,” he cursed. The Windy City was aptly nicknamed, and this close to the lake, the gusts were strong enough to push along even a man as big as he. He’d never get used to it. Michael hunched his shoulders, turned up his collar and rammed his hands into his pockets before joining those few foolhardy enough to walk the sidewalks this arctic night. He thought of the warm breezes of California and fingered the envelope in his pocket.
Michael quickened his pace to Michigan Avenue where, with luck and a piercing whistle, he might catch a cab. He’d just ducked out of a small wedding reception for a fellow architect at city hall. Frank and his bride seemed so happy, so sure of their decision to spend the rest of their lives together. Their happiness left him feeling hollow, reminding him how empty his own life was.
Michael fingered again the envelope in his coat pocket. He had received the letter from his father early today and carried it with him, rereading it several times. His father hadn’t written him more than three letters in his whole life. Most of the letters he’d received were from his mother. Her English was better, and she would kindly include his father’s opinions. “Your father and I are proud of your good work at school.” “Your father sends you his love.” “Your father and I wonder why you don’t come home more often.”
His father, however, rarely lifted a pen to write a letter. Michael never judged him harshly for it. Truth was, he understood that his father was too exhausted from lifting a shovel all day to even consider lifting a pen into his large worn and callused hands.
He had received his first letter when an essay he’d written on the Constitution was published in the local newspaper. The second when he graduated from college. “A college graduate!” his mother had crooned, her breast as puffed as a hen’s. The first ever from his family. Michael’s entire extended family had gathered to celebrate the occasion at a noisy fiesta with plenty of singing and laughing. He remembered with chagrin the suspicious glares from the “gringos” neighbors. And now this one. In this third letter, his father, Luis, had called Michael home.
“My hands,” he had written in his own hand. “They are bad now. They no do what they must do. And the customers, they are not happy. So many young men come with new ideas. Ha! They know nothing of the soil. Of the plants. But they draw pretty pictures for los gringos who know even less nothing than they do.
“I need you now,” he wrote, underlining now. “To help the family. You know how to draw those fancy pictures. You know how to talk the English good. Most of all, you know the soil. I need you. Tu. Miguel. My son.”
Michael shivered as a cold blast shot down his spine. Mi padre. He loved his father. And he missed him. Yet his father was asking him to give up his career as an architect to return to California and the landscape business that his father had started thirty years earlier. Asking him to return to his roots.
Michael closed his eyes against the memories. Roots. The soil. Black dirt under his nails. He ground his teeth. What did he want with roots? He was an architect. He built skyscrapers. Madre de Dios, he swore under his breath. He strove higher and higher into the sky. Miles—years—away from the soil. Away from the time he was scurrilously considered just another spic with a shovel. Wasn’t that why he’d left California? To sever the roots? To break with the culture that grounded him?
Michael lifted his chin and laughed loudly into the bitter wind. Fool, he was! Such roots could not be severed. He would return. He knew it. Like poison ivy, the roots of his family were invasive. They dug too deep. No matter how he fought to deny it, he was Mexican. It was his culture, his blood. It was who he was. And, more, he was a Mexican man. Machismo. A Mexican male could not be weak or cry about his pain. Machismo required that he honor his father. Machismo demanded that he remember the family.
To remember it all.
The Michigan Avenue office of Dr. Jacob Harmon was as glittering and impressive as his reputation. The waiting room had the cool, smooth elegance of crystal, and as with fine crystal, Charlotte felt afraid to touch anything. But her eyes took in everything: the forced paperwhites in a pinecone basket, the lovely petit point upholstery, and a pungent, silvery eucalyptus wreath for the holidays. Even the artwork was original, not like the cheap prints and peeling posters on the walls at McNally and Kopp. It made her feel that she’d come to the right place. She held her hands tight against her thighs, not willing to so much as move a single up-to-date magazine in the plastic-protected covering from its precisely ordered line. In the corner, her blue wool coat hung in shabby contrast to the other luxurious ones. It embarrassed her just to look at it.
“Miss Godowski? Come this way, please.”
The stunning brunette nurse led her to a small, shell pink examining room to take a thorough medical history. Then she was transferred across the dove gray carpet and left to roost in Dr. Harmon’s office. She thought all the glass and shiny chrome was rather cold and hoped it didn’t reflect the doctor’s personality. Charlotte was exceedingly nervous about the interview. She knew that the doctor’s psychological exam was as important as the physical one in determining if she was fit for surgery. And she just had to have the surgery….
After what felt an interminable wait, the office door swung open and Dr. Harmon came sweeping into the room with a billowing white coat, followed by another model-perfect nurse. Charlotte’s mouth fell open. The doctor appeared more a boy. He was short, small boned, with amazingly smooth skin for a grown man. How old could he be? she wondered. More to the point, how many operations had he done?
Dr. Harmon delivered a quick, piercing look as he passed her, then moved to sit behind the huge desk that only dwarfed him further. The nurse appeared attentive, even fawning, to Dr. Harmon as she presented him with the chart and a coquettish smile. She left without so much as a nod of acknowledgment to Charlotte.
Charlotte’s heart began to pound. She slunk far back into the chair and peered out at Dr. Harmon with a guarded expression. He appeared unaware that she was even in the office. He leaned far back in his leather chair and began reading her chart, flicking pages with sharp, quick precision. She thought of a sparrow picking at seed. Good hands for a plastic surgeon, Charlotte decided.
Gradually he lowered the manila chart and raised his gaze. It was as though a searchlight had been flicked on and was scouring every inch of her eyes, her nose, her lips and the awkward line of her deformed jaw. Charlotte didn’t feel embarrassed
