style="font-size:15px;"> Exhausted, she staggered up the stairs to her loft. It was still light outside, which confused her. She squinted at her living room. How different it looked with sunlight streaming through the big window. On the street below throngs of people were heading toward chic restaurants and cafés. A glance at her watch told her why. It was five in the afternoon. People were meeting for after-work drinks or early dinners. The thought of socializing like that startled her somewhat. When she wasn’t pouring herself into work, she truly preferred to spend her time alone.
She wolfed down the fast food first, while reading one of three medical journals on the table in front of her. The hamburger and super-size fries were the perfect accompaniment to the article on a new and innovative artery replacement. Then, with the sun still shining in all the windows, she headed into her bathroom, still reading, nibbling on a croissant as she stripped for a mind-numbingly hot shower.
No one could ever say she couldn’t multi-task.
After her steaming shower, she padded naked back into her bedroom, heading directly for the bed, until she glanced at her answering machine, which was blinking.
Damn it, why did she have one of those things again?
Because the hospital administration, tired of not being able to get her when they needed, had insisted. With a sigh, she hit the message button. If it was work, she’d just roll over and die right now.
“Nicole, baby, it’s me. Mom,” her mother clarified in her cheerful, laughing voice, as if Nicole wouldn’t recognize the woman who’d been nagging her all her life. “Are you working too hard? Are you getting any rest? Are you eating right? Are you ever going to call me and put my mind to rest that my baby isn’t working herself into an early grave?”
Nicole sank to her bed and ran the towel over her short mop of hair—her idea of styling. Since she’d just called her mother last week, in fact, called every week, she refused to feel guilty.
“Once a week just isn’t enough, Nicole,” her mother said with her perfectly startling ability to read her daughter’s mind. “I want to hear you.”
Nicole rolled her eyes but a smile escaped anyway.
“Honey, listen. I’m making pot roast on Sunday. Your father called your sisters and everyone is coming—the husbands, the kids, everyone.”
Oh, good God. Nicole had three sisters, each of whom had a husband, the requisite minivan, the house in the burbs and at least two kids. The thought of that entire noisy, happy bunch all in one place made Nicole suddenly need another hamburger.
“So, honey, you have to come. We’ll expect you by four, and let me warn you, if you don’t show, I’ll…well, I’ll call you every single day for a week.”
As Nicole’s mother was quite possibly the bossiest, nosiest, most meddling, warm, loving person on the planet, Nicole believed her.
But everyone under one roof? Laughing, talking, happily arguing sisters, sticky toddlers, drooling babies, stinky diapers… She felt a headache coming on already. She loved her family, she did, but sometimes she felt as if she was an alien, plopped down in the middle of a planet where she didn’t belong. They were all so…normal. Something she’d never been. Despite her genius IQ, she couldn’t deal with people outside of medicine. It was so difficult for her to get out of her own head, she rarely knew what to say to people and some of the basic niceties escaped her. That her family loved her anyway, even though she was intensely introverted, was a strange and odd miracle she tried not to think about too often.
“So, we’ll see you Sunday,” her mom said as if it’d been decided. “It’ll be fun to be all together.”
Fun wasn’t quite the word Nicole would have come up with. Maybe she’d have work. Yeah, that was it, she could add a shift and—
“Love you, baby.”
Ah, hell. Sunday it was.
Still naked, she plopped on the bed. It only took two pillows over her head and approximately twenty seconds for sleep to conquer her the same way she’d conquered her world.
She dreamed. She would have thought she’d be haunted by the blood of her second surgery that day. A patient had burst an artery and by the time she’d gotten everything under control she’d been standing in a sea of red.
But blessedly she’d left that behind at the hospital. Instead, in dreamland, she was two years old again, and memorizing the book of presidents her parents had kept on the coffee table. For fun, she’d recite them backwards to her hotshot, know-it-all sisters Annie and Emma.
It had been their first inkling that Nicole was going to be different.
The dream shifted and she was six, helping Emma with her seventh-grade algebra.
At twelve, she’d helped Annie with her PSAT testing. A genius, were the whispers around her. Off-the-scale IQ, they said. A prodigy.
At twelve, Nicole should have been into lip gloss, pop bands and boys. Instead she’d been fascinated by science. She operated on frogs. She dissected bugs.
Yet kids her own age remained a mystery to her, a complete mystery.
And now that she was grown up, she was still different. She should have learned to deal with others by now. Learned to be a social creature, well rounded and defined.
But the reality was that she’d rarely dated and had no idea how to do anything but heal. It was what she was. Who she was. A doctor.
Nothing else.
So why did the next dream involve one tall, dark and sexy Irish architect with a killer smile and eyes that made her yearn for something completely out of her reach?
Turning over, she sank back into an exhausted and dreamless slumber.
* * *
“WAKE UP, Nicole, you’re scaring me.”
Nicole snuggled more deeply beneath her covers. “Go away, Mom, I don’t have school today.”
“I had better not look anything like a woman old enough to be your mother.”
Nicole jerked her eyes open, heart pounding. Okay, good, she was home. The sun was shining again, how annoying.
And Taylor sat on her bed, looking as stunningly beautiful and elegant as ever.
With a groan, Nicole shut her eyes again. “I didn’t help you with the engagement party plans, right?”
“No, but I forgive you because you’re going to reschedule. I brought you breakfast.”
Nicole smelled something delicious. She cracked open an eye and saw a tray filled with mouthwatering food.
“I should tell you—as if you couldn’t guess—I didn’t cook this. Suzanne’s catering a big brunch this morning and made this up for us. You frightened the hell out of me, not answering your door. You never even heard me calling for you like a banshee, and we all know I don’t like to sound like a banshee. Who sleeps like that?”
Nicole blinked. “Well…”
“You’ve
