was using this corridor only as a shortcut to the conference room, not to circumvent the hospital chapel.
The conference room was dead ahead. Money for the hospital—for her hospital—was at stake, but she knew very little about this research project. If the study was failing to show results, it could be canceled. They’d lose over a million in funding. That much, she’d been able to learn in the hour since her administrative assistant had told her this meeting was on her morning’s schedule.
She was going to have to think fast to keep up with the representative from Plaine Labs International who’d come to hear the status of the study being conducted at West Central.
Is it west or is it central? You can’t be both.
She wouldn’t have time for memories.
Thank God.
Chapter Two
Braden tapped his fingers impatiently on the conference room’s table while a senior resident fumbled with the projector for her laptop. She’d told him three times that Dr. Montgomery, Braden’s former faculty adviser, had asked her to present the study’s midpoint data.
When the laptop’s screen was finally, successfully projected on the wall, Braden took advantage of that awkward moment before the young doctor clicked on the icon that would start the slide show. He’d become an expert at gathering all kinds of intelligence in those seconds. File names that looked personal indicated that any PLI-provided laptops were not being used strictly for research. The name of any file often indicated how many versions existed. Always, Braden would note the amount of total slides before the first one ballooned up to fill the full screen—in this case, slide one of forty-three.
Forty-three.
Death by PowerPoint. It looked as though this resident planned to make it a slow, painful death.
Braden would cut it short after a polite amount of slides had passed. He’d already received the raw data from the midpoint of this study. He’d done the statistical analysis himself. While there was some trend toward the treatment group having a better outcome than the placebo group, there was no statistical difference. Plaine Labs International was not going to sink another 1.2 million dollars and another eighteen months of time into this study, not with such weak results at the midpoint.
It was a shame, because Braden had a soft spot in his heart for the subject: a new medicine for migraines, something his father had suffered from. The man had been a force to be reckoned with, but Braden had been awed as a child at seeing his indefatigable father laid low within moments of a migraine’s onset. This particular molecule wasn’t going to work, though. It was time for PLI to cut its losses and move on.
Time to kill someone’s dream.
The door behind him opened with a hard push, and the PowerPoint physician looked up from her laptop and exhaled in relief. “Ah, Dr. Donnoli is here—our new department chair. She’ll be able to field any questions after the presentation, I’m sure.”
Dr. Donnoli? Dr. Donnoli was in West Central Texas Hospital? It couldn’t be. She was in Washington, D.C., adding more impressive credentials to her curriculum vitae. He knew, because he knew where all the key research physicians in America were. But he swiveled his chair to look, and it was her.
The beautiful-est girl in the world.
Damn it all to hell.
* * *
Lana crossed the beige carpet to the conference table, taking care to walk as if she were as confident as she hoped she looked in her high heels and her dark blue coat dress.
“Dr. Donnoli?” A young woman in a lab coat addressed her. “Would you like to make the presentation to Mr. MacDowell?”
MacDowell? Lana’s gaze darted from the woman to the man in the dark suit. He’d been sitting with his back to the door when she’d walked in, but now he was facing her. Braden MacDowell. Her Braden MacDowell.
For a moment, she was frozen. Confused. It was as if being in this hospital had not only refreshed all her memories, but actually conjured her ex-fiancé in the flesh. Quite a magic trick—an unwelcome, unwanted trick of the mind.
Her administrative assistant, a compact ball of energy one would hesitate to label “elderly,” burst through the door behind her.
“Sorry I’m late,” the gray-haired Myrna said. “Oh, good. I see you’ve got that projector working.”
Lana barely processed the words. Every brain cell was occupied with Braden. He looked just the same. It took only one glance for her to recall the feel of his skin, every angle of his jaw, the texture of his dark hair sliding through her fingers. Myrna kept talking as she placed notepads around the table. Lana was grateful for the valuable seconds it provided to regain her composure.
“You must be the president of Plaine Labs,” Myrna was saying, making small talk and saving Lana. “Cheryl called me this morning to say you’d be here. I didn’t realize you were already in the building. Welcome to our conference center. May I introduce our new chairperson, Dr. Lana Donnoli?” She gestured at Lana. “Dr. Donnoli, this is Mr. Braden MacDowell.”
Braden stood and nodded at Lana politely. Impersonally. How did he manage it? Was she nothing more than a past memory, an old college girlfriend?
“Dr. Donnoli,” he said, and the bored formality in his voice went straight to her heart. And it hurt.
That he could still have that kind of power over her, six years after leaving her behind, made her angry. She extended her hand to shake his, determined to show him the professional she was, not the heartbroken girl he probably remembered sobbing over a phone line.
“Mr. MacDowell?” she asked, with a skeptical lift of her brow. “Isn’t it Dr. MacDowell?”
“I don’t use the title.” He shook her hand firmly, once, and let go.
“Why not? You earned that much.” She knew she’d made it sound as if it wasn’t much at all.
“I’m well aware that it’s an academic title only. Since I don’t practice medicine, I don’t choose to use it.”
Myrna stopped in the middle of placing her pens. “Do you two already know each other?” She sounded a little confused, and a little hopeful.
“Not at all,” Lana said tersely at the same time that Braden said, “Very well.”
“Ah,” Myrna said, looking confused but obviously too smart to explore that topic further. Instead, she gestured toward the senior resident, who was standing by her laptop, finger poised on the enter key. “This is Dr. Everson. She joined our department this month.”
“My card,” Braden said, offering Lana a small rectangle of pressed linen paper.
“Thank you.” She should have offered him her card, of course, but she hadn’t had a chance to get any made. Instead, she asked the very young-looking Dr. Everson to please begin the presentation and took a seat directly across from Braden, on the opposite side of the narrow table.
As the resident began with slide number one,
