as his drive, his ambition and his tendency to run over anyone who stood in his way. Since his image routinely graced the covers of Time and Newsweek in waiting and exam rooms, she even knew what he looked like. She wouldn’t go quite as far as the early-twenty-something Michelle had in her sighing description of the man, but he was rather attractive—if one was drawn to the lean, chiseled type.
As for the body the impressionable nurse had described, when Alex, gowned and gloved, backed through the door of the surgical suite, all she could tell was that it was…long.
The familiar beep of the heart monitor underscored the quiet murmur of conversation as she approached the blue-draped form on the operating table. The trauma doctor and the anesthesiologist hovered at the head. At the other end, the surgical nurses and another assistant were setting up stainless-steel trays of barbaric-looking instruments that appeared more suitable for torture than healing.
The only exposed parts of the patient were the facial laceration Whitfield had already starting suturing and the thigh she would repair.
The thigh was what had her attention.
It was a mess.
“Ouch,” she whispered, and reached for the large plastic bottle of clear antibiotic wash Rita had anticipated she would want.
“Was he alone?” she heard Michelle ask.
Rita clamped a gauze pad with a hemostat, holding it ready. “You mean, was there a woman with him?”
“This suture’s too big.” Metal ticked softly against metal when the curved needle Whitfield tossed landed on a tray. “I need a one-point-three.”
Michelle was the float nurse, the one who moved about the room taking supplies and materials to and from the team members at the table. “I’m just curious,” she defended on her way to the supply cabinet a few paces away. “If he’s alone, he might appreciate a little extra TLC when he wakes up.”
“I’d give up that idea right now,” Alex’s assistant chided. “I’m sure he has someone waiting to give him all the TLC he needs. The man dates models.”
Paper crackled as Michelle peeled a small packet open and held it out. “Maybe so. But no one’s been able to get him near an altar yet. Maybe he’s tired of male-fantasy quality women and rich society types.”
The bushy-browed anesthesiologist snorted. “I doubt it.”
Whitfield held up the fine-threaded and curved suture, eyed it, and went back to work. “I don’t think he spends as much time running around as the press says he does. I read an article in Forbes that said he puts in sixteen-hour days. His latest thing is the high-tech market. And sailing,” he added, as he methodically stitched. “It’s his passion. That same article said he’s putting together a team to race in the next America’s Cup.”
Checking his patient’s vital signs on the monitors, the anesthesiologist tweaked the flow of gas keeping the man under discussion…under. “I thought it was rock climbing he was into. Didn’t he climb Mt. McKinley last year?”
“I’d heard that, too.” Reverence entered Whitfield’s voice. “The man never slows down. I don’t know which I envy more. His investment portfolio or his stamina. I hiked the Grand Canyon a few years ago, but I can’t imagine climbing a mountain.”
Michelle sighed. “I wonder what he’d planned to do next.”
“I hope it wasn’t anything he had his heart set on,” Alex murmured. “The only thing this guy’s going to be climbing for a while is the training stairs in the physical therapy department.”
Looking from the four-inch gash in his thigh, she critically eyed the X-ray on the monitor beside her to judge the position of the upper, unexposed break. The team was still talking, their voices low, but everything they said only made Chase Harrington sound more and more like a man who played as hard as he worked and who wouldn’t have anything left for a relationship even if someone did slow him down long enough to snag him.
No woman in her right mind would want to fall for a man like that. A woman needed a partner, someone to share with. Someone who cared enough to be there even when things got rough. Someone who wouldn’t walk away, leaving her to handle everything alone just when she needed him most.
She jerked her glance toward the head of the table, annoyed with herself for becoming distracted, displeased with the unwanted direction of her thoughts.
“Move that retractor higher. Perfect,” she murmured, pointedly turning her attention to debriding the open wound. “I need to cauterize these bleeders.”
Ian took his last stitch. “I’m ready to assist.”
“Would you like your music, Dr. Larson?” Rita asked her.
Alex usually liked to have music while she worked, preferably classical and mostly to keep from inadvertently humming whichever Disney tune her four-year-old son had plugged into the car stereo. But she declined the subliminal diversion tonight. As she set about the painstaking task of manipulating, drilling and pinning to stabilize the breaks, her only other thought was that Chase Harrington was going to slow down for a while, whether he liked the idea or not.
The surgery took over two hours. It took Alex another half hour to dictate nursing instructions and the surgical notes chronicling the procedure that, given the hour, she probably could have put off until morning.
She never put off anything when it came to her patients, though. It was the personal stuff she let slide—which was why her washing machine still leaked, why she hadn’t started the renovations on the potentially lovely old house she’d finally plunged in and bought last year. And why, she remembered, grimacing when she did, she was always running out of milk at home.
She’d meant to go to the grocery store after she’d picked up Tyler from child care, but they’d stopped at Hamburger Jack’s for dinner because Tyler had really, really needed the newest plastic race car that came with the kiddy meal and she’d flat forgotten about the milk.
Hoping she wouldn’t drive right past the Circle K on her way home and forget it again, she headed for the recovery room. If she hadn’t been up to her eyebrows in student loans and house and car payments, she’d have hired a personal assistant. Someone to tend to details like picking up the dry cleaning, paying bills and keeping the kitchen stocked with SpaghettiOs and Lean Cuisine.
She’d bet Chase Harrington had one.
She’d bet he had a whole bloody staff.
His long, lean body lay utterly still on one of the wheeled gurneys in the curtainless, utilitarian room. Tubes and monitor lines ran every which way, his body’s functions converted to spiking lines and digital numbers on screens and illuminated displays. The surgical drapes that had helped make him more of an anonymous procedure than a person were gone, replaced with a white thermal blanket that covered everything but one arm and his bandaged and braced leg.
Nodding to the nurse in green scrubs who’d just administered the painkiller she’d ordered, Alex stopped beside the gurney. A white gauze bandage covered his upper left cheekbone and a bruise had began to form beneath his left eye. Even battered, broken and with parts of him turning the color of a bing cherry, he was an undeniably attractive man. His features were chiseled, his nose narrow, his mouth sculpted and sensual. Dark eyebrows slashed above curves of spiky, soot-colored lashes. His hair
