LITMIR.BIZ

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doesn’t make anything easy.”

      He smiled then. “No, I suppose she doesn’t.” He had to be getting back. He had a feeling the tapes he’d left on the front seat of his car were melting. “Well, Dr. Pollack, if there’s nothing else—”

      “But there is,” Sheila told him, interrupting. “She’s asking for you.”

      Chapter Four

      Stupid to feel nervous like this.

      Sebastian upbraided himself as he walked down the corridor to Stephanie’s room. He’d entered hundreds of hospital rooms. None, not even his first one as a medical student, had ever made his palms feel as if they were damp.

      Unconsciously drawing in a deep breath, Sebastian pushed the door open and peered in. Despite the summons, he was hoping that she was asleep. That way, he could say he had stopped by as asked, but would be off the hook.

      She was awake.

      The hook sank in a little deeper.

      “Hi.” As he said it, the single-word greeting sounded particularly lame and hollow to him, given their history and what they’d just gone through together.

      She didn’t think he’d come, even though she’d asked Sheila to page him for her. She thought that he’d just leave the hospital. Now that he was here, she wasn’t sure what to say, or even why she was putting herself through this.

      Too late now for second thoughts, she told herself.

      Stephanie pressed the remote attached to her bed and the upper portion began to rise, allowing her to look straight at him instead of up.

      “Hi.”

      He nodded over his shoulder toward the corridor beyond the closed door. “Met your doctor. She said you wanted to see me.”

      The irony of the words struck her. More than you’d ever know, Sebastian. More than you’d ever even begin to guess.

      Silence played through the room, drawing itself out, encompassing both of them.

      There were hundreds of questions crowding her head, and a hundred more accusations and recriminations beyond that. But she knew the futility of re-hashing things. Nothing would be settled by bringing up the past and nothing would be resolved. What was done was done. He’d made his choice seven years ago, left her after her father had made it apparent to him, her father had told her, that she and the family money were not a package deal. Her father went to great lengths to make sure she was painfully aware of that. That Sebastian had left her because she would no longer be in his will.

      Maybe that was why there was such a schism between her and her father now.

      Sebastian was waiting for her to say something. Manners were important in the world she came from. Outward badges of breeding that hid a myriad of blemishes, she thought cynically.

      Stephanie said the most logical thing that came to mind.

      “I didn’t get a chance to say thank you for what you did.”

      Sebastian shoved his hands into his front pockets. His degree, the long, hard years spent earning it as well as the respect of his peers in the medical profession, all fell mysteriously away. For a second, he was just Sebastian Caine again, a seventeen-year-old senior from the wrong side of the tracks, way out of his league by trying to strike up a conversation with the daughter of one of the most well-known lawyers in the state. Never mind that she was his friend’s sister. His mouth had turned to cotton just looking at her.

      A little like now, he thought.

      All he’d had then to see him through was his bravado. That, and an attraction so strong, he couldn’t even breathe when he was in the same vicinity as Stephanie.

      Sebastian dug deeper now, telling himself he was a fool for the momentary jolt of insecurity. He’d come a very long way since then. He’d made something of his life, not wasted it away in the pursuit of some meaningless job the way her father had predicted.

      In an odd sort of way, he supposed he had her father to thank for all that, for becoming the doctor he was now. It was the image of Carlton Yarbourough’s smirking face that had goaded him into meeting challenge after challenge long after he had ceased to willingly go out tilting at windmills. It had been his determination to show the snide bastard up that had made him endure the spirit-draining schedule of holding down two jobs and attending medical school, all on next to no sleep.

      Funny how things turned out sometimes. The man who had clearly hated him had become one of the reasons he had attained his goals.

      The westerly oriented room embraced the sunlight that spilled into it. Sebastian took another step into the room. Another step closer to her.

      “I’m a doctor. If I stumble across a woman giving birth, it’s my job to stop and help her. It’s clearly spelled out in the Hippocratic oath,” he added.

      She couldn’t help the smile that came to her lips. “Same eloquent way of saying things, I see.”

      He shrugged carelessly, looking away. The woman had just given birth and wasn’t supposed to look enticing in any manner, shape or form. So why did she? “Yeah, well, can’t expect much from a guy dragged up on the wrong side of the tracks, now can you?”

      She looked at him, trying to still the numbing pain his cold tone had suddenly generated within her. He’d always been a brooding soul, but not like this. When had he become so bitter?

      “I always did,” she told him quietly. And she had. Expected great things of him. Which was why having him abandon her without a word of explanation had been so devastating to her.

      He laughed shortly. She lied well, he thought. In the end, if they had stayed together, it would have been just like her father said, her soul squashed by a life of deprivation. “Well, that would have placed you in the minority.”

      She was trying very hard not to let her emotions into this. “I don’t think so.”

      Sebastian looked at her and felt that old feeling wash over him. The one that reduced him in stature and strength. He wasn’t going to stay and get pulled in by those huge blue eyes of hers. Wasn’t going to stand here, looking at her mouth form words and wishing he could silence it with his own.

      He’d only be making himself crazy.

      Slowly, he began backing away toward the door. “Look, I’ve got to be going.” He thought of the initial errand that had caused their paths to cross. “There’re videotapes dissolving in my front seat.” His hand was on the door. “Glad you’re okay.”

      He left before she had a chance to say she was sorry to see that she couldn’t say the same for him.

      When had he returned to Bedford? How long had he been walking the streets, driving the roads, without letting her know he was here?

      Loneliness blanketed her.

      Suddenly feeling very, very tired, Stephanie closed her eyes and sank back into her pillow as she slowly lowered the bed down again.

      “Did they move the video place to Seattle?” Geraldine Caine’s teasing voice reached Sebastian just as he let himself into the house.

      Pocketing his key, he turned toward the family room and watched her approaching. Something sad and angry twisted inside of him as he saw her leaning so heavily on the cane that never seemed to leave her side now. He couldn’t help remembering the way this bright, vibrant woman had initially encouraged his love of track and field sports by jogging alongside him when he was just a boy.

      Now all that seemed left of that woman was her wide smile and that brilliant sparkle in her eyes. Except that right now she looked worried. That was his fault, he thought with a prick of guilt. He knew she was trying not to show just how concerned she must have grown. Being a good mother in her book meant sublimating her own needs, her own fears and putting his life first. It was the way she had always operated. He’d

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