The Doctor's Former Fiancee

He hung up, then rubbed his forehead, mostly to break eye contact with his mother.

“That was Lana again?” she asked. “Be nice. I told you that girl was crazy about you.”

“That girl is not crazy about me. That girl is only speaking to me because she is the head of research at West Central.”

“Since when?”

“Since this morning, apparently. I pulled a million dollars of funding from her today. A million dollars can make people desperate, Mom, and if she wanted to create problems for me with the FDA, she could.”

“She won’t.”

“I’m glad you have such confidence in my ex-fiancée.”

His mother narrowed her eyes.

He hoped he looked innocent. No, Ma, I wasn’t being a smart aleck. Honest.

Braden tried again. “Even if Lana keeps your involvement a secret to the grave, I still need to know why you were being given a migraine medicine.”

“I don’t get migraines.”

“Exactly. The salient question is, what do you get that Dr. Montgomery was trying to treat?”

“I know you are a doctor, but I’ll tell you what I’ve told your brothers. You are not my doctor.”

Despite the topic, his mother was smiling—or rather, trying not to smile. The corners of her mouth were twitching.

Braden’s bafflement warred with impatience. “What is amusing you? This is serious.”

“If you say so, son. Lana Donnoli is back in town, and you want to bring a guest out here for Valentine’s weekend.”

“Not Lana.” Good God, not Lana. Not that heartbreak. His mother had it all wrong.

“Grab a dish towel.” She started scrubbing the pan she’d used to make his chicken-fried steak. “Better yet, go on back to town and see your Lana.”

“It’s business. She can wait until morning.”

She only smiled. “No son of mine would ever be so rude to a lady over the phone.”

“I wasn’t rude. I was businesslike.”

“I’m sorry to spoil your surprise, but I can put two and two together. Lana calls, and you leave the room. When I follow, you pretend to be angry with her and hang up. Tonight, you can’t stay at the ranch, because you are sleeping at the Four Seasons. Here, give me that dish towel and go on to your hotel.”

“No, that isn’t—”

The mother who was supposedly so frail put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a shove toward the door. “I’m delighted that you and Lana are back together. Valentine’s will be wonderful. You don’t have to tell her I figured it out. I’ll act surprised.”

“You’ll be surprised because Lana Donnoli is not the woman I’m planning on marrying.”

She escorted him all the way to the front door, forcing him out of his own childhood home in the gentlest way possible. “Marriage? You’re going to announce a marriage? Sweetheart, that is so romantic. Now go. Lana’s waiting, and I can’t stand to listen to another of these fake fights on your phone.”

Braden realized his phone was ringing. He checked the screen. It was indeed Lana. He let it ring. She could chat with his assistant this time.

“Mom, don’t get your hopes up like this. You’ll be disappointed.”

“Right. Mum’s the word. I’ll be surprised, I promise. Good night, sweetheart.”

Braden had barely gotten his rental car started when his phone vibrated again. It was laughable that his mother thought he might need to fake a phone fight with Lana. They’d had plenty of real ones, burning up the line from Boston to Austin, back in the day. He waited for the fifth ring that would cue his assistant to answer, then enjoyed the silence while he began the long drive down the ranch road.

The phone rang again within seconds.

For the love of—

His emotions were engaged now. This negotiation was breaking down. Phone calls with Lana always had been disastrous.

He answered without taking his eyes off the long ranch road. “Give it a rest, Lana. I’m not going to argue with you all night. Those days are long over.”

There was a moment of silence, which Braden imagined meant Lana was suitably subdued by his show of temper.

A woman’s voice finally spoke. “Lana? Who is Lana?”

Braden let his eyes flick to the screen, although it was unnecessary. Of course, the name and thumbnail photo of Claudia St. James were displayed in full color.

“I’m sorry, Claudia. It was nothing. A business call.”

“It didn’t sound like a business call. Who is Lana?”

Braden sighed in defeat. The drive into Austin was going to be a long one.

Chapter Six

The patients enrolled in PLI’s migraine study might not suffer from high blood pressure, but Lana was pretty sure hers was going through the roof.

She glared at her phone’s screen. Braden wasn’t going to return her last call, obviously. His executive assistant had sounded excruciatingly cool and competent, so Lana knew her message hadn’t been lost. Braden’s workday was apparently over, although his assistant’s obviously was not. Poor woman.

Well, Lana was no slave driver. She wasn’t going to call her own assistant this late at night and demand that Myrna rearrange her schedule to be here at eight in the morning, no matter what Braden demanded. Her blood pressure hiked up another millimeter just thinking about it.

She ought to lock the office door and go home. Braden could show up tomorrow at the time of his choosing, but she wouldn’t be here. He could stew in the hallway, calling her number in vain. Since not-for-profit hospitals didn’t provide their department chairs with twenty-four-hour assistants like Braden had, he’d be stuck listening to her voice mail. Even better.

The whole scenario sounded wonderfully vengeful—but Lana knew it was a fantasy. She wouldn’t do it. This wasn’t about her personal irritation; this was about patients who were suffering.

She had some sleuthing to do, stat. It was nearing midnight, and she needed to find a link between Marion MacDowell and the other enrollees. All patients had listed their other medical conditions upon entering the study. Lana had sorted those lists every which way, but nothing striking had appeared, no similarities in secondary diseases beyond the migraines.

Her stomach growled. She’d intended to battle her exhaustion only long enough to call Braden, set up a future appointment and then go home. Her new apartment was full of cardboard boxes. The headboard and rails of her bed were propped against the wall, unassembled, so her mattress was flat on the floor. Her great ambition for the evening had been to locate the box containing her microwave oven, heat up an organic frozen dinner and then flop onto that mattress for the night.

Instead, Braden had insisted that West Central return its data to PLI. She would have to wait one more day before giving in to her exhaustion. Patients were counting on her.

The rush of adrenaline was welcome. Knowing she’d be seeing Braden again in a matter of hours made her feel energized. Not because she was looking forward to seeing him, but because she was in competition with him. She had to beat Braden at his own game. The challenge was better than coffee.

“All right, Dr. Montgomery,” she murmured into the silence of her office. “Why did you put Marion MacDowell on this drug?”

She tapped her pencil at the corner of her mouth. Perhaps she needed to look at Marion MacDowell’s involvement from a fresh angle. The medicine may have been designed to treat migraines, but an unusual side effect might have been reported. Sometimes, a prospective medicine had a side effect that turned out to be more beneficial than the original effect. A prospective asthma medicine, for example, might unexpectedly cause low blood sugar and become a diabetes medication. It was a rare occurrence, but it happened.

Perhaps Dr. Montgomery had noticed that PLI’s migraine drug was causing an unusual but beneficial side effect, one that could benefit Marion MacDowell in some way.

It was a long shot.

It was also nearly midnight.

Lana started looking for frequently reported side effects of the study. At least one hundred patients had been enrolled during the six months before Dr. Montgomery had given the last slot to his friend. Lana began sorting her list again, this time by date of enrollment, then copying the side-effect data for only the first six months’ worth of patients, then...

An hour later, she glared at her still-dark phone screen. So far, she’d found nothing. At this rate, it was quite possible she’d still be here at eight in the morning, still wearing the same dress from today’s meeting. Braden would know she’d pulled an all-nighter.

She doubted he’d be shocked. They’d pulled more all-nighters together than she could count during residency. Having Braden by her side had made those years an adventure. They’d met every challenge together. Lana and Braden versus the evil attending physicians. Lana and Braden conquering forty-eight-hour workdays. Lana and Braden slipping into the storage room.

She closed her eyes for a moment and let her head rest on the tall back of Dr. Montgomery’s oversized leather desk chair. When she opened her eyes again, Braden was there, standing on the other side of the glass door, framed by pink paper hearts.

She was dreaming.

Braden opened the door without knocking.

She was not dreaming.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Lana stood immediately. Her pumps had been kicked off long ago, so jumping to her feet didn’t do much for her, size-wise. Braden walked past Myrna’s desk to stand before hers, hands on his hips, glaring down at her as if she were a disobedient child.

She was no child. “This is my office. I’m the one who gets to ask what you’re doing here.”

“I was just walking past the door,” he said, frowning at her. “Your lights were on.”

“At midnight, you just happened to be walking down this hallway of West Central?”

“Yes. My brother had a late dinner break, so I came by to see him.” He crossed his arms over his chest. He’d changed into a soft knit shirt and jeans, she noticed, the same clothes he’d always preferred, even when she and all the other residents were living in scrubs.

Jeans or not, he hadn’t come to pull an all-nighter by her side. He was having dinner with his brother. It wasn’t his job to find a reason to keep pentagab viable. He got to sit back, relax and wait for someone else to make the case for him.

Must be nice.

“While you were having dinner, I was working on pentagab.”

He only raised one eyebrow at her. “That’s not a particularly wise way to spend your time. The drug is dead.”

The man was a broken record on the subject. She threw her hands up. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about why your mother was taking it?”

“You’re investigating my mother right now?”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.