The Wilders

Where was she going with this, he wondered. And why did she have to look so damn attractive going there? “So I hear.”

“You car had snow all around it this morning—as if it hadn’t been moved,” she said, explaining how she’d come to her conclusion.

“Very observant.” Peter looked at her for a long moment, wondering whether to be amused or annoyed.

She smiled and something definitely responded within him. He vaguely recognized what was going on. This wasn’t good, he thought.

“Look, Dr. Wilder, let’s talk openly. What will it take to get you to listen to arguments for the other side?”

All around the table, people had begun to return to their seats, drawn in by the verbal duel.

He tried to make it as clear to her as he could. “You can’t possibly tell me anything about NHC’s motives that I don’t already know.”

Oh yes she could, Bethany thought. She had access to the latest studies, something she highly doubted this throwback bothered with. “There are statistics, Dr. Wilder.”

He waved her words away with an impatient hand. “I deal in patients, Ms. Holloway, not statistics.”

“Patients make up the statistics, Doctor,” she insisted, and felt color rising in her cheeks. “Where do you think they come from?”

He banked down his impatience. The woman probably didn’t know any better. Wiser people than she had been led astray by the hocus-pocus of numbers if they were juggled just right.

“Ms. Holloway,” he began in a patient, quiet voice, “statistics are very flexible. In the hands of someone clever, they can be bent to support almost anything. The good done by a bloated, fat-cat conglomerate, for instance.”

Her eyes blazed, reminding him, he suddenly realized, of Lisa. Of the woman he’d once thought—no, knew—he’d been in love with. The one he’d made plans to spend the rest of his life with. The one who’d left him in his senior year for a medical student who was “a better prospect” because once Steven graduated, he was slated to join his father’s lucrative Manhattan practice.

A chill worked its way down his spine as the realization took root. Bethany Holloway had the same coloring, the same full lips, the same slender figure.

And the same take-no-prisoners ambition, he thought.

“Everyone I know at the hospital thinks that you’re this kind, gentle, understanding man,” she retorted. “So far, I’m not convinced they’re right.”

At that moment, the silence in the room was almost deafening.

And then Peter said quietly and with no emotion, “I have no desire to convince you about anything that has to do with me, Ms. Holloway.”

But he knew it was a lie. What people thought of him did matter to him. He didn’t like being thought of in a bad light. It bothered him.

Bothered him, too, that the sensual fragrance she always wore was really filling up his head, undermining his senses. It gave her an unfair advantage because it made him think of her during the course of the day when his mind was supposed to be on other things. And then his mind would wander. Wander in directions he was determined not to take. Not with her.

Where was all this coming from? Peter silently demanded. He was arguing to preserve the hospital, not fantasizing about his opponent. He wanted to save the place that had been a second home to James Wilder. Walnut River General was his father’s legacy. And if NHC came into the picture, that legacy would be changed, if not eradicated entirely.

And Peter needed to do everything he could to keep that from happening.

“Sorry, sorry,” Wallace announced, coming back into the room. He made a show of turning off his phone. “I hope you all got to stretch your legs for a moment, before we launch into part two of our agenda this morning.” He chuckled at some joke he thought he’d made, then paused, waiting for the stragglers to be seated. Moments later, he began again. “First up, I’m told that the radiology department desperately needs a new MRI machine. The old one, according to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, the department’s head technician, has been down more than it’s been up in the last few months. Any ideas?” he asked, looking around the table as he threw open the matter for discussion.

He no sooner asked the question than Bethany’s hand went up. The chairman nodded toward her. “Yes, Ms. Holloway?”

“If we take NHC up on their offer when they formally present it, we won’t have to worry about how to pay for the new MRI machine. The money—” she slanted a look in Peter’s direction “—would come from them.”

“Yes, but at what price?” Peter countered, struggling to keep his temper in check. This should have been a no-brainer, if not for her, because of lack of experience, then for everyone else seated at this table. They all knew what HMOs, no matter what they called themselves, were like.

Obviously trying to keep the peace, Wallace asked him, “What do you mean?”

Was the man playing dumb for Bethany’s sake? Heaven help him—maybe it was the lack of sleep talking—but he had no patience with that. “You know what I mean, Wallace. We’ve all heard horror stories about HMOs—”

“Yes, but those are all from the nineties and earlier,” Bethany cut in. “Things have changed since then.”

“Have they?” Peter challenged. “Instead of sitting around, waiting for NHC to come sniffing around, why don’t we investigate some of the other hospitals that have become part of their conglomerate in, oh, say the last five years or so? See what they’ve become in comparison to the way they were.”

Wallace cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Our resources are limited, Peter,” he protested. “We can’t afford to do that.”

Didn’t the man understand? If he was going to actually entertain this proposition, then he needed to know what might happen to Walnut River General.

“We can’t afford not to,” Peter insisted. “Now, as for the new MRI machine—” he knew how costly those could be “—why don’t you have Henry Weisfield put together one of his fund-raisers? He’s still not leaving for another three months or so. He could do it easily.”

“That’s your answer?” Bethany demanded, her voice rising. “A fund-raiser?”

The angrier she seemed to get, the calmer he became. “It’s worked so far.”

“And when we need to modernize the operating rooms?” she posed. “What then? Another fundraiser? Just how many of these things do you think we can swing before we wind up losing donors altogether?” she asked.

“We’ll tackle that when it comes,” he said, smiling.

Was he laughing at her? “If NHC oversaw us, we wouldn’t have to tackle anything. We would just make the request in writing.”

He looked at her, stunned, not really sure she believed what she was saying. Was she just saying it to convince the others?

“Are you really that naive? Don’t you realize that a company big enough to give you everything, is also big enough to take everything away if you don’t dance to the tune they play?” He was tired of this. He was beginning to understand why Henry felt the way he did, why he wanted to retire. “If I’m going to have my strings pulled, I want to be able to see who’s pulling them.” He addressed his words to Wallace, not Bethany. With Wallace he had some hope of getting through. “Not having some conglomerate versed in buck-passing doing it.”

Just then, his pager went off. Glancing down at the device clipped to his belt, Peter angled it so that he could read the message that had just come in. “Sorry, Wallace.” He rose to his feet. “There’s been a car accident. I’m wanted in the E.R.”

Wallace nodded. “Of course.”

As he left, Peter couldn’t help thinking that the chairman sounded rather relieved to see him go.

“Talk to me,” Peter urged the E.R.’s head nurse, Simone Garner, a slender woman with brown hair and a ready smile, when he arrived in the emergency room several minutes later. As he questioned Simone, one of the other nurses helped him on with the disposable yellow paper gowns they all donned in an effort to minimize the risk of spreading infections amid the E.R. trauma patients.

The paramedics had left less than two minutes before, so Simone quickly recited the vital signs for the three patients, then added, “It was a two-car collision. The police said the brakes failed on the SUV and it plowed into the other car at an intersection.”

“Where did it happen?” he asked as he took out his stethoscope.

“Less than two miles away. The paramedics got them here quickly. Those two were the drivers.” She indicated the first two gurneys. “The little boy was a passenger. Sitting in the front, I gather.” The little boy was crying loudly. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist and leaned in closer. “It’s going to be all right, honey,” she told him, then raised her eyes to Peter’s face. “No child seat in the car,” she said. It was obvious what she thought of the driver’s negligence. “I think the little guy got the worst of it. He’s pretty banged up. There might be internal bleeding.”

“Get him to X-ray as fast as you can,” Peter instructed. She motioned to an orderly and, between them, they took the gurney away.

Peter turned his attention to the other two victims. Before he could say anything, the man on the gurney closest to him grabbed his forearm.

“My little boy,” the man implored hoarsely.

Peter looked down into a face that was badly cut up and bruised. One of the man’s eyes was swollen shut and he looked as if he was barely able to see with his other one.

“Your son’s going to be all right,” he said with the conviction he knew the patient needed to hear. Long ago he’d been told not to make promises he might not be able to keep, but he knew the good a positive frame of mind could do. “Now let’s make sure that you are.” He pointed to the first empty bed he saw. “Put him in trauma room two.”

He’d had to remove the boy’s spleen. Then he’d gone back to the boy’s father to explain at length everything that had been done. It had taken a lot to make the man believe his son was going to make a full recovery. Peter had never seen such concern, such guilt, displayed by anyone the way it was by Ned Farmer.

Farmer, a self-employed auto mechanic and former racer, berated himself over and over again for being so busy working on other people’s cars that he’d neglected to check out his own.

“My fault, my fault, it’s all my fault,” Farmer kept saying over and over again, working himself up almost into a frenzy. It got to the point that Peter finally authorized an injection of diazepam be given in order to calm Farmer down.

The other driver, it turned out, had some traumatic bruising to his spine. So much so that the swelling was pinching his spinal cord, causing his lower extremities to become numb and unresponsive.

He called Ella and asked her to come down for a consultation. He thought his sister’s soft voice and gentle manner might help quell the second driver’s fears. She was there within the quarter hour.

The last he’d seen, Ella was at the man’s bedside, calmly reassuring him. “In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the victim walks as soon as the swelling on his spine subsides. You just have to be patient.”

The man looked anything but that. “But I’ll walk again?”

“Most likely, as soon as the swelling there goes down,” she repeated.

“But what if it doesn’t?” he pressed nervously. “What if it doesn’t go down?”

She took his hand in hers and said without wavering. “We’ll do everything we can.”

Peter smiled to himself and thought how proud his father would be if he could see her.

NHC, Peter was certain, would never approve of all this handholding on the part of their doctors. The patient would be swiftly examined, given his diagnosis and then sent home to recuperate. And to nurse fears of never being able to walk again. Who knew how much damage that would ultimately create?

It made him more determined than ever to block the takeover.

All in all, Peter thought as he changed back into his street clothes in his dimly lit office, this had been one of the worst Januarys he’d ever experienced.

He remembered Bethany saying it had snowed, and wondered if he was going to have to shovel his driveway when he got home that night. It wasn’t a heartening thought. Despite having lived in Walnut River his whole life, Peter was definitely not a fan of the white stuff.

He paused just long enough to locate some lab and radiology reports and place them in his briefcase. When he stepped into the elevator car, it was empty. He continued to have it to himself all the way down. The doors opened again on the first floor and he walked out, then made his way down the corridor leading to the parking lot.

As he opened one of the double doors and emerged into the frigid night air, he was in time to hear a woman exclaim, “Oh damn,” and then see Bethany Holloway suddenly disappear from view as she slid down the icy stairs.

Chapter Seven

Working triage in the E.R. had honed Peter’s reflexes. Instinct just took over.

Holding on to the banister, he sailed down the steps and grabbed Bethany’s arm just before her body came in ungraceful contact with the icy ground.

With her feet sliding in one direction and her body being jerked in another, Bethany overcompensated. In an effort to regain her balance, she threw her weight forward.

The next second, instead of keeping her steady, Peter found himself going down. He landed flat on his back. Since he was still holding on to her arm, he wound up pulling her down as well.

Right on top of him.

The air knocked out of her, she stared down at his face, stunned. He thought she’d indignantly scramble to her feet—or try to. Instead, she started to laugh. Her laugh, low, melodic and sensual, was highly infectious, not to mention that he could actually feel her laughing.

Picturing how absurd this had to look to anyone passing by—mercifully, there was no one—Peter started laughing, too. He laughed so hard, he became practically helpless and moisture began forming in the corners of his eyes.

Moving with the rhythm of laughter, their bodies rubbed lightly against each other.

Slowly, the laughter died away.

Caught between amusement and concern, Bethany struggled to regulate her breathing. “I don’t think that this is what you had in mind.”

Looking up at her, Peter found himself fighting an urge that hadn’t come over him in a very long time. So long that he could barely remember the last time. The pace he’d kept up these past ten years had left very little time for him to even attempt to nurture a private life. Even if that was partly by choice.

Right at this moment, with her breath drifting down along his face and their bodies pressed together, he was acutely aware of what had been missing from his life. What was missing.

So aware that he wasn’t conscious of anything but the tightening of his groin, the long, warm tongues of desire traveling through his body, heating it.

Making him yearn.

The look in her eyes told him he wasn’t alone here. For whatever reasons, Bethany was experiencing the very same thing. The same attraction, the same electricity.

He wasn’t a reckless man by nature. Acting on impulse was something other men did, not him.

Until now.

In one unguarded moment, Peter reached up and framed her face with his gloved hands. He brought her face down to his.

If having her body on top of his had set off a series of sharp, demanding electric shocks, kissing Bethany multiplied the sensations tenfold. She tasted of fresh strawberries and spring, both equally far removed from the moment.

He lost himself in the sensation.

For one brief shining second, he wasn’t Dr. Peter Wilder, highly respected internist, keeper of his father’s flame. He was just Peter, a flesh-and-blood man who longed for companionship, for someone to be there for him at the end of the day, for someone with whom he could share his thoughts, his plans. His love.

He remembered other dreams he’d once had.

Her head was spinning so badly Bethany thought maybe she’d hit it when Peter had accidentally pulled her down. But she’d landed on top of him and, though his body felt solid and hard, she knew for a fact that her head hadn’t made contact with him.

Her pulse accelerating, she could almost feel her blood, exhilarated, surging through her veins.

Bethany deepened the kiss.

The second their bodies had come in contact, it’d felt as if something had just come undone within her.

But if she didn’t draw back, if she let him continue even for another moment, Bethany was sincerely afraid of what that might do to her resolve, to the walls she’d been building up around herself for longer then she could remember. She only knew that they had been forged to keep the hurt back. If she let no one in, then she would never be hurt, it was as simple as that. She’d be invulnerable, the way she wanted to be.

She wasn’t invulnerable now, she realized. She was shaking. Inside and out. Any second now, it was going to occur to him that the cold weather had nothing to do with her reaction.

Her mind scattered in all directions, searching for something plausible to say in order to throw his attention off.

“So.” The single word swooped out of her mouth on a breath that was all but spent the moment she drew her head back. And then she smiled down at him. “About that takeover.”

She felt the laughter rumble in his chest before it burst from his lips. The up-and-down movement was soothing and erotic at the same time. So he did have a sense of humor, she thought, relieved. Thank God for small favors.

“One takeover is about all I can handle right now,” he told her amicably. It was obvious that he wasn’t talking about NHC—he was referring to what had just happened between them.

Confusion, enhanced by nerves, echoed in her head. The only thing she was certain of was that she wanted to kiss him again. She was even more certain that she shouldn’t.

Placing his hands on her arms, Peter gently moved her back so he could sit up. When he did, he drew in a long, deep breath, then exhaled. Slanting a look at her, he apologized. It seemed like the thing to do.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Are you?” Was he sorry that he’d kissed her? The second she thought that, she felt this odd pin-pricking sensation around her heart. What was that? Rather than deliberate over it, she struggled to block it.

Peter’s eyes held hers. “The fall,” he clarified.

Her breath had stopped in her throat and she had to force it back out again, had to consciously make herself breathe.

“And the kiss?” she asked softly.

Peter slowly moved his head from side to side. “I’m not sorry about that.”

She looked at him for a long moment. He wasn’t lying, she realized. An unexpected wave of happiness suddenly drenched her.

“I’m not, either,” she confided. And then she smiled at him, really smiled. “Finally, something we can agree on.” Was it her imagination, or had his smile just deepened?

“I have something else we can agree on,” Peter told her.

A leeriness slipped in again. She reminded herself that this was the man who opposed her ideas, whom she had to win over. She knew he was no pushover.

“Oh?”

He nodded. “That we should get up before someone comes by and sees us.”

A wave of regret came and went. She couldn’t begin to understand it. “Right.”

Bethany was about to spring to her feet, but he was faster. Standing up, Peter extended his hand to her. She looked at it, then raised her eyes to his face.

“Isn’t this what got us in trouble in the first place?” she reminded him.

He continued holding his hand out. “Lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice.”

She had a wealth of extraneous knowledge in her head, retaining everything she’d ever read, even in passing. “That’s a fallacy, you know. Lightning’s been known to strike twice in the same place. Sometimes even three times.”

“I said ‘rarely,’” Peter pointed out, trying to keep a straight face, “not ‘never.’”

“Good enough.” Wrapping her long, slender fingers around his hand, Bethany held on tightly as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Once up, she took a step and felt her feet begin to slide dangerously beneath her. Instantly her hand tightened on his. She wasn’t pleased about coming off like some damsel in need of rescuing. “This is what I get for not wearing my boots,” she murmured under her breath.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he offered. “I’m not in any hurry.” For once, he added silently.

She had an independent streak that was a mile wide and she considered it one of her chief sources of pride. It almost made her turn him down. But she also possessed more than her share of common sense and, in this case, common sense trumped independence.

So Bethany murmured, “Thank you,” and then tried to make light of the situation by adding, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

He looked at her and she could all but feel his eyes delving into her. He was probably wondering what she was talking about, she thought. And then he surprised her by commenting, “Streetcar Named Desire. You’re a lot younger than Blanche DuBois.”

She nodded, impressed. “You’re familiar with the play?”

The corners of his mouth curved in amusement. “We’re not entirely backward here. Town’s got a library with books on the shelves and everything.”

She hadn’t meant to insult him, or be patronizing. It was just that she wasn’t accustomed to people who were versed in the arts. Her world had always revolved around business and she’d naturally assumed that his did the same around medicine.

A pink hue overtook her cheeks as Bethany pointed out her vehicle. “The car’s right over there.”

He gave her his arm to hang on to. They proceeded carefully. His shoes were rubber soled and he was far more sure-footed than she was, but he took small steps to match her pace. The snow crunched beneath their feet as they went.

“Is it true?” he asked, breaking the silence just as they reached her sedan.

She wasn’t sure what he was asking about. “That it’s my car?”

They’d reached their intended destination, but he was in no hurry to reclaim his arm. He rather liked the way she held on to it. “That you’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

Maybe that had been giving too much of herself away, even though it had sounded like a flippant remark. “Well, I’ve moved around a bit, so most of the people I interact with are strangers.”

Which brought up another question in his mind. “Why did you move around so much? Army brat?”

The question made her laugh. Her father in a uniform, now there was an image. “Hardly. Both my parents made their mark in the corporate world.” Nannies had raised her and her older sister because her parents put in ten-, twelve-hour days, seduced by the promise of success, then working even harder once it came. “For the most part, I lived in New York until I went away to college.”

“And afterward?”

“Afterward, I moved around.”

“Which brings us back to why?” He looked into her eyes. “Unless you think it’s none of my business.”

It wasn’t, but she answered him anyway. “I was looking for the right fit,” she replied, and then asked a question of her own. “Is this part of some psychological workup, Dr. Wilder?”

He shook his head. “Not my department.” And then he looked down into her eyes. “We’ve kissed in the snow, Bethany. I think we can dispense with the formalities, don’t you?”

She shrugged, looking away. The parking lot had thinned out a great deal. What was left had a layer of snow on it. “I guess maybe we can. Does this mean you’re going to use my first name when you growl at me at the next meeting?”

“I didn’t growl,” he protested. “I just raised my voice a little.”

She smirked at him.