Uncovering Her Secrets

“I like to be honest with my patients,” Dasha muttered. “One hundred percent.”

“You were honest.”

“And I don’t need you cutting me down to them either. They should feel confident in—”

“I wasn’t cutting you down,” Preston cut in. “It was banter, and it put her at ease. She was confident.”

“You charmed her. And you lied,” Dasha said, then leaned over and whispered, “which you should do with the staff, not just the patients. Charm them. You know how.”

“Relax. If you’re worried about the staff liking me, maybe you could act like you do. Set an example,” he whispered back.

“Fine,” Dasha whispered through gritted teeth, and stepped around to her preferred side for this procedure.

“Malrotation and gastric bypass?”

“Malrotation and sleeve gastrectomy,” she corrected in her most cheerful voice, and tried really hard not to consider the irony of the condition for their first scheduled surgery.

Malrotation. Badly twisted-up insides.

Sounded about right.

* * *

Preston pulled his cap off as he exited the OR and made a beeline for the nearest bathroom—his usual routine. Part necessity, part just needing to be alone for a few minutes.

He’d lied to Angie. It was a hard procedure. Long. And he needed to stop fighting with Dasha. It didn’t gain him anything. She was right, everyone liked her. No good could come from the antagonism he felt around her. He wanted St. Vincent’s. As much as he’d like to pretend otherwise, his surgical skill alone wouldn’t get this job for him. And time had repeatedly proved that his skill couldn’t keep jobs when his mouth interfered.

On the plus side, at least at the end of day two, he felt firmly reassured that Dasha had the skills to avoid sullying his reputation, or using him to boost her own.

It also felt good to know he’d helped someone. The woman’s life would improve. They’d mitigated the danger of an emergency situation in the future.

And his eyes hadn’t so much as twitched the whole time. Maybe the injection was going to do the trick. Even if it caused that eye swelling Dasha had grilled him about.

On the way back out, he spotted Dasha and a male surgeon standing in front of the OR door, speaking in low, heated tones. He leaned and listened, not wanting to interrupt yet. Eavesdropping might not be cool, but this was a public area. If they’d wanted privacy, they should have sought it. It wasn’t his fault if they didn’t notice him listening.

“You don’t have to deal with him,” Dasha said, her brows pinched in that way they always had before she got into it with someone.

“I will eventually,” the man said. He looked familiar. Maybe. Preston tended to forget any but important faces, and even then sometimes...

“Leave Preston to me. I can manage him.” She shifted her weight to her back foot, planting herself. If she hadn’t just said she’d manage him, he might be amused at her fighter’s stance over a conversation. Someone she actually looked like she might fight with? That didn’t fit with her Be Nice, Make Friends motto.

It was the first time he’d seen that look since arriving. The man must be annoying her. If he hadn’t been talking about him, Preston might have decided to like the man.

“You only think you can manage him,” the man said. “What about everyone else?”

“He’s going to do fine. Better than fine. You’ll see. You’ll be glad he’s here,” she said.

Dasha was defending him. It took a second for that realization to really penetrate.

“Doubt it,” the man said.

“This will all work out.” Dasha sounded as put out with this man as she regularly did with him. “Just drop it, Jason.”

“His father can’t even manage him.”

Jason? And knew Davis P.? Oh, hell. Time to interrupt.

“My father stopped managing me when my voice dropped.” Preston leaned off the wall and approached. “Preston Monroe.” He stuck out one hand, a gesture that was hard for a man to ignore. “You must be Frist.”

“I am.” Jason Frist, neurosurgeon and golden boy, as far as Preston’s father was concerned. The son he’d always wanted. The ideal held up to him when his father lamented his choice of specialty. That Jason. Friends with Dasha too. Or maybe more than that with Dasha. It took a certain kind of closeness to lecture someone.

Frist took Preston’s offered hand and gave it a shake. “No offense, man.”

Words surged into his throat, but he remembered his pep talk of minutes ago and stopped the verbal eruption with a choke. He cleared his throat. “You’re worried about the department. I get it. You don’t need to worry.”

“Good to know. I have to be off. Appointments this afternoon. Hardin. Monroe.” Frist exited fast, which was something at least. He didn’t harp on the subject, and he didn’t call Preston on the lip service.

Preston felt Dasha’s gaze before he actually saw it, prompting him to turn back to her. “You know, I was coming back here to congratulate you on your performance in surgery and apologize for the situation with Angie, then I heard the conversation and wanted to choke you. You think you can manage me.” He folded his arms and leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb.

“You can—”

“And then I saw you defending me,” he cut in before she really got going. “Now I don’t really know what to think. You looked like you were about to sock Frist in the nose. Did you know I was there?”

“I didn’t. But would it make you feel better if I said yes?” She lifted her chin and stared him in the eye. “I’m setting an example.” Just when he thought she was gearing up to fight, she smiled at him. A real smile—alight with mischief and challenge. And if he hadn’t known what to think before...

She was still in there, beneath all the polish and tact... Before he could think of anything to say, she headed off down the labyrinthine corridors to the stairs she’d taken down from her office. Still a creature of habit. Still someone who could make his belly flip over.

Preston followed. He was on probation with her, this wasn’t about him wanting her to smile at him again, because that would be stupid. A couple of quick steps helped him catch up and he looked down at her. “Have you been getting that much?”

“Getting...” Dasha took a few seconds, but soon shook her head. “Not really. If they feel that way, they haven’t said anything. I don’t expect them to unless you pull a Preston.” She grinned again. “Jason’s just freer with his words with me.”

“You together?” Why did he ask that? It didn’t matter who she was with.

Dasha gave him a weird look, but they were only a few steps from the office and she waited until they were inside before she answered, “Why would you ask that? Jason is my friend. We started here around the same time.”

“Yes, but your friendship with him links you to my father. Did he put you up to this?”

“I don’t know your father, Preston.” The weird look turned into a guilty one.

Preston squinted, risking a cascade from those hyperactive eye muscles. “Did he put you up to this? Save his idiot son’s career? Because I don’t want this position if it’s through him.”

She paced to the desk and leaned against the front of it, folding her arms over her chest. Hiding something? Or just trying to distract him with—?

“I get that you don’t like your dad, but not everyone is his puppet.”

Trying to distract him. Definitely trying to distract him. “Direct answer, Dasha. Now.” He closed the distance to stand over her, close enough to shake some sense into her if she didn’t stop...whatever it was she was doing with her cleavage...

“Your father did not put me up to anything. I do not know him. Jason does not deliver orders or requests on your behalf from Davis Monroe.” Dasha stared him in the eye the whole time she spoke, and then for a few seconds after for good measure, daring him not to believe her.

Well, he didn’t want to believe her.

Which was really too bad, considering he did believe her.

Still not ready to stop antagonizing her, he continued to hold her eye. “You sure you’re not trying to impress Frist and win his tender affections?” It wasn’t flirting. It was teasing. Joking around...

Watching her try to decide if he was playing with her or picking a fight tickled him. In the spirit of cooperation, he decided to make it easy on her. “It’s okay to want to marry a neurosurgeon and have two point five abnormally brilliant little spawn with him.”

“I don’t want to marry him,” Dasha said slowly, and then shook her head, the smile that came with it more rueful than sparkling. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Just so you know, when you’re feeling touchy about something, you have a tendency to joke about it. It’s a bad poker face, Preston.” She whirled out from between him and the desk, grabbed her bag and headed for the door, bag slung over her shoulder. “We’re done for the day.”

“Do I? It’s because I’m so damned sensitive to the needs of others, everyone can see my concern, no matter what I say.”

Did she not get that he was playing with her? He paused, smile still in place but he had to think about it...make sure that it stayed put so she could pick up on the teasing. She always used to be able to recognize a joke. She’d had a great sense of humor. Aside from the sex and the way she had motivated him, their playfulness had been something he’d never been able to replicate with anyone else. It mattered. Well, it had. Not now...except that it bothered him she’d changed so much, or bothered him that she was pretending to be so different. He wasn’t sure which was more accurate, only that he was bothered and she seemed different.

If he could ignore the manner of their parting—and that was something he had to do to even envision this arrangement working—then he had to think about the good things. The idea that he may not have really known her at all rankled more than it should have. More than the betrayal maybe.

He grabbed the strap of the bag as she waltzed by, expecting him to follow, and stopped her in her tracks. “Did you fail to recognize that I’m trying to ease things here with us? Are you really so different now than you used to be? You changed your hair, you changed your wardrobe and you’ve changed from being direct to beating around the bush to avoid confrontation...but have you lost your sense of humor too? Or was all that an act back then?”

“You’re joking now too, right?” She jerked on her bag but he didn’t let it go, and from the timbre of her voice he could see she wasn’t intent on being tactful. “I always changed my hair—every month, if you recall. I’m wearing work clothes—you can’t wear tank tops and flip-flops in your professional life. And being tactful is the way you build relationships with people until you know them well enough to be blunt. That’s all part of being an adult.”

“And the sense of humor?” Preston held fast to the strap, the only way he knew to keep her in place without actually touching her skin.

She kept enough tension on the bag that the strap was taut, as rigid as her posture. He’d expected her to take a fighter’s stance, but again he was wrong. She leaned slightly away from him, partially from the tension she kept on the bag, but it was more than that. Flight. If he let go now, she’d be out the door, leaving him to lock up.

“There’s not a lot going on in my life right now that I find funny. And you’ll just have to excuse me if having you tease me about dating is one of those things I don’t find funny.”

“Relax, Dasha.” He started to relax his arm, but she kept up the tension on the strap. “Stop pulling.”

“You stop pulling.” She pulled harder, forcing him to keep his hold.

“You’re going to fall over the second I let go. We’ll both let go at the same time. On the count of three, okay?” Sadly, this wasn’t the most ridiculous confrontation he’d ever gotten into at work. It was just the first time he had gotten into a fight at work where he didn’t know he was right from the outset.

* * *

The countdown shamed Dasha into compliance. She let go of the bag. Preston didn’t fall, but he did bash himself in the cheek when his arm rebounded.

“Right, I’m off,” Preston muttered, and dropped the bag on a nearby chair, prowling for the door.

“Wait...” She had to tell him something. What had she...? Oh, right. “Um, Dr. Monroe, we’re on call this weekend. I’ll call you if we get pulled in for any emergencies.”

He nodded and left, leaving her to try and puzzle out what had happened. What had set her off?

Well, there was the questioning of who she was as a person, as if who she had been had been so much better. How could he even insinuate that after the way things had ended? And he didn’t even know New-and-Improved Dasha, so he was just reacting to her being different than he expected.

But that wasn’t really what had got her. He’d get to know her now, everyone changed as they matured, and he’d get used to the new her. It had been the joking about Jason that had got to her. She didn’t need to explain herself or her current relationship status—or that the only man in her life was her convertible, which she’d named Belvedere for some unfathomable reason...

If she had been interested in Jason—which she wasn’t—that wouldn’t be cheating on Preston. But in the moments after he’d teased her about it that’s what she’d felt like. That’s what it still felt like. And if that told her anything, it was that though her methods in the past had not been right, she really did have to go to extremes to stay away from him. She hadn’t set eyes on him for five years, and she still felt like she belonged to him. So stupid...

Twenty minutes later Dasha climbed into her car.

To hell with running today. She should visit Marjorie and Bill. No call duty tonight, but tomorrow she’d be on and planning anything on a call weekend never worked out.

Plus, she wanted to go. Sort of.

Every time she visited, Marjorie was a little further gone. Asleep a little longer. Voice a little weaker. And it became a little harder for Dasha to hold on to the scrap of hope that she’d turn this disease around.

She’d heard about miraculous cures, inexplicable spontaneous remissions, but she’d never witnessed one. Now she stood at the edge of losing her second mother. The trauma surgeon who’d tried so hard to save Dasha’s mother, and who had cried with her when she hadn’t been able to. And who’d remembered Dasha and taken her under her wing after she’d selfishly thrown Preston to the wolves to make sure she could get to St. Vincent’s.

And she was once again being selfish by thinking about how Marjorie’s imminent death affected her. Me, me, me.

Flowers. She should get flowers.

Or donuts.

Or both.

At least it was something to do, kept her from feeling helpless.

Half an hour later Dasha slipped into the bedroom and joined Bill, sitting by the bed, watching Marjorie sleep. She made her customary check of the equipment and room, making sure everything was as it should be, and then plopped onto the arm of his chair.

“He’s giving you a run for your money, eh?” Bill murmured.

“That obvious?” Dasha whispered back, not wanting to disturb Marjorie.

“The sigh gave it away.”

“Didn’t realize I’d sighed.” She slouched, dropping her bag onto the floor. “He just sort of dredges up everything again. I’d like to stick with the here and now, but it’s looking less and less likely that I’ll be able to do that.”

Bill winced. He knew everything Marjorie knew, and Marjorie knew it all. All the way down to her getting out before she’d ended up turning into her mother—devoted to a man she could never have.

“Don’t worry. I didn’t hit him. He kind of hit himself after we had some kind of showdown over my bag, though.” Yeah, that would help him not worry. Perfect. “I don’t know exactly how that happened, but he was joking around with me. I don’t know why he was. Maybe because of Jason.”

“Jason giving you trouble?” Bill’s frown didn’t express a lack of worry. Still not helping.

“Not exactly. He’s just worried about Preston causing trouble. And Preston kind of caught Jason talking about him.”

“Heaven help us. Did you get it sorted out?”

“I think so.” Dasha shrugged. She really wasn’t going to mention Nettle.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there to help with the situation,” Bill said.

“Don’t. It’s nothing you should apologize for. You’re right where you need to be.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s nothing you should have to get involved with anyway. My doing. All mine.” She thought for a moment and added, “And his father’s not helping. I don’t know exactly what happened between the two of them, but he said some things that makes me think they have a kind of feud.”

“The senior Monroe meddles,” Bill murmured. “We were surprised when you got the fellowship. Davis had arranged for it to go to Preston. All he had to do was show up that day.”

Dasha’s jaw dropped and her stomach curdled. “Why...you never said anything.”

“Would you have felt better?” Bill asked, leaning forward in the chair so he could hold her gaze better as they talked.

“No.” It didn’t really change anything. If anything, it would have made her less certain of Preston’s opportunities. “Probably worse.”

Bill nodded, not elaborating. They’d been protecting her. She still never expected that from anyone, even after the past years of being included in Marjorie and Bill’s lives, even with those she loved, she never expected protection.

“I think I need to stretch my legs.” He stood, and then gestured her to slide into the seat...and off the arm of his favorite chair. “Will you stay?”

She nodded, his revelation spinning in her head.

“Later I’m making my famous takeout,” he said as he wandered toward the door, talking to himself now more than her. “Mexican, I think. Feels like a taco kind of day.”

It felt more like a burrito day to her. Wrapped up, confined, lots of messy stuff hidden beneath a pretty, soft, white, flavorless case.

Why tell her now? To protect her? To give her extra fortitude she’d need to handle whatever Preston threw at her? Or maybe because he’d just known she was ready to hear it. How nice would it be for a relationship man to get her that way?

She’d have to let them know her better for that to happen.

Did Preston even know about the fellowship? Might explain why he thought that Davis was manipulating her into giving him the job.

Well, if he didn’t know, she couldn’t tell him. It didn’t matter, not really. She’d done what she’d done, and saying that he would have gotten it because of his father just sounded like a cop-out. She hadn’t known, she’d just assumed he’d get it because he was better than her. And then she’d consoled herself with the knowledge that he’d have tons of other opportunities, and she needed St. Vincent’s.

No good could come from telling him. Best case scenario, it would just give him something else to resent his father over.

“You’re frowning.”

Dasha looked up when she heard Marjorie’s voice, and then rose to go sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m practicing looking serious and formidable.”

“What are you really thinking?” Marjorie smiled.

“Thinking other less productive things.” Dasha smoothed the blankets down, tucking and tidying. “I got the invitation for the winter ball today. I’m thinking of getting something classy to wear in honor of the fancy-pants hotel where it’s held. You know, slit up to here and down to there, and covered in sequins. I’m thinking orange with lime-green accessories.”

“You should be thinking escorts and not trying to scandalize me with your fluorescent monstrosities,” Marjorie murmured.

She was smiling, though. Dasha would probably wear that hideously described dress if it would make Marjorie smile. “Hair teased out high enough for squirrels to nest in.”

“And a top hat.”

Dasha’s turn to laugh. “Hair teased into the shape of a top hat.”

“Enough foolishness now. How are you doing with Preston?”

“Oh, well...I really have no idea. Mercurial as ever. Evasive then charming. Antagonistic and then playful. I really have no idea. He’s still there and no one has filed any official complaints. At least, not that I know of.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, Dasha.”

“He joked with me earlier. And I yelled at him a little bit.” That story lost something in translation.

“Why?”

“It was... I don’t know. I’m not entirely sure what happened.” Dasha waved a hand in the air, trying to get past the subject she suffered a lack of words on. “Don’t worry. I’m not giving up yet, and he might not go nuclear on me.”

“You need to figure it out, honey. Even if you don’t want to dwell on it,” Marjorie advised, and then in her soothing way followed on by addressing the needs of the other soul in her care. “Bill’s said no to outside nursing, but I want you to talk him into getting someone to come in here at night. He’s not sleeping like he should.”

“Okay. I’ll make sure it’s someone good.” Dasha leaned in and kissed Marjorie on the cheek, her throat suddenly thick enough to make her voice raspy. “Just until you’re well enough to look after him yourself.”

She had to hold on to the idea of a miraculous recovery.

CHAPTER THREE

FLOOR-TO-CEILING windows ran the entire length of Preston’s loft, which had been converted from a nineteenth-century third-floor warehouse in the heart of historic downtown Nashville—where much of Nashville’s night-life now was located.

The glow from neon signs and streetlights illuminated his apartment in soothing blues and greens, and unless he had to read something or stab himself in the eye with a needle Preston left the lights off. Even while working out on his climbing machine.

It also made him feel a little better, a salve to his ego, that the low lighting at least downplayed the pink flowers on the stupid gel mask he’d resorted to wearing. The woman at the pharmacy had claimed it soothed tired eyes, but so far he didn’t feel soothed. And neither did his eyes. He might as well have bought pantyhose, feminine hygiene products and something with wings—whatever those were.

So much for the injections fixing the problem. One day. One freaking day without any symptoms, was that too much to ask? Today it had kicked up again, not even at the hospital this time. That was something. He’d noticed the feeling as soon as he’d opened his eyes, so it had started when he’d been asleep. Either that, or he so strongly remembered the sensation he’d worked himself up a phantom leg type of situation.

Whatever the reason, it wasn’t good. He couldn’t do another round of injections already and his attempts to manage it with medication worked about as well. Time for more aggressive tactics—before he lost everything. That possibility seemed more real with the eye situation than it ever had because of his mouth. Felt more personal too. Like a real failing rather than being unable to suffer idiots.

He climbed faster. Running built great endurance, but did nothing for the upper body. And did equally little to help him work out the aggression he’d been feeling of late.

Saturday, on call and nearing evening, it looked like he might have a reprieve. Strange that there’d been no calls. Maybe Dasha just hadn’t called him in.

Maybe it was a hint that he should cut and run. His constant failing on personal vows to maintain professional distance with her said he wasn’t as over her as he wanted to believe. He swung from baiting her to flirting with her to growling at her. Out of his damned mind.

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