Confessions of the Heart

Anna thanked her again, and then started down the hall to Tom Bellows’s office. He was standing in the doorway waiting for her. At fifty-five, he was still a fit and handsome man with silver hair, piercing blue eyes and a tanned, weathered complexion that attested to his passion for deep-sea fishing.

“I thought Juliette had to be mistaken,” he said in a serious tone. “But it really is you. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Thanks.” A very apt way of putting it, Anna thought as she followed him into his office. He motioned her to a chair across from his desk and she sat down, draping her raincoat across the arm and placing her red umbrella on the floor beside her.

Tom sat down behind his desk and gave her a long, frank appraisal. “Last time I saw you, I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”

She gave him a wry smile. “A lot’s happened since then.”

He nodded. “I heard you got the transplant.”

“Yes, thanks for the card you sent.” Tom’s had been one of the few cards that had been waiting for her when she’d gone home from the hospital. It had meant a lot.

He was still studying her with undisguised curiosity. “I may be crazy, but I swear you look different. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.”

“I lost quite a bit of weight,” she said with a shrug.

“You were always thin. That’s not it.” He tilted his head. “It’s the eyes.” He stared at her for a moment longer, and then glanced away suddenly, as if disturbed by something he’d seen. “You’ve been through a lot. I can see that.”

She nodded, suddenly very uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. She cleared her throat. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

“I assumed you were back at work.”

“No. And to be quite honest, I’m not even sure I’m going back.”

He lifted a brow in surprise. “They know that upstairs?”

“I haven’t handed in my formal resignation, but I suspect they have a pretty good idea. It’s been almost a year, after all.”

He rubbed his chin. “They’d probably give you another year if you wanted it. An attorney with your abilities and instincts doesn’t come along every day.”

Abilities as in ambition. Instincts as in sheer, cutthroat ruthlessness. She drew a deep breath. “That was the old Anna.”

He smiled. “I’ll admit you do seem different, but I’ve never seen a leopard yet who can change its spots overnight.”

“Maybe you haven’t seen one whose life depended on it,” she countered.

Tom seemed to consider the possibility for a moment. He shuffled some papers on his desk. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

“I have a job for you.”

“But I thought you said—”

“It’s personal.”

“All right, I’m listening.” But a frown already played between his brows as if he were anticipating something unpleasant.

“I want to find out the identity of my donor.”

He glanced up, his frown deepening. “Then why not go through the proper channels? I read somewhere that transplant recipients write an anonymous letter to their donor’s family, and it’s delivered through the hospital. The family has the choice to either respond or ignore the letter. Eventually, if both sides agree, they can meet face-to-face.”

Anna impatiently drummed her fingers on the chair arms. “What if the family decides they don’t want to meet me?”

“Then that might be for the best.” Tom sat forward, gazing at her intently. He was clearly disturbed by her suggestion. “Look, Anna, I think you’re only looking at this thing from one side, but the safeguards are in place for your protection as well as the donor’s family. Let me give you an example. What if a bereaved mother finds out you have her son’s heart? What if she’s had a hard time accepting her son’s death? What if she starts calling you in the middle of the night or showing up on your doorstep unexpectedly? I’m not saying anything like that would happen, but it could.”

Apprehension tingled along Anna’s nerve endings as she thought about the phone calls. “I see your point, and I appreciate your concern, Tom. But I think it’s possible someone in the donor’s family may already know who I am.”

She told him then about the phone calls, and when she finished, he drew the same conclusion as Michael. “I agree that’s pretty strange, but it doesn’t mean the calls are coming from someone in the donor’s family. A lot of people…know about your transplant.”

She had a feeling what he’d meant to say was that a lot of people had it in for her.

“Your transplant was even mentioned in the paper,” Tom pointed out. “So it’s hardly a secret.”

Anna nodded. “My stepmother showed me the article.” Her name and medical condition had been included in a follow-up piece to a highly publicized trial she’d litigated for the firm. She supposed it was possible that someone she’d crossed swords with in the courtroom, or even in the office, had seen that article as well and had, as Michael said, decided to get under her skin a little. “I know what you’re getting at,” she told Tom. “And, yes, I’ve made a few enemies. But I honestly don’t think that’s it. The phone calls are more—”

“Mind sick?” he supplied.

A shiver crawled up Anna’s backbone, not unlike the one she’d experienced earlier in the elevator. She thought about the man with the scar, wondering again who had sliced open his face. And why.

She glanced at Tom. “I was going to say personal. It might even be that someone is trying to reach out to me.”

“Which is exactly my earlier point,” he reminded her grimly.

“Look, even if I knew who was responsible for the calls, it wouldn’t change my mind.” Anna leaned toward him. “I don’t expect you to understand, but this is something I have to do. I know my donor was a thirty-nine-year-old woman, but I need to know what kind of person she was, the kind of life she led. Don’t ask me to explain it, but I feel as if I owe her that much.”

“Don’t you think your gratitude would be better served by honoring her family’s privacy?” Tom asked bluntly.

Anna drew a breath. “Are you saying you won’t help me?”

He looked away, unable to hold her gaze. “I’m saying I have deep reservations about this. About your motives.”

Anger darted through her. She sat back in her chair, eyeing him coldly. “You know, Tom, I’m the one who brought Matthews, Conley and Hart to your firm. One call and I could just as easily take that business away from you.”

His jaw hardened as he returned her stare. “I’m aware of that.”

Anna was at once struck by remorse. She put a hand to her mouth. “Tom, that was completely out of line. I apologize.”

Tom shrugged, but something had changed between them. Anna could see it in his eyes. “Don’t apologize. In some ways, it’s a relief to know the real Anna Sebastian is still around.”

He studied her for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite decide whether her remorse was genuine or not. “You know, Anna, I’ve always admired and respected you. I’ve even at times felt a certain fondness for you. But you’ve never made it easy for people to care about you.”

“I know that.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m going to do this for you because you’re right. I do owe you. But after that…” he trailed off on a shrug, and guilt and humiliation welled inside Anna where once she would have allowed herself to feel nothing but anger. Tom was about the closest thing to a friend she had, and now she’d pushed him away. Maybe he was right. Maybe a leopard couldn’t change its spots overnight. Maybe she couldn’t change them at all.

“If you’d rather I take this to another agency, I’ll understand. And there won’t be any hard feelings. No…repercussions.”

He shook his head. “I said I’d look into it, and I will. I just hope you know what you could be letting yourself in for.”

“I do. And I want you to know that I’m not going to hurt anyone with this information. Whatever you find out will stay between us.” She paused again. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but this is something I have to do. I have to make sure…”

“You deserve your new heart?”

His insight stunned her. “Yes, exactly,” Anna murmured. “And I can tell by your expression what your opinion is on the subject.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.” He stood, drawing the meeting to an end. “I’ll be in touch.”

He didn’t bother seeing her out.

Chapter Two

Anna felt deeply unsettled as she headed up Travis Street toward her apartment in the old Cullen Bank Building on Main. The weather didn’t help. It was after four and the late-afternoon traffic was starting to stack up on the streets, but she was only one of a handful of pedestrians on the sidewalks. The rain had driven everyone else down into the tunnels. Even the terrace at Cabo’s, a trendy Mexican restaurant and bar, looked damply forlorn in the drizzle.

Crossing the intersection at Preston, Anna began to experience a strange sensation of being watched. She glanced over her shoulder, saw no one behind her, and continued on toward Congress. She waited for the light, and then crossed the street. As she hurried toward her building, her gaze was inexplicably drawn to the covered bus stop at the corner.

A man stood inside, staring at the slow-moving traffic on Congress. He had his back to Anna, but something about him looked familiar. He was tall, with closely cropped dark hair and broad shoulders beneath a black shirt.

Her stomach fluttered as she stood watching him. For a moment, she thought he was the man from the elevator, and something told her to run—not walk—away from him. To hurry inside her building, rush up to her ninth-floor apartment and lock the door behind her.

But she couldn’t seem to move. And then, as if sensing her scrutiny, he turned slowly to stare at her. Anna caught her breath, realizing at once why he’d seemed familiar to her.

Her ex-husband smiled as he left the shelter of the bus stop and started toward her.

“Hello, Anna.”

“Hays,” she said in surprise. Her hand had gone automatically to her heart, and now she self-consciously dropped her arm to her side. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.” Moisture glinted in his dark hair. “I saw you getting on the elevator in the Chase Tower, and I tried to catch you, but you didn’t go up to your office.” He shrugged. “I figured you had to come this way sooner or later.”

His excuse sounded a bit convenient to Anna although plausible, she supposed. Hays worked for an oil and gas exploration company headquartered in the Chase Tower, which was how they’d first met.

She decided to play the meeting by ear. “So why did you want to see me?”

“I’ve been working out of the Dallas office for the past several months, and I just got back in town a few days ago. I heard what happened.” His gaze dropped very briefly to her chest. “I guess I needed to see for myself that you were okay.”

Anna wanted to accept his concern at face value, but there was something in his eyes that made her say warily, “You didn’t have to go to so much trouble. You could have just called.”

“Like I said, I needed to see for myself.” He stared down at her. “Can I ask you something?”

Anna shrugged. “Sure.”

“How does it feel to have someone else’s heart beating inside your chest?”

How was she supposed to answer that? Should she tell him she felt an appreciation bordering on reverence for her new heart? That she was deeply humbled by a second chance she’d done nothing to deserve? That she felt an almost spiritual connection with the woman who’d given her the ultimate gift?

She could tell him all those things, but she could never make Hays or anyone else understand if they’d never walked in her shoes.

“It feels just like my own,” she said, but that wasn’t altogether true.

He cocked his head. “I heard about this guy once. He got a new heart just like you, and he suddenly developed a strange affinity for pasta. Spaghetti, fettuccini, you name it. He never could stand the stuff before, but suddenly he couldn’t get enough of it. Turned out his donor had loved Italian food.” Hays arched an eyebrow. “How about it, Anna? Had any strange cravings since your surgery?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“What, no new abilities or talents?”

“No.” She shivered a bit in the light rain. “But…I have changed.”

One brow shot up again. “How so?”

She hesitated, unsure how to phrase what she wanted to say, but more important, not certain how he would take it. “I’m glad you came here to wait for me, Hays, because there’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for a long time.” She adjusted the collar of her raincoat, buying herself a moment of time. “I regret the way things ended between us. I still think divorce was the only answer for us, but I’m sorry you were hurt by it.”

His eyes widened, as if he were stunned by the apology, then he gave a low, bitter laugh. “God, Anna, who are you trying to kid?”

“I’m serious,” she said, a little wounded by his reaction. “I’m deeply sorry that I hurt you.”

He took a quick step toward her and put a hand underneath her chin, tilting her face up to his. He wasn’t a tall man, but he’d always worked out, always kept his physique lean and muscular. At five-six, Anna had never felt threatened or intimidated by his physical superiority, but now, gazing up at him, she saw something in his eyes she’d never seen before. The bitterness and the resentment were the same, the anger hadn’t changed, but now there was another, darker emotion she couldn’t quite name.

She wanted to move away from him, away from his touch, but something of the old Anna wouldn’t let her cower away. She remained still, gazing up at him with what she hoped was a nonprovoking expression.

His gaze took on a mocking glint, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Why, Anna,” he said softly. “If I didn’t know better, I might think they’d given you a soul along with that new heart. But the problem is…” His features hardened almost imperceptibly. “I do know you.”

He was still holding her face up to his, his dark eyes now burning into hers. Something smoldered in those black depths, something not quite sane, Anna feared.

Dear God, what had happened to him since their divorce? He’d been bitter and angry over the breakup, but she’d never considered him dangerous.

But now…the way he was looking at her…

Anna suddenly wondered if Hays was behind the phone calls. If he had a deeper, darker motive for his visit.

And she remembered just as suddenly the bouts of moodiness during their marriage. The bursts of temper. The way he would sometimes disappear for days at a time. He’d always blamed their marriage difficulties on her career, and Anna hadn’t bothered to dispute him because she knew her ambition was a big part of their problem. But now she realized that their incompatibility went deeper than that. Much deeper.

“I once thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. That blond hair.” He tucked a strand behind her ear. “Those dark eyes. And a body any man would kill to possess. But look at you now.” His gaze roamed over her, taking in her pale complexion, her frail frame. “Do you know what you’ve become, Anna? You’re a freak, a modern-day Frankenstein.”

She tried to move away, but his grip tightened on her chin. “It would be wrong to blame you, though, wouldn’t it? The real monsters are the surgeons who patch together pathetic, soulless creatures like you from the dead and the dying.”

Anna said angrily, “Let go of me, Hays.”

His hand slipped to her chest, and with one finger, he uncannily traced the outline of her scar through her blouse. “Tell me something, Anna. What man is going to want to see that in bed?”

HAYS’S TAUNT followed Anna into her building, into the elevator, all the way up to the ninth floor. She’d experienced his animosity before, but nothing like this. He’d seemed so cold and cruel, and that strange glint in his eyes…

Anna shuddered, trying to put the confrontation out of her mind, but as she got off the elevator and walked down the hall to her apartment, she couldn’t get his words out of her mind. Tell me something, Anna. What man is going to want to see that in bed?

It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of that herself. It wasn’t like she hadn’t stared at that scar in the mirror, trying to picture a man’s reaction the first time he saw it.

Luckily, she supposed, she had no one serious in her life these days. After her divorce, she’d avoided complicated entanglements and had pursued only the companionship of men who shared a similar philosophy to hers, namely, that she neither wanted nor expected an exclusive commitment, and her career would always come first.

She’d convinced herself it was an outlook that would serve her well, but looking back after her surgery, when she’d had plenty of time to dissect her life, Anna had come to realize that the like-minded men whose company she’d sought were as shallow as she, their personal lives as empty and vapid as hers. Looking at them was like looking in a mirror, and the reflection was not pretty.

Anna could well imagine their reactions on seeing her scar. Naturally, they’d try to put a good face on it, but inside they’d recoil in horror and wouldn’t be able to get away fast enough. She was flawed now and—even worse—high-maintenance. A double whammy for the commitment-challenged.

And the one of substance, that nameless, faceless man whom Anna had now started to fantasize about? The man who could look at her, scar and all, and still want her? Was he out there somewhere?

Unaccountably, her thoughts went back to the man in the elevator, and as Anna inserted her key into the lock and opened the door, she wondered why he’d had such a strong impact on her. He was a total stranger. She’d probably never see him again. No reason for her to feel this strange fascination for him.

Except, of course, for the obvious reason. They were both flawed.

Had women shunned him because of his appearance?

Somehow Anna couldn’t imagine that.

Closing the door behind her, she took off her soggy raincoat and tossed it into the powder room just off the foyer, an action that once would have been unthinkable to her.

“Laurel, I’m home!” She brushed fingers through her damp hair as she walked into the living room.

When there was no response, Anna decided she must have beat her stepmother home. Then she heard voices coming from the den, and she hurried down the hallway toward the sound.

“Laurel!”

As Anna entered the room, the first thing she saw was her stepmother’s pale face, and she knew immediately something had happened. Something terrible.

Laurel stood in front of the television, so engrossed in whatever was on that she hadn’t bothered to sit. She didn’t appear to hear Anna’s approach, either, but then she glanced up. “Anna! Oh, I’m so glad you’re home. I’ve been so worried—”

She actually swayed on her feet, and Anna rushed to her side, clutching her arm. “Laurel, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I still can’t believe it,” she murmured, one hand to her throat.

“What?” Anna’s gaze was drawn to the television screen then and to the news alert that had interrupted an afternoon talk show Laurel loved. A female reporter stood on the street in front of a large home in an older, upscale neighborhood.

But Anna caught only a word or two of the woman’s report because her stepmother started to babble. “He must have left the hospital right after we did. The police think he was lured home and the killer was waiting for him—”

Anna gripped Laurel’s shoulders. “What are you talking about? Waiting for whom?”

All Laurel could manage was to point weakly at the TV where the reporter’s calm, clear tone was a surreal contradiction to her agitation.

Anna turned once again to stare at the screen. The reporter was in the middle of her recap. “…on the scene live in the Museum District where a prominent Houston heart surgeon was found brutally murdered in his home a short while ago. This has been a Channel Eleven exclusive report. Stay tuned for all the late-breaking developments….”

Anna spun to face Laurel. “No,” she whispered.

Laurel nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. “It was Michael, Anna. He’s dead.”

And suddenly all Anna could think about was what her ex-husband had said to her not ten minutes earlier. It would be wrong to blame you, though, wouldn’t it? The real monsters are the surgeons who patch together pathetic, soulless creatures like you from the dead and the dying.

HUDDLED INSIDE the apartment, Anna and Laurel remained glued to the TV that evening, watching several local news broadcasts for the latest developments in Michael’s murder. But the details remained sketchy. He’d been shot to death in the breezeway between his garage and house. None of the neighbors had heard gunfire, nor had anyone seen anything suspicious. His body had been discovered when a woman walking her dog had gone to investigate her pet’s frantic barking and strange behavior. No suspects were in custody, and though the police spokesperson didn’t come right out and say so, it appeared there were no concrete leads.

After Anna went to bed that night, she lay awake for a long time thinking about everything Michael had done to save her life. And now he was dead. Who could have done such a thing?

Deep down, she didn’t really believe Hays had anything to do with the murder, but his words continued to haunt her. When she finally fell into an exhausted sleep, however, she didn’t dream about Michael or her ex-husband. She dreamed about the stranger with the scar.

He was lying naked in bed, watching her undress. His eyes were dark and smoldering, and as she slowly approached him, he reached up, snaking a hand around the back of her neck to draw her down for a long, deep, soul-shattering kiss that robbed her of breath and sanity.

For the longest time, they kissed. His tongue was deep inside her mouth, tangling with hers, mating with hers, making her yearn for an even deeper intimacy.

When they finally broke apart, she traced the scar on his face with her fingertip, and he let her for a moment. Then he grabbed her hand, pulling her on top of him, and she came willingly. Eagerly. She moved over him, and their bodies joined so frantically, she cried out. The stranger’s hands slid downward, grazing her breasts, tracing her waist, grasping her hips as he set a powerful rhythm. Anna’s head fell back. She could feel herself losing control. In another moment…

She woke up, gasping for breath. Her skin was on fire. For a moment, she thought it was the aftermath of the dream, but then she realized her elevated temperature and heart palpitations signified something far more dangerous.

Her body was rejecting her new heart….

Chapter Three

Anna climbed out of her car in San Miguel and stood in the baking heat. July in South Texas could be brutal and she was only a week out of the hospital. She’d rushed this trip. She knew that. She should have given herself another few days to build up her strength, but it was too late to turn back now. Somehow she knew if she got back in her car and drove away she might never work up enough courage to come here again. And if she left now, her self-doubts might never be laid to rest.

Everything about Anna’s surgery and transplant had been almost textbook perfect. Michael had been so pleased by how readily her body had accepted the new organ and how quickly overall she’d recovered. Except for taking her daily meds, Anna had started to believe she could have a normal life again.

But Michael’s murder and the organ rejection, coming on the same day, had been two devastating setbacks that had shaken Anna to her core. Both had been grim reminders of how fragile her world had become. Nothing was ever going to be normal for her again, and for the first time since the transplant, she’d begun to question whether or not it had been worth it.