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  She paled. No one knew about that. Only Dr. Monroe and her. “Who told you?”

  He wasn’t about to go into an explanation about cups of coffee and hand washing. “No one told me, I just found out.” She was doing it again, trying to distract him. “And that’s beside the point.”

  Her temper flared. This was supposed to be a secret. “No, it is the point—”

  He took hold of her shoulders, as if that could somehow make her see reason. “No, what is the point is that you didn’t trust me to tell me about this.”

  Trust. The last time she’d trusted someone to be there for her, he’d disappeared, leaving her emotionally alone. Leaving her with a broken heart. That wasn’t going to happen again.

  “So you could do what?” she demanded. “Start a chorus of ‘Good-night Irene’ and make a quick retreat? I didn’t need that on top of everything else.” She felt hysteria bubbling up within her. Why couldn’t he just be a gentleman and leave? Why did he have to keep chipping away at her like this, until there was nothing left? “What I have or don’t have is none of your business.”

  Did she actually believe what she was saying? “Don’t you get it yet? You are my business.”

  “Right,” she retorted. “For how long?”

  The woman had a short memory for someone so bright. “Are you asking me to recite the definition of forever again?”

  “No,” she said wearily, waving him away, “and I don’t want to hear any other lies, either. I’m not up to it.” She turned away, rubbing her brow. “Now just go, I have a headache.”

  When she heard no movement, she turned around. He was exactly where she’d left him.

  “I’m not going.”

  Why was he doing this to her? Why was he torturing her like this, getting her to believe that he really was one of the good guys when she knew there was no such animal. “I can have you removed. I can get a restraining order.”

  Mac looked at her pointedly. “Now who’s running away?”

  Tears were pushing their way through her system, threatening to spill out. She didn’t want to cry in front of him.

  She had no choice. The tears came anyway, despite all her attempts to block them. She had no say, even in this.

  “I don’t want to be left,” she told him. “I want to walk away on my own. I have my pride.”

  So that was it. She was afraid. Well, so was he. Afraid of losing her. “Pride’s a pretty cold thing to curl up with at night.”

  She sniffed, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. “But it’s better than nothing.”

  “How about better than something?” She looked at him. “Is having your pride better than having someone in your life who loves you?”

  He was being unfair, she thought. She didn’t have the strength to fight him off, not when all she wanted was for him to hold her, to make everything better.

  But he couldn’t. He could only make things worse. She’d let herself believe him and then he’d walk away, the way Matt had.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had that happen yet. I thought it did, but then I was rudely awakened.”

  “Not every man is like your ex-husband,” he told her patiently. “Not even every doctor is like him.”

  “But you were,” she insisted. “You are.” Now she was the one who wasn’t being fair, but she was fighting for her survival now. “The only difference is that you never got married.”

  He resented the comparison to a man he had come to loathe on principle, but he held his reaction in check. “And I was always honest. I never told a woman she was my one true love.”

  She had to give him that. She knew his reputation. There had never been any promises from him. They’d only lived in the moment. “No—”

  He cut her off before she could continue. “Until now.”

  Jolene stared at him. She’d misheard. There was no other explanation. “What?”

  He leaned over and whispered the words in her ear. “Until now,” he repeated.

  She drew back as if he’d just burned her flesh. “You’re saying you love me.”

  “Yes.” He moved to take her into his arms.

  Jolene sidestepped him, refusing to let her guard down. What he felt wasn’t love. “That’s pity,” she insisted.

  He looked at her incredulously. Was she out of her mind?

  “Why the hell should I pity you? If anything, I pity me for standing here, banging my head against the wall, putting up with a tongue-lashing. I can’t think of a single reason to pity you except maybe that you’re just too stubborn to see beyond your memory. Too stubborn to see that history is not doomed to repeat itself if you make the right choice.”

  He was wearing her down and she didn’t want him to. “Meaning you.”

  Mac touched her face. “Yeah.”

  She curled her fingers, digging her nails into her palms, trying to focus on that instead of melting.

  “You said yourself you can’t stand to see a child in pain. You’ve just broadened your base, that’s all. You’re not a self-centered bastard, you’re a good, kind man when it comes to the downtrodden. I know that. But once this—this thing is behind me, then maybe you’ll rethink your feelings, come to your senses and go on to the next woman.”

  How did he make her understand? “I’m not interested in you as the disease of the week, or the month, or my cause of the year, Jolene. I am just interested in you, period.”

  She held her head. The headaches rarely stopped now. This one had been plaguing her all day and was now at its apex. “I can’t process this right now. My head feels like it’s coming off.”

  Though he wanted to press her for a decision, for a commitment, Mac backed away. Nothing would be settled tonight.

  It felt strange, he thought. He’d run from commitment all of his adult life only to have someone withhold it from him now that he wanted it.

  There was irony in that. He knew a few who would call it poetic justice. But this wasn’t about him. It was about Jolene. Which meant that his feelings had to be shelved for the time being.

  “When are you having the surgery?” There hadn’t been any indication of that in the notes he’d read in her file.

  Jolene began to shake her head, then stopped. The pain was too great. “I don’t know. I haven’t set a date.” She saw him stride to the phone and pick the receiver up. “What are you doing?”

  He was already pressing buttons. “Calling Howard at home to set one up.”

  She put her hand on the cradle, disconnecting him. “You can’t do that. It’s my life.”

  His fingers curled around the receiver, channeling his anger. “Wrong again. It’s not your life. It’s Amanda’s and your mother’s. And mine,” he insisted firmly. “No matter how much you want to be, you’re not in this alone.”

  She didn’t want to be in this alone. She just was. “You’re hurting my head.”

  “You’re hurting my heart. We’re even.” He looked at her expectantly, his eyes indicating the receiver. “Now can I make the call?”

  “No.” She took the receiver from him, then sighed. “I’ll make the call.”

  He stood beside her as she dialed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Erika looked up from the coloring book spread out before her. She was helping Amanda choose a color for the clown’s feet. Tommy was beside her on the sofa, carefully examining the crayons in the box before rendering his opinion. When he offered her an orange crayon, Amanda took it from him solemnly, her impatience melting.

  Mac was pacing around the room like a caged tiger that was searching for a way out.

  Leaving the children with each other, Erika walked up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be all right.”

  He covered her hand with his, silently thanking the woman for the comfort she was offering. He wasn’t used to this, wasn’t used to waiting, to not knowing. Not doing. Time dragged on longer when you couldn’t do anything about it.

  Mac turned and smiled at Jolene
’s mother. “I’m supposed to be the one telling you that.”

  “I know.” She lifted her shoulder in a half shrug. “Just in case you forgot, I thought I’d say it out loud for both of us.” And then anxiety pushed forward, getting the better of her. She looked at her watch. “Is it supposed to be taking this long?”

  They hadn’t exceeded the customary surgical time range, even though it felt like several eternities had gone by since they’d watched the operating room doors close on Jolene and filed into the lounge to wait for word.

  Mac went into his best physician’s mode, realizing now from this vantage point how little comfort the words actually were. “It’s not something you want to rush through. They want to make sure that nothing vital gets affected while they’re draining the aneurysm.”

  He’d already explained it to her earlier, before Jolene had gone in for the surgery. The patient remained awake through the operation and the surgeon proceeds cautiously, asking a battery of questions for every minute movement that was executed.

  It had been just two days since he’d stormed into Jolene’s house. Two days since he’d fully realized just how much she meant to him.

  He’d never felt so helpless, so useless.

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, he began to pace around the lounge again, grateful that there was no one else in it beside Erika and the kids. He would have preferred leaving Tommy with the sitter, but the boy had begged to come once he’d discovered that Jolene was having surgery. When Tommy continued to plead, Mac had given in and brought him along. Under the pending circumstances, he thought it only fitting.

  He realized by the look on Erika’s face that Tommy had asked him a question and was waiting for an answer.

  Crossing to the boy, he squatted down to his level. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Tommy took a deep breath. “Is her doctor as good a doctor as you are?”

  Mac laughed, touched at the boy’s obvious adulation. “Better. He’s at the top of his field. None better.” The testimony was supposed to comfort Erika and Tommy. He clung to the words himself as if they were a life raft he was using to navigate his way through the rapids.

  Tommy’s face was a wreath of smiles. “Then Jo’s gonna be okay.”

  Mac hugged the boy to him. Who was comforting whom? “Yes, she’s going to be okay.”

  She had to be, Mac silently insisted. He wasn’t going to allow his thoughts to go in any other direction. Jolene was going to pull through. Any other possibility didn’t enter into it. Because it just couldn’t happen.

  “Why don’t you go over there and help Amanda? I think she needs you to pick another color for her.”

  Tommy sighed. “Women.” But he was obviously happy to be of service.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Mac said under his breath. He’d been much better off when it was a matter of a multitude of women rather than a single woman. Because now his stomach was completely tied up in knots. Just like his heart.

  Howard Monroe didn’t come looking for them until another half hour had passed. The doctor walked into the lounge still wearing his scrubs, his mask at half-mast around his neck.

  Erika froze when she saw him. Mac made it across the length of the room in three strides, taking Howard’s arm, as if that somehow assured him of the right answer to the question he put to him. “Well?”

  Howard smiled, nodding. “Yes, she will be.” His gaze took in both mother and worried significant other. “Jolene came through with flying colors.” Howard thought of sitting down, then decided against it. If he sat, he’d never get up and he needed to change. “Lucky we went in when we did. The aneurysm gave every sign of rupturing. As it was, we got it all. She’ll be up and flying in no time.”

  Tears in her eyes, Erika hugged the surgeon. “Oh thank you, thank you.”

  “Entirely my pleasure.” Howard looked at Mac over Erika’s shoulder. “By the way, she’s asking for you.”

  The news surprised him. He would have thought Jolene would have asked after her mother or Amanda. “Me?”

  Howard nodded, removing the mask’s ties from around his neck. “I think she mumbled something about a damn bastard.” A genial smile curved his mouth. “I figured that had to be you.”

  Mac looked at Erika uncertainly. It was enough that he knew Jolene was all right. He could wait now. “Her mother should—”

  “No,” Erika told him. “You go in first.” She gave him a little push to set him moving. “I’ll stay out here with the children and celebrate.”

  Grateful, Mac began to hurry out, then doubled back and brushed a kiss on the older woman’s cheek. No words were necessary.

  Erika smiled. “I see what she sees in you. Actually I saw it first.” She shooed him out. “Go, tell her we were all out here, rooting for her.”

  He barely heard the end of her sentence.

  Very quietly, Mac made his way into the recovery room. There were times when the area was teeming with beds, all separated from each other only by the curtains that hung from the ceiling and served as temporary walls.

  But the load was light today. The last patient had just been taken up to his room. Jolene’s was the only bed in the dimly lit enclosure.

  As he approached her, Jolene appeared to be groggy, but awake. Mac’s heart constricted looking at her.

  Just thinking of what he might have lost at the very moment when he’d realized he’d found it…

  He leaned his hands on the railings, marveling at how fragile she seemed. And how perfect, despite the bandage over half her head. “Hi.”

  She gazed up at him, vaguely aware that she had to look terrible.

  “Hi.” The word all but croaked out of her parched throat. She’d done a lot of talking in the operating room. That and the surgery had left her pretty much exhausted.

  Mac nodded toward the entrance. “Your mother and the kids are outside.”

  “I have kids?” she asked wryly. “When did that happen? I thought I just had one.”

  “Amanda and Tommy. He insisted on coming once he knew about the surgery. Felt it was his duty since you were there for his.” For the first time, Mac’s tongue felt heavy. He was just so grateful she was all right.

  “I remember,” she murmured.

  “Your mother let me come in first.” He glanced again toward the entrance, thinking that perhaps Jolene might rather have seen her mother in his stead. “Nice lady.”

  “I always thought so.” She blew out a breath slowly, then dragged another in. Breathing was taking concentrated effort. “What I didn’t think…was that you’d be here.”

  He took her hand in his. How did he make her understand? “When are you going to stop underestimating me?” A grin played on his lips. “Besides, bald women turn me on.”

  She closed her eyes, thinking of what she had to look like. Too bad Halloween wasn’t around the corner. She’d be all ready. “Don’t remind me.”

  She’d never looked more beautiful to him. “It’s just a section, not your whole head.”

  “Great,” she sighed, then took another deep breath. Her eyes felt like lead. “I’ll start a new style.”

  Mac stroked her hand. “Just as long as you’re around to start it, that’s all that counts.” Was this happiness he was feeling inside? It hurt, he thought. It hurt to be this happy. “You’re a lucky woman, they got it just in time. All of it.”

  Jolene tried to nod and found that any movement hurt. This was going to be slow going. But then, she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “That’s good.”

  She vaguely remembered that the surgeon had said something along those lines, but everything was getting blurry now. She just wanted to sleep.

  “Now it’s time for me to get lucky.”

  She opened her eyes wider as his words registered. Well, at least he was being honest with her. What did a man like him want with a half-bald temporary invalid? “New prospect?”

  She’d misunderstood. He shouldn’t have joked. “New venue.” Mac collec
ted himself, looking for words, serious words. “This isn’t exactly the most romantic setting, but seeing as how we’ve all been given a second chance here, it’ll do. Jolene, will you marry me?”

  When she didn’t answer, he looked down at her and realized that she’d fallen asleep.

  Frustrated, Mac blew out a breath. Okay, so this was just dress rehearsal.

  She was someplace else.

  Jolene peeled her upper eyelashes away from her lower ones, trying to see. Trying to focus beyond the haze.

  This wasn’t the Recovery Room anymore.

  When had that happened?

  Or was the other a dream and she’d been here all along? She could have sworn that Mac had asked her to marry him.

  Right, like that would ever happen.

  What had the anesthesiologist given her to make her groggy like that?

  Her eyes were closed again. She was looking at the inside of her lids. With effort, she opened them again. There was someone beside her.

  Holding her hand.

  A nurse, probably.

  How about that, she thought, giddy, the nurse needs a nurse.

  Jolene took a deep breath, filling her lungs so she could talk.

  “I’m alive.” The words were said to no one in particular and to the world at large.

  “Yes, I know.”

  The deep voice rippled all around her.

  A male nurse?

  No, wait, she knew that voice. It filled her head and her dreams. It was in the last one she remembered hearing before…

  For the third time, she opened her eyes. And focused in on—

  “Mac.”

  He grinned at her. “You were expecting Santa Claus?”

  “No.” He’d come. He hadn’t bailed out, he’d come. Happiness poured through her veins, chasing away the anesthetic. Making her feel alive. Groggy, but alive. Very alive. “I guess I fell asleep.”

  “I guess you did.” This was something they were going to talk about every anniversary, he decided, how she’d fallen asleep during his proposal. He’d never let her forget. “Right in the middle.”

  She didn’t quite follow. “Of surgery?”