Fortune (4 page)

His last surgery had run over, although it was ultimately successful. He hated to admit how antsy he’d gotten at the end, how impatient he was to see her—the girl he definitely didn’t want to get messed up with. But things were feeling messier than ever right now. He fought with himself as he walked down the quiet, sterile hallway. Why was he here when he had no intention of getting tangled up with her?

He stopped outside the door, looking through the window. The ma
ma
was sitting in Kat’s room by the bed. Kat was sitting up too, alert and awake. Her eyes flitted to his over her mother’s shoulder, her beautiful eyes that made him forget everything. Elena turned and saw him too.

“Dr. Ryan McCarthy! You come in.” Not
would you like to come in?
Not
why don’t you join us?
It was an order as emphatic as any he’d received as a child. He pushed the door open slowly as Kat stared daggers at him.

“I know you’re tired. I won’t stay. I just came by to—”

“Come in and sit,” Elena ordered, getting up. “I have to go to…gift shop. You stay here, you sit with her. You stay, yes? While I am gone?”

He was pretty sure the gift shop was closed, but he sat in the chair Elena shoved him toward and watched her sail out the door.

He studied Kat. Good, she looked better. Some part of him had feared a hidden pocket, a slow bleed. He worried all day about being paged for emergency surgery. He couldn’t have done it, not on her.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said at the same time he asked, “How are you feeling?”

They both paused. “I’m feeling okay,” Kat finally said. “Less groggy. I’m sorry about my mother, she’s a little—”

“Never apologize for your mother,” he said in a chiding tone that doubtlessly annoyed her. She stopped talking and stared at her hands. The awkward silence was stultifying.
Just leave, you idiot.
“So no pain? No visual disturbances?”
Okay, that’s not leaving.

“No bad pain. Just the bruises. And the twenty stitches along the back of my head,” she added ruefully.

“Maybe I should just take a look while I’m here.”
Idiot. Not your job! Leave now, before you touch her. If you touch her…
She leaned forward and he put one hand on her hair even though he didn’t need to. He felt guilty, like one of those doctors who fondled patients on the sly. Her curls were as thick and soft as he imagined. He ran a thumb across her nape as he lifted the gauze to check the stitches. When she shivered a little he almost came undone. He replaced the bandage quickly and stepped back.

“They look good, Kat. And any scar won’t show unless you pull your hair up. I’d say you’re a very lucky lady to come away with just a scar, considering the fall you took. But you’ll need to take things easy for a while. No late nights and bar hopping. No tabletop dancing.”

She looked at him with that shuttered, slanted glance, and again he thought,
Go, just go. Get out of here.
This wasn’t the wanton tease from the club. This was a real girl and he felt even more strongly for her. Forget messing with her stitches, the medical small talk. He wanted to take her in his arms. Why this strange pull, this connection? Yesterday it had been all about the amazing body, the challenge of the frown. Now, he realized, it was about something more. She looked back down at her hands, a faint blush rising in her pale cheeks.

“I do appreciate your help. For you to stay all night… And I know I bled all over you.”

He shrugged and smiled. “You really know how to maim yourself. But you’re okay, and that’s all that matters.”

“Well… Thank you. I wouldn’t have liked to bleed out at the bottom of the stairs at Masquerade.”

“No. It wouldn’t have been a very dignified way to go.”

She looked up at him, her deep green eyes narrowed in a question. “You seem awfully young to be a surgeon.”

“Thank you. But I’m not that young.”

“You’re younger than every other surgeon I’ve ever seen.”

“And how many have you seen?”

She pursed her lips and he grinned by way of apology. “Okay, you’re right. I’m slightly younger than average. I started college early.”

“When you were twelve?”

“Not quite,” he hedged. He had been almost sixteen.

“You’re like Doogie Howser, huh? Child genius?”

“I was just really motivated. I always wanted to be a surgeon. My parents were both surgeons.”

“They were? They died?”

“They retired last year. Went off to spend their golden years in Aruba.”

“Oh, nice.”

Her
Oh, nice
was difficult to decipher. Approval? Derision? He mentally compared his serious, reserved parents with the effusive Elena Argounov. He loved his parents, but his childhood had been lonely, quiet. Solitary. He wondered what Kat’s childhood had been like, with her prodigious mother and all those women he’d assumed were sisters since they all looked like different versions of Kat.

“Did you make these?” Kat asked, turning to the window. Someone, perhaps her mother, had lined up all his little origami figures like soldiers on the windowsill beside her bed. He’d made a cat, a dog, a crane, a fish, a pig, a tiger and even a bird with flappable wings. Kid stuff. He could fold more complicated things, but that took a level of concentration he hadn’t possessed last night as he watched her sleep and obsessed about intracerebral hemorrhage and aggravated axonotmesis.

“Yeah. I’ve been making those for ages. I make them for kids sometimes before surgeries to calm their nerves.”

“You’re like Patch Adams.”

“Patch Adams. Doogie Howser. Any other celebrity doctors you’d like to compare me to?”

She laughed then, a weak laugh, but it was a laugh. He stared at the way her face changed when she smiled. It was over too soon.

“Do that again.”

“Do what?”

“Laugh. Or at least smile. I thought you weren’t capable of it.”

She snorted softly, with another quick smile that left him wanting more.

“I wonder what it would be like to see you laugh until you were breathless.” His words came without thought, without intention. She sobered and looked down at her hands, then back at him. They were still looking at each other when Elena returned.

“
Ouft,
” she sighed. “Gift shop is closed. But thank you for staying. You think she is okay? She go home soon?”

“Tomorrow, I expect,” Ryan said. “Her physician will be by to discharge her.”

Elena dug in her purse, brought out a business card and handed it to him.

“You come to our house so Ekaterina’s papa can give thanks to you. She is his princess. He will wish to thank you very much. He is not so strong in his mind now and he does not like hospitals, so he cannot come here,” she said. “You come and see us. Come for dinner.”

He looked down at the card.
ELENA ARGOUNOV, FORTUNE-TELLER AND SPIRITUAL ADVISOR.
And under that, in ornate, swirly script, “Show me your palm and I will tell you your future.”

“You call first if you like, let us know you are coming. A big boy like you, an important doctor has great appetite, yes? I cook lots of food.”

The phone number was there, the address too. Unbearable temptation.

“Thanks, Mrs. Argounov, but I have consultations, office hours. Surgeries of course, and then work at the club some evenings—”

“You call and you come,” Kat’s mother snapped in her inimitable style.

“Yes, I sure will,” he assured her. “When things slow down, I’ll call.”

But he wouldn’t call. He absolutely
would
not
call. Kat watched him pocket the card, watched the entire interaction with an ambivalent look on her face. Oh, her glorious curls and those lovely pouting lips he wanted to kiss.

Run, you idiot. Run.

Forget it. It’s too late.

Chapter Three

It took over a week for Kat to get back on her feet. Then she started work from home, which was impossible with all the noise, so she returned to working at the office probably sooner than she should have. Her stitches itched and her bruises were tender. She went straight to bed after work, no nightclubs. Her beloved club shoes were tainted by misfortune and went out with the trash.

She still thought about him, though, in no small part because her mother muttered often about the fact that he didn’t call. Kat tried not to care, but each time she stood at the top of a flight of stairs, she felt the loss of him. She waited for it to happen again, some random accident in the random world that flummoxed her. Wouldn’t he be sorry when her next stair debacle turned fatal because he wasn’t there? Escalators with their sharp, scary teeth were impossible for her to cope with. She took elevators whenever she could and convinced herself he was just an asshole. Just one more of those club guys, not worth obsessing over. She forced herself to stop thinking about him and actually tried to convince herself she hated him. She threw away his silly paper animals so she didn’t have to look at them, then fished them out of the trash and stowed them in a shoebox under the bed because she couldn’t bear to lose them.

On difficult days, when the textbook translation was boring and her family was annoying her to tears, she’d pull out the box and pore over the origami figures he’d made. The folds and corners were so delicate and precise. Little flaps and notches, each perfectly symmetrical and balanced, like him. She would trace the folds as if to trace the fingers that had run over them. Some of the newspaper ink blurred along the edges. Had his fingers done that? Or hers, tracing again and again? She imbued the paper figurines with an emotional gravity she was sure they didn’t have.

She just needed to go back out to the clubs. She needed the eardrum-bursting music, the hot press of party people. But to return to that place where she’d surely see him, where she’d have to navigate those stairs—it seemed the most self-destructive of choices.

But then, she was a self-destructive person. It took less than three weeks for her to break down and return to Masquerade because she simply couldn’t stay away. She refused to admit to herself that he was the reason, that she really wanted to see
him
again. She convinced herself it was only the atmosphere she missed, and the promise of more empty but comforting sex.

When she got there it felt strangely different. She felt like an outsider for the first time in a long time. She wandered around for a while, then retreated to her place at the top of the stairs, navigating the concrete steps gingerly. The blood was long gone, of course, and now the stairs had some kind of nonslip rubber material on them. Some other girls were standing in her spot.
Damn it.
She leaned on the railing farther down and her gaze swept the dance floor. Lots of new faces but a few familiar ones too.

But not him.
Relax
, she told herself.
You didn’t come here to see him.
She could have asked one of the bouncers where Ryan was but she was way too embarrassed to do that. Even now, she thought they were looking at her funny.
Why is she back here? I hope she doesn’t fall down the stairs again.
She needed to get out of there before she went crazy, but she needed to find a man first.

She made her way down to the dance floor and found a hot prospect quickly, a youngish, very handsome college boy.
Okay, you’ll do
, she thought to herself, pasting on a come-hither smile. He was sweaty but he still smelled good and he had some pretty intriguing hip-thrusting action going on. He leered back at her and started grinding his hips against her. He was already half-hard. Oh yes, he was hers.

But then she felt a hand close on her elbow. She pulled away instinctively. She hated to be grabbed at. Hard, dark eyes bore into hers and he wouldn’t let her pull away. In fact, he was pulling her right off the dance floor.

“Let go of me.” She tried to extricate herself. “How dare you? I was dancing with that guy.”

“I saw your little hook-up-in-progress,” Ryan muttered. He spun her to face him on the edge of the dance floor. “What in holy fuck’s name are you doing back here again?”

“I’m dancing and trying to have fun. At least I was.”

“You go home
now
and you go home
alone
. I’m tired of watching you do this.”

“Do what?”

“Give it away and play fast and loose with your life. You’re supposed to be resting, recuperating. Hm, now how would I know that? Oh, that’s right. Because I was your doctor!”

“That doesn’t mean you can yank me around now and tell me what to do. Why the fuck do you care anyway?”

He leaned close to her, his eyes flashing. “Because you’re a reckless little slut and I do not approve.”

His face was so close to hers that they could have kissed if they wanted to, but they didn’t kiss. He started to pull her again. She was so shocked by his words she didn’t resist when he tugged her along. The crowds parted to let them pass and she felt embarrassed that everyone was witnessing something so private. She was embarrassed by the possessive way he dragged her, by the angry look on his face. But at the same time, she was also a little aroused at the way he was manhandling her.