Her Texas Rescue Doctor (6 page)

Grace knew that. She did. She just wished...

She looked at the cypress tree again, a single, tall pillar of green in the middle of an acre of asphalt. A lonely pillar. “I wish I was as good as you are at imagining that everything will work out okay.”

He turned toward her, laying his arm along the back of the bench. She was aware that his hand rested on the bench just behind her shoulder blades, right behind her spine, the very spine she needed to stiffen.

“Is everything not okay with you?” he asked.

She didn't want to have a spine of steel. She wanted to melt into his arms. “Isn't everything not okay with everyone? We all have our little troubles, right? Everyone's fighting their own battle.”

She was babbling, fighting the desire to lean into him, into Alex Gregory, MD, according to the embroidery on his coat.
Can I call you Alex? Tell you all my worries?

“Grace, you can talk to me.”

Okay, that was a little scary. He was like the perfect guy.

But he was a doctor. He meant she could talk to him about medical things. “I don't think I've caught anything from her. I'm a generally healthy person.”

He was studying her again. She didn't know when anyone else had ever looked at her so closely. She was only an assistant, for goodness' sake. Keeper of the lipstick and the schedule. What was there for him to see?

“I'm fine. Honest.”

Alex Gregory, MD, began unbuttoning his white coat. He stood and shrugged out of it. The scrub pants she'd seen beneath his coat were matched by a loose green scrub shirt that had been pulled on over a long-sleeved white knit shirt.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He sat back down, coat folded over his arm. “There. Now I'm not a doctor. Call me Alex. I'm not asking you about your health. You're not my patient. There are no legal obligations for me to report anything you want to tell me. Is there anyone you're scared of?”

“Listen, Dr. Gregory—”

“It's Alex.”

His stethoscope was still hanging around his neck. She tried not to stare too long at the dusting of dark hair in the V-neck of his top. “You still look like a doctor.”

He waited, silent.

“I'm sorry,” Grace said. “It's not you. I just don't talk to anyone except Sophia. I can't. Everyone else, from the limo driver to a cashier at the grocery store, could make some money selling tales to tabloids, you know?”

“No, I don't know. I wouldn't know how to go about finding a tabloid to sell anything to.”

“They'd find you.”

“We're opposites, then. You can only talk to Sophia, and I can't talk about Sophia at all. Not legally. She's my patient, so the tabloids will be out of luck if they find me.” He smiled at her a bit, a little crinkle at the corners of his eyes behind those frames. “I don't have any restrictions when it comes to you. Do you think the tabloids would offer me money to hear about you?”

“I'm nobody.”

“Me, too. But I'd rather you called me Alex.”

The little joke was pleasant, coming from such a serious man, but she couldn't find it in herself to return his smile. The desire to tell someone about her fears was painful. She looked over her shoulder out of habit. No one was in earshot, and Dr.—Alex—was sitting right here, all blue-eyed concern. God, she hadn't had a friend in a million years.

“Sophia's got herself mixed up with a terrible guy. A new boyfriend.”

“Is that Deezee?”

“You've heard of him.” She sat back, determined not to say anything else.

He tapped her back lightly with the hand that had been resting behind her shoulders. “I hadn't heard of him until ten minutes ago. You turned white when his name was mentioned.”

“DJ Deezee Kalm? That doesn't ring any bells?”

He shook his head.

“He's the first guy she's been interested in for years, but I don't know why. He's awful for her. He's awful to her.”

“This boyfriend is abusive?”

“Persuasive.”

“Persuading her to do what, exactly?”

Grace wasn't sure how to answer that. Everything sounded melodramatic. Deezee was persuading her sister to throw away her career. Persuading her to destroy her own reputation. Persuading her to push away her own baby sister.

“Nothing that's really illegal.” Even yelling at a police officer wasn't illegal. It was just horrible.

The thought of police made her think of the other patient Alex was dealing with this afternoon. “Oh—did you think he was like a Mr. Burns? Nothing like that. Deezee has just been persuading her to be mean to me. Not exactly a crime, is it?”

But how nice that Alex had been worried about her, like a big brother. She felt tears threatening. She started to get up, ready to go back inside.

He stopped her with a question. “How long has this been going on?”

She was startled into silence. He wanted to know more, even though she'd given him the easy out. Without physical abuse, it was hard to explain how poisonous Deezee was. A boyfriend was setting one sister against the other—no big deal, not enough to make an episode of reality television. Alex could easily dismiss her complaint as drama, but the way he'd said
How long has this been going on?
sounded like he thought
this
was significant. She could have kissed him for taking her seriously.

“They met at a thing in Telluride, three months ago. He's not as big a star as Sophia is, not nearly, but he hired a very well-known publicist. That's who introduced them. Sophia never would have met him, otherwise. She doesn't do the club scene, or at least she didn't do the club scene before Deezee. She doesn't know any of the D-list wannabes that he hangs out with, and—” She clapped her hand over her mouth, mortified. “That sounded so snobby.”

Her parents had raised her better. Each kid at school was to be treated the same, whether one wore expensive sneakers or one didn't. Having money hadn't made kids superior then, and being more famous didn't make her sister superior now.

Except it did. Those things mattered in Hollywood.

“She
is
an A-list celebrity. She earned that. It's not a matter of being photogenic or even being a good actress. She never fails to make her call. She's always prepared. I know I sounded bad just now about the D-list, but Sophia isn't snobby like that. By the time she leaves a set, the entire crew is always in love with her because she's nice to everyone. It's kind of sad that saying hello to the other people on the set is enough to make you stand out, but that's Hollywood, I guess. Anyway, her good reputation makes people want her on their projects.”

She knew she was babbling, but the floodgates were open. “It's also Hollywood to lose your A-list status in the blink of an eye. Right now, Deezee has her dancing to his tune. The best scripts in circulation are sent her to read, but she's blowing them off in order to party with him. Deezee says he needs her, and she goes running.”

“It sounds like the D-list guy is hoping her A-list status will elevate him.”

“Exactly. Yes, exactly.” Grace realized she'd reached out and clutched his forearm for emphasis. Despite the lightly chilly Texas air, she could feel the heat of his skin through the white shirt. His arm was solid in her grip. She meant to let go, but instead she gave his arm a little shake in her frustration. “How can you see it so easily, and she can't see it at all? I've pointed it out to her, but it's like talking to a child who doesn't want to believe that eating a bucket of candy is the reason she's sick to her stomach. I'm the one that's getting sick of it. We spent ten years building up to where we are now, and she's managing to destroy it in three months.”

Grace did let go of his arm then. “Everything is going downhill. She's starting to act like him, disrespectful in public. Worse, she's being disrespectful
to
the public. Invitations have dried up, because no one wants her to bring Deezee to their event. The job offers will dry up next. The money will dry up. He's hurt her reputation, her finances—heck, he's even given her pneumonia.”

Alex raised a brow at that. “He had an upper respiratory tract infection?”

She shooed away an imaginary bug. “I'm on a roll. I'm blaming him for everything, okay?”

Alex made a little sound of amusement, and Grace found herself doing something she never thought she'd do: laughing at the situation. Chuckling, at least. For a moment, anyway.

Her smile faded. “It's embarrassing, the way she talks to me now. I'm not normally a pushover. You probably find that hard to believe.”

“Not at all. You didn't let me push you around when I was being short with you. I'm sorry, again, for shutting you down when you first asked to speak to me alone.”

“You didn't know what I wanted to speak to you about.”

“You're letting me off the hook pretty easily. That makes you kind as well as brave.” He moved his arm, a simple shifting along the back of the bench, but his fingertips grazed her shoulder as he did. Did he linger? Had he touched her on purpose?

Please.
She wanted to be touched.
More.

She had no one to talk to but Sophia, no one to even hug except Sophia. Alex was too tempting. He was sympathetic and interested and warm, physically warm. And tall. With amazing blue eyes.

He almost touched her. She saw his gaze drop to her shoulder, but he stopped himself and raised his eyes to hers instead. “You were brave enough to report a crime today. I'm sure you are brave enough to find yourself a new job. You should work for someone who appreciates you.”

It was either the conviction in his words or the kindness in his eyes that just about undid her. Whichever it was, her throat felt suddenly tight with emotion, making her voice sound husky. “She's my sister. I have to keep trying. I can't just let her crash without trying to get her to put on the brakes, you know?”

He hesitated only a moment. He set his hand on her shoulder, and gave her a firm squeeze, solid and warm, a masculine touch.

“Family.”

That was all he said. One word. It was the bottom line, she realized. It was her purpose in life, to take care of her family. Her only family.

It felt like finding an oasis in a desert. Someone understood.

But then Alex let go. He looked resigned even as he gave her a small smile. “I hear sirens coming. My break is going to be over whether I want it to be or not.” He stood, so she stood with him. “Are you going to be able to handle Deezee when he arrives?”

“He won't arrive. He can't. Sophia's contagious. You said so.”

“Yes, but only for about forty-eight hours. She shouldn't fly for a week, but she won't be contagious for long. Antibiotics are effective.”

Her heart sank. “I thought I had a week, maybe a month. I need to keep her in Texas as long as possible. We've only been here a day, and already I've caught some glimpses of the real Sophia returning.”

In silence, he began putting his coat back on.

“Couldn't you tell her she'll be contagious for a month?”

He pushed his glasses into place with his knuckle. “She's my patient. I won't lie to her.”

Lying to celebrities was a given in Hollywood.
You don't have to wear anything you object to. There will be plenty of time to rehearse. This interview will only take five minutes, then we'll get you some lunch.
Telling Sophia she was contagious for a teensy bit longer than she really was barely counted as a fib in Hollywood. At least Grace's lie was for Sophia's own good.

“Um...could you not tell her how long she'll be contagious?”

He looked at her in silence, and she imagined all kinds of disapproval focused on her through those lenses. Clark Kent never told a lie, if Grace remembered her superheroes correctly. Her sister would like dating a man who didn't lie to her.

“I'm not asking you to lie, just not to mention it if she doesn't ask.” The sirens were getting closer by the second, feeding some sense of urgency that Grace hadn't known was building. “The contagious thing is all I can think of to keep Deezee away from us.”

Alex put his hands in his pockets. His poker face was back in place, but after a small eternity, he sighed. “I'm sure the nurse has given her the discharge orders by now. Unless she requests to see me specifically, she and I are done talking. Whether or not you choose to lie to your sister is something I can't control.”

They were done. Alex was going to leave her. She'd be on her own with Sophia again, with no one else to talk to, no one who shared her concern. “When can we see you again? I mean, when does she follow up with you?”

“Unless she takes a sudden turn for the worse or spikes a significant fever, she should finish her antibiotics, travel home when she feels well enough and see her regular physician for follow-up.”

This was goodbye, then.

No, no, no.
She needed to think of something, but with the sirens closing in and the clock running out, she could only fall back on what she knew. Sophia was a powerful draw for most men, and Grace had the valuable commodity of access. “I'm sure Sophia would like to thank you properly when she's feeling better. If you give me your number, I can call you and we could set up a time for coffee or something.”

“That isn't entirely appropriate. I don't normally visit a patient in their home—or hotel room. It stretches the limits of the doctor-patient relationship.”

Desperation made her bold. “Let me give you my number, in case you change your mind.”

She didn't have her tote bag with her. She found one of Sophia's gum wrappers in her pocket, but she had nothing to write with. Alex had a couple of pens clipped onto the edge of his pocket. He made no move to hand her one.

The ambulance pulled under the portico with a deafening noise. Grace winced, but she only had seconds. She grabbed a pen, scribbled her number on the paper side of the foil wrapper, and shoved the pen and the little silver square into his pocket.