Priceless (14 page)

She fought the dismay that crawled up the back of her throat. “That’s hardly a shock,” she admitted, forcing out the calm, measured words. “Your track record alone would give anyone that impression, wouldn’t it?” She’d been wondering for some time now, though, if impressions were to be believed. Now she had her answer. In Mack’s case, they were dead-on accurate.

“It’s the truth, not just an impression,” he said flatly, confirming her conclusion.

Beth stared straight into his eyes and saw the real torment there. Ironically now, with everything out on the table, she wasn’t sure that letting go to avoid more hurt was the right choice for either of them.

“This is all because you lost your parents and you’re afraid if you care too much about someone else, you’ll lose them, too,” she said quietly. “That’s why you won’t take a chance.”

He didn’t seem surprised that she’d put the pieces of the puzzle together. He merely nodded.

“I always thought I was immune to whatever damage their deaths had caused, but I guess I’m not,” Mack said. “Lord knows, I’ve always found some reason to move on every time a relationship started to get serious. I thought it was different with you. I know how I feel about you. This morning when I thought I might lose you over that stupid photo in the paper, I panicked, but at the same time I can’t see myself taking the next step.”

“Meaning what? Marriage?”

He nodded. “My stomach starts churning just hearing you say the word,” he admitted. “How can I not consider the probability that it’s because of that early loss?”

Beth struggled with the dismay spreading through her, but no one knew better than she did the hole that was left in a heart after losing someone. Hers had healed, but that didn’t mean Mack had to recover on the same kind of timetable. At least he was trying desperately to be honest with her. She had to respect him for that.

“Fair enough,” she said, making up her mind not to
let this matter. She’d known all along that their match wasn’t made in heaven, even though it had begun to feel so right. She’d been taken by surprise from the moment they met. It struck her as a little sad that this was the one time he hadn’t surprised her, but rather acted totally predictably—reaching out only to yank his hand back before it could get burned.

“We should stop seeing each other,” he said when she remained silent. “Now, before I can hurt you any more than I already have.”

“Is that what you want?” she asked dully, her heart in her throat. If it was, she would have to accept it and move on. She had too much pride to do anything less.

“No,” he admitted.

Relief nearly overwhelmed her. Sometime soon she would have to examine why that was, but not tonight. Tonight she needed to feel Mack’s arms around her again. She needed the connection to him that had made her feel alive these past few weeks. In time she might have to let go but not yet.

“Okay then,” she said briskly, to cover her emotional reaction. “Neither do I. And you seem to have forgotten that I’ve lost someone I loved, too—my brother. I know exactly how devastating and life-altering that experience can be.”

“But—”

Beth cut him off. “You’ve been honest with me, Mack. That’s all you owe me. I’m a grown woman. I can decide when the risk is too high. It’s not your decision to make, at least not on my behalf, only for yourself.”

His expression still troubled, he touched her cheek. “But I couldn’t bear it if I hurt you or let you down. You don’t deserve that.”

“You might do both,” she told him, then slid out of the chair to wrap her arms around him and rest her cheek against his. “But not tonight. Not unless you go away without making love to me.”

He studied her intently, then a smile tugged at his lips. “Guess there’s no chance of that, darlin’. No chance at all.”

A few days later Mack sat in his office contemplating the turn of events that had kept Beth in his life. For a few minutes he’d thought it was all over, thought it needed to be over. It had stunned him how much that had dismayed him.

Until Destiny had spilled the beans to Pete Forsythe, Beth had been the first woman that the media hadn’t caught on to in Mack’s life. Now that the days of being out of the limelight were pretty much over, Mack appreciated them more than ever. It had been surprisingly nice to actually have a private life that was his alone.

At least so far, his warnings to his aunt had kept Beth’s identity a secret. He’d thought maybe that photo had been a boon, after all, that it would throw Forsythe off the scent, but he’d been mistaken about that. In fact, according to the indignant call he’d received a half hour ago from Jason, the columnist had been poking around at the hospital this morning.

Fortunately, most of those who knew about the two of them were as interested in protecting Beth as Mack was. Jason had reassured him that he, Peyton and the other doctors and nurses who worked around Tony would never say a word. Tony might happily give away the secret, but so far the hospital public relations department had been dedicated to protecting the identity of the sick child Mack came to visit so regularly.

Yesterday, when a reporter had caught up with Mack outside the hospital, he’d uttered nothing more than “No comment,” then hurried inside, beyond the reach of the reporters and photographers who were staking out the public areas outside hoping for details of the secret romance in his life. He knew that the terse reply would only stir curiosity. Until now he’d been well-known for cooperating with the media. Until now he hadn’t even viewed them as adversaries, but rather as a condition of celebrity.

Of course, until now, the women he’d been with had sought the spotlight that shone on them because of him. Maybe that’s why he felt so completely off-kilter. Beth didn’t crave the media attention. She was with him despite it, in fact.

Just as important, his relationship with Beth was his alone, not the media’s and not his fans’. He was stunned to discover he could be with a woman out of the spotlight for weeks on end without growing bored or restless. They had an endless supply of things to talk about besides football, and that was a relief, too. His brain was getting a workout keeping up with Beth, and rather than being intimidated by that, he was delighting in it.

He was pondering the meaning of all that when his secretary buzzed him.

“Dr. Browning on line one. She says it’s urgent.”

Heart pounding, he picked up the phone. “Beth? What is it? Are you okay?”

“It’s Tony,” she said, her voice oddly cool and detached. “He’s taken a turn for the worse.”

When? How? Was this it, then, after all that struggle? A million and one questions nagged at him, but
he could tell from Beth’s tone that now was not the time to ask them.

“I’m on my way,” Mack promised, his heart pounding. “Hang in there, sweetheart. And tell Tony to hang on, too.”

“Hurry, Mack.”

“W
ithout that donor marrow, he doesn’t stand a chance,” an unfamiliar doctor was telling Beth when Mack arrived. Peyton and Jason were beside her, their expressions equally bleak. “If we could get that transplant lined up, we could go ahead with the high-dose chemo and prep him. It’s our only shot at this point.”

“No hits on the donor list?” Beth asked in that same detached tone she’d used on the phone. She could have been talking about someone she’d barely met rather than a boy that Mack knew she loved as much as he did.

Mack studied her worriedly. There was no color in her cheeks, and her eyes were dulled by fatigue and anguish. Her demeanor might be calm and professional, but he didn’t think it could possibly be healthy. She had to be as torn up by the news as he was.

Jason caught his eye and gestured for him to join
them. Mack walked up beside Beth, put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She gave him a quick, grateful glance, but her eyes were haunted.

When Beth went back to her consultation with the other doctors, Mack looked down the hall and spotted Maria Vitale outside of Tony’s door, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, her forehead resting against the cool tiles on the wall. He’d never seen anyone look so utterly sad and alone. Because there was nothing he could do here at the moment, he decided to go offer his support to Maria.

He leaned down and whispered to Beth that he was going to speak to Maria. “I’ll be right there if you need me.”

Again she regarded him with gratitude, but her focus remained with the other doctors.

Reluctantly Mack left her and went to Tony’s mother. He spoke softly. “Maria?”

She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Mack, I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t think I can bear it. He’s giving up. He told me you would understand, that you would make me see that it’s time for him to let go, but I can’t let him do that. He’s my baby. How can I let him go?”

Mack hadn’t spent nearly enough time in church, had never had a reason to bargain with God. It had been too late when news of his parents’ plane crash had been delivered. Prayers had been useless then. He searched his heart for the right words now, trying to balance comfort against hope.

“Maria, it’s out of your hands,” he reminded her gently. “Maybe it’s always been out of your hands. God has a plan for Tony. He’s the only one who’ll decide this.”

“How could God want my boy?” she demanded angrily, choking back another sob. “Tony is all I have.”

Mack was helpless to answer that. “What did Dr. Browning tell you?”

“That without a bone marrow transplant very soon, there is no hope.” She gave him an anguished look. “There is no donor. I would give my boy my own life, but they say the match is not good enough. His father…” She gestured dismissively. “He’s given Tony nothing, not since the day he was born. I don’t even know where he is.”

“Are there other family members?”

“None close enough to help,” she said bleakly.

Mack finally saw the one thing he could do. He should have thought of it weeks ago, but for some reason it had never struck him that he could help in this way. He gave Maria’s hand a squeeze. “Then let me see if I can buy Tony a little hope. Go back in there, Maria. Talk to him. Tell him you love him. Tell him I’ll be in soon, too. He needs to know you’re there beside him and that there are a lot of people around who care about him.”

She nodded and wiped her tears. Her shoulders squared. “I left because I didn’t want him to see me crying. He asked me not to cry for him. That’s the kind of boy he is, concerned for me and not himself.”

“Then, no more tears,” Mack said. “Not until all hope is gone.”

Maria regarded him with a sad smile. “You’ve been a good friend, Mack. I will never forget that you’ve been here for him every day. It has been like the fulfillment of a dream for him. If these are his last days, you’ve made them happy ones.”

Mack shrugged off his effort. “Let me see if I can’t do something for him that really matters.”

When Maria had stepped back inside the room, Mack ducked in behind her for just a glimpse of Tony. He was paler than ever, his eyes closed. He looked so frail it didn’t seem possible that there was even a breath of life left in him. Mack’s heart ached, but his resolve strengthened.

Closing the door quietly behind him, he headed for an exit so he could use his cell phone. Maybe it was too late, but he had to do something. This wasn’t happening to just any kid. It was happening to Tony, and over the past weeks, Mack had come to love that boy as if he were his own son. He couldn’t lose him. It simply wasn’t an option.

Mack was suddenly a boy again, listening to a stranger tell him, Richard and Ben that their parents were dead. The housekeeper had stood silently weeping at the stark recitation of the facts about the plane crash in the fog-shrouded mountains. Ben had cried with her, but Richard had stood stoically silent, looking dazed. Mack knew about death, but he’d never experienced its finality. He hadn’t really understood what the full implications were at the time. He’d had no idea how horribly alone they were.

Only after the funeral had it begun to sink in that his mother and father would never be there with them again. Only when Destiny had moved into the house, trying in her own unexpected way to make things normal, had he fully grasped that things had changed forever. His aunt was such a dramatic change from their parents, and in some ways a welcome one. She was always laughing, always unpredictable, always ready
for a new experience. It had been easier after a while to simply pretend that his world was okay.

But it hadn’t been. He could see now that it had never been okay, that the scar from losing his folks ran deep, shaping him in ways he hadn’t had to confront until he contemplated losing first Beth over something foolish and now Tony through a ravaging illness. He was terrified right down to his soul that he would never recover from this loss, that he would never dare to risk his heart again.

He wasn’t thinking just of himself now, either. He didn’t want Maria Vitale to have to face the feelings that had shaped his life. Nor could he handle watching Beth struggle so hard to bear that loss, that stark reminder of another boy—her beloved brother—who had died of the same devastating illness.

Filled with a sense of urgency, he made a mental checklist as he went down the hall. As he passed Beth, she gave him a questioning look. He mouthed that he would be outside, and she nodded. Then she and the other doctors kept on talking, struggling for answers that could buy Tony a few more days, or even a few more hours.

It was a half hour later and Mack was still on the phone when Beth finally broke free and came outside looking for him. He reached for her hand and gave her a tired smile as he wrapped up this one last call. She looked as wiped out as he felt.

“You okay?” she asked when he’d finished and stuck the cell phone back in his pocket.

“How could I be?” he asked, astounded that she had enough strength to worry about him, when she so clearly needed comfort herself.

She raised a hand, rested it against his cheek. “Don’t take it so hard, Mack. We knew this could happen.”

Her quiet acceptance, her defeatist attitude, grated. “We can’t let it happen,” he said angrily, shrugging off her touch and her words. “I won’t listen to you give up on him.”

“Sometimes you do everything you can and it’s not enough,” she said pragmatically.

“I can’t accept that,” he stated flatly. “I’ve made some calls.”

“To?”

“The team.”

She gave him a bewildered look. “Why?”

“He needs a bone marrow transplant, right? That’s his only hope?”

She nodded. “But the chances—”

He cut her off. He wouldn’t listen to any more doubts. “I’ve got just about everyone I know coming in here to be tested as potential donors. Can the lab handle that?”

She stared at him, her expression filled with disbelief and maybe just a tiny hint of hope. “Yes,” she said at once. “I’ll alert them right away, but are you sure? Did you explain to them that it’s not just a simple little blood test?”

“They get it,” Mack assured her. “They understand the important part, that it’s a chance to save a boy’s life.” He met her gaze. “You can start right now with me. I should have done it weeks ago. It never even occurred to me that it was the one thing I should do that might really make a difference.”

Sudden tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, Mack.”

He squeezed her hand. “Let’s get started. That boy has to live, Beth. He has to.”

What he couldn’t say was how terrified he was of losing not only Tony but Beth. The two were so connected by now, he didn’t think he could bear it if he lost either one.

Beth would have sworn that she’d already shed all the tears she possibly could, way back when her brother had died. Since then she’d maintained a stoic kind of calm in the face of each and every loss that had come her way. She might be shaken when she lost a patient, she might feel like a failure, but she never shed a tear. Even today, when she’d been forced to accept that the end was all but inevitable for Tony, her eyes had remained dry.

Now, though, as she watched one brawny football player after another appear to be tested as a prospective bone marrow donor, she kept bursting into tears. Mack had finally gone to the gift shop and brought back the biggest box of tissues the store offered.

She blinked away a fresh batch of tears when she spotted Mack’s brother Richard, accompanied by a man who could only be another Carlton, the reclusive artist, Ben. Her eyes grew even mistier when she saw that Destiny was with them.

Mack opened his arms to his aunt. “You didn’t have to come. I just wanted you to get in touch with Richard and Ben for me.”

“Of course I had to come,” Destiny insisted, reaching for Beth’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “I intend to be tested, too.”

“Destiny, no,” Beth protested.

“Why on earth not? Is there some reason I should be disqualified?” Destiny inquired.

“No, but no one would expect you to do this.”

“Then isn’t it a good thing that I expect it of myself,” Destiny said briskly. “Where do we need to go?”

Beth looked up at Mack, expecting him to protest, but he merely gave his aunt another fierce hug.

“Have I ever told you how much I admire you?” he asked her quietly.

“You’ve never had to say the words,” she told him. “None of you have. I know you think I’m impossible sometimes, that I’m annoying, that I’m a romantic meddler, but I also know that you love me.”

“This isn’t just about loving you,” Mack said. “That’s a given. Admiration and respect are something you’ve earned quite aside from that.”

“He’s right,” Ben said. “You’re a remarkable woman, Destiny.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said, clearly flustered. She grabbed one of Beth’s tissues and dabbed at her eyes. “See what you’ve gone and made me do? I’m crying.”

“And we know how you hate to spoil your makeup,” Richard teased.

“Especially in a place like this,” Destiny responded tartly. “With all these handsome doctors around, I want to look my best.”

Beth chuckled. “Shall I take you someplace to powder your nose on the way to the lab?” She leaned in to confide, “Peyton Lang is quite something and he’s single.”

Destiny’s eyes immediately brightened. “Really?” She winked at Mack. “See, darling, this isn’t nearly the unselfish act you were making it out to be.”

“You can’t fool me, Destiny,” he countered. “This is not about meeting a doctor. You already have half
the available men in Washington falling at your feet and you never give most of them a second glance.”

“Politicians and bankers,” she said dismissively. “There is something so impressive about a man in a white coat, don’t you think so?” she asked, linking her arm through Beth’s. “It’s reassuring.”

To Beth’s amusement, Mack rolled his eyes.

“I think I’ll wait here,” Mack said. “I’m not sure I can bear to watch my aunt in there batting her eyelashes at Peyton.”

“Neither can I,” Ben said. “I’ll wait with Mack till they’re ready for me.” He glanced up at Richard. “And before you say one single word, big brother, no, I’m not trying to back out. I said I’d do this and I will.”

“Never doubted it,” Richard said. He turned to Mack. “Just in case, be prepared to escort him down there. You know how Ben is about needles.”

Ben feigned a horrified expression. “There are needles involved in this test?”

“Big ones,” Mack confirmed.

Beth laughed, despite the dire situation that had brought them all here. “Ben, don’t let them get to you. Mack’s acting all brave and superior now, but even he turned pea-green during the procedure.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring,” Ben said dryly, then squared his shoulders. “Hell, I might as well get this over with. Come on, Beth, lead the way. If a wuss like Mack can do this, then anybody can.”

“Hey, I’ll do just about anything for a lollipop and one of Beth’s kisses,” Mack said. “The rest of you will have to content yourselves with the candy.”

Beth grinned at him. “Not necessarily. Right now I’m in the mood to dispense a lot of very grateful kisses.”

Mack shook his head. “Then isn’t it a damn good thing that most of the team has come and gone?” he grumbled.

“Jealous, bro?” Ben taunted.

“Damn straight,” Mack shot back without hesitation.

Beth’s heart filled with unexpected joy. Life was an amazing thing, she concluded. Just when you were very near the depths of despair, it could turn around.

Maybe they would find a match from today’s testing or maybe not, but she doubted she would ever forget the astonishing parade of people who had come here at Mack’s request. Only an incredible man could garner such an outpouring of generosity with a few phone calls.

Whatever happened with Tony, however heartbreaking the outcome might be, she would always think of this as the precise moment when she’d realized that she could never let Mack go, not without a fight.

After the last of the volunteers had gone, after his family had said goodbye and left for home, Mack paced the halls of the hospital waiting for word on the test results. Surely someone would be a match. Granted, the odds weren’t in their favor—Beth and Peyton had made that clear—but Mack couldn’t stop himself from hoping and praying that the news would be good.