A Surgeon to Heal Her Heart Read online

  Always. She’d always keep her mother at home. She hoped and prayed.

  Joyce waved her hand. “You know what I meant.”

  She did. Joyce wanted to help, as did Gerald, to lighten Carly’s burden. But Carly had this. Precariously, but she was making ends meet. She’d worry about sorting out all the tangles and knots later...hopefully, much later.

  “Thank you for all you do. Nothing more is needed.” She hoped it never was. “Just you taking care of Momma.”

  Joyce made another loud tsking sound. “I don’t do nearly enough.”

  “You’re here and that frees me to work without worrying about what kind of care Momma is getting. That’s huge.” As she thought about how different life would be without someone she trusted to care for her mother, Carly’s eyes misted. “If I don’t say thank you often enough, please know how grateful I am that I met you while doing my clinical rotation at the nursing home where you worked.”

  Joyce’s eyes filled with love. “You say thank you about every other breath, and you know the feeling is mutual. Gerald and I love you and Audrey.” The woman hugged Carly in a big bear hug, gathered her belongings, and got ready to leave. “Don’t work too late into the night. You have to rest, too, you know.”

  Carly nodded. She worked a side job for an insurance company going through medical claims. The more claims she processed, the better her extra pay. While sitting next to her mother’s bed, she’d work late tonight, processing as many claims as she accurately could.

  “See you bright and early in the morning,” she told the woman she truly didn’t know what she’d do without.

  Carly peeked in at her mother, saw she was resting, and went to the bathroom to grab a quick shower. When she’d finished and was dressed in old gray sweats and a baggy T-shirt, she checked her mother again, then went to make herself a sandwich before logging into the insurance company’s website.

  Work waited. It always did.

  But when she went back into her mother’s room, Audrey was awake.

  “Hi, Mom. How was your day?” Some days her mother would answer. Some days her mother just stared blankly.

  “S-same a-as a-always-s.” Although slurred, her mother answered, which made Carly’s heart swell. Did she know who Carly was today?

  “Mine, too. Busy, busy, busy. Some of my patients are the same ones I mentioned to you last night, but I did have a couple of new ones.” Carly never gave names or identifying information, but chatted about her patients. She tried to make her stories interesting, to give her mother a link to the outside world as often as she could.

  Audrey rarely left the house these days. When she did it was usually to go to a doctor’s appointment.

  Before Carly knew it she was telling her mother about walking in on the new surgeon and how he’d been holding his patient’s hand, comforting her.

  “I-i-is h-he h-h-handsome?”

  “Gorgeous,” she admitted. “He’s also very kind and funny. The man makes me smile.”

  Realizing she was going on too much about Stone, she glanced at her mother.

  Her mother who was staring oddly at her. “Y-you l-like h-him?”

  Oops. Not the first time today she’d been asked that.

  But, unlike at the hospital, to her mother, she nodded. “He seems like a great guy.”

  “Y-you sh-should g-go out with h-him.”

  Her mother knew her. If she thought Carly was Margaret, she’d be scolding rather than encouraging her mother to cheat on her father.

  “Mom, he’s a doctor. I’m a nurse. How cliché can you get?” She tried to keep her voice teasing and fun and similar to conversations they might have had during Carly’s teenaged and college years when Carly had dated, when she’d been wrapped up in Tony and thought he was her forever person. “Besides, Stone’s way out of my league.”

  “Wh-why?”

  “Because he’s such a great catch.”

  “S-so a-are y-you.”

  “You, my dearest mother, are the tiniest bit biased.” Carly stood, bent over and kissed her mother’s cheek. While her mother was with her, really with her, Carly wanted to milk the moment for every precious second. “Truly, he’s out of my league. Even if he wasn’t, it would never work.”

  “Be-because of m-me?”

  “Of course not,” Carly gasped. Never would she want her mother to think such a thing, never would she want her feeling guilt over Carly taking care of her to the exclusion of everything else. It was a privilege to take care of her mother. One Carly treasured and had never thought twice about...until Stone.

  Darn him. That he made her discontent with the status quo was enough that she should dislike him.

  “To-Tony,” her mother began.

  Despite the slight thrill that her mother’s memory was working at the moment, Carly stopped her. “Tony was an idiot and I was lucky to be rid of him.”

  She was. Any man who couldn’t understand that Carly had to take care of her mother, that her mother came first, well, he needed to hit the road. She’d needed Tony’s support; instead, he’d resented everything about Audrey.

  “Tony has nothing to do with why Stone and I would never work. He and I are just not physically or economically compatible. That’s all.”

  “I-if h-he th-thinks that then y-you are b-better off wi-without h-him.”

  “Exactly.” Before her mother could talk more about Tony or Stone—why on earth had Carly mentioned him?—Carly launched into a tale about another patient, exaggerating to make the recounting more entertaining.

  Because tonight her mother looked at her and saw her daughter. Sometimes that wasn’t the case.

  Sometimes it was all Carly could do not to cry.

  Sometimes she did cry.

  But not tonight. Tonight she smiled and enjoyed talking to the weak woman lying in the hospital bed that took up a good portion of the bedroom.

  Tonight her mother was mentally her mother.

  * * *

  “Any regrets?”

  Having just stepped out of a patient room, Carly spun toward the sound of Stone’s voice near her ear and almost collided with him.

  “About what?” she asked, stepping back because of his close proximity. He wore dark navy scrubs that made his green eyes pop.

  She glanced up and down the empty hospital hallway. Although the nurses’ station was within view, no one was paying them the slightest attention.

  “Not going to dinner with me last night.” His voice teased, but his eyes asked real questions.

  “Not a single one.” The truth. She prized the evening she’d spent with her mother until she’d dozed off and Carly had worked on insurance claims late into the early morning hours.

  Stone’s sigh was so dramatic someone should give him an award. “Pity.”

  Despite knowing the best thing was to walk away, to not encourage him in any shape, form, or fashion, she couldn’t resist asking, “Why’s that?”

  His gaze locked with hers, sparkled like an emerald sea. “We’d have had a good time.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a true man.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Men automatically think you getting to spend time with them means you’ll have a good time.” Tony had thought that. “That’s not always the case, you know.”

  His grin was quick. “We should test that theory.”

  Step away, Carly. Don’t get pulled in by his charm.

  “By?” she asked, unable to follow her own advice, and wondering how long they could linger in the hallway prior to someone taking notice.

  “Going to dinner with me tonight.”

  Her gaze met his. “I’ve already told you no to going to dinner tonight.”

  “That was yesterday. Today’s a new day.”

  “My answer hasn’t changed.”

  “It should.”

  Rosalyn stepped out of a patient room, glanced toward Carly and Stone, and stopped to stare.

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Carly quipped.

  Obviously, Rosalyn’s opinion ran more along the lines of Stone’s. Grinning big, she gave a thumb up.

  “Your opinion is that you should deprive yourself of dinner with me?”

  “Deprive myself?” Carly snorted, then shook her head at Rosalyn. “I’ll survive just fine if we never go to dinner.”

  Turning, Stone shot a grin at Rosalyn, who smiled back, then headed toward the nurses’ station.

  “You won’t know what you’re missing.”

  Shifting her weight, Carly squinted at him. “Is that supposed to bother me?”

  His eyes flashed somewhere between serious and teasing. “It should.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s something between you and I.”

  Her breath caught. She felt it. He felt it. Thoughts of her mother were all that kept her from throwing herself at the mercy of whatever he wanted. She had no time for a relationship, no energy for a relationship. Everything she had, and more, was already claimed.

  “You’re wrong.” She smiled tightly. “There’s nothing I want from you.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  Because I’m a horrible liar and usually pride myself on being a person who tells the truth, but with you...

  She didn’t want his pity. Or his rejection if he felt the same as Tony had.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, not meeting his eyes. “Why don’t you?”

  “Because you’re not telling the truth.”

  She hadn’t expected him to call her bluff, and
her gaze shot to his. “How dare you say such a thing?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  She lifted her chin in indignation, partly feigned, partly real, at his arrogance. “So your word gets taken as the truth, but not mine?”

  “In this case, yes.”

  “What an ego you have, Dr. Parker.”

  “Stating facts doesn’t make me egotistical.”

  Carly put her hands on her hips and glared at him with the sternest look she could muster. Not an easy thing to do when he was grinning at her with his brilliant smile and twinkling eyes.

  “Is there a point to this conversation?”

  “Just enjoying your company.” His tone was teasing, but the glint in his eyes said he told the truth.

  If she were honest, she’d admit she was enjoying his company, too. Which was ridiculous considering what their actual words were. Was she really that desperate for any scrap of his attention?

  “I’ve work to do.” She glanced down the hallway and caught Rosalyn and a nurse’s aide watching them.

  “Am I interfering with your work, Carly?”

  “Yes.” Carly’s head hurt. Or maybe it was her heart.

  “How so?”

  “You’re distracting me.”

  His eyes danced. “You’re admitting you find me distracting? Finally, we’re getting somewhere.”

  She bit the inside of her lower lip, then shook her head. “Dr. Parker, I shouldn’t be having lengthy personal conversations while on the clock.”

  “Which is why you should go to dinner with me tonight. We could have lengthy personal conversations to our hearts’ content.”

  She wanted to. She wanted to say yes, go to dinner with him, and stare into his eyes all evening. Longer.

  But, even if she could, how unfair would that be to him? Very. To lead him, or anyone, on was wrong.

  She should tell him, should apologize for smiling when he sat with her at break, for laughing at his corny jokes, for looking at him and longing for things outside her grasp.

  But she couldn’t find the words, so she hurried away, dodging into a patient room to avoid both the man she could feel watching her and her two co-workers anxiously waiting to question her.

  She didn’t think of herself as a woman who ran from her problems. But, at the moment, running from temptation, and the questioning thereof, seemed the best course of action.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “CAN I HELP you with that?”

  Carly peeped at Stone from over the top of the box she carried through the hospital corridor. He’d changed out of his navy scrubs into his own clothes, black trousers and a green polo shirt that perfectly matched the color of his eyes. She fought sighing in appreciation. The man should be in movies, not a hospital operating room.

  “I’ve got it,” she assured him. “Thanks anyway.”

  Ignore him and maybe he’ll go away. Not likely, but maybe.

  “That box is bigger than you are.”

  The sturdy box was more bulky than heavy. Inside were expired medical supplies the hospital couldn’t use. Carly had gotten clearance from upper management to take the expired supplies home with her. No one at the hospital knew about her mother, but they did know she sat with someone on her days off work.

  There might not be a thing she could use. But Carly would go through the box, pull out what she could use, and take the rest to a free health clinic for the uninsured that could hopefully make use of the items.

  “You look like it’s all you can do to keep steady. Quit being stubborn and let me help you, Carly,” Stone insisted, his voice sounding off a little.

  He had a point. Plus, Carly’s fingers ached from gripping the box so hard and she was curious why his voice wavered. “Fine.”

  He took the box from her with an ease indicating it weighed no more than a feather, then beamed as if he’d done something amazingly chivalrous. Whatever had caused the waver, he was all smiles now.

  “Lead the way.”

  As in to her car.

  She didn’t want Stone to see her reliable, but old sedan. Whereas most people didn’t notice the little details in Carly’s life that hinted things might not be fairy tales and roses, that sharp mind of his would question things she didn’t want questioned.

  She didn’t want him making her question things.

  Pushing the hospital door open and holding it for him, she sighed. “Of all the people who offered to help, it would have to be you.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t like me.”

  “I don’t know you well enough to like or dislike you,” she said as she made sure the hospital door completely closed. “I only know you from the hospital and what little interaction we’ve had here.”

  “I keep trying to correct that.”

  “You want me to know you well enough to dislike you?” She pretended to misunderstand in hopes of redirecting the conversation. Besides, he deserved a little taking down.

  Rather than look offended, he laughed. “I’m hoping you’ll swing the other way and like me.”

  Fighting a smile, she narrowed her gaze at him. “But you’re admitting there is a distinct possibility I won’t?”

  “It’s not been a big problem, but you wouldn’t be the first.” He cut his eyes toward her. “For the record, I’d prefer you like me.”

  “Noted,” she said, keeping a step ahead of him as they crossed the employee parking lot.

  “Go to dinner with me, Carly.”

  He was asking her again. How could something be so unbelievably dreamy and such a nightmare at the same time?

  “I can’t.” Part of her wanted to. Part of her wanted to grab her box and run.

  Despite how she’d hightailed it from him earlier, she didn’t run from her problems. She dealt with them head on and chin up.

  Just as she had with Rosalyn and the nurse’s aide’s teasing questions about Stone.

  “Because?” he prompted.

  Because she had to relieve Joyce. The retired nurse was wonderful, never complained if Carly worked overtime, but, otherwise, Carly always came straight home.

  “Are you involved with a married man?”

  Almost tripping, eyes wide, Carly spun toward Stone. “What? Are you crazy? Of course not. What would make you think that?”

  His gaze, not so twinkly at the moment, stared into her eyes. “No one knows anything about your private life, yet you say you’re busy.”

  She glared for real. “Because I’m not interested in you that means I must be sneaking around with a married man?” She rolled her eyes. “Get over yourself, Dr. Parker.”

  He winced. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “It’s what you implied and I don’t appreciate it.” Was that what he’d taken away from the short bits of time they’d spent together? That she was a woman who would mess around with a man who’d vowed himself to another woman?

  “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to imply.”

  Hanging onto her anger proved difficult when his apology was full of sincerity. Frustrated with herself, she put her hands on her hips. “Then say what you mean.”

  He shifted the box. “Regardless of what I say, I upset you.”

  “You should take the hint and not say anything, then.”

  “What’s the fun in that?”

  “What’s the fun in upsetting me?” she tossed back and took off toward her car in a fast walk.

  “You’re right,” Stone said from right behind her. “I take no pleasure in upsetting you. The truth is I want to do the opposite.”

  “You want to take pleasure in upsetting me?” She pretended to misunderstand, again. She felt contrary and purposely misunderstanding gave her a little reprieve. Asking if she was seeing a married man! The nerve. “Thanks, but no, thanks.”

  Okay, she might be latching onto that to throw a wall between them. She needed whatever shield she could find to protect her from the charm he exuded.

  Digging her key out of her pocket, Carly unlocked her old economy sedan, then hit the button on the car-door panel to unlock the back doors. She opened the backseat door, tugging a little extra hard where the door often stuck, then stepped back for Stone to put the box onto the seat.