His Leading Lady Page 2

  “You’re the one who keeps insisting on throwing these little parties,” he reminded her.

  She shrugged helplessly, making her black spiral curls bounce against her shoulders. “I know. I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment.”

  “Or a shameless matchmaker.”

  “Guilty.” Her smile was shameless as she led the way back to the loft’s spacious den. They both fell back into the oversized couch with a sigh. Classical music still played softly in the background, and the soft clinking sound of dishes in the kitchen was a homey, comforting backdrop.

  The fact that he could finally relax for the first time all night—and after a killer shift in the pediatrics ward—had him nearly ready to doze off on that comfy couch.

  “Admit it,” Claudia said. “Helen was a pretty good choice.”

  Nicholas nodded. “She was…lovely.” And she was. His blind date had been everything he’d told Claudia he wanted—warm, witty, and kind. And empirically speaking, she was pretty, no doubt about it.

  Claudia’s head dropped back against the couch as she groaned. “Uh oh.”

  “What?”

  She turned her head to face him. “You hesitated. Why, what’s wrong with her?”

  Nicholas opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. Nothing. Nothing was wrong with her. He just hadn’t felt it—a spark, or a connection—whatever it was that was supposed to be the dead giveaway when you met the one or a viable contender for the one, at least.

  Claudia was still watching him, and her face fell at whatever she saw in his expression. “Seriously, Nick. What was wrong with her? This is the third woman I’ve set you up with this month, and you haven’t liked any of them. How can you expect me to find you a nice girl if you don’t give me some feedback?”

  Nicholas winced. She was right—he’d been a difficult matchmaking client, to say the least. And it wasn’t like he was unwilling. About six months ago he’d made the decision that he was finally ready to settle down. He’d gotten to a stable position at the hospital and was ready to focus on the next step of his life plan. Marriage, kids…the whole white-picket-fence scenario. It was time. And if there was one thing Nicholas excelled at it was creating life goals and attaining them. This should be no different. But months passed and he’d had no success—between his busy work schedule and his small social network, finding a wife the old-fashioned way had not been fruitful.

  He’d gone to his best friend with the problem, and she’d been ecstatic to hear that he was finally open to being set up on blind dates—something she’d been trying to push on him since they’d studied premed together at college. She’d even managed to convince him to try his hand at online dating, but his few attempts to date had been spectacular failures.

  Claudia was still waiting for a response, but he had none to give. “I think you don’t know what you want,” she finally said.

  She might as well have slapped him in the face. Straightening his shoulders, he gave her his haughtiest look. “That is not true. I’ve told you exactly what I want.”

  “Right,” Claudia laughed. “Miss Perfect. Well, I hate to break this to you, Hot Doc, but the perfect woman does not exist.”

  He ignored her use of the nickname she’d given him in college—the one he hated with a passion. “I’m not looking for perfection, but I do think compatibility is important. Like what you have with Frank or what my parents had when they were alive.”

  Claudia looked down her nose at him. “I have a feeling you’re glorifying your parents’ romance. And I know you’re doing it to mine. Lord knows I love my husband, but we are so far from perfect.” Though he was safely in the kitchen and out of earshot, she called out, “No offense, honey!”

  Nicholas didn’t bother to argue. She didn’t get it—he wasn’t looking for perfection, he was looking for…simple. Easy companionship. He didn’t need some torrid affair or a passionate emotional relationship—he was looking for a teammate, a friend to share a life with.

  “I don’t think it’s crazy to be looking for a woman who shares the same goals, the same dreams for the future.”

  Claudia gave a short laugh. “Not everyone is as goal-oriented as you are, my friend. Most of us are just making it up as we go along.” Before he could respond, she switched the topic. “So Helen wasn’t the girl of your dreams. Duly noted. I’ll keep looking. In the meantime, how’s online dating going?”

  Nicholas cringed at the memory of his last date. A girl who’d seemed perfect on paper but when he met her had turned out to be something else entirely. Her whole profile was devoted to how much she wanted a long-term commitment, then when he showed up she informed him that her roommate had actually made her profile and it was all one big lie.

  “So far it’s been a waste of time.”

  Claudia murmured something about kissing a lot of frogs, which made him laugh. “Thanks for the wise words of wisdom, Claudia, but I can’t waste time on someone who doesn’t want the same things as me.”

  He could practically feel his best friend roll her eyes. “Oh right, I forgot, you’re on a timeline.”

  She made it sound like it was the worst thing in the world. But really, he hadn’t gotten where he was—a highly successful, renowned pediatric surgeon at a world-class hospital—without having a plan. And plans required a timeline and end goals.

  Finding his wife and future mother of his children was no different.

  “My timeline is perfectly reasonable. Now is the perfect time to find my partner. If I get this promotion—”

  “When you get it,” Claudia chimed in supportively.

  “If I get it, I’ll be relocating and—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Claudia cut in. “Now is the perfect time to meet your wife. I’ve heard this all before. I just think that perhaps you’re being too narrow-minded about this perfect woman of yours.”

  Nicholas shrugged. They’d been through this before. “I know what I want.”

  “You always do,” she muttered.

  He looked over in surprise. “What does that mean?”

  Her sigh sounded weary and she sank even farther into the couch as she kicked off her shoes. “I don’t think you’ll know what you want until it’s right in front of your face. And if you want my opinion? It’s probably not going to be what you think it is.”

  Nicholas turned to her with a frown. He was a man who got what he set his mind to; Claudia knew that better than anyone. “What makes you say that?”

  She turned to face him then and her smile was enigmatic, like she was laughing at a joke she wouldn’t share. “Because that’s the way love works, Hot Doc. It couldn’t care less about your plans.”

  Nicholas had no response to that—he had little to no experience with love in his own life, he’d never had time for that particular adventure, so he was hardly in a position to argue. Ceding temporary defeat, he pushed himself off the couch and pulled Claudia up along with him so he could give her a hug and say his good-byes.

  Frank came out of the kitchen to shake his hand and when Nicholas got onto the elevator he turned back for one last good-bye to find his favorite couple friends standing with their arms around one another, leaning against each other in their exhaustion.

  A brief pang shot through his chest. That. That right there was what he wanted. Despite his friend’s cynical words, he found seeing her with her husband was more heartening than anything. True love was out there. His parents had found it and so had his best friend. He was happy for her—she deserved it. Still, seeing his friend’s perfect relationship made him that much more aware of what he was missing, and he found himself pushing the button to close the elevator doors so he could escape the sight. “Good night,” he called as the doors started to slide shut.

  “We’ll keep looking,” Claudia called out. “Don’t give up hope!”

  Her words rang in his ears long after the doors shut. Claudia might tease him mercilessly, but she was also his biggest cheerl
eader. She was also ruthlessly persistent. He had no doubt she would continue weeding through all her available single friends and acquaintances until she found the one. Her devotion was sweet, but at that particular moment the thought of facing endless dinners like the one he’d been on tonight made him slouch against the elevator wall with a weary groan.

  His parents and Claudia had made finding a life partner look so easy, but so far his search had been fruitless and tiring. For quite possibly the first time in his life, he’d set out to accomplish a task and was failing. Well, maybe it was too soon to call it a failure, but it certainly wasn’t coming easily. Perhaps it was time to rethink his strategy. Maybe he should put his wife-hunt on hold, wait until the promotion was a sure thing… But then that would mean delaying his plans.

  And life plans waited for no man.

  * * * *

  Heavy exhaustion weighed on him as he rode in a taxi uptown to his Riverside high-rise apartment building. He gave the doorman a quick nod as he got in the elevator.

  Sleep, that was what he needed. His apartment and his bed were calling to him. He needed to shut his mind off for a few blissful hours. The doors slid open with a ding. For just a little while he could turn off all thoughts of work or dating or—

  Oof. The force of a woman slamming into his body at a full run temporarily knocked the wind out him. Instinctively holding on to her to keep them both from falling over, there was a stunned moment when he found himself in an odd embrace. One minute he’d been alone on an elevator, and then he was in a hallway, pressed up against a woman.

  A gorgeous woman.

  She pulled back to look up at him, her eyes impossibly wide and startlingly green. Not emerald green but some shade between green and blue. A turquoise maybe. Her red hair was pulled up off her neck, and her lush lips were parted, like they were begging to be kissed.

  He had to be dreaming—the world tilted on its axis as he stared down into the face of the woman. His woman. He’d found her….

  But then words rushed out of her mouth, and he was jolted back to reality.

  “Doctor. I need a doctor.”

  Chapter 2

  When the stranger spoke, Alice had the unnerving sensation that she was hallucinating.

  The blindingly handsome man looked a bit like an angel, and his deep voice was a soothing balm, cutting through her frantic panic. “I’m a doctor.”

  “You’re a doctor?” she repeated. What were the odds that in her hour of need, she would run smack into a doctor sent from heaven? But then the panic returned in full force and the dizzying fear held her in its grip once more. Taking the doctor by the hand, she pulled him toward Ena’s apartment.

  “Ambulance,” she thought she said. “Collapsed. Have to get to hospital.” Disjointed words came out of her mouth in a jumble, but the doctor snapped into action with a cool professionalism that was slightly reassuring.

  Thank God someone was here who knew what the hell to do.

  When they reached Ena, she was still on the floor, but she was conscious. As Alice rushed to her side, she was dimly aware that the doctor was on the phone giving orders, then he was by her side doing all the doctorly things she’d seen on TV but would never have thought to do herself. Checking Ena’s pulse, asking her questions, reassuring the patient…and Alice in the process.

  The next hour flew by in a blur as an ambulance arrived and paramedics showed up in the apartment with a stretcher. Through it all she was dimly aware of the doctor taking the lead, with Ena and with her.

  He led her by the elbow to the ambulance and helped her into the back so she could stay with Ena. He went to close the door, and terror had her gripping his arm like he was a lifeline. And he was. He was the only thing that seemed to make any sense in this nightmare of a night.

  He stopped and covered her hand with his. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Gently uncurling her clenched fingers, he closed the door.

  She paced the waiting room for what felt like hours, anxiety churning alongside a stomach full of terrible hospital coffee. The caffeine made her edgy on top of being worried out of her mind. Her deep-seated fear of hospitals wasn’t helping anything either. She fought off the bad memories that threatened to drown her, but the fear seemed to live in her bones and the seeped into her blood. The stranger who’d accompanied her to the hospital had sat with her for a while, which had helped a little. He didn’t force her to talk, and for that she’d been grateful. But then, as impatient as she was to get word on Ena’s condition, he’d told her he was going to track down the doctor on duty to get an update.

  She’d briefly considered calling her sister to keep her company while she waited, but Meg was ready to pop with pregnancy—she needed her sleep. There was no one else she felt comfortable calling. She had friends, of course, but no one she could turn to in a crisis.

  That’s what you get for being so stubbornly independent. She could practically hear Ena’s voice in her head, chastising her. Ena was always giving her a hard time for being too closed off for not trusting enough. What Ena didn’t understand—had never understood—was that trusting people was not easy for her. She didn’t know how people did it. She trusted Meg and Ena. That was it.

  Oh God, please don’t let anything happen to Ena. That woman was the closest thing to a grandmother she’d ever known, and over the past few years she’d been more of a motherly figure than her own mother had ever been.

  By the time the double doors swung open, she was ready to jump out of her skin.

  It was him—the doctor from earlier in the night, the one who’d miraculously appeared when she’d needed him most. Beside him was a young bald man wearing scrubs—the ER doctor on duty, she guessed.

  “How is she?” Alice asked, her hands wrapping and unwrapping around the now-cold coffee cup in her hands.

  The bald doctor frowned at her. “You’re Ms. Knight’s granddaughter?”

  She nodded quickly. She’d almost forgotten that lie she’d told the nurse who’d made it clear that only relatives would be informed of the patient’s condition.

  “She’ll live.”

  Alice let out a long breath. Relief coursed through her. She was grateful that the doctor hadn’t beaten around the bush and had told her what she needed to hear first.

  The hot doctor—her doctor, as she was starting to think of him—took her gently by the elbow and steered her toward a seat. She sank into it, and he took the seat beside her as the ER doctor filled her in on the details. Ena had suffered a heart attack, it seemed. Not life-threatening thanks to the quick response time, but serious enough that they were keeping her for observation for the next few days.

  Alice nodded as he spoke, trying to register the words as they filtered through her hazy brain. After the rush of adrenaline, followed by the overwhelming wave of relief at the good news, Alice was wrung out—emotionally and physically. His words barely made sense because all she could focus on was one thought—Ena was going to live. She wasn’t going to lose her friend.

  A choking sensation had her scrambling for breath. She saw the doctor’s eyes narrow in on her expression with a look of concern. “Are you all right, miss?”

  No. What the hell was this? Her throat was closing up and her eyes were burning. What the… Was she about to cry? No. Impossible. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She hadn’t cried since she was nine years old, not even when she’d broken an ankle in volleyball. She sure as hell was not going to cry here, now, in front of a complete stranger.

  But even as she thought it, tears came trickling out of her eyes and her breath hitched in her throat in a quiet, gasping sob.

  Neither doctor seemed unperturbed by the sudden choking sobs and the stream of tears that were coursing down her cheeks. The ER doctor gave her a sympathetic wince of a smile before heading back through the double doors. As for her doctor, by his calm, cool, composed features and the way he instantly, almost instinctively reached out an arm to wrap a
round her supportively, it was easy to believe that he was used to seeing women break down every day of the week. And maybe he did. He was a doctor after all, maybe waiting room hysterics were par for the course.

  But Alice was horrified. Swiping at the errant tears, she found herself trying to get words out through the sobs. “I-I’m s-sorry,” she managed. “I d-don’t—I n-never c-c-c—”

  He interrupted her with a tight squeeze. “It’s all right. You have nothing to be sorry about. It’s been a trying night.”

  Alice resisted the tug at first, but his arm felt so good around her shoulders and his broad chest looked so inviting, she gave in with a little wail, letting herself collapse against him as the sobs racked her body, leaving her shaken and exhausted.

  She was vaguely aware of the fact that he was murmuring soft words of comfort as he stroked her arm in a rhythmic, soothing motion. The movement lulled her, and his body heat warmed her chilled body. And the scent of him—something earthy and masculine—made her feel safe and cozy. The tears subsided after a little while, but Alice found she didn’t have the energy to pull away. Not just yet…

  * * * *

  Holy shit! Alice sat up with a start, instantly awake and filled with a sinking sensation. She’d fallen asleep. On the stranger’s chest, no less. She turned to him, certain that embarrassment had turned her face a special shade of crimson, one typically reserved for cranberries and stop signs.

  He smiled at her. Smiled! Like strange women fell asleep on him all the time. No big whoop. Just another day in the life of Doctor Sexy. And holy crap was he sexy. She’d started to think that maybe she’d been hallucinating in the hallway when she’d thought he was an angel sent from above. But now, she knew she hadn’t been exaggerating anything in her distress.

  This man was beautiful—there was no other way to describe him. Beautiful in a manly way, of course, but beautiful nonetheless. His light brown hair was cut short in a sort of military style, and his features were the stuff of sculptures. His jaw looked like it had been chiseled from stone, and his nose and cheekbones had the sleek lines of an aristocrat. He had vivid blue eyes that seemed to be filled with warmth at all times—whether he was issuing commands to paramedics or cuddling a stranger while she cried.