His Leading Lady Read online

  Maybe warm eyes were a requisite attribute for doctors. Maybe that was all part of the bedside manner thing.

  It was then that she realized that she was staring. He didn’t seem to mind, he was still giving her that small, comforting smile—the type one might bestow on a small child or a dotty old aunt.

  It hit her again—she’d fallen asleep on him. For how long? Oh crap, was she drooling? She lifted a hand and wiped the back of her mouth just to be sure.

  “Do you want to go see your grandmother?”

  She blinked at him, the words not registering. Her grandmother. Her grandmother?

  Ena! Scrambling to move away from him, she jumped out of her seat. “Yes! Definitely yes. I’d love that.” She was rambling but couldn’t bring herself to care. Why not add one more bit of crazy to the boatload she’d already dumped on this man.

  He led the way through the doors and into the intensive care unit, holding her arm as if he was afraid she might collapse or something. And he had every right to think that given the way she’d just acted, she reminded herself.

  Still, she resisted the urge to jerk her arm away. She did not need his help. But she let him lead her because despite the fact that she hated his support, she wasn’t altogether steady on her feet. The hospital smells were overwhelming, threatening to choke her or make her sick. God, she really hated this place.

  He left her at the door, and she didn’t turn to say good-bye or thank you in her eagerness to reach Ena’s side. She looked like she was sleeping so Alice took the seat at her bedside and settled in, ready to wait it out as long as it took.

  It only took two minutes. Ena opened her eyes, which looked extra dark against her paper-white skin and hair. “You’re here.”

  “Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?”

  Ena’s voice sounded weaker than normal, but she didn’t miss a beat. “Oh I don’t know, off with a certain hunky doctor?”

  Despite the fact that she looked like she’d just narrowly escaped death and was currently lying on a hospital bed, Ena’s eyes were filled with mischief.

  Alice ignored her. “How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?”

  “No, no.” She waved off Alice’s concern. “I’m fine, and the doctors gave me some medicine that’s making it hard to stay awake.”

  “Then get some sleep, you need your rest.” Alice leaned over and pulled the covers up farther and then gave them a little pat to smooth them flat, mainly because it seemed like that was the sort of thing one was supposed to do at a sick person’s bedside. But really, she had no idea. The simple gesture felt awkward. She wasn’t the mothering nursemaid type—that was Meg’s role. She should have had her sister come down here, she would have known what to do...

  Ena broke into her thoughts. “You look like you need rest more than I do. Good God, girl, what happened to you?”

  Alice spun around to face a mirror on the far side of the room and gave a little shriek at the sight she saw there. Her face was ashen white where it wasn’t red and blotchy from crying. Any makeup had been lost in the deluge of tears, and the hair that had at one point been pulled back in a bun was now sticking out and frizzing out all over the place, making her look like a mad scientist.

  To top it all off, she was still wearing the ridiculous, oversized pajamas that made her figure look like a giant lump. She was a large potato in a flannel sack.

  Her hands came up to her face as she breathed out string of curse words.

  Unbelievable. She’d actually let herself be seen like this. In public. By him. She had a vivid memory of sobbing onto the nice doctor’s shirt, and an irrational anger swept through her. Some stranger had seen her cry. And not just any stranger—a hot guy.

  Alice did not cry, and she sure as hell didn’t lose her cool in front of strange, hot men. She just didn’t.

  Her blotchy face was a rude reminder that yes, apparently she did.

  It was a onetime thing. An anomaly. She inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders. It would never happen again.

  Ena’s voice broke into her inner tirade. “So? What do you think of that doctor? He’s right up your alley.”

  She gaped at her reflection in the mirror before spinning around to face Ena. “Are you kidding? Doctor vanilla ice cream?” She feigned a yawn. “Too boring for my tastes. Besides, he probably has a perfect little wife and two-point-five kids waiting for him in the suburbs.” Her reflection frowned back at her as her brain summoned up an image of the sexy doctor with his perfect wife on his arm. She’d bet money the woman in question was a blond bombshell—elegant, sleek, and disgustingly sweet.

  Ena’s soft laugh had her shaking off the nauseating mental image as she turned to face her friend.

  “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”

  Alice rolled her eyes, but a tightness in her chest eased at the sight of her friend’s smile, which was as lively as ever despite her wan features. “He’s not my type.”

  “Why? Because he’s seen you like this?” She pointed to Alice’s wardrobe and let out a cackling laugh. “You just don’t like him because he’s seen you vulnerable. I can read you like a book.”

  Alice ignored her as she settled into the chair once more. “So are you going to sleep, or are you going to keep harassing me?”

  Ena’s lips clamped shut but she looked like she was smothering a smile. She shut her eyes, and Alice let out a sigh of relief that the conversation was over. She was ready to head home, take a shower, and forget all about the awful image of Ena on the ground. And the humiliating image of her utter loss of dignity in front of the sexy doctor.

  But then Ena said, “I can ask him if he’s single if you’d like.”

  Alice groaned. She should have known Ena wouldn’t give up that easily—even when she was doped up and in pain. Her friend was bound and determined to find Alice a love match, despite the fact that Alice didn’t do love.

  “Good night, Ena,” she said as she gathered her purse and headed toward the door.

  “One date with the dashing doctor,” Ena called after her.

  Alice paused in the doorway long enough to say, “I plan on never seeing the dashing doctor again as long as I live. Now go get some sleep.”

  She’d left the room and had taken two steps toward the exit when she heard Ena call out after her, “But you do admit he’s dashing!”

  * * * *

  Alice pushed a broom across the lobby of The Ellen on a chilly Saturday morning and lamented her fate. “I am single-handedly saving this theater, and you’re still putting me on gum duty? This is so unfair.”

  Tamara, who was following behind her with a mop, gave a little snort of a laugh. The petite blonde had her long mane of hair piled up on top of her head while she cleaned, making her look even more like a ballerina than usual—like she might break into a pirouette at any moment. “The gala is an awesome idea, Alice, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The owner is still looking for a buyer, and I’ve still had no word back from the historical preservation people about whether or not we qualify for landmark status.”

  Tamara ran the theater and had the most to lose if the owner sold the place. She, like the others, had been ecstatic when Alice broke the news about the new company-sponsored theme party in two weeks, but Alice couldn’t fault the girl for keeping her expectations low. She was the one working the hardest to keep this place going and had the most to lose if they failed.

  Meg waddled over to her, her big baby belly leading the way as she handed Alice the dreaded gum scraper. “Caitlyn took off early—”

  “To meet her luv-uh,” Marc, Tamara’s roommate, called out.

  Meg rolled her eyes. “Yes, most likely to meet Ben.” To Alice she added, “Which means you’re up for gum duty.”

  Alice narrowed her eyes at her sister. No one wanted gum duty—ever. “You just love bossing us all around, don’t you?”

  Since she was nearly nine months along in her pre
gnancy, Meg had become less and less active in the cleaning and more and more of a drill sergeant with the to-do list.

  Meg’s eyes were sparkling with humor. With her short brown curls and pixie features, she looked like a mischievous elf. “It’s not the worst job.”

  “No, that would be gum duty,” she grumbled. Meg’s lips clamped shut as she smothered a laugh. Alice sighed melodramatically as she took the scraper. “You’re gonna be a mean mommy.” Since Meg had all but raised her, they both knew that wasn’t true, and her sister’s laughter followed her as she stalked past her through the double doors that led to the opulent, if tattered, theater.

  There was a part of her—a very little part—that was grateful for the dreaded task. Scraping gum off the theater seats meant being alone in the theater. She’d called in sick on Friday and slept most of the day away. This morning she’d woken up in a funk, as if her brain hadn’t fully processed everything that had happened on Thursday night.

  When she’d arrived this morning she’d told her friends all about the pro bono gig but left out the part about Ena and the hospital. But it was all she could think about. How frail her friend had looked lying on the floor, how useless she’d been in the face of trauma, and how incredibly useful the doctor had been.

  The doctor—that’s what it all kept coming back to. His eyes, his warmth, the solid weight of him against her cheek. As she cried all over him.

  Disgust had her scraping the seats with enough force that her arm started to ache. Ridiculous or not, a growing resentment had formed whenever she pictured his face. He’d seen her cry, for God’s sake.

  But it was fine, she reassured herself as she brushed back her hair and sat back on her heels to appraise her work. She would never see him again.

  That thought just brought up another line of questioning that had driven her crazy the day before. Where had he come from?

  If she didn’t have such a vivid memory of his scent and feel, she might have thought she’d conjured him up. She’d never seen him before at her Riverside apartment building—and he was a man she would have noticed.

  Maybe he was there to visit a friend.

  That thought put her at ease a bit.

  And what were the odds that he was a doctor at the hospital where Ena was staying? Slim to none. He’d just said he was a doctor, not where he worked or what type.

  Gum scraping turned out to be a therapeutic event. By the time she was done, she’d convinced herself that if she hadn’t seen the handsome doctor before, odds were she would never see him again.

  The whole crying debacle was behind her forever. Now if she could just forget about the whole embarrassing incident, she could move on with her life.

  Meg popped her head in to say good-bye a little while later. “You going back to the hospital?” she asked.

  Alice nodded. “They said they need to run some more tests, so they’re not letting her go home for a few of days. I promised to bring her some movies and ice cream.”

  Meg gave her a watery smile. “That’s so sweet.”

  Alice rolled her eyes and let out a snort of disgust. Her sister thought being “sweet” was the highest compliment while the word had a tendency to give Alice a chill. “Don’t make too much of it, sis.”

  Meg laughed. “Doing pro bono work, volunteering on your weekends, and now you’re a candy striper? You know, one of these days people are going to start to catch on to the fact that beneath that cool-as-a-cucumber act, you’re actually quite the softie.”

  Alice stood and set down the scraper. “Don’t get too excited, Mother Theresa. The pro bono work is going to get me that promotion. I help out at the theater because I love to watch movies here—it’s selfish motivation, really—and Ena…” She stopped as another image of a pale, lifeless-looking Ena gave her a shudder. “She’s my friend.”

  Before Meg could get all weepy again, she added, “Plus, she has the best collection of old movies I’ve ever seen. How could I not be nice to her?”

  Meg rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue. She knew Alice’s obsession with old movies better than anyone because she shared it. It was really the only thing the sisters had in common. The shared love was their old next-door neighbor’s fault. Some of Alice’s earliest memories were of the nice old lady next door coming to their apartment door during her parents’ fights. She’d come in, ignore her screaming parents, scoop up Alice, take Meg by the hand, and bring them back to her apartment, where she’d plop them down in front of her old TV, which was always tuned to the classic movie channel.

  She’d ignore them for the rest of the time they were there, but she and Meg didn’t mind. They were just happy to be out of the war zone, and those black-and-white flicks were the ultimate escape. As they got older and the next-door neighbor moved away, Meg took over the job of taking Alice into the kitchen, where their mom had an old, tiny TV set up. It was fuzzy and the audio was poor, but it got the classic movie station, and there they would perch at the kitchen counter and watch movie after movie until the fighting stopped. The fighting didn’t stop after their dad left; he was just replaced by strange men who came in and out of their lives with such frequency Alice never even tried to learn their names.

  Alice was the last one to leave, and she made sure to pick up the promised ice cream and movies on her way back uptown to the hospital. Hospitals always made her queasy, and on top of that, a flutter of nerves hit her as she entered the cold, sterile building, but she shoved them aside.

  Odds were that she’d never see him again. That awful bit of humiliation could be buried in the past. Forgotten.

  Shoulders set, she resolutely set aside her nerves and her fears and made her way to Ena’s room and found her friend looking slightly less pale and far more ornery than when she’d last seen her. “Took you long enough.”

  “Good to see you too, Ena.” She held out the bag filled with ice cream and desserts and started to set up the movie in the DVD player. Before long they’d settled in, and Ena was back to her normal cheerful but sarcastic self as she dug into her treats and they picked apart the Marilyn Monroe movie.

  * * * *

  Sea-green eyes and vivid red hair—they were all Nicholas could think about for the last forty-eight hours. Maybe that was why he found himself heading from the pediatric ward to the intensive care unit.

  He just wanted to check up on his patient, he told himself. Well, she wasn’t his patient anymore, but he still wanted to make sure she was recuperating all right. Liar. An inner voice that sounded suspiciously like Claudia’s voice mocked him. You’re going to see if the pretty granddaughter is there visiting.

  That too.

  He stopped short when he reached Ena’s room. There she was, the woman he’d been fantasizing about. She’d been a wreck the other night—a sweet, adorable-looking, rumpled mess—but today, through the small glass pane of the door, he had a straight-on view, and what he saw left him breathless.

  She was stunning. That flaming red hair was piled up on top of her head, exposing her long neck. Her spectacular eyes were lit with laughter and her lips…oh sweet Jesus, those lips. A perfect cupid bow, they were lush and plump and begging to be kissed. And right now they were pulled up in a smile that made his knees weak.

  Holy shit. Claudia had been right. He had a thing for this girl. No, this woman. But that was ridiculous, he barely knew her. True, he’d felt an instant connection when she’d collided with him in the hallway, but as much as he believed in the one—love at first sight was too hard to swallow. So he’d chalked it up to lust in hindsight. True love might be too difficult to fathom, but instant desire was easy to comprehend. It had been chemistry, pure and simple.

  But then he remembered the pain in her eyes when they’d filled with tears and he’d watched as she’d lost the battle to contain them. Nicholas wasn’t a spiritual guy—he was a man of science—but he could have sworn there’s been something more than chemistry between them in that moment. An und
erstanding. Something at a deeper level than just physical attraction, although that had clearly been present.

  Whatever had transpired between them, it was exactly what he’d been looking for. It was the singular spark that he felt when he was around Claudia and Frank and what he’d witnessed his entire life between his parents before they’d died. It was a connection.

  The thought had his heart racing as he watched the beauty interact with her grandmother. What was not to like about her? She was clearly empathetic, caring, and kindhearted.

  He forced himself to wait patiently, pacing the brightly lit hallway until at last he heard the movie come to an end and some movement from inside. He leaned against the wall and tried to look casual. For the first time ever he was nervous to talk to a girl. That thought made him laugh out loud. He hadn’t even been nervous as a teenager asking out his first date. But there was no denying it, his palms were sweaty, and his heart was racing like he’d run a marathon.

  When she finally emerged, any illusion of cool he’d tried to adopt melted away. “Hi.”

  She looked up, clearly startled. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, but it was impossible to tell if it was a pleasant surprise or not. “Hello,” she said slowly.

  Was he imaging things or was she inching toward the exit, as if getting ready to flee.

  “I just came by to check on your grandmother.”

  “My—” For a second, her brows drew together in confusion, but then the look cleared and she once again started to back away from him. “Oh, right. Yes. How thoughtful of you.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the exit, and he had the horrible feeling she was about to take off in a sprint. Her posture was tense and poised, like she was ready to run from a crazy psychopath and not the doctor who’d helped save her grandmother’s life.

  He shook off the fear. Maybe she was just in a hurry to get somewhere. So then get to it, Hot Doc, the irritating inner voice mocked. Ask the girl out already. He opened his mouth to do just that but then she spoke.