DR. MOM AND THE MILLIONAIRE Page 7

  Ryan was first to move. Approaching with easy, athletic grace, he extended his hand.

  Chase offered his own.

  Their hands connected, their grips firm and suddenly, a little unwilling to let go. "I'm—"

  "Ryan," Chase supplied, conscious of an odd knot under his breastbone as the pressure of his hand increased.

  "Your brother," Ryan expanded, his deep voice more raw than he'd probably intended. His glance swept the bruises, the leg he'd scarcely seemed to notice. But when he opened his mouth, masculine reserve frayed. Muttering a choked-sounding oath, he bent—and hugged him.

  Chase felt his chest burn. Before he could think, he found himself hugging him back. His throat tightened. Swallowing hard, he bit back the unfamiliar sensations and looked up to see Tanner walking toward him.

  Looking as awkward as Chase felt himself, Tanner gripped his hand when Ryan stepped back and started to pop him on the shoulder. Seeing the dangling IV line, he caught himself, sparing Chase the more typical display of male affection. Apparently, he didn't want to hurt him any more than he already had been.

  One look at the EFD and he'd blanched. "Man, you're a mess."

  Chase couldn't dispute the observation. The mirror hadn't been kind. "Yeah," he agreed, watching the man's jaw work. "But you should see the truck."

  A ghost of a smile flickered in Tanner's eyes. "I don't know about the truck, but Alex said it really creamed your car. She's amazed you came out of it as well as you did."

  "Alex?"

  "Dr. Larson," Ryan supplied. "She called on her way back from the towing lot this morning to tell us why you hadn't shown up Friday night. I can't believe you were here all this time. I had no idea you were… I mean… Well, I just had no idea," he repeated and cut himself off because it didn't seem to matter who he was now that he knew Chase was his brother.

  "I don't know what to call you," Ryan continued, his smile coming more easily as he lowered himself to the chair beside him. Tanner took a chair, too. The arm of one anyway. He didn't look comfortable enough to settle into it. "When you called, you identified yourself as Andrew Malone."

  Chase felt his reserve lock into place. "That's the name on my original birth certificate. I thought if you knew of me, that's the name you'd recognize."

  He watched Ryan lift his chin in acknowledgement. Chase had known there was a possibility that his brothers would have recognized his legal name—the name he'd grown up with—but he hadn't wanted them to be influenced by that part of who he was. He'd wanted them to agree to meet him because they were related. That was all. And they had.

  He couldn't begin to admit how much that meant to him. "Let's just stick with Chase," he remarked, not knowing how to think of himself as anyone other than who he'd always thought he was.

  "It would be confusing calling you Andrew, anyway," Tanner agreed. "That's our nephew's name."

  "Our nephew?"

  "Ryan's oldest boy."

  "I have another, boy, too," Ryan told him. "Griffin's four. And my little girl, Lisbeth, is six. Tanner has a daughter, Lia. And my wife's pregnant." He grinned, though it looked as if he tried not to. "That's our family."

  Chase pulled a breath, catching himself when his expanding ribs reminded him of the bruises there. He hadn't known about Tanner's child, but he had known of Ryan's kids. Somewhere in the report from the PI there was a list of their names and ages. He'd just never thought of them as being part of the deal. If he had nieces and nephews, that made him an uncle.

  He wasn't sure why he thought of it just then, but his doctor had a child, too. Alex, he now knew she was called, though the name seemed awfully hard for someone whose skin looked so soft it fairly begged to be touched.

  "So … Chase," Ryan began, then blew a breath himself. "I don't even know where to start." Tanner did. "How did you find us?"

  "I hired an investigator," Chase admitted frankly. "My father … the man I thought was my father," he corrected, ignoring the host of conflicted feelings that came with mention of the man, "died four months ago. I learned that I'd been adopted at the reading of his will."

  Walter Harrington acknowledges that Chase Randall Harrington is his adopted son and that he desires that Chase Randall Harrington receive nothing from this trust or his estate.

  He still remembered the stunned disbelief that had washed over him in the moments following the attorney's reading of those words. The money hadn't mattered. He had ten times the holdings Walter had accumulated. But he still lived with the odd, empty sensation that had opened inside him when he'd walked out of the study with his mother begging him not to be upset with her for not mentioning the "detail." The only thing that helped alleviate it was the sense of relief Chase felt finally knowing why he'd never been able to win the man's approval. He'd never been "blood." He'd never been the man's son at all.

  "The man I hired was able to get information on the two of you. Your education and business involvements," he continued, wanting to move past what had started his investigation to admit that he had, in effect, checked out the two men who'd just glanced uncomfortably at each other. "He said you were in foster care when you were kids. Sometimes together. Sometimes not. What he hadn't been able to find out—"

  "They kept us together when they could," Ryan explained.

  "Except for the dozen or so times they split us up," Tanner muttered.

  "Sorry," Ryan said, apologizing for the interruption. "What was it he couldn't find out?"

  "He couldn't find out what happened to my … our," Chase corrected, totally unaccustomed to thinking in the plural, "…parents. He said you were three and four years old when the state took custody. I was told I was six months old when I was adopted."

  Tanner looked to Ryan, not so much deferring to him as sparing himself the recitation. The trace of bitterness in his tone moments ago had been unmistakable. And understandable, considering what such a childhood must have been like.

  Ryan was actually the tougher read. He was undoubtedly as familiar as Chase himself with the boardroom negotiating tactics that allowed information to be exchanged without betraying whatever was going on inside him. Listening to him as he began to tell of the car accident that had taken their parents' lives, Chase figured Ryan was either guarding himself the same way he did, or Ryan really had no reservations about accepting him.

  Just because he was family.

  Chase had absolutely no concept of acceptance on that level.

  "We were told they were on their way home from San Francisco and hit a patch of black ice in one of the passes," Ryan was saying. "Apparently our grandmother had been seriously ill so they'd left us with friends and gone to see her."

  There had been no other family willing to take them on. Their mother had been an only child and her parents had been frail and elderly even back then. Their father's mom had died years before that, their dad had long been estranged from his father and his only brother was a bachelor college professor who had no interest in taking on one kid, let alone three of them. The brother had signed off on them so they could be adopted, but only Chase actually had been. Tanner and Ryan had grown up in foster care.

  It was absurd for him to feel guilty. But as Chase looked from Tanner's remote expression to Ryan's thoughtful one, guilt was what he felt. His brothers had been two little kids who'd had no one but each other, living in a system that kept pulling them apart and putting them back together again. While they were being bounced around, he was being raised by nannies. Until he was seven years old anyway. Then, his grooming had started and he'd been shipped off to the private schools that had been his home away from home until he'd escaped to college.

  Watching the two brothers exchange another glance, he realized it wasn't guilt he felt after all. It was envy. These two men might not have grown up with material wealth, but even when they'd been apart, each had known the other was there. They'd had … a bond.

  Chase had no idea how it would feel to have that sort of connection to another person. He'd
never felt connected to anyone in his life.

  "How long are you going to be here?" Tanner finally asked.

  "My doctor won't let me go for another few days."

  "I mean in Honeygrove."

  "I … don't know." Fully appreciating his brother's reticence, he decided to let him know he had doubts of his own. "I had no idea what to expect when I got here. I'd left the weekend open, but I also had a reservation for a flight out yesterday morning."

  For a moment, Tanner said nothing else. He just stared at him, weighing, judging until, finally, he gave a tight nod that seemed to say that was fair enough.

  "I would like a tour of that wing over there sometime, though," Chase mentioned to them both. "I've been staring at it for two days now. I know you're building it," he added to Tanner, already impressed with the scope and scale of the multi-million-dollar project "And it's your hospital," he said to Ryan. "So, which one of you would I talk to about that?"

  Ryan and Tanner both looked at the IV bag hanging on the pole above the wheelchair.

  "We'd better check with Alex," Ryan said. "If she clears it, we'll get you a hard hat and we'll both take you."

  "She's in surgery." Chase glanced at his watch. "At least that's where she was going when I last saw her. Why don't we just tell the nurse where we're headed?"

  "Sure," Tanner agreed, looking as if he wouldn't mind showing his little brother what he was justifiably proud of. "It's not like we're taking him off the property."

  Ryan didn't look so sure. Chase thought he understood Ryan's hesitation, too. Taking a patient into a construction area opened up all manner of potential liability. But when Ryan frowned at Tanner, that didn't seem to be what he was thinking about at all.

  "Alex said we're not supposed to tire him out," he reminded his brother, just before he turned his concern to Chase. "You're sure you're up to it now? We could do this anytime."

  "Ryan," Tanner muttered, "you're sounding like a big brother."

  "I am the big brother," Ryan muttered back. "I don't want to set him back. You're Alex's patient," the tall, sophisticated-looking man said to Chase, sounding as if he wanted them all to be aware of that as he planted his hands on his thighs to push himself upright. "But you're our brother. If you're up to it, we'll call the floor and tell them where you'll be in case they need to bring you another bag of whatever that is. Alex probably won't mind."

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  « ^ »

  "They're where?"

  "Somewhere in the basement of the new wing," the slightly flustered Kay replied from behind the nurses' station counter. "I told Mr. Malone that you hadn't authorized Mr. Harrington to go anywhere except the boardroom, but he said Mr. Harrington wanted to see the new wing, and he was sure you wouldn't mind. It's not as if I could argue with him. I mean, after all, Mr. Malone is the administrator and it's not my place to question him. But I've never lost track of a patient before. Not that he's really lost," she hurriedly defended, fanning herself with a file. "I mean, he's over there somewhere and Mr. Malone did give me his pager number so we were able to track them down and give Mr. Harrington his four-o'clock pain med.

  "But, really, Doctor," she huffed. "I'm short staffed as it is today and his nurse shouldn't have to run all over creation to take care of a patient nosing around a construction zone. Just because he wanted to see our new wing doesn't mean he had to. That man's behavior breaks every rule in the book. And now he's inconveniencing you. Do you want me to send an orderly to bring him back?"

  It was as clear as a test tube that Kay held Chase responsible for the present disruption. It seemed she also expected Alex to share her indignation over the affront to hospital routine. After all, when a busy doctor showed up on the floor to check on a patient, she had a perfect right to expect to find the patient there. Somewhere.

  Unfortunately for Kay's sense of propriety, Alex wasn't concerned about the rules or about this particular patient's tendency to make his own policy. She was concerned about Chase. She knew how he pushed himself, and how he tended to ignore pain. She also suspected he fought fatigue with the same tenacity, and his body needed rest to heal. But the last thing she wanted to do was interrupt the three men if they were bonding over boilers and conduits or whatever it was about the innards of a building that men seemed to find so fascinating.

  Trying not to concern herself with how their reunion was going, assuming it was going well since they'd been together for hours, she told the indignant woman that Ryan Malone regarded Mr. Harrington as a special patient and that they'd just have to work around rules while he was there.

  Kay greeted that news with thin-lipped disapproval—which had also been her reaction when she'd learned Chase was having a private audience with the hospital administrator. She already thought the man was getting far too much preferential treatment.

  Seeing that Alex wasn't going to give her the understanding she wanted, the nurse handed over the charts Alex needed for her rounds. From behind her, the unit secretary, whose frizzy blond hair was tamed with a huge butterfly clip, added her two-cents' worth.

  "Yolanda thinks they're meeting because Mr. Malone wants to prime him for a donation for the new wing. Or maybe it was Alison who said that. She's his nurse today, right? Anyway," she continued, dismissing the need to properly identify the source with a wave of her arterial red nails. "The man is filthy rich. It makes perfect sense."

  "Our administrator is hardly a vulture," Kay admonished. "I can't imagine he'd do that while a person is a patient here." Apparently seeing the potential advantage to the hospital, she relented ever so slightly. "He'd wait until he was discharged."

  "But it would make sense to start priming him now, wouldn't it?"

  Figuring the rumor as good a cover as any until the men wanted their relationship made public, Alex tuned the women out, along with the ringing of the phone and the hurried steps of soft-soled shoes scurrying back and forth behind her. She flipped through the first chart, anxious to get on with her rounds. "Do we have test results back on Mrs. Tillman?"

  Kay took the hint. Dropping the subject, she turned to the computer to scroll up the results Alex wanted. Alex figured it would take at least an hour to round on her patients. Then, after she changed out of her scrubs, she'd have to stop by Children's Hospital to check on the little girl whose ankle she'd just pieced back together before the child was transferred. Memorial didn't have any pediatric beds. Not until the new wing opened, anyway.

  Thinking that surely Tanner and Ryan would have Chase back on the floor by the time she was ready to leave, she headed in to greet a shyly smiling Brent. But when the Malones still hadn't returned their brother to the floor by the time she had checked everyone but Chase, she decided the men had played enough. She needed to check her last patient, and, according to his harried nurse, it was time for a new bag of antibiotics.

  Asking Kay to find out where they were, Alex whipped her stethoscope around the neck of her lab coat and grabbed Chase's chart to study in the med room while Alison, a wiry young nurse with a head of stick-straight brown hair and a quick smile, prepared the antibiotic cocktail Alex would hook up herself. As she leaned against the counter, she checked the vitals that had been taken just before he'd left the unit. Chase's blood pressure had been a little high, but that didn't surprise her—considering where he'd been about to go at the time. Everything else—pulse, temperature and respirations—were more suited to someone about to run a marathon than a person who couldn't even walk at the moment.

  Two minutes later, a ten-inch bag of IV solution in hand, she walked through the unit's open double doors to see Tanner and Ryan flanking Chase in the elevator lobby forty feet ahead.

  They must have decided to return when Kay had called to get their location. Deep in conversation, not one of them seemed to notice her as she came to a halt by the wall.

  She couldn't hear a word they said, but both of the tall, dark-haired Malones gave their equally compelling brother a pat on the
shoulder. Seeming a little reluctant, they stepped back at the soft ping of an arriving elevator. After waiting for an elderly couple to emerge from it, they disappeared inside.

  The couple, obviously visitors, stood studying the directory on the wall while Chase wheeled himself around and headed for the unit alone.

  It was only then that he noticed her watching him.

  Even from that distance she could see him look from the collar of her lab coat to the blue paper booties below the hem of her surgical scrubs. She was dead certain that by the time his attention returned to her face, he would know she wasn't pleased.

  Moments ago, her only thoughts had been of how relieved he must be to have the anxiety of the meeting behind him. Considering the time the men had spent together and the ease of their smiles, Chase's included, the worst moments were long over. But the need she'd felt to ask how he felt about his brothers was cancelled by disbelief. And exasperation. With all of them.

  She couldn't believe Ryan and Tanner had left him to get back to his room on his own. Besides the fact that she'd specifically told Ryan that Chase would tire easily, Chase obviously wasn't in any shape to be maneuvering a wheelchair. Every time he moved his elbows back to push forward on the wheels' metal rings, fresh pain tightened his cleanly shaven jaw.

  She was already moving toward him, unable to bear watching the senseless effort.

  He didn't even possess the good sense to stop.

  "Why didn't you let Ryan or Tanner bring you back to your room?" she demanded as they drew closer.

  "Because it wasn't necessary." A muscle in his jaw jerked as he gave another shove on the rings. "I've got it," he muttered, seeing her move past him. "It's not that far."

  Ignoring his claim, she stepped behind the green and silver chair. "I'd always heard pride was painful. I'd just never seen the concept in action before. Hold this." The bag of pale gold solution landed in his lap with a soft plop. "And move your other hand," she ordered, seeing that he'd only given up his grip on one of the rings when he'd caught the bag.