Surrender My Love (15 page)

When the two men were gone, Bea looked up from her paperwork and let out a sigh.

“I swear the two of them are like mischievous little boys sometimes!”  Bea said to Chloe, giving her a toothy grin.

Chloe
laughed, glad to finally release it. She swung her head towards Brad’s office and smiled at Bea. “I think Dr. Wasko has a crush on you.”

Bea’s
arched a delicate brow. “
Crush?
The man’s slap-shit-stupid in love with me!”

Chloe gasped
, then grinned. “You know?”

Bea sighed. “Lord…I think everybody knows! He damn n
ear killed me last Valentine’s Day. I can’t imagine what he’s up to now.”

“And you?” Chloe knew it was none of her business but couldn’t help but ask.

Bea shrugged and her head turned towards Brad’s door. “It’s complicated.”

She
nodded, curious but understanding it wasn’t her place to pry.

“Well, it was nice meeting you.”

“You too.” Bea smiled, then rolled her eyes. “Men! All clowns!”

Chloe nodded
agreement, returning the smile before she left.

The following morning,
Brad pulled open the door to his medical suite and ushered Chloe in. It was exactly eight a.m. and he wondered if she’d waited outside the door until the exact hour. She walked ahead of him towards his office, wading through a sea of morning sunlight that poured in from the large windows. He purposefully loitered behind her, watching the bright glow engulf her body. She was wearing worn jeans that were loose, but fit her curvy feminine hips and well-rounded butt. He recalled those hips filling his hands and unconsciously flexed his fingers. A plain white tee hugged her slender waist and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hung like a lustrous cascade of black fluid to her back.

He couldn’t help thinking that she looked young
and wholesome, and a pang of guilt hollowed his gut as he remembered how roughly he’d handled her. Although she’d been a little clumsy, she had a latent wild side that roused his darkest desires. He’d love to experience her fully, without inhibitions, and then coerce her passion to his will. Just the thought had him instantly and painfully hard. He cursed beneath his breath and secured the button of his lab coat.

The sunlight in his
personal office was not as bright and her skin seemed radiant in the soft light. She stopped in front of his desk, and he saw her take a deep breath before she deposited her purse in a chair. She reminded him of a solider readying for battle. God! Was he that intimidating?

“Don’t worry, Chloe. I won’t bite.” He smiled as he approached her, then passed her the
paper bag on his desk. “Unless you want me to.”

He winced
when she almost dropped the cup of coffee she’d pulled out. He’d meant it as a joke. “There’s milk and sugar in the bag.” He’d picked up coffee from the cafeteria after his morning rounds.

“Thanks.”
She kept her hazel eyes shuttered, her gaze focused on her task.

He watched her prepare the coffee, adding several packets of sugar. Somehow he knew she’d like it sweet.
He studied her face. There’d been something on his mind since seeing her yesterday.

“Chloe, about the other night…” 

Her hands stilled in the midst of adding milk. She squeezed her eyes closed and he watched her chest rise and fall unsteadily.

“Brad…please. I’d rather not…” S
he trailed off, shaking her head.

He was surprised by his sudden anger.
She didn’t want to talk about it, apparently wanted to forget it ever happened. He clenched his jaw so tight he could feel the stretch of his muscles. He should be happy. He was used to the tedious reliving of his sexual exploits by the women he usually bedded. They would drone on and on about his prowess and cling to the memory like the sex had been a religious event. If Chloe didn’t want to talk about it, then fine.

“I just need to say one thing…
in case you were concerned.” He hated the irritation in his voice and mellowed it. “I’m sorry I didn’t use protection.” When she didn’t respond, he proceeded to inform her about his frequent health exams and blood tests, hoping to alleviate any lingering anxiety. When he was done, she looked up, but he couldn’t read the emotion in her golden eyes. She held her spine stiff and her lips firmed with serious contemplation.

“Thank yo
u.” Her voice cracked slightly. “I—I…You are the second person I’ve ever been with. I have no health issues either.”

“Great! Then we’re f
ree to go at it like rabbits!” His lips crept up in a grin which he quickly chased away at the look of alarm on her face.
Christ!
Was she always so serious? Apparently just with him.

“It was a j
oke, Chloe.” He took a step towards her. He thought about what she’d confessed moments ago and wasn’t surprised. He’d guessed she hadn’t had a lot of experience. Her cheeks colored with a slight flush as he hooked a finger beneath her chin to tilt her gaze up to his. He studied the beautiful face mere inches from his and shivers hummed along his skin where he touched her.

“Are you
doing okay?”

She nodded and
suddenly pulled away, turning towards the charts sitting on a shelf by the wall. He wondered if she’d felt the strange rush from their nearness. He slid a palm across the back of his neck and kicked himself for having asked the question. She didn’t wish to discuss it. Right. She wanted to forget that it ever happened. Right.

“Are those the charts?”

After a slight pause, he marched over and grabbed the stack from the shelf then deposited them on the desk in front of her.

Her breath caught as she thumbed through the large stack
. “What are all these?”

His gaze
met her face, marking her startled expression. He hadn’t said anything yesterday. He’d wanted to consider the information she’d given him. “There’ve been a few other deaths that have been explained by old age in the past few months.”

“
Oh my God…”

His palm shot up. “Let’s not jump the gun here.”

“Jump the gun? There must be six or seven charts here!”

“Yes,” h
e said slowly. “And it was determined that each patient died of natural causes. I requested the charts from medical records after going through the hospital’s recent deaths file.”

“So it wasn’t just
my
charts you requested?”

He shook his head, circling the desk. “At fi
rst, yes. Then I requested others also. I am concerned about a hospital epidemic although nothing I’ve found so far has indicated one.”

“Did you go through
all these?”

“
Just a few.”

“Doesn’t
the hospital investigate—”

“Listen,
this may seem like a lot, but this is a large hospital. These are not enough to trigger an internal investigation from the Occurrence and Safety Committee, and there was nothing suspicious about the deaths. I only questioned Mr. Barkley’s death because I knew him well and had no explanation for it. I then grew concerned when I heard about a similar incident with Mr. Prescott, but that’s me… Frankly, it’s just my nature to question everything.”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and his gaze strayed there.
He knew the taste of those lips.

“The conference yesterday…t
he symptoms just reminded me so much of Mr. Barkley and Mr. Prescott. Do you believe me? Do you think I’m crazy?”

He chuckled grimly
, looking into her eyes. “I don’t know what to believe. But, no. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re looking for an answer just as I am. It may be that there simply is none. But, as farfetched as it is, it’s worth investigation, at the very least it’ll put your restless mind at ease.”

She nodded and took the chart he’d pulled from the top of the pile.
He kept speaking as she flipped it open. “I’ve already gone through Mr. Barkley and Mr. Prescott’s. We can start with the others and compare notes.”

“
I’d like to go back to them, if you don’t mind. I know Mr. Barkley and Mr. Prescott were extremely confused and agitated before they died. Now thinking back, their behavior was very unusual. I wanted to take a look at their medication list to see if they were on anything similar, maybe on a drug made by Omega. Perhaps the drug got contaminated or switched by accident with Memoram, or something like that.” She shrugged her thin shoulders and gestured towards the computer on his desk. “Do you have access to electronic records from here?”

Brad nodded, but his
brows drew up on his forehead. She certainly did have a fertile imagination. The regulations for pharmaceutical companies in the United States for manufacturing and distributing drugs were stringent to the point of suffocation. What she proposed was virtually impossible. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. If she was anything like him, she needed to assess the data herself and reach her own conclusion. He had his own theory, and he could use her help with sorting through the charts to rule out a common infectious agent. If he could collect enough data to form a cogent argument then he’d go to the O & S Committee and have them look into the matter further.

“I have level one clearance. I’ll be able to access data that’s not in the charts.”

She sat, seemingly deep in thought for a few moments. “Dr. Gross talked about the subjects experiencing some sort of hearing loss or a feeling of water in the ears. Do you remember Mr. Barkley thought he’d been surfing? That he’d fallen off his surf board into the water?”

“Yes. I do remember you telling me that. Mr.
Barkley was an avid surfer when he was much younger. He always talked about it.”

“Ma
ybe the sensation he felt was much like being in the water and that was the only way his confused mind could express it, by associating the symptom with something familiar.”

Brad quirked a brow. “Interesting.”

“And Mr. Prescott too. I remember him complaining of a mild vertigo. He said he always felt like he had water in his ears, like he’d been swimming. I never made anything of it, but that was another thing that struck me as a strange coincidence since hearing the lecture yesterday. I’d like to go through the charts and see if anyone else documented a hearing issue or vertigo on any patient. I’d also like to look at their mental status during the course of their hospitalization, labs, physical exams, and then we can look through all the charts for similarities. Dr. Shaw said that the subjects in the experiment were cognitively stable and then suffered an acute agitation or paranoia.”

“Very well then.” Brad nodded, unable to hide the smile that
tugged at his lips. “I see that you’ve given this considerable thought.”

She gave a decisive nod
, and pulling a note pad, her cell phone, and a pen from her purse, she flipped open the chart and started shuffling sheets of paper.

Brad tapped his index finger against his chin, regarding her down-turned hea
d. At first glance, Chloe seemed fragile and timid, with a protected vulnerability and an almost prudish introversion, but he was seeing glimpses of a woman who was fiercely brave when threatened, single minded in her pursuits, and who staunchly followed her convictions.

Pulling another chart from the pile, he wondered what her story was. He’d considered that she might have a boyfriend and had used him as retaliation for some egregious deed the guy had committed. Even bravely baring her breasts here in the office could have been, to her, the equivalent to a slap in his face. Was that why in the alley she’d wanted to be someone else? Was she trying to forget a love? Yesterday, she’d almost said she had to be with someone, then her thoughts had detoured. Had it been a boyfriend?

He didn’t know why that thought caused his heart to pump sluggishly,
to squeeze a strange melancholy through his veins. The matter was of no consequence to him. He’d enjoyed a fleeting moment of incredible pleasure with her. A pleasure he hadn’t been able to accomplish in a long while, or since, for that matter. He grimaced, thinking maybe he should give Jasmine a call tonight, see what would happen. Maybe he was cured. Realizing the thought held absolutely no appeal, he frowned and flipped open the chart, trying to focus on assuaging his curiosity instead of his lust.

The room was
tranquil as they meticulously combed through the documentation, sometimes using the computer to gain additional information, and often comparing notes on similar findings. Frequently, Brad found his gaze returning to Chloe, absorbing her as she read. He would watch her capture her bottom lip in deep concentration or idly tap her pen against her cheek.

His mind was steeped in a moonlight memory when she
glanced up and almost caught him staring. He looked down quickly, but moments later, with his head lowered, his lids rolled up again and his stubborn gaze collided with her pensive amber eyes. They simply stared. The room grew quiet. Time flowed between them with a languid sway, gently rocking the moment before she jerked her head down, severing the connection, and he couldn’t help the slight smile that tickled his lips and washed heat through his body. Still smiling, he bowed his head and continued reading.