Unfinished Business (16 page)

“Vanessa, I can't tell you how much I—”

“Please don't.” She softened the order with a laugh. “It's only one night.”

“You can stay in Cordina as long as you like.”

“One night,” she repeated. “Send me the particulars here. And give my best to Her Highness.”

“I will, of course. She'll be thrilled. Everyone will be thrilled. Thank you, Vanessa.”

“It's all right, Frank. I'll see you in a few weeks.”

She hung up and stood silent and still. Odd, but she didn't feel tensed and keyed up at the thought of a performance. And a huge one, she considered. The theater complex in Cordina was exquisite and enormous.

What would happen if she clutched in the wings this time? She would get through it somehow. She always had. Perhaps it was fate that she had been called now, when she was teetering on some invisible line. To go forward, or backward, or to stay.

She would have to make a decision soon, she thought as she walked to the piano. She prayed it would be the right one.

 

She was playing when Brady returned. He could hear the music, romantic and unfamiliar, flowing through the open windows. There was the hum of bees in the flowers, the purr of a lawn mower, and the music. The magic of it. He saw a woman and a young child standing on the sidewalk, listening.

She had left the door open for him. He had only to push the screen to be inside. He moved quietly. It seemed he was stepping through the liquid notes.

She didn't see him. Her eyes were half-closed. There was a smile on her face, a secret smile. As if whatever images she held in her mind were pouring out through her fingers and onto the keys.

The music was slow, dreamy, enriched by an underlying passion. He felt his throat tighten.

When she finished, she opened her eyes and looked at him. Somehow she had known he would be there when the last note died away.

“Hello.”

He wasn't sure he could speak. He crossed to her and lifted her hands. “There's magic here. It astonishes me.”

“Musician's hands,” she said. “Yours are magic. They heal.”

“There was a woman standing on the sidewalk with her little boy. I saw them when I drove up. She was listening to you play, and there were tears on her cheeks.”

“There's no higher compliment. Did you like it?”

“Very much. What was it called?”

“I don't know. It's something I've been working on for a while. It never seemed right until today.”

“You wrote it?” He looked at the music on the piano and saw the neatly written notes on the staff paper. “I didn't know you composed.”

“I'm hoping to do more of it.” She drew him down to sit beside her. “Aren't you going to kiss me hello?”

“At least.” His lips were warm and firm on hers. “How long have you been writing?”

“For several years—when I've managed to sneak the time. Between traveling, rehearsals, practice and performances, it hasn't been much.”

“But you've never recorded anything of your own.”

“None of it's really finished. I—” She stopped, tilted her head. “How do you know?”

“I have everything you've ever recorded.” At her smug smile, he continued. “Not that I actually play any of them.” He gave an exaggerated yelp when her elbow connected
with his ribs. “I suppose that's the sign of a temperamental artist.”

“That's
artiste
to you, philistine.”

“Why don't you tell this philistine about your composing?”

“What's to tell?”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it. It's what I like best.”

He was playing with her fingers. “Then why haven't you finished anything?” He felt the tension the moment it entered her.

“I told you. There hasn't been time. Touring isn't all champagne and caviar, you know.”

“Come on.” Keeping her hands in his, he pulled her to her feet.

“Where are we going?”

“In here, where there's a comfortable couch. Sit.” He eased her down, then put his hands on her shoulders. His eyes were dark and searching on her face. “Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“I wanted to wait until you were recovered.” He felt her stiffen, and shook his head. “Don't do that. As your friend, as a doctor, and as the man who loves you, I want to know what made you ill. I want to make sure it never happens again.”

“You've already said I've recovered.”

“Ulcers can reoccur.”

“I didn't have an ulcer.”

“Can it. You can deny it all you want—it won't change the facts. I want you to tell me what's been going on the last few years.”

“I've been touring. Performing.” Flustered, she shook her head. “How did we move from composing to all this?”

“Because one leads to the other, Van. Ulcers are often caused by emotion. By frustrations, angers, resentments that are bottled up to fester instead of being aired out.”

“I'm not frustrated.” She set her chin. “And you, of all people, should know I don't bottle things up. Ask around, Brady. My temper is renowned on three continents.”

He nodded, slowly. “I don't doubt it. But I never once remember you arguing with your father.”

She fell silent at that. It was nothing more than the truth.

“Did you want to compose, or did you want to perform?”

“It's possible to do both. It's simply a matter of discipline and priorities.”

“And what was your priority?”

Uncomfortable, she shifted. “I think it's obvious it was performing.”

“You said something to me before. You said you hated it.”

“Hated what?”

“You tell me.”

She pulled away to rise and pace the room. It hardly mattered now, she told herself. But he was sitting here, watching her, waiting. Past experience told her he would dig and dig until he uncovered whatever feelings she wanted to hide.

“All right. I was never happy performing.”

“You didn't want to play?”

“No,” she corrected. “I didn't want to perform. I have to play, just as I have to breathe, but…” She let her words trail off, feeling like an imbecile. “It's stage fright,” she snapped. “It's stupid, it's childish, but I've never been able to overcome it.”

“It's not stupid or childish.” He rose, and would have gone to her, but she was already backing away. “If you hated performing, why did you keep going on? Of course,” he said, before she could answer.

“It was important to him.” She sat on the arm of a chair, then stood again, unable to settle. “He didn't understand.
He'd put his whole life into my career. The idea that I couldn't perform, that it frightened me—”

“That it made you ill.”

“I was never ill. I never missed one performance because of health.”

“No, you performed despite your health. Damn it, Van, he had no right.”

“He was my father. I know he was a difficult man, but I owed him something.”

He was a selfish son of a bitch, Brady thought. But he kept his silence. “Did you ever consider therapy?”

Vanessa lifted her hands. “He opposed it. He was very intolerant of weakness. I suppose that was his weakness.” She closed her eyes a moment. “You have to understand him, Brady. He was the kind of man who would refuse to believe what was inconvenient for him. And, as far as he was concerned, it just ceased to exist.” Like my mother, she thought with a weary sigh. “I could never find the way to make him accept or even understand the degree of the phobia.”

“I'd like to understand.”

She cupped her hands over her mouth a moment, then let them fall. “Every time I would go to the theater, I would tell myself that this time, this time, it wouldn't happen. This time I wouldn't be afraid. Then I would stand in the wings, shaking and sick and miserable. My skin would be clammy, and the nausea would make me dizzy. Once I started playing, it would ease off. By the end I'd be fine, so I would tell myself that the next time…” She shrugged.

He understood, too well. And he hated the idea of her, of anyone, suffering time after time, year after year. “Did you ever stop to think that he was living his life through you?”

“Yes.” Her voice was dull. “He was all I had left. And, right
or wrong, I was all he had. The last year, he was so ill, but he never let me stop, never let me care for him. In the end, because he had refused to listen, refused the treatments, he was in monstrous pain. You're a doctor—you know how horrible terminal cancer is. Those last weeks in the hospital were the worst. There was nothing they could do for him that time. So he died a little every day. I went on performing, because he insisted, then flying back to the hospital in Geneva every chance I had. I wasn't there when he died. I was in Madrid. I got a standing ovation.”

“Can you blame yourself for that?”

“No. But I can regret.” Her eyes were awash with it.

“What do you intend to do now?”

She looked down at her hands, spread her fingers, curled them into her palms. “When I came back here, I was tired. Just worn out, Brady. I needed time—I still do—to understand what I feel, what I want, where I'm going.” She stepped toward him and lifted her hands to his face. “I didn't want to become involved with you, because I knew you'd be one more huge complication.” Her lip curved a little. “And I was right. But when I woke up this morning in your bed, I was happy. I don't want to lose that.”

He took her wrists. “I love you, Vanessa.”

“Then let me work through this.” She went easily into his arms. “And just be with me.”

He pressed a kiss to her hair. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“T
hat was the last patient, Dr. Tucker.”

Distracted, Brady looked up from the file on his desk and focused on his nurse. “What?”

“That was the last patient.” She was already swinging her purse over her shoulder and thinking about putting her feet up. “Do you want me to lock up?”

“Yeah. Thanks. See you tomorrow.” He listened with half an ear to the clink of locks and the rattle of file drawers. The twelve-hour day was almost at an end. The fourth twelve-hour day of the week. Hyattown was a long way from New York, but as far as time served was concerned, Brady had found practicing general medicine in a small town as demanding as being chief resident in a major hospital. Along with the usual stream of patients, hospital rounds and paperwork, an outbreak of chicken pox and strep throat had kept him tied to his stethoscope for over a week.

Half the town was either scratching or croaking, he thought
as he settled down to his paperwork. The waiting room had been packed since the end of the holiday weekend. As the only doctor in residence, he'd been taking office appointments, making house calls, doing rounds. And missing meals, he thought ruefully, wishing they still stocked lollipops, rather than balloons and plastic cars, for their younger patients.

He could get by with frozen microwave meals and coffee for a few days. He could even get by with only patches of sleep. But he couldn't get by without Vanessa. He'd barely seen her since the weekend of the wedding—since the weekend they had spent almost exclusively in bed. He'd been forced to cancel three dates. For some women, he thought, that alone would have been enough to have them stepping nimbly out of a relationship.

Better that she knew up front how bad it could get. Being married to a doctor was being married to inconvenience. Canceled dinners, postponed vacations, interrupted sleep.

Closing the file, he rubbed his tired eyes. She was going to marry him, he determined. He was going to see to that. If he ever wangled an hour free to set the stage and ask her.

He picked up the postcard on the corner of his desk. It had a brilliant view of the sun setting on the water, palm trees and sand—and a quickly scrawled note from his father on the back.

“You'd better be having a good time, Dad,” Brady mused as he studied it. “Because when you get back, you're going to pay up.”

He wondered if Vanessa would enjoy a tropical honeymoon. Mexico, the Bahamas, Hawaii. Hot, lazy days. Hot, passionate nights. Moving too fast, he reminded himself. You couldn't have a honeymoon until you had a wedding. And you couldn't have a wedding until you'd convinced your woman she couldn't live without you.

He'd promised himself he would take it slowly with
Vanessa. Give her all the romance they'd missed the first time around. Long walks in the moonlight. Champagne dinners. Evening drives and quiet talks. But the old impatience pulled at him. If they were married now, he could drag his weary bones home. She'd be there. Perhaps playing the piano. Or curled up in bed with a book. In the next room, there might be a child sleeping. Or two.

Much too fast, Brady warned himself. But he hadn't known, until he'd seen her again, how much he'd wanted that basic and traditional home. The woman he loved, and the children they made between them. Christmas mornings and Sunday afternoons.

Leaning back, he let his eyes close. He could picture it perfectly. Too perfectly, he admitted. He knew his vision left questions unanswered and problems unresolved. They were no longer children who could live on dreams. But he was too tired to be logical. Too needy to be sensible.

Vanessa stood in the doorway and watched him with a mixture of surprise and awe. This was Brady, she reminded herself. Her Brady. But he looked so different here, so professional, in his white lab coat with the framed diplomas and certificates surrounding him. There were files neatly stacked on his desk, and there was an ophthalmoscope in his pocket.

This wasn't the wild youth hell-bent on giving the world a left jab. This was a settled, responsible man who had hundreds of people depending on him. He had already made his niche.

And where was hers? she wondered. He had made his choices and found his place. She was still floundering. Yet, however much she flailed or stumbled, she was always drawn to him. Always back to him.

With a faint smile on her face, she stepped into the office. “You've got another appointment, Dr. Tucker.”

“What?” His eyes snapped open. He stared at her as dream and reality merged. She was standing on the other side of his desk, her hair pulled back, in a breezy cotton blouse and slacks.

“I was going to say code blue, or red alert, one of those things you hear on TV, but I didn't know which would fit.” She put the basket she carried on the desk.

“I'd settle for ‘Hi.'”

“Hi.” With a quick laugh, she looked around the office. “I almost didn't come in,” she told him. “When I came to the door, you looked so…intimidating.”

“Intimidating?”

“Like a doctor. A real doctor,” she said on another laugh. “The kind who uses needles and makes terrifying noncommittal noises and scribbles things on charts.”

“Hmm,” Brady said. “Ah.”

“Exactly.”

“I can take off the lab coat.”

“No, actually, I think I like it. As long as you promise not to whip out a tongue depressor. I saw your nurse as she was leaving. She said you were through for the day.”

“Just.” The rest of the paperwork would have to wait. “What's in the basket?”

“Dinner—of sorts. Since you wouldn't make a house call, I decided to see if you could fit me into your office schedule.”

“It's an amazing coincidence, but I've just had a cancellation.” The fatigue simply drained away as he looked at her. Her mouth was naked, and there was a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “Why don't you sit down and tell me what the problem is?”

“Well.” Vanessa sat in the chair in front of the desk. “You see, doctor, I've been feeling kind of light-headed. And ab
sentminded. I forget what I'm doing in the middle of doing it and catch myself staring off into space.”

“Hmmm.”

“Then there have been these aches. Here,” she said, and put a hand on her heart.

“Ah.”

“Like palpitations. And at night…” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I've had these dreams.”

“Really?” He came around to sit on the corner of the desk. There was her scent, whispery light, to flirt with him. “What kind of dreams?”

“They're personal,” she said primly.

“I'm a doctor.”

“So you say.” She grinned at him. “You haven't even asked me to take off my clothes.”

“Good point.” Rising, he took her hand. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Your case warrants a full examination.”

“Brady—”

“That's Dr. Brady to you.” He hit the lights in examining room 1. “Now about that ache.”

She gave him a slow, measured look. “Obviously you've been dipping into the rubbing alcohol.”

He merely took her by the hips and boosted her onto the examining table. “Relax, sweetie. They don't call me Dr. Feelgood for nothing.” He took out his ophthalmoscope and directed the light into her eyes. “Yes, they're definitely green.”

“Well, that's a relief.”

“You're telling me.” He set the instrument aside. “Okay, lose the blouse and I'll test your reflexes.”

“Well…” She ran her tongue over her teeth. “As long as I'm here.” She let her fingers wander down the buttons, un
fastening slowly. Under it she wore sheer blue silk. “I'm not going to have to wear one of those paper things, am I?”

He had to catch his breath as she peeled off the blouse. “I think we can dispense with that. You look to be in excellent health. In fact, I can say without reservation that you look absolutely perfect.”

“But I have this ache.” She took his hand and pressed it to her breast. “Right now my heart's racing. Feel it?”

“Yeah.” Gently he absorbed the feeling of silk and flesh. Her flesh. “I think it's catching.”

“My skin's hot,” she murmured. “And my legs are weak.”

“Definitely catching.” With a fingertip he slid a thin silk strap from her shoulder. “You may just have to be quarantined.”

“With you, I hope.”

He unhooked her slacks. “That's the idea.”

When she toed off her sandals, the other strap slithered down her shoulders. Her voice was husky now, and growing breathless. “Do you have a diagnosis?”

He eased the slacks down her hips. “Sounds like the rocking pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu.”

She'd arched up to help him remove her slacks, and now she just stared. “What?”

“Too much Mozart.”

“Oh.” She twined her arms around his shoulders. It seemed like years since she'd been able to hold him against her. When his lips found the little hollow near her collarbone, she smiled. “Can you help me, Doctor?”

“I'm about to do my damnedest.”

His mouth slid over hers. It was like coming home. Her little sigh merged with his as she leaned into him. Dreamily she changed the angle of the kiss and let his taste pour into her. Whatever illness she had, he was exactly the right medicine.

“I feel better already.” She nibbled on his lip. “More.”

“Van?”

Her heavy eyes opened. While her fingers combed through his hair, she smiled. The light glowed in her eyes. Again he could see himself there, trapped in the misty green. Not lost this time. Found.

Everything he'd ever wanted, ever needed, ever dreamed of, was right here. He felt the teasing pleasure turn to grinding ache in the flash of an instant. With an oath, he dragged her mouth back to his and feasted.

No patience this time. Though the change surprised her, it didn't frighten her. He was her friend, her lover. Her only. There was a desperation and a fervency that thrilled, that demanded, that possessed. As the twin of his emotions rose in her, she pulled him closer.

More, she thought again, but frantically now. She could never get enough of being wanted this wildly. She dragged at his lab coat, even as her teeth scraped over his lip. Desire pumped through her like a drug and had her yanking at his T-shirt before the coat hit the floor. She wanted the feel of his flesh, the heat of it, under her hands. She wanted the taste of that flesh, the succulence of it, under her lips.

The loving he had shown her until now had been calm and sweet and lovely. This time she craved the fire, the dark, the madness.

Control broken, he pushed her back on the narrow padded table, tearing at the wisp of silk. He could tolerate nothing between them now—only flesh against flesh and heart against heart. She was a wonder of slender limbs and subtle curves, of pale skin and delicate bones. He wanted to taste, to touch, to savor every inch.

But her demands were as great as his. She pulled him to
her, sliding agilely over him so that her lips could race from his to his throat, his chest, beyond. Rough and greedy, his hands streaked over her, exploiting everywhere, as her questing mouth drove him mad.

His taste. Hot and dark and male, it made her giddy. His form. Firm and hard and muscled, it made her weak. Already damp, his skin slid under her seeking fingers. And she played him deftly, as she would her most passionate concerto.

She feared her heart would burst from its pounding rhythm. Her head spun with it. Her body trembled. Yet there was a power here. Even through the dizziness she felt it swelling in her. How could she have known she could give so much—and take so much?

His pulse thundered under her fingertips. Between his frenzied murmurs, his breath was ragged. She saw the echo of her own passion in his eyes, tasted it when she crushed her mouth to his. For her, she thought as she let herself drown in the kiss. Only for her.

He grasped her hips, fingers digging in. With each breath he took, her scent slammed into his system, potent as any narcotic. Her hair curtained his face, blocking the light and letting him see only her. The faint smile of knowledge was in her eyes. With her every movement, she enticed.

“For God's sake, Van.” Her name was part oath, part prayer. If he didn't have her now, he knew he would die from the need.

She shifted, arching back, as she took him into her. For an instant, time stopped, and with it his breath, his thoughts, his life. He saw only her, her hair streaming back like a wild red river, her body pale and gleaming in the harsh light, her face glowing with the power she had only just discovered.

Then it was all speed and sound as she drove them both.

This was glory. She gave herself to it, her arms reaching
up before she lost her hands in her own hair. This was wonder. And delight. No symphony had ever been so rousing. No prelude so passionate. Even as sensation shuddered through her, she begged for more.

There was freedom in the greed. Ecstasy in the knowledge that she could take as much as she wanted. Excitement in understanding that she could give just as generously.

Her heart was roaring in her ears. When she groped for his hands, his fingers clamped on to hers. They held tight as they burst over the peak together.

 

She slid down to him, boneless, her head spinning and her heart racing still. His skin was damp, as hers was, his body as limp. When she pressed her lips to his throat, she could feel the frantic beating of his pulse.

She had done that, Vanessa realized, still dazed. She had taken control and given them both pleasure and passion. She hadn't even had to think, only to act, only to feel. Sailing on this new self-awareness, she propped herself up on an elbow and smiled down at him.

His eyes were closed, his face so completely relaxed that she knew he was next to sleep. His heartbeat, was settling down to a purr, as was hers. Through the contentment, she felt need bloom anew.