A Self-Made Man (4 page)

No more angst. Now it was simply back to business. Raising money, putting out office brush fires, posing with happy parents who wanted to remember their friends on the staff of Pringle Island General Hospital. These were all things that the competent Lacy Morgan, director of community relations, could do in her sleep.

Lacy smiled at the family who waited in front of her now. She had just taken their picture—proud father, ecstatic mother, robustly wriggling baby girl. Yes, she thought, handing the daddy his camera. This was better. Much better.

“Take the baby, would you please, Mrs. Morgan? We want a picture of you two together. We wouldn't ever have made it though all this without you.”

With pleasure, Lacy accepted the beautiful, pink-faced infant, who was finally going home after three weeks under ultraviolet lights in the nursery. It had been touch-and-go, but this little one was a fighter. Lacy whispered soft nothings and let the amazingly delicate fingers wrap around her thumb.

Soon, when the hospital had its own neonatal unit, these success stories would be commonplace. Small miracles on a daily basis, and she would be a part of that. A worthwhile life, surely. Even if none of the miracles were her own….

The father's enthusiasm knew no bounds, and he kept the flash popping even after Lacy's eyes were half-blind with red after-images, even after his tiny daughter had begun to wail in bored protest.

“Mr. Rosterman, perhaps it's time to take—”

“Lacy?” Kara Karlin's worried voice broke in. “Can I speak to you a moment?”

Lacy looked over toward the maternity ward door, and saw Kara's wrinkled brow and pursed lips. She knew that look. Something was wrong. Shifting the baby to her shoulder, where her cries subsided slightly, Lacy left the parents struggling to get a new roll of film into their camera and moved to where Kara stood wringing her hands.

“Lacy, I'm so sorry. I really hate to bother you, but the most awful thing has happened.”

Lacy smiled. Though Kara was nearly fifty and the seasoned mother of four, she lived and breathed superlatives like a teenager. Everything that happened to her was the most something—most terrible, most wonderful, most horrifying, most exciting. All peaks
and valleys. Lacy, who had carefully tethered her own psyche to a flat, uneventful plain for years, realized that she sometimes took a vicarious pleasure in watching Kara roller-coaster through her days.

“Surely not the
most
awful,” Lacy teased, patting the baby's back softly. “The Most Awful thing happened yesterday, didn't it, when the caterer brought the wrong hors d'oeuvres to the auction? And yet somehow we survived.” She swayed slightly as she talked, creating a gentle rocking motion. The baby began to suck her fingers placidly, and the quiet was blissful. “We even managed to raise a quarter of a million for the neonatal unit.”

Kara scowled. “Laugh if you like, but if old Mr. Terwilligan had touched one of those seafood canapes, his throat would have swelled up like a blow-fish.” She brushed her damp, graying hair back from her temples. “And besides, this is worse. You won't believe it, Lacy. The birthday clown is sick. We haven't anyone to do the basket thing.”

Now that
was
a problem. The entire pediatric ward was practically holding its breath, awaiting the clown visitation and the attendant shower of toys and candy from his huge green basket. To disappoint the children would be unthinkable.

And therefore Lacy simply wouldn't let it happen. “We'll have to find a replacement,” she said calmly, her mind scanning the possibilities like a computer. “Is Leo working today?” Kara shook her head mournfully. “Bart?” Another negative. “Roger?”

“We don't have a single man in the community relations department today. Oh, what are we going to
do? The kids are so excited. Ronny Harbaugh was up all night.”

“Now, Kara, don't panic.” Lacy concentrated on slowing her breath, lowering her voice, communicating serenity both to the suddenly restless baby and to the older woman, who seemed about to burst into tears.

Rotating the baby to her other shoulder, she studied the possibilities. “No men at all. What about a woman, then?”

Kara looked blank. “But we always use a man. The costume is huge. The eyes are so high—”

“Then we need a tall woman.” Lacy scanned Kara's trim five-feet-ten inches. “What about you?”

Kara looked stunned, confused by this departure from tradition, terrified at the sudden responsibility. “Oh, I couldn't. I've never… We've never… I just couldn't.” But she wanted to. Lacy could see a tremulous hope in her eyes. “Could I?”

“Of course you can,” Lacy said steadily, putting her free hand on the other woman's shoulder. “The kids all love you. You'll be wonderful.”

“But I can't.” Kara braided her fingers anxiously. “Oh, my goodness, the newsletter! And I was just about to—”

“It doesn't matter. I'll help you get the newsletter sent out. Whatever else there is can wait.”

“No, really, this can't.” Groaning softly, Kara gnawed on one already-tortured fingernail. “Oh, this is the
worst
luck! I was just about to give a tour—”

“I'll take the tour.” Lacy put a little steel in her voice, though she still smiled encouragingly. “Now
for heaven's sake, Kara, stop worrying and start dispensing birthday presents before Ronny Harbaugh starts a riot in the pediatric ward.”

Kara's answering smile was equal parts gratitude and anxiety. “Oh… All right, I will, then!” She bustled toward the hallway, turning back at the last minute, her face lit with a new inspiration. “You know, you probably should conduct this tour, anyhow, since you're the director. He's not just any investor. He's the type who'd expect the red carpet treatment, isn't he?”

Lacy's stomach went suddenly cold. She gripped the infant more carefully as she felt the room take a quick, violent tilt and right itself in the blink of an eye. Aware of the baby's parents watching her with a sudden, instinctive anxiety, she fought the urge to follow Kara down the hall.

“He?” She spoke loudly enough to reach the bank of elevators where Kara waited. Her voice sounded normal, thank God. “Who?”

But she knew. She knew even before Kara stepped into the waiting elevator and turned with the name on her lips. “Only the most gorgeous man on Pringle Island, you lucky thing,” Kara called back. “Only that hunky Adam Kendall.”

 

H
E HAD TO GIVE HER CREDIT
. The lady had guts.

Adam raised one eyebrow as he watched Lacy coming toward him, her posture erect, her chin high and set. Even though Kara Karlin had popped in about half an hour ago to promise that Lacy would be arriving soon, still Adam would have bet his left cuff
link that she'd never show. The tour would be quietly foisted off onto some underling.

He had assumed, in fact, that it was Lacy's search for a suitable underling that had kept him cooling his heels here in the waiting room of the community relations department. Not that he'd minded—the room was designed for comfort. The chairs opened roomy, inviting arms to visitors. Peach pillows as soft as upholstered clouds tumbled across the sofa. Cheerful apricot artwork smiled from behind the desk. Gentle, indirect lighting spread a buttery glow over every wall.

The room positively oozed warmth. Lacy Morgan, however, stopping now in the doorway to take a deep breath, did not.

Dressed in a knife-slim, glacial-blue suit, her long, thick hair pulled back into a cruel, shining knot at the nape of her pale neck, she affected the room like a blast of refrigeration. She didn't hurry, even after she saw him sitting there. She smoothed her sleeve carefully, then touched the top button of her collar, which was high, slightly Oriental, and clearly in no danger of slipping open—now or ever. Then she moved to her desk, a study in graceful efficiency. Her slim heels clicked against the wood flooring with a sound that reminded him of ice falling into an empty glass.

She fingered a few papers pointlessly, then looked up, gazing at him with a cold calm. “Kara tells me she promised you a tour,” she said politely. “I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“Really.” He smiled. “Are you sure?”

She obviously hadn't expected that. A faint line
marred the snowy placidity of her forehead before she caught herself and smoothed it away. “Sure of what?”

“That you're sorry to have kept me waiting.” He hitched one leg over the other and watched her from the comfortable embrace of the armchair. “After last night, I thought perhaps you might have welcomed the opportunity to…put me in my place.”

“Your place, Adam?” She shook her head. “I wouldn't presume to know where
your place
might be.”

“Well,” he murmured. “Under your thumb, perhaps?”

She laughed, a brittle sound that once again reminded him of ice cubes tinkling against crystal. “Actually, the last time I remember thinking about where you should go, it was somewhere considerably farther south. And somewhat warmer.”

“Oh?” He smiled and let his gaze travel slowly south across her body. He couldn't help himself. He knew what she meant, of course—that he belonged in the lowest level of Hell. But she wasn't very good at this game, was she? She had thrust, but the effort had left her exposed.

In the space of two hot, blinking seconds, she knew how it had sounded. Her eyes widened, and her fingers tightened on the papers they held.

He didn't speak. He didn't have to. He waited for the signature cherry-red circles to bloom in her cheeks. She had always been a blusher. She had blushed when Mrs. Bickens called on her in Calculus, when Adam's fellow construction workers whistled at
her as she picked him up after the late shift, when her aunt scolded her for coming in beyond the stroke of midnight….

And, with an intoxicating innocence that had sent quakes through his entire system, she had blushed in his arms when he undressed her. Though they had been alone in the melting summer darkness, it had taken a dozen murmuring kisses to coax her fingers away from her burning cheeks.

But, to his surprise, she didn't blush now. If anything, her strangely immobile face, ivory under its weight of dark hair, grew even more pale.

She stared at him a long moment and then, slowly, she came around the desk and leaned against the corner. She adjusted her skirt with graceful hands. A wink of silver at her wrist showed beneath her cuff and a scallop of white lace retreated obediently under her hem.

The shift brought their knees together, separated by no more than a sliver of an inch. It was deliberate—he could see the challenge in her steady gaze. She was completely unaffected, she was assuring him, by both his words and his body.

“Perhaps we'd better get something straight,” she said in a voice that was commendably even, if not quite natural. “Touring potential investors is part of my job. Don't flatter yourself that I would let anything you did in the past—last night or ten years ago—keep me from raising money for this hospital.”

He stared back at her, realizing that suddenly, absurdly, he was angry. Angry at that marble-statue face, at that automaton voice, at those graceful hands
that no longer trembled. What a waste. What a criminal waste of sweet fire and flesh and blue-moonlight blushes.

What the hell had she turned herself into? And, more to the point, why did he give a damn?

“Don't worry, Lacy,” he said with another cold grin, this one curving to within an inch of rudeness. “I know you better than to believe you'd ever let anything come between you and a man's wallet.”

Had he still been hoping for a reaction? If so, she had bested him again. She merely nodded and returned his smile.

“Especially a wallet as fat as yours,” she agreed concisely. Without waiting for a reaction, she stood. “Shall we get started?”

From then on, it was all business. Without stumbling over a single syllable or a single threshold, she led him through gleaming sterile corridors and into crisply organized offices, delivering as they went one of the most comprehensive sales pitches he'd ever witnessed. From exotic medical terminology to infant mortality statistics, from estimated square footage to anticipated funding partners and percentages, she covered her material so thoroughly that whenever she turned to him with a politely inquisitive smile, inviting questions, he couldn't think of a single one.

Except perhaps…
when did this happen to you, Lacy? Do you remember how, back at old man Morgan's department store, you were so shy you could hardly look at the customers while you counted out their change?

But of course he didn't ask any such thing. He already knew the answer. No. She didn't remember.

She introduced him to doctors and administrators, even a patient or two, apologizing gracefully each time for interrupting their busy schedules, though apologies clearly weren't necessary. Mrs. Malcolm Morgan was obviously welcome anywhere in this hospital. Two particularly athletic obstetricians, Adam observed wryly, nearly plowed down a maternity ward nurse in their rush to guarantee that they'd intersect Lacy's path.

Forty-five minutes later, the tour ended up in a wood-paneled conference room, hung from door to door with expensively framed blueprints. In the center of the room, an intricate maze of miniature cobalt and gray buildings sprouted like some geometric fungus across a huge mahogany table.

“The finished product,” she said, waving two elegant, peach-tipped fingers at the table. “Designed by Prescher and Osteen. You may remember them—they've been the premier architects on Pringle Island for generations.”

“I remember,” he said, strolling casually by the little painted boxes and dollhouse shrubs. He flicked a very real dead fly from the pretend sidewalk, then tilted a half-cocked grin up at her. “How is good old Biff? Did his daddy's plastic surgeons ever sand that kink out of his nose?”