Searching for Cate

She hated not knowing, hated being shut out. Frustration had her fisting her hands in her lap. “What can you tell me?”

“That if this is on the level and for some inner peace you need to have Joan accept you as her daughter, that you take this slowly. Let her get used to the idea,” he advised.

That would be his approach, it always had been. Slow and steady. Only once in his life had he jumped in with both feet, and that was to threaten Alma’s father to keep away from her.

“If Joan is your mother the way you say,” he added as he saw the protest rise to her lips, “she probably thought she’d never see you again. She certainly didn’t expect you to pop up on what she undoubtedly feels is one of the darkest days of her life.”

Was he doing that on purpose, teasing her with information he wouldn’t give her? No, she doubted that. Gut instincts told her that this was a man who didn’t tease. Too bad. The thought came from nowhere and she had no idea why it materialized in her brain. She began to entertain the thought that, just possibly, she was going a little crazy. Who could blame her?

Cate sighed, regarding him a moment in silence. Wondering what made him tick. Wondering what she could use to her advantage. He seemed nice enough, or else why would he be here, talking to her now? But his allegiance was clearly to his patient. “You won’t tell me if I guess right, will you?”

“I took an oath.”

“To what, torture the bastard daughters of your patients?” This time, Cate was certain she saw a hint of a smile quirk his lips.

“No, to keep my patients’ confidences just between us.” Christian debated for a moment, then decided to tell her the little that he could. “I will tell you this, though. Joan never mentioned having another daughter besides Rebecca.”

The laugh that left her lips was completely without humor. Her eyes challenged his. They were flashing with barely suppressed anger. He had to admit, the sight was compelling.

“And you would tell me if she’d filled out on her patient history form: ‘Gave away one daughter because I wasn’t ready to be a mother yet.’”

In her position, he was pretty sure he would have felt the same. But he wasn’t in her position. And his position was to guard Joan’s privacy. “If she had, I wouldn’t say anything. But since she hadn’t, I can tell you. I can also tell you that maybe you should think about signing up for an anger-management class.”

And who the hell was he to tell her what to do? She could feel her temper rising dangerously close to the surface. Cate squared her shoulders. “I can manage my anger just fine, thanks.”

Instead of getting up and walking out the way she’d expected him to, her mother’s doctor took her wrist and placed his fingers against her pulse. Her anger square-danced with a strange surge of warmth that washed over her.

“That’s not what your pulse is saying.” His eyes held hers. “It’s accelerated.”

Cate yanked away her wrist. The warm feeling stayed, but it was being smothered by a wave of anger fueled by indignation. “Maybe that’s because a good-looking man is holding it.”

Christian took it as a sarcastic remark. If there was the tiniest part of him that reacted, he attributed it to a trying morning, nothing more. He’d hoped that Joan’s tests would have returned negative from the lab.

“You have better control over yourself than that” was all he said. He took his cup, rinsed it out and placed it on the counter again. “I’ve got to go to my office.” After drying his hands, he put back the towel and saw that she was staring at him. “What?”

His comment about her having better control over herself than that left her momentarily speechless. Rallying, she searched for something plausible to say. Cate glanced at the mug draining on the counter. “I never saw a man rinse out his own cup before, that’s all.”

He had a feeling she was lying, but he went along with it. “Part of being allowed to use the nurses’ lounge. I remove all traces of having been here.”

“Except for the money you leave in the can.” She nodded toward it.

“Except for that.” It occurred to him that maybe the woman needed more time to pull herself together, although she didn’t look it. But he was the first to know that the exterior didn’t always give away what was happening beneath. People thought of him as stoic and he was anything but. It was only a role he took on. “You can stay here as long as you like,” he said as he began to open the door.

But Cate was already on her feet. She quickly rinsed out the cup he’d given her and was beside him in less time than he would have thought possible.

“I just took a few hours of personal time to try to resolve this.” The expression on her face was contrite. She realized that something this huge required more than “a few hours of personal time.” “I need to be getting back, too.”

Christian held the door open for her.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “For the coffee and the talk.”

“Even if it wasn’t fruitful?”

“Everyone’s got their own interpretation of ‘fruitful,’” she replied.

He couldn’t quite read the smile on her face. He supposed that was why the word enigmatic was created.

They parted in the hallway. He had a feeling deep in his gut that this wasn’t going to be the last time he saw her. The FBI special agent didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who gave up easily. She reminded him a great deal of his sister-in-law.

Christian hadn’t lied about needing to get to his office. He had patients scheduled all morning. But the first up was an annual exam with Sally Jacobs, who’d had no particular complaints when she’d made the appointment with his nurse. Christian decided that the annual exam could wait a few minutes.

Instead, he went back to Joan’s room to check on her. He wanted to see if the sedative had taken hold yet and if she was doing better than when he had left her.

Knocking once, he opened the door when he heard the muffled, “Come in.”

Joan was sitting up in bed, shredding a tissue into a hundred tiny pieces. Out of habit, Christian picked up the chart hanging off the edge of her bed to see if the right dosage had been given. There had never been any mistakes of major consequence at Blair Memorial, just a few minor inconveniences. Delays in lab results, a food menu lost, things of that nature. Nothing to warrant any anxiety. Checking the chart was a pretext.