Buch lesen: «Prescription For Seduction»

Chapter One

Brady Spencer came to Eden only at night. When the phone was quiet, the front door locked, the last customer gone hours ago. Only the light inside the display refrigerator remained bright. The garden scents seemed stronger.

Eden studied the table before her scattered with foam, floral tape, chicken wire, ribbon, flowers. She picked up a yielding lily and when she saw her hand was trembling, she closed her eyes, feeling foolish. There was a light knock at the back door. He always used the back door. She heard the handle turning, the door opening. The door was left unlocked. Eden opened her eyes, stayed her hands against the cool Formica tabletop.

Even before he opened the door, Brady smelled the sweetness. A sweetness different from blood’s hot smell or the operating room’s white, close scent. He stepped inside, closed the door, took a breath. Heaven would smell like this.

“Eden?” His voice was low, but still heard in the surrounding quiet.

“Doctor.” She appeared in the back room’s archway. In her hand she held a thin-stemmed flower, its large petals furled back, unafraid to reveal its secrets.

“Come in.” The flower pointed the way. “I’m just finishing an arrangement for the front windows.”

Brady smiled. Eden’s lush window displays were legendary. Tomorrow passersby would stop and stare like children in front of a pastry shop.

He followed her. The dark apron that covered her had been left undone in the back, its ties hanging loosely. The shift she wore beneath it was shapeless, a long column moving down her body, unbroken except for the push of small, rounded hips. The apron’s ties swung, and he saw her body’s curves come, change with a single sway, then disappear beneath the pale print. He looked up, realizing the feminine form he’d been ogling was Eden. His interest became unease. He looked away only to see more color, shape, proportion in the tubs, watering cans and jugs of flowers and greens. Spring had just begun in southern Wisconsin, but here, it reigned endless. He breathed in, gathering the composure that had made him one of the most trusted surgeons at Tyler General.

Eden had seen the frown appear on Brady’s face as he’d looked away. She dropped her gaze to the flowers on the table, envying them their beauty. “So another order?” She broke the silence. “Who’s the unsuspecting recipient this time?”

He looked at her. Her face was without makeup, her dark-brown hair pulled tight into a ponytail that stressed the shapes of her features—broad, almost flat cheeks, a colorless mouth. It was an ordinary face on an ordinary woman. She was average in height, only she seemed smaller, swallowed by the apron hanging loose, the formless dress that stretched to the jut of her thin ankles. There mint-green socks wrinkled above dull black loafers, the kind with the wide fit and the puckered seams worn by many of his elderly female patients.

His gaze moved to her hands, pale against the perfection of the flowers. Her wrists were thin. There was a vulnerability about her that made her appear much younger than her years. There was a quiet to her that made her seem much older. Both discouraged ogling. Still he had an urge to kneel and pull up those socks until they climbed smooth up her calves, ending just below her knees that had to be endearingly knobby. His unease crept in again.

She concentrated on the table before her, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed as if she were listening to the flowers. She taped leafy greens to a thin, pointed stick, angled it in among the others, adjusted a slender yellow-and-white bloom. She lifted her gaze back to him. He saw those eyes—large, round and made even more remarkable when compared to the surrounding ordinary features. These eyes didn’t just see, they fascinated, they divined, they reminded one that miracles did exist—all through an undefinable color. Its base was purple, but darker than the frail shade of an iris, lighter than the red-purple of a grape. It wasn’t the purplish-blue of periwinkle or the pale shadow of lilac nor the strong purple prized by royalty. It was a shade that belonged only to Eden.

She smiled, the shape of her face gentling. “Or has the Flower Phantom decided to reveal his identity?”

The Flower Phantom. The name had been coined in Gina Eber’s column in the Tyler Citizen about the recent secret flower deliveries around town. There’d been other anonymous gifts—the motorized toy jeeps to take the children cancer patients to chemotherapy; the DVD players with a complete collection of Jerry Lewis films for long-term care. But it was the flowers everyone remembered the most.

Eden unrolled some wire and clipped it. “Gina’s a good friend of mine, you know. In fact, she’s been stopping by the shop even more frequently.” She met Brady’s gaze.

“You don’t think she knows, do you?”

“She brought up the subject once or twice.” Eden looped a length of ribbon back and forth. “I told her that was privileged information between a florist and her client.”

He heard the unexpected jest in her soft voice. He remembered the push of her hips as she walked, the hint of curves and rounds. He couldn’t look away.

For a moment neither did she. When she finally did, he followed her gaze to the flowers waiting for her. There he saw blooms of purple. He searched for the shade of her eyes. He was a man who liked things defined.

“What color are your eyes?”

Her cheeks flushed, the deep-red seeming to alter her eye color. He hadn’t meant to make her uncomfortable by blurting out the question.

“People tell me it’s violet.” She looked down again, busying herself with the flowers. Only her blush was left exposed.

“Violet.” To most, it was a color. But he knew it as a woman’s name, a name he’d been forbidden to say since the age of eleven.

“Violet.” He said it again defiantly. Once there would’ve been no response inside him. Lately that hadn’t been the case.

He focused on the silent girl in front of him. Seeing the blush still on her cheeks, he chose his words carefully. “Your eyes…they’re unusual.”

She raised her head, not sure if she’d been complimented or diagnosed. She knew she wasn’t beautiful. Beautiful would have been divine. Nor was she ugly. Ugly would have been, at least, interesting. She was plain. Bland as unbuttered macaroni. Except for her eyes. But they were so at odds with the rest of her physical appearance that instead of rescuing her, they only served to confirm that even the gods sometimes made mistakes.

She knew all this before Brady fixed his gaze on her and offered a compliment in the same tone he might use to note the discovery of a rare disease. She also knew how ridiculous she was, imagining his presence here was for any reason other than that she had the most beautiful flowers in Tyler and several miles beyond.

“So what kind of an arrangement would you like to send?” Eden moved the conversation back to business, where it belonged.

He looked at the buckets of eucalyptus and narcissus, the stiff stalks of delphiniums, the clusters of daffodils curving beneath the weight of closed buds. “I want something exotic.” He waved the hands that healed. “Something exciting.”

She didn’t realize she’d sighed aloud until he glanced at her. She covered with a bright smile and a light voice that teased, “Don’t we all?”

His expression went from curious to uncertain. “I suppose.” He moved to inspect the aluminum shelves of vases and foam-filled containers lining the far wall.

His back was to her, yet she didn’t turn to take him in. She didn’t have to. She knew without sight his back’s strong width, his shoulders’ proud slope, the faint pink where the barber had shaved the nape of his neck. She’d had a crush on him since she was eight. She’d been crossing to the park and tripped on the curb. Instead of laughing at her like the other older boys hanging out in the square had done, he’d come and helped her up, asked her if she was all right, his face serious and already adult as he examined her knees. From that moment her heart had been his, even though her head knew her fantasies were futile.

Then he had come into her flower shop late one night over a month ago.

She heard him move. The temptation became too great, and she turned and looked at him. She’d been born without beauty, but every day she created it, surrounded herself with it, gave it to others. Most of all she knew when it was before her.

It was before her now. She looked at him and, for a moment, was adrift.

She looked away before he caught her. As well as she knew beauty, she also knew what she created often fell short of reality, what she craved could never be completely hers.

He asked about a vase. She walked to where he stood.

“This one?” She took the vase off the shelf, its weight cool against her palms. “It has lovely lines, don’t you think? And the size, the balance of the body is certainly strong enough to hold its own with the most exotic mixtures.”

He touched the vase in her hands and nodded approval.

“I hope these exciting flowers aren’t for a patient with a heart condition or high blood pressure.” She kept the conversation friendly. They were, after all, friends. It would have to be enough.

He smiled. She was pleased. He didn’t smile enough. His brows often pulled low as if weighted with worry. Two deep lines angled above his nose, creating a constant stern impression. Some nights, though, she would make small jokes and small talk, and the lines on his face would smooth.

“Actually, these flowers aren’t for a patient at all.”

“No?” She walked to the design table, the vase heavy in her hands. A woman? Why not? Brady and his brothers had inspired more female fantasies within the town limits of Tyler than George Clooney and a case of Asti Spumante combined. But the two other brothers had both married within the past four months, leaving only one single Spencer brother—Brady—to fight off the wily women of Tyler. Eden had no doubt Brady’s bachelor days were numbered.

“The flowers are for a nurse.”

Of course.

“Cece Baron.”

“Cece Baron?” Eden’s quiet voice went an octave higher.

He glanced at her curiously. “You know, Jeff’s wife.”

Eden did know. Cece was the nursing supervisor at Worthington House, and together with Jeff, Tyler General’s chief of staff, had seven-year-old twin girls.

“Don’t you think your boss is going to have something to say if his wife starts receiving bouquets of flowers from a secret admirer?”

“I hope so.”

She frowned. “You’re sure about this?”

“Definitely, after I saw Cece sitting in Jeff’s office today, waiting for him. She was looking at a family picture Jeff has in his office—I think it was taken at his younger sister Liza’s wedding. Cece was crying.”

Eden’s frown deepened.

“She put on a big smile when she saw me, but she knew I’d seen her. She’d said she was being silly. That between her work and Jeff’s schedule and the twins, she couldn’t expect things to be like they once were between her and her husband.”

“Like they once were?”

“Crazy, wild in love, passionate, head-over-heels, you know.” Brady spoke with a doctor’s detachment.

Eden didn’t know, but she nodded, anyway.

“Cece finally told me Jeff and she had made a lunch date, just the two of them. Some ‘together’ time to try and put a little magic back in the marriage. She’d waited forty-five minutes before she’d found out he’d left the hospital an hour ago to take some prospective donors to lunch to discuss building a new imaging facility. He’d forgotten about their date. ‘Imagine,’ she’d said. ‘Stood up by your own husband. How humiliating is that?’ But she made me promise not to tell him she was there. Said it’d only upset him, and she was already worried enough about his stress level.”

Eden’s features relaxed. “But she didn’t make you promise not to send an anonymous arrangement of flowers that she might assume was an apology from her husband?”

Brady smiled. “Let’s send one to Jeff, too. Maybe that’ll put a little mystique back into the marriage.” She heard an uncustomary excitement in his voice. He looked away, and if Eden didn’t know better, she would’ve sworn Tyler General’s most unflappable surgeon was suddenly self-conscious.

“It’s a lovely thought,” she assured him, hoping to ease his discomfort.

“Unsigned, of course.” His voice was even once again. He returned his gaze to her.

“Of course.” She wondered if he’d ever believe that his vulnerability didn’t make him weak, merely human.

“If the chief of staff knew one of his surgeons was playing Cupid, well, you can imagine how that would go over at the monthly staff meetings.”

“Of course.” She always agreed. It was part of the ritual. He walked around the shop, his briefcase gripped in his right hand and his steps brisk. His left hand tapped the curved sales counter, made a wrought-iron birdcage sway, asserted control over his surroundings.

“What about these?” He tapped on the cooler’s door, his nose inches from the glass. “These white things in the corner. What are they?”

“Calla lilies. Special order received today. They’re lovely, don’t you think?”

“They look exotic enough.”

“Oh, they are. Add nothing more than some camellia leaves or laurel, and you’ve got yourself a beautiful bouquet.” She studied the oversize blooms. “They’d also be stunning mixed with white French tulips and paperwhites.”

Brady nodded as if he knew what she was talking about. They both knew he had no idea.

“Put a big bow around the vase,” he said. It was a voice that suffered no fools, especially himself. He had a reputation as one of the best doctors around and also one of the most demanding. Eden suspected, however, he was hardest on himself.

“Always a big bow.”

“Good.” He smiled, satisfied.

Now that wasn’t so painful, was it? she thought as if she were the doctor and he, the patient.

“Charge it to my card as usual.” Business done, he turned to go. He was a busy man. Too busy, Eden thought. The first night he’d lingered, asking irrelevant questions as if needing to talk. One night she might coax him to again stay longer, sit with her, have a cup of tea, but not tonight. Tonight she wasn’t brave enough, and he wasn’t calm enough.

“Eden?” He’d turned, catching her studying him.

“Yes?” She dropped her gaze to the table, pretending to inspect the arrangement.

“Thank you.”

She looked at him.

“You’re…” He cleared his throat. “You’re swell.” He turned, went through the arch and was gone.

Swell? Eden stared at the doorway. She looked back at the splay of flowers before her on the table. She twisted a peony to the left for balance. “Swell?” She spoke to the flowers. The peony’s heavy head bobbed as if confirming.

She circled the arrangement, her practiced eye checking the line, color, rhythm.

“Is that what he told that sleek blonde he had dinner with at the Old Heigelburg a few weeks ago? And what about that big-chested, big-haired brunette spoon-feeding him Marge’s apple pie not two days later at the diner? I suppose she was swell, too?”

The flowers were silent as if knowing the answer as well as she did. With Brady’s movie-star looks, commanding presence and dark charm, it was no secret that the patients of Tyler General weren’t the only ones who sought out the doctor’s renowned skills. His success with single women was as well-known as his acclaimed professional reputation.

Yet Eden knew she was the only one with whom Brady had shared the secret of his anonymous good deeds. The thought made her smile. It also made her feel special. Not beautiful or exciting like the flowers he chose or the many women he dated. But she felt privileged to share a side of Brady Spencer that no one else knew or even suspected. No, it wasn’t love or passion, a far cry from that, but still it was something.

She misted the flowers and carried them to a draped pedestal in the front window. “Don’t worry, Dr. Spencer.” The room was quiet except for the hum of the lights and the gurgle of the fish tank. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

SWELL? Brady walked down the thin alley between the flower shop and the beauty salon. He was a highly trained, skilled surgeon. Why was he talking like some jug-eared kid with a cowlick? He reached the street and turned toward the condominium complex where he lived.

It was Eden, he decided. Eden with her innocence, her guileless smile, her wonderful world so removed from the reality he knew. He stepped into The Garden, and he was eleven again—insecure, confused, wanting—all beneath a facade of bravado and bluster.

He stopped to cross at the corner, already recognizing the restlessness that would have him prowling around his efficient, empty condo until early-morning hours. His apartment was close to the hospital, and he often walked the short distance no matter the weather. In fact, battling the winter cold and winds gave him as much satisfaction as strolling in the sun. This year, though, spring had come unusually early. The record-warm March had melted the snows and muddied the ground and brought out others not so brave or belligerent to walk the icy streets like Brady.

There was no traffic but he hadn’t crossed. He sighed, turning almost automatically toward the hospital and the piles of paperwork that might quell his unrest. He saw Martha Bauer on the arm of her daughter, Anna Kelsey, coming up the street. Even from a block away, Martha’s blue eyes pinned him.

He strode toward the women, seeing no reason for concern. If they’d seen him coming out of the alley next to The Garden of Eden, they’d probably assume he’d taken a shortcut home from the hospital.

“Good evening, ladies.” He greeted them a half block away, his smile sociable but his steps smart.

“You’re turning in the wind like a weathervane, Doc.”

Martha’s eyes held him fast, slowed his step. “I’ve never known you to lose your way.” The old woman’s smile was as sharp as her gaze. “Or to admit it, at least.”

Martha’s daughter, Anna, looked apologetically at Brady, her eyes the same blue as her mother’s, only softer. “Now Dr. Spencer knows why all his other patients at Worthington House have high blood pressure.”

Brady continued to smile pleasantly, professionally. “I’m not lost,” he assured Martha. “Just on my way back to the hospital to catch up on some paperwork.”

Martha studied him. “You always were the most serious son.”

“I thought I was the most charming one,” Brady deadpanned.

The older woman folded her arms across her chest. “When are you going to settle down and get married like your brothers?”

“Mom!” Anna shook her head, the evening light blending the gray in her dark hair.

“What? No more single Spencer men in Tyler?” Brady smiled. “The place would become a ghost town.”

“No more single Spencer men in Tyler?” A glint had appeared in Martha’s blue eyes. “Are you telling me something I don’t know about your father and Lydia Perry?”

Brady eyed the elderly woman. “Is there something I should know about my father and Lydia? The Quilting Circle hasn’t started a new quilt, have they?”

Martha studied him as if trying to determine if he was teasing or serious.

“Brady, did Quinn and Molly tell you how much my grandson, Jeremy, adores Sara?” Anna diplomatically changed the subject. “They’re inseparable at Kaity’s Kids.”

Brady’s smile widened at the mention of his brother’s new wife and her daughter. “I agree with Jeremy one hundred percent. Sara is a charming child. Pure adorable.”

“And it won’t be long before Seth and Jenna will be bringing new little ones to the Spencer Sunday dinners, will it?”

Brady nodded. “Jenna is due in May.”

“Imagine, twins.” Anna shook her head again.

“Humph,” Martha sounded. “Elias will never be the same.”

Brady had to agree. Everything was changing. After many years, the somber Spencer family home stretching along Maple Street was again hearing the sound of children’s laughter, the song of women’s voices.

Martha’s gaze remained on Brady. “So, why aren’t you dating anyone, Doc?”

“I’m dating, Martha. As much and as many as I can.”

The old lady smiled slyly. “Spring is in the air, Brady Spencer.” She gestured toward the flowers displayed in The Garden of Eden’s front windows. “Good time to stop and smell the roses.”

He looked at the flowers in the soft light, thought of Eden’s thin, white hands arranging them until they were even more perfect. Past the shop windows it was dark except for the fish tank’s purplish glow and the low light from the cooler. Eden must’ve gone up to her apartment over the store for the night.

“Eden’s a good girl, isn’t she?” Martha asked. He stepped back from the window, but it was too late. His study of the store hadn’t gone unnoticed by the old woman.

He carefully composed his reply. “She seems like a nice person.”

Martha’s eyes narrowed. “You know her, don’t you?”

“Sure, everybody knows Eden.”

Martha tilted her head back, her gaze gaining new power. “She could be easy to overlook. She’s not flashy and noisy like some I’ve seen. She’s the kind of girl that lets a man hear the sound of his own breath.”

“Mom,” Anna interrupted, “we’re keeping the good doctor from his work.” She again smiled apologetically at Brady.

Martha’s gaze never left Brady. “I think I’ll keep an eye on you, Doc.”

Brady knew the elderly woman’s sharp tongue protected a soft heart. He knew because it was a tactic he himself had mastered. “If somebody’s got to, Martha, I’m glad it’s you.” He leaned over and kissed the woman’s cheek, felt the precarious thinness of flesh.

He stepped back, concealing his own surprise at his behavior. Martha touched her cheek, but snorted with indignation. “It should be someone with a lot fewer years and a lot more agreeable. Someone like—”

“C’mon, Mom.” Anna hooked her arm through her mother’s. “If we don’t get you back by bingo, the home will be calling in Deputy Cooper. Nice seeing you, Brady.”

“You too, Anna. Tell Johnny I said hello.”

“Can I tell him you said he should go easy on those onion rings when the Dairy King opens for the season next month?”

With relief, Brady returned to his professional role. “With his hiatal hernia, the chili dogs, too.”

Anna glanced at Martha. “And maybe egg substitutes and a little less bacon for Mom at those Sunday breakfasts at the diner? Her last blood workup showed her cholesterol was high.”

“Couldn’t hurt.” He looked at Martha. “No sense courting heart disease.”

“If you’re in such a big hurry to get me home, why are we still standing around here flapping our jaws?” Martha snapped at her daughter.

“No wonder he’s not settled down yet,” the old woman was still grumbling as she and Anna crossed to the square. “He’s too busy making sure the good citizens of Tyler live long, unhappy lives.”

Brady watched the women walk away. Even after they disappeared behind the oak trees, he stood, trying to figure out what had prompted his sudden show of affection. He wasn’t one given to spontaneous gestures…until lately. He shook his head. At times he didn’t understand himself anymore.

He looked up. The windows above the flower shop were covered with lace, the light past them tinted pearl-pink. He took a deep breath, swore he smelled heaven once more before he started toward the hospital.

The security guard glanced up as the double glass doors to the hospital’s main lobby slid open. The regular entrance to the brick annex where most of the doctors had their offices was locked after hours to save on security costs. The guard nodded at Brady. “Thought your day was done, Doc.”

Brady only had to say one word. “Paperwork.”

The guard nodded again. “The modern man’s burden.”

“You have a good evening now.” Brady headed down the corridor. His encounter with Martha had scared him off small talk for the night.

The hall was windowless, lit by fluorescent tubes in the ceiling that made shadows seem to disappear and turned faces hard. He said hello as he passed a cleaning lady. The floor was bland asphalt tiles. The walls were a faded mauve.

He turned into another, shorter hall that led to a tunnel connecting the smaller professional center to the hospital. At the tunnel’s end, he took the stairs to the second floor. He inserted his key card into the door and went into the empty waiting room. He passed reception, the records room, examining rooms, the offices of the other doctors in the practice before coming to his own. He unlocked the door, seeing the charts piled on top of the corner file cabinet. Several white lab jackets on wire hangers hung from the coatrack next to the cabinet. The blinds were drawn. Beneath the room’s only window was a sofa he’d never rested on.

He set down his briefcase and grabbed a handful of charts. Sitting at his desk, he took a microcassette recorder and some pens and pencils out of the top drawer.