“Among other things. Trust me. His chart wouldn’t be my priority.” Iris laughed. “Okay, I’ve got to go. Thank you for taking my shift tomorrow.”
“Not a problem. Tell Jordan I said hi and to get better soon.”
“Not if he can help it. You know him. He’s going to milk this for all it’s worth. I’ll catch up with you next week.”
Vera hung up and sagged into her seat. Absently, she tugged the rubber band from her hair, spilling her long brown locks free for a moment before she gathered her hair up again into a practical knot. Thanks to Iris, she now had weekend plans. Sexy Brazilian soccer player, here I come.
Not…
Chapter 2
Most of Saturday, including Vera’s fifteen-minute lunch break, passed in a blur of activity at the Family Health Center on Hollywood Boulevard. Her fluent Spanish helped her communicate with many patients who walked into her office; her broken Portuguese helped her reach several others. When all else failed, she tried English. Over the course of the day, she treated food poisoning, diabetes, hypertension, viral and bacterial infections, and stomach flu. She taped sprained joints and set broken bones.
The people’s needs were, for the most part, routine, though her current patient, a Hispanic woman in her mid-thirties, worried her. Vera set down the woman’s file, leaned over her desk, and tapped on the phone intercom. “Maria, can you come in here for a minute?”
Moments later, the door opened, and Maria, the receptionist, stepped in. “What do you need?”
Vera nodded at her patient. “She needs an appointment with an oncologist over at Broward General Medical Center. Her blood work shows high levels of alpha fetoprotein, and I’d like to get a second opinion from a specialist. Blake Smith, perhaps? I’ve already explained this to her, but can you make the appointment, and then let her know where and when to see him?”
“Sure.” Maria reached for the file and then ushered the woman out ahead of her.
The woman darted a nervous look at Vera, but she muttered, “Gracias,” before leaving the office.
Vera sighed. The woman’s lips had trembled, and she had wrung her fingers so tightly it was a wonder she hadn’t twisted them into a knot. The woman’s medical records were incomplete; the driver’s license number and home address were conspicuously absent. She was an illegal immigrant, perhaps, or a prostitute. Either way, full disclosure was not in her best interest. The same could be said for most of the people Vera had seen that day.
She glanced at her watch before reaching for the next file on her desk. Almost done; she was a half hour from wrapping up a full day at the health center. Her gaze darted over the patient’s name: Rowan Forrester. The note in the file, scribbled in Iris’s familiar scrawl, indicated Rowan was coming in for “routine blood tests.” It was health clinic speak for a prostitute requesting a regular medical screening for STDs or HIV.
Vera shook her head. If only she could do more for these women than translating the results of a routine blood test. She quickly flipped through the full blood-work report—skimming past the lipid and protein results to scan the STD report—as the door opened to admit her next patient. “Come in, Miss Forrester. I was just going through your results and everything looks—” A shadow fell over her desk. She looked up. Her eyes widened; her jaw dropped. “—fine.”
Actually, he was more than fine. Rowan Forrester wore a black T-shirt and faded denim jeans on his six-foot athletic frame with more elegance and panache than she had seen other men wear tuxedos. His hair was chestnut brown; his piercing eyes were a gold-copper color she could only describe as amber. His symmetrical, chiseled features pushed him over the line from good-looking into gorgeous, and the easy confidence he exuded set him apart from every other person who had walked into her clinic that morning. Heck, it set him apart from every other person she knew.
“You’re a man.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded squeaky and pitched an interval or two higher than normal.
“Excellent powers of deduction, doctor.” His baritone was rich and warm. Laughter lurked in his voice. He sat down, without invitation, across from her. “I hope the blood tests and my medical records agree with you, or I’m in trouble.”
“I…I’m sorry. I just read your name and assumed you were a woman.”
Disgust flashed across his face. “You’re an Anne Rice fan, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Rowan was a perfectly good, solidly male name until that woman co-opted it for one of her heroines. Now, half of the Rowans in the world are female.” He leaned back in his chair. “I was expecting Dr. Whitley. Doesn’t she usually work here on Saturdays?”
“Dr. Whitley had a family emergency.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
“Her son took ill, and she needed to stay home with him.” Vera stared down at Rowan’s file, because it was safer than staring at his face. “As I was saying, your test results are fine. No STDs—” Realization was like a slap in the face. Heat rushed into her cheeks. Oh, God. He was a prostitute, or an escort, or whatever society called male prostitutes. It explained his good looks and sensual appeal. Vera rushed on with the rest of her spiel. “Still, you’ll need to practice safe sex. Condoms. You know.”
“Yes, I know.” He sounded amused.
Her head snapped up. She glared at him. “This isn’t a joking matter. You owe it to yourself and to your…partners…” Vera faltered. “—to practice safe sex.”
“You almost said clients, didn’t you?”
Damn it, why did he have to be right… and so amused about it? She had spent her entire day talking to nervous women with wrecked self-images, women who believed that the only money they could earn came from selling their body. Rowan’s self-confidence and insouciance, compared to those women, came across as arrogant, even selfish. “Do you even know what you’re doing? Your looks, your body—”
“My looks and my body are my stock-in-trade.”
How could he sound so matter-of-fact about it? “Why are they?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you choose to do something else?”
“I happen to enjoy what I’m doing. Are you going to tell me next that I shouldn’t enjoy my job?”
“Do you? Why?”
He shrugged, an elegant motion that rippled the muscles beneath his T-shirt. “It’s hard work, but I’m good at it, and it pays well.” His amber eyes narrowed. “I’m paying my way in the world, doctor. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Of course.” She sighed and shook her head. “I didn’t mean to— It’s your life, of course, and if the people who love you couldn’t stop you from going down this path, then who am I, a stranger, to think I can talk you out of it in five minutes?”
“Ah, now here’s the guilt trip.” He laughed, but without humor. “I’ve heard it all, doctor. If it makes you feel any better, my parents are both dead, so I’m not breaking anyone’s heart.”
“But what about your girlfriend or your wife—?” She glanced down at his left hand. She did not see a ring, nor the telltale indentations that he might have ever worn one.