Adam went still.
Everything went still.
Even the minute hand on the clock on the wall seemed to cease its tick.
“I’m rambling.” Eric paced back to the doorway, looking out. “Clock is crawling.”
“You said Laurel quit her job. At the art museum. Here in Houston.”
“Yeah. That’s how we met. Through the museum.”
Adam’s sense of doom made it hard to breathe. How many Laurels could there be working at art museums in Houston? “You’re not talking about Laurel Hudson, are you?”
The other man’s shoulders stiffened under the gown tied behind his neck.
And Adam knew. Even before Eric turned to give him a sharp look. He knew.
There was a frown on Eric’s face visible above the mask. “Yes. Laurel Hudson. You knew her?”
It took Adam a while to get the words out. But even though it did, he could see realization dawning in the other man’s eyes. “I knew her,” Adam said hoarsely.
More than that, he’d loved her, too.
Chapter One
“Mr. Fortune?”
Adam shot out of the thinly padded waiting room chair so fast that it bounced against the pale green wall behind him.
Nobody noticed or cared. He’d been the only one occupying the sparsely furnished waiting room of Seattle’s Fresh Pine Rehabilitation at eight o’clock in the evening.
The clinic director had an apologetic smile on her comfortably lined face. “I’m sorry you had to wait, Mr. Fortune.” Her handshake was firm and brief. “I’m Dr. Granger.”
“Call me Adam.” Ever since he’d received the call from Dr. Mariel Granger three days ago, it had been a toss-up which emotion had rocked him most.
Relief. Impatience. Pain.
Now, so very close to Laurel, impatience definitely had the upper hand. But expressing it with Dr. Granger wasn’t going to solve anything.
If not for her persistence in reaching him, no one would have known that Laurel was even alive.
Despite the mess waiting in Texas, the fact that she was alive took precedence.
Fortunately oblivious to his thoughts, the director gestured toward the doorway behind her. “When the guard called me, I turned right around and drove back. My office is this way. Seattle traffic, you know. I’m guessing your flight was delayed?” She glanced up at him as they headed along the wide corridor. It was carpeted so their footsteps were silent.
“In Denver,” he said. “Mechanical problems.” All of the doors they passed were closed. Hiding whether it was offices or patient rooms on the other side.
The notion that Laurel was behind one of the doors made his mouth dry and his chest ache.
“Here we are.” Dr. Granger turned into the opened doorway of a cramped office and took one of the chairs situated in front of the desk. She gestured to the second.
His molars clenched, but he lowered himself into the chair.
Something in her eyes flickered as she watched him. “Are you still experiencing pain?”
He almost laughed. Pain? Which kind? “Hoped it didn’t show.”
She smiled knowingly. “I’ve been a donor, myself. Give yourself time. Those little aches will pass. Bone marrow donation is entirely rewarding even without finding yourself the subject of a national news story the way you did.” She patted his arm in a way that reminded him of his mother. “But, if not for that story, we still wouldn’t know Lisa’s—sorry, it’s hard to break the habit—Laurel’s identity. It’s anyone’s guess how long it would have taken for her to show some improvement if she hadn’t reacted to your face on the news last week.”
He eyed her closely. “Has she remembered anything—” He broke off, because Dr. Granger was already shaking her head, her forehead knitting.
“I’m sorry. Not beyond knowing you were familiar to her for some reason. But it was enough of a reason for me to reach out to you the way I did. Learning that you recognized her in return? I can’t tell you how helpful you’ve already been, particularly when no other family has stepped forward in all this time. You must have been good friends. College, you said?”
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, quashing the stab of guilt he felt. He hadn’t told Dr. Granger about Laurel’s parents. Nelson and Sylvia Hudson were still ensconced in the Virginia plantation home where Laurel had grown up. Eric had confirmed it.
And, despite the strained situation, he’d agreed with Adam. Bringing her parents into things just now was the quickest way to lose track of Laurel. Again.
“It’s still very good of you to agree to come in person.” The doctor was smiling knowingly at him. “Particularly so soon after your procedure. If I’d been your physician, I would have advised against traveling so soon.”
In fact the doctor in charge of the harvesting procedure had. Adam didn’t figure he needed to confirm Dr. Granger’s words, though.
She’d reached over her desk to slide a file across the obviously fake wood surface. Fresh Pine Rehabilitation had been caring for Laurel for two months now—ever since she’d been released from the hospital. But the facility was by no means a luxury establishment.
If Nelson and Sylvia had had anything to do with it, their daughter would be in a much more elite setting and much closer to their home than all the way across the country. He’d met them once. Nearly a decade ago when they’d come to Buffalo for Laurel’s college graduation.
To say they had been unimpressed by him was an understatement. They figured their only child deserved a lot more than an out-of-work auto engineer’s son who’d been working his way through college waiting tables and tending bar at a blue-collar joint.
Someone like Eric Johnson. Who owned and operated his own nationwide trucking company and who had financial resources
