Trust Me (5 page)

C
arly was still seething at eight the next morning as she drove into the hospital parking garage. She had just come from Henry’s
house, where she fed the animals and played a quick game of ball with the dogs on the back lawn. Henry had a crew of local
teenagers on his payroll, who came over daily to exercise the dogs and do chores, and between the kids and Pauline, who was
back and running at full throttle, everything at the mansion seemed to be under control.

But Max Giordano haunted her mind like a particularly nasty poltergeist. The previous day’s encounter replayed itself endlessly
in her thoughts, filling her with frustrated anger. It was no help that now, long after the fact, she was finally coming up
with clever and withering responses to his ugly accusations.

Oh, so you think I’m after Henry’s money,
she imagined herself saying haughtily, calmly, her gaze impaling him like a knife blade.
That must make me seem like quite a threat to your own plans, Mr. Giordano.

But no, she had gotten upset and flustered and ended up telling him to go to hell. How trite was that? She wished that she
had the verbal acuity to fend off his barbs. It was her own fault, she thought. He could bait her all he wanted, but she didn’t
have to respond. And she wouldn’t, if she ever saw him again. She wouldn’t get angry, she wouldn’t try to explain herself.
She would just be coldly polite, then turn her back on him and let him feel her dignified contempt.

The elevator doors slid open, and Carly stepped into a hallway of shiny linoleum, with walls so white that they glowed in
the fluorescent light. The ICU reception area was cheered slightly by two baskets of orange day lilies on either side of the
long curved counter.

“I’m here to see Henry Tremayne,” she said to the young woman behind the desk. “He was admitted on Wednesday night.”

The nurse nodded. “Are you a family member?”

“No,” Carly said. “I’m just a friend. May I see him?”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “But we only allow immediate family into the ward. Mr. Tremayne still hasn’t regained consciousness.”

“How is he doing?”

“He’s a fighter,” the nurse said kindly. “He’s hanging on. Have you talked to his grandson?”

“Today? No.”

“Mr. Giordano had a meeting with Dr. Sheaffer this morning.”

“Max is here? Right now?” Carly felt a flash of alarm. She had intentionally come early, hoping to avoid him.

“Yes. And the meeting must be finished, because he’s just over—”

“Actually,” Carly said quickly, “I should go. I’m on my way to work, and I don’t want to disturb him.”

“Oh, but he’s just behind—”

Carly hurried on. “I brought something for Henry, and maybe you could put it by his bed for me…” Her voice trailed off as
she suddenly realized that the woman’s eyes had focused on a point just past her shoulder. Her heart sank. Too late.

“… behind you,” the nurse finished.

“Good morning, Dr. Martin,” said a cool, familiar voice. “You’re up early.”

Carly turned slowly, warily, to face Max Giordano. Judging from his immaculate suit and still-damp hair, he had made it back
to his hotel to shower and change, but the dark weariness around his eyes suggested that he had slept little, if at all.

“What’s that?” he asked, nodding toward the object that she held clenched in her hand.

Silently, Carly handed it to him. It was a tiny porcelain figurine of a robed man. A bluebird perched on his shoulder, and
two bear cubs tumbled in the grass at his feet.

Max turned the figurine over, examining it. “This is for my grandfather?”

Carly thought of her resolution to turn her back on Max, but she had also resolved to be coldly polite, and it didn’t seem
polite to turn her back on someone who had just asked her a question.

“It already belongs to him,” she said. “I gave it to him for his birthday last year. It’s Saint Francis of Assisi—he’s the
patron saint of animals. He watches over them, and protects them, like your grandfather does. Henry says that it’s his good-luck
charm, and I… thought that it might reassure him. If he wakes up, that is…”

She bit her lip, embarrassed as she realized that she was explaining herself again. It was a sentimental bit of foolishness,
and it didn’t take any great insight to see that Max Giordano was not a sentimental man. No doubt he would scorch her with
a caustic comment any moment now. She tensed, waiting.

But the comment never came. Max frowned down at St. Francis, running his thumb thoughtfully over the figurine’s tiny head.
He looked up, unexpectedly meeting her eyes. Carly stood uncomfortably as he studied her.

Finally, he nodded. “Thank you. I’ll put it by his bed.”

He turned away. Carly watched as he opened the frosted glass doors and walked through them into the short corridor that led
to the ward. The doors closed behind him, and Carly exhaled shakily. She had been holding her breath.

“Are you a doctor?”

The nurse behind the desk was speaking to her. Carly turned. “Sorry, what?”

“Didn’t he call you ‘Doctor?’ If you’re a doctor, the rules are a little different. Maybe we could arrange for you to visit—”

Carly shook her head. “I’m not a people doctor. I’m a vet.”

“Oh!” The young woman laughed. “Okay. Can I ask you a question? I have the sweetest little terrier, only eight months old.
She already knows how to sit and shake, and she heels like a dream.”

“That’s great,” Carly said automatically. The doors were still closed, but they seemed to be looming toward her, like a frightening
white portal that could regurgitate Max at any moment.
If I leave right now,
she thought,
I can get away before he comes back.

“The thing is,” the nurse continued, “she’s been scratching like crazy lately. What do you think is wrong with her?”

“Fleas,” Carly said. Did she hear footsteps, or was she imagining things? The doors opened, and Carly jumped, but it was a
bearded man in scrubs and a lab coat, not Max. The man glanced briefly at her and walked over to wait for the elevator.

“Fleas,” the nurse exclaimed. “Oh, no. I hope not—I don’t want to have to shampoo all the carpets. You know, I did look, but
I didn’t see any on her.”

“It could be allergies. Have you changed her diet recently?”

“No… but I did take her to a new groomer last week, and now that I think about it, that place just didn’t seem clean to me.”

The elevator chime sounded, and the doors slid open. Carly imagined that Max had left Henry’s bedside and was now walking
through the ward on his way back to the desk. Any second, she thought, he would be there.

“She might be having a bad reaction to one of the products they used. Here.” Carly scrabbled in her bag for a clinic card
and pressed it into the woman’s hand. “I have to go. But I’d be glad to take a look at her. Give me a call, or just bring
her in.”

The elevator doors were closing as she rushed forward, barely catching the narrowing opening in time. She jumped on, breathless,
getting a strange look from the bearded man, who probably thought that she had just escaped from the mental ward.

She tried to relax as the elevator carried her down to the lobby. What was it about Max Giordano that unnerved her so completely?
He was a rotten person, sure, but she had never turned and fled like that in her entire life, not even when she was thirteen
and Mary-Louise Rattner had threatened to beat her up in the girls’ locker room.

It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t afraid of him, exactly. But her knees had gone weak when she had felt herself being measured
by his silent gaze. Something about Max made her want to prove herself to him. She winced at the memory of the hope that had
passed through her as she stared back at him, a sudden, furtive desire for…

For what? Approval? Warmth? From that guy?
Ha,
she thought.
Not likely.
She didn’t even want to think about what it meant to be hoping for approval from a man who clearly hated her. And whom she
hated right back. The psychological implications were not pretty.

By the time that she reached her car, she had decided not to think about it. She had already devoted far too much mental energy
to Max Giordano. Better to forget all about him and get on with her life. She buckled herself in, turned the key in the ignition,
and was rewarded with a sad chugging sound, then dead silence.

The meeting with the neurosurgeon had provided Max with plenty of information, but not the kind that he wanted.

“I can’t tell you what will happen,” the doctor had said. “And I don’t want to give you false hope, Mr. Giordano. The trauma
fractured the base of your grandfather’s skull and caused what’s called a subdural hematoma, which basically means bleeding
under the protective membrane that covers the brain.”

“How bad is it?” Max asked, steeling himself.

“We were able to clean things up pretty well. There was still some active bleeding, but we found the ruptured vessel and evacuated
the lesion. He’s being monitored for any increased intracranial pressure. Things look fairly stable, but to be honest, at
his age, he’s not going to heal like a younger man might.”

“When is he going to wake up?”

The doctor raised his hands slightly. “I can’t answer that. The CT scan shows some bruising to his brain stem, which is the
part of the brain that controls the vital body functions like breathing, blood pressure, and consciousness.”

Max felt sick. “You’re telling me that he has brain damage.”

“Yes, but that term has a very wide range of implications. Brain damage, per se, occurs in every traumatic head injury. The
real concern is the extent and the location of the damage. If your grandfather were twenty years younger, I’d feel more optimistic.
Frankly, I think it’s a miracle that the fall didn’t kill him.”

“He’s a strong old man,” Max said.
So they tell me.

The doctor nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

More than anything, it was Max’s own lack of control that maddened him, made him want to pace the halls of the hospital, burning
off energy by doing something, anything. He wasn’t accustomed to being useless in a time of crisis, and while he could tolerate
entrusting Henry to the best neurosurgeon on the West Coast, it was an entirely different matter to be forced to wait helplessly
while his grandfather’s life trembled in the hands of Fate.

After the meeting with the doctor, Max had had a sudden overwhelming need to get away from the hospital, to escape the disinfectant
smells, the harsh lights, and the anxiety that simmered inside him.

He was on his way out when he saw Carly Martin at the nurses’ station. Her back was to him, but it was impossible to mistake
that auburn hair, or the curves of her body as she leaned forward to speak to the nurse.

Checking up on Henry’s condition, no doubt.

Or so he thought, until he confronted her. Instead of the syrupy concern he had expected to see, her face was written with
lines of uncertainty and worry. She could barely look at him, and when she did, she faced him with the awkward defensiveness
of a child.

And then there was the business of the little statue. Max set the figurine on the table by Henry’s bed, placing it carefully
so that his grandfather would see it if he opened his eyes. He stared down at St. Francis’s porcelain head, wondering for
the first time if there was more to this situation than he had assumed. Was it really just a simple case of an opportunistic
young woman and a lonely old man, or could Carly be genuinely emotionally attached to Henry? Could she even be—Max’s chest
tightened in an unexpectedly strong reaction to the thought—in love with him?

It happened, he told himself. Some women were attracted to much older men. Maybe it was a father-figure thing, some need to
feel pampered or protected. Could that be the truth of the matter? He sincerely hoped not. It would make the situation a little
more palatable, but would also create more problems than it solved. He knew how to deal with a con artist, but if he actually
had a troubled young woman on his hands… Max shook his head. That would be very bad. He did not know how to fight a subtle
and gentle fight. An emotional angle would complicate everything.

When he returned to the nurses’ station, there was no sign of Carly.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“The vet? You just missed her. She took the elevator down.”

Max strode toward the elevator and pushed the down arrow. She had disappeared quickly, but not so fast that he couldn’t catch
her before she left. And if she did manage to slip away, he knew exactly where to find her.

What he hadn’t expected, as he walked out of the elevator into the busy lobby, was to see Carly making her way back into the
building.

She hurried through the crowd, looking stressed, and when she spotted him she stopped in her tracks and put a hand to her
forehead.

“Great,” she said, as he approached. “Just great. This is really not my day.”

“That was a quick escape,” he said.

“Thank you. Now, will you please go away? I need to find a phone book. Unless you happen to have jumper cables in your Jaguar.
My battery is dead.”

“You left your headlights on?”

“No,” Carly said flatly. “I left the interior light on. One of the doors wasn’t closed all the way.”

“That shouldn’t be enough to drain a battery.”

“It was enough to drain mine. I need a new one, and I haven’t gotten around to buying it. This is what I get for procrastinating.
Now I have to call a tow truck, and I’m already late for work.”

“I’ll drive you. You can deal with the car later.”

“What?” She looked stunned, then wary. “Why?”

“Because you’re late,” Max said. “And because I’m headed that way.”

That wasn’t actually true, but he wanted to talk to her. This new idea about her possible relationship with his grandfather
was very disturbing, and he wanted more information.

“Come on,” he said, as she stood there, unconvinced. “It’ll take half an hour to get a tow truck here, and it’s already eight-fifty.”