My Sweetest Sasha: Cole's Story (Meadows Shore Book 2) (7 page)

“Dinner’s on you tonight, and I want dessert,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes.

“My punishment for being a jackass?”

“Your punishment for calling me a nag.”

He picked up the squeegee ball from his desk and threw it at her. She lifted her hand and snatched it effortlessly from the air, tossing it back to him with a self-satisfied look on her face.

He smiled. A smile reaching up from his soul, releasing all the tension from his shoulders and neck. “My pleasure.”

And it was.

A week after the incident with Landry, Alexa and Cole had settled into a predictable routine. Predictable, but not terribly relaxing, because there really was no relaxing around him. He was like the Venti—the Roman Gods of wind. All four of them inhabiting his body at once, competing to be the dominant force. The gentle southern breezes battling the brutal northern gales, with east and west, the yin and yang, coming to regular blows in a desperate struggle for equilibrium. He was the balmy waft caressing bare skin in the heat of the day, and the ferocious gust rattling shutters, making bodies tremble long into the night.

Cole was a force of nature, impossible to tame, and every day he challenged her mettle to survive in the unpredictable climate. It was unsettling, but as a result, she was beginning to find her footing, and learn new things about who she was, and what she was made of.

The world wasn’t black or white, naughty or nice, rude or polite. There was gray, nice enough, moderately mannered, an entire array in between the extremes of the all or nothing thinking she had adopted for herself. The broad range gave humans their complexity, their depth. It’s what allowed them to grow, to flourish. She wasn’t sure when, or even why, she’d accepted the notion that you lived at one end of the spectrum or the other. It’s not what she expected of others, so why was she expecting it of herself?

* * *

Cole was unusually distracted, and didn’t seem to notice her prickly mood. Rounds had gone on forever, interrupted twice by what she was sure were calls from Clarisse. Disruptions that had wasted everyone’s time and made her bristle.

When they finally got back to the trauma suite, an irate doctor in hospital-green scrubs was pacing outside Cole’s office. “What the fuck, Cole?” he spat as soon as he caught sight of them.

“Christian. You ready to talk?” asked Cole.

“I’m off the schedule. What’s going on?”

“Let’s have this discussion in my office,” Cole said leading the way.

Christian followed closely on Cole’s heels, and Alexa wasn’t far behind when they reached the office. “Uh-uh. This doesn’t involve you.” Cole’s tone was firm and unyielding, but she wasn’t in the mood to indulge, so she ignored him and started toward the conference table with her things. But he cut her off long before she reached her destination.

“You need to leave. I already told you this doesn’t involve you. It’s a personal matter,” he spoke in a hushed voice with a threatening tone.

“Oh, really? When did the surgical schedule become a personal matter? This absolutely involves me. If you want privacy, you should learn to comport yourself like a professional adult. This is your doing, not mine,” she hissed.

“Get out.” He took a step forward, invading her personal space, and she stepped back in response. They continued the dance until she was in the hall, where he slammed the door in her face, and she heard the lock click. He’d delivered the final insult.

She was seething, but unsure of how to proceed. To go to Chet now would be the equivalent of admitting she’d failed. That she couldn’t handle her job. No, she wouldn’t go whining to him. If she got fired over this coaching assignment, it would be to preserve her integrity, not because she was incompetent, unable to manage a spoiled little prince.

First came the raised voices, and then shouting from Cole’s office, before long the door swung open, rattling the bookcase behind it.

“How long have we been friends? I guess long enough that you and my wife feel totally comfortable screwing me behind my back.” And with that Dr. McKenna stormed off.

Alexa marched into Cole’s office and dropped her purse on the nearest surface. “We need to talk.”

“Save it.”

“No. You can’t throw me out of here anytime it gets uncomfortable for you.”

“This wasn’t about my comfort. I may have given up some privacy because of my actions, but I wasn’t about to give up anyone else’s. You don’t have the right to compromise the privacy of my patients, or anyone who works for me.”

She grabbed her bag and went over to the conference table. He was right. He was absolutely right. That’s what made the whole thing so exasperating. Christian McKenna was entitled to privacy …
Christian. “I told Christian I was having coffee with a friend.”

She sat down and set up her laptop with unsteady hands. She researched Christian and Clarisse McKenna, praying all the while her instincts were wrong.
No such luck. There they were, photo after photo, Christian and Clarisse—the happy couple. Her stomach heaved, and she was greatly relieved she hadn’t bothered with breakfast.

Oh God! Please. No, no, no!
A picture popped up of Clarisse flanked by Cole and Christian taken at a hospital fundraiser. Both men had their arms around the stunning redhead, toothy grins plastered on their handsome faces.

She struggled to compose herself before beginning the difficult, but necessary, conversation. It wasn’t easy. Her heart and mind raced, like athletes neck and neck in an Olympic event, their sights set on a gold medal finish. She curled her fingers and her toes tight and then relaxed them, hoping to release some of the anxiety disguising itself as pent-up energy. But her efforts were wasted.

“Why was Dr. McKenna so angry with you?” she asked gripping the edge of her seat.

“It doesn’t concern you.”

“I don’t need the details, just a general idea.”

“He’s not happy about the surgical schedule.” Cole jotted notes on the folder in front of him while he spoke.

“Do you make the schedule?”

“No. But I have the ultimate say over it.”

She wasn’t sure if she should confront him now or talk to someone else about the situation first. The problem was, she had no one but Chet to discuss it with. She hadn’t been at the hospital long enough to form a relationship with anyone in administration. She wouldn’t go to Chet. Not yet.

She rose from her chair and stood in front of Cole’s desk with her chin high and her spine straight. “I know your friend Clarisse is married to Dr. McKenna. I also know you’ve been sneaking around with her behind his back. You were alone in your office with her after hours, you planned dinner together at least once, and you have hushed phone conversations with her that end abruptly whenever anyone walks into the room. Even if, and it’s a big if, you haven’t been physically intimate with her, it’s not appropriate to involve yourself in their marriage in that way. He works for you.”

“You think that’s what’s happening? Christian’s all pissed off because I’m boinking his wife?” He shook his head. “This is Boston General Hospital, not ABC’s
General Hospital
. You need to stay the hell out of my business.”

“This isn’t just about you, or about the morality or lack of morality involved here, it’s about the hospital, too. You’re in an executive position. I work for Risk Management. This is a huge problem, with the potential to send ripples throughout the system, putting patients at risk. I have an obligation to report this.”

“Bullshit. You have no evidence I’ve done anything wrong. Just put it in your damn report. Go ahead. You’ll look like an idiot.”

“I can’t wait for the report to disclose this incident. Dr. McKenna left here livid. You took him off the schedule. His surgeries are either being performed by another doctor or they’ve been delayed. You’ve cut off his source of income, and interfered with his right to earn a living.”

Cole blanched.

“Tell me something that will allow me to keep this confidential, at least until the report is finalized. Offer some reasonable explanation—toss me a bone.” She was pleading with him now, but he said nothing.

She placed her fingers on his desk and leaned toward him, imploring him to look up at her. “If it’s not like it looks, then tell me what’s going on, Cole. Please give me something,” she begged.

He searched her face with stormy eyes, angry and conflicted. “I’m giving you nothing. Nothing,” he repeated.

“This is your choice. I wanted it to be different,” she whispered and left the room with slumped shoulders, shutting the door behind her.

Cole whipped his pen at the closed door, and when it didn’t make him feel any better, he hurled his keys, and then his water bottle.
He wanted to tell her, he desperately needed her help with this, but he wouldn’t risk his friend’s reputation and career.
Not even with her.

* * *

There were many things about Cole that Alexa admired and respected, but this went beyond the pale, reckless behavior so abhorrent that frankly she was having trouble wrapping her head around it.

The womanizing was consistent with his history, but it seemed out of character for him to be involved in something quite this unseemly, although he wouldn’t be the first man whose sexual fervor hijacked his good judgment and sent his ambitions skidding off the rails. It didn’t matter what she thought, anyway; she couldn’t sit on this. The possible ramifications were enormous, and she had an obligation to share the information with her supervisor.

She dragged her feet before going to Chet, hoping Cole would relent, give her some reason to stay quiet. Anything. But the hours ticked by and he never did, forcing her to take action that left her tormented and riddled with guilt.

* * *

Cole barely acknowledged Alexa’s existence after the incident in his office. He went about his business as though she was an inanimate object designed to blend into the contours of the room. When she initiated conversation, he walked away, or simply ignored her. It had been a week since he’d spoken one word to her. The silence was chilling, bone-chilling. And in his darkest hours, he hoped the icy shards cut into her as deeply as they cut into him.

She’d exposed his friend’s troubles, and in turn, he focused all his rage on her—sprayed the silent venom in her direction every chance he got. But she was merely a scapegoat, and in his more lucid moments, he knew it. When he thought clearly, he wasn’t sure what infuriated him more—Christian, or the system that had chipped away at Christian’s soul bit by bit. No, he wasn’t actually angry with her, but he was plenty angry with himself.

* * *

Donald Green, the Chief Medical Officer, knocked on Tom Hagel’s office door, confident that he finally had the Department of Surgery just where he wanted them. Things had worked out even better than planned.

“Come in.”

“Tom, I can see you’re busy, so I won’t take up too much of your time. We need to begin creating a viable succession plan for the department,” Green said, pulling up a chair.

“I’m not going anywhere yet, unless you’re poisoning my bourbon.”

“No one stays in a job forever, and you’ve got a big department we need to be concerned about when you step down.”

“You mean I have a department that generates the bulk of the hospital’s revenue, and you wouldn’t want there to be a hiccup on my way out the door. Don’t pretend you’re concerned about the department or anyone in it.” Tom scowled at him over his reading glasses. “I have a succession plan. And you know it.”

“It’s untenable.”

“Excuse me? A two-bit psychiatrist is going to tell me how to run my department? The department I’ve run for twenty years?”

“I’m a physician and your boss. You might want to remember that.”

“You’re my boss because your predecessor was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and they needed a warm body to quickly replace him. And the last time I saw you in the vicinity of a patient, you were bullying some poor medical resident into taking a suicidal woman off your hands because she’d sneezed a couple of times in the emergency room. Even my grandmother can take care of a patient with a cold, and she’s been dead at least forty years. Physician, my ass.”

“The executive coach assigned to Cole Harrington reported that he’s been having sex in his office with Christian McKenna’s wife, and that it’s been going on for some time. Harrington took McKenna off the surgical schedule. McKenna’s not happy about it—he apparently isn’t too happy his boss is screwing his wife either.”

Tom didn’t blink. “I don’t believe a word of it. You never wanted Cole Harrington to succeed me.”

“It’ll all be in her report, so you’ll be able to read the sordid details yourself. I don’t care how much influence you have with the hospital president or with the board, Harrington will never be allowed to chair the department after this.”

Tom looked Green straight in the eye. “Get the fuck out of my office before I toss you out on your ear.”

Donald Green wasted no time rushing from Tom’s office. He’d delivered the blow that sealed Harrington’s fate. He’d never be chair. Even that pompous ass Tom Hagel couldn’t argue with that. But, almost as important, Hagel had used poor judgment in his succession plan. Now he’d get to appoint his own person, someone who was a team player like Chet Toomey, and understood the dollars and cents of the bottom line.

After Green left, Tom picked up his phone. “Page Cole Harrington and tell him to get his ass in my office the minute he’s out of the OR. The very second—tell him not to stop to piss.”