Mystery Heiress

Jess had dealt with the problem sufficiently by now to know they didn’t have any other choice. Reluctantly, because anything calculated to make Annie sicker was like a dagger in her heart, she gave her permission.

“I’ve asked my office nurse to register Annabel with all known marrow sources, including one that’s previously turned up several donors for us in Australia,” he added. “It’ll take a few weeks, maybe longer, to find out if there’s an available match.”

“And…if there isn’t?”

“Unless her remission’s far stronger than I expect, your daughter’s not a good candidate for autologous donation, the process in which a portion of the patient’s own marrow is removed, cleansed of cancer cells and replanted after the remaining cancer is killed off with chemotherapy,” he said, his gaze unwavering though it was deeply sympathetic. “We could try it, I suppose, if all else failed. But it would be risky in the extreme.”

Jess didn’t answer. There wasn’t much use in arguing the point. Annie’s doctors in England had advised strongly against the process in her case, as well.

“Mind telling me why you decided to come to Minneapolis, of all places?” he asked, changing the subject.

She supposed she might as well describe her possible connection with the Fortune family, though it hadn’t been proven yet. “When my family members—what few I have—were tested as possible donors for Annie,” she said, “those on my maternal grandfather’s side turned out to be so extremely wide of the mark that her doctors found it puzzling.

“Shortly thereafter, I was going through some things that had belonged to my late mother. An old letter fell out of a book she’d read to me as a child. To my astonishment, it suggested that my true maternal grandfather wasn’t a man named George Simpson, as I’d always believed, but rather Benjamin Fortune….”

She could tell from the look on Stephen’s face that he was taken aback and highly skeptical. Doubtless he’s convinced I’m grasping at straws, she thought. Or worse. “I have the letter right here, in my purse. I’ll be happy to show it to you,” she offered, determined that he should believe her search was motivated by Annie’s welfare, not greed, now that she’d opened up to him.

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

Silently she took it out and handed it to him.

From what Stephen could determine, the letter appeared to be genuine. It was entirely possible that the lovely, dark-haired Englishwoman seated opposite him was a long-lost Fortune relative. The physician in him leaped at the possibilities for his patient.

“During the short time we’ve been here, I’ve done everything I could to contact someone connected with the family, to no avail,” Jess went on, when he didn’t speak. “They all seem to have unlisted numbers. Jacob Fortune’s secretary did promise she’d get a message to him. But I’m not holding my breath.”

At that, Stephen regarded her quizzically. “I gather you didn’t realize that Dr. Todd, your daughter’s new pediatrician, is a Fortune,” he remarked.

Caught by surprise, Jess could do little more than stare.

“As a matter of fact, she’s Benjamin Fortune’s daughter,” he continued. “Granted, you wouldn’t have guessed it from her name. She went by Lindsay Fortune-Todd for a while after marrying Frank Todd, another of our doctors here, then simply dropped her maiden name….”

For Jess, it was if a door had suddenly blown open on a host of possibilities. Twin spots of color blossomed in her cheeks. With a surge of excitement, she jumped to her feet. “Surely, if she knows of the connection, Dr. Todd will help us!” she exclaimed.

“Not so fast,” Stephen advised, rising also. “Lindsay and the other Fortune children lost their mother, Kate—who, as you probably know, happened to be their only remaining parent—in a plane crash last year. To potential fortune hunters, the money they inherited is like a plum, ripe for the picking. At least one young woman whom most people regard as an imposter has turned up, claiming to be Lindsay’s long-lost twin, who was kidnapped shortly after their birth, and demanding a share. Long-lost relatives of any sort are bound to be something of a sensitive issue, especially with her.”

“But…but…I don’t want money,” Jess protested. “I want…”

Taking her hands in his, Stephen caused little ripples of awareness to flutter up her arms. “Take it easy. I believe you,” he said. “Lindsay and I are friends, as well as colleagues, and next-door neighbors. I think it’s fair to say she trusts me. Why don’t you let me talk to her?”

Jess wanted to fling her arms around him. “Oh, Dr. Hunter…would you?” she asked.

“Call me Stephen,” he said. “Thanks to Annabel, or Annie, as you call her, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. C’mon, let’s go upstairs and see how she’s doing before I have to check out of here.”

Pale and wraithlike as she slept beneath her hospital blanket, Annie looked like a little-girl ghost. Her control slipping, Jess wept softly as she gazed at her daughter. “I’m so worried about her,” she confided. “She’s all I’ve got. I don’t want to lose her.”

All too well, Stephen knew how she felt. A moment later, he’d taken her in his arms. Her tears were soaking into his hospital coat. An unplanned act, the move was meant simply to comfort her, or so he told himself.

To Jess, his arms offered a place of sanctuary and trust—and, incredibly, of nurturance. She wanted to lean on him. Blend with him. Burrow against the warmth of his neck. Despite her fear and worry over Annie, she realized it was a wake-up call to the lonely, loving woman in her—a woman who’d built a fortress around her heart when she learned of her late husband’s faithlessness.

As their embrace held, Stephen found he didn’t trust himself to move, or speak. By some alchemy he’d thought long extinct, he was holding a woman who filled his arms—one who, with her obvious refinement and strong capacity for love, might be able to fill his heart, as well.

A moment later, he was withdrawing from her. He was her daughter’s hematologist, after all. Professional ethics forbade his getting involved with her, even if his track record as a comforter of women who stood to lose a child did not.

“Ummm…Mrs. Holmes, I’d better be going,” he said awkwardly, when she didn’t speak. “We’ll have a chance to talk again tomorrow. Try to get some rest.”

Settling in a chair by Annie’s bed after he left, Jess pondered the fact that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. By itself, of course, it didn’t mean anything. Yet, coupled with the air of loneliness she’d noticed at the zoo and her persistent impression that he was a man who’d known sorrow, she thought it might.

She was aware their physical contact had embarrassed him. While her reaction to it had been quite a bit different, to say the least, she hoped it wouldn’t interfere with his care of Annie. Or prompt him to forget his promise to talk to Lindsay Todd on her behalf.

Returning home to face an empty house and the remainder of a lonely, aimless Saturday afternoon, Stephen found himself going into David’s room. On impulse, he opened David’s toy box and picked up some plastic cowboys and Indians, complete with ponies, that his little boy had loved to play with. The ache in his heart was boundless.

Aside from bringing the impersonal cruelty of illness home to him in a very personal way, David’s death had also taught him something about his fitness for a man-woman relationship, particularly one that might have to survive an emotional crisis. Or so he believed. As they’d dealt with the crushing blow of David’s cancer and death, he and Brenda had failed each other.

“What are you doing even thinking about Jessica Holmes?” he asked himself.

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