The Billionaire's Christmas Wish

Madison swallowed. “Pablo left today.” She tried to put enough subtle emphasis on the word “left” that Theo would realize she wasn’t talking about going home.

A muscle went to work in his jaw, pulsing a couple of times before going quiet. He got it.

He lowered himself into a nearby chair, elbows on his knees, head down.

Thinking about how Pablo could just as easily have been his daughter?

Unwilling to leave him to figure out a way to respond to Ivy’s question about miracles—or the lack thereof—Madison spoke up. “Why don’t we see if we can challenge your dad to a game of Go Fish?”

Up came Theo’s head, eyes fixed on her. “Go Fish?”

Those two words had never sounded as elegant as they did in that accent of his. It forced a smile from her.

“It’s a card game that uses a special deck.” She never knew what kind of cases she might be called in on, so she’d gotten used to carrying a pack in one of her pockets. Sometimes getting someone’s mind off an illness helped calm nerves, whether it be children, parents, or anyone else. She’d been kind of famous for producing that deck of cards at her hospital in the U.S., had often being called on to help calm a child who was being prepared for surgery. It was the one time she’d felt wanted—needed—for something other than her skills at diagnosis.

“I know what it is. I’m just not sure how you’re going to manage—”

Out came the pack of cards. Theo’s head gave a funny little tilt as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Now I’ve seen everything.” His glance landed on her. “Madison the magician.”

The way he’d said that...

A shiver rolled over her that she did her best to suppress.

“It’s good therapy for cognitive and fine motor skills.”

And it gave Madison a way to observe her patients, looking for any tiny changes that she might miss otherwise. If she played a quick game over a period of a couple of weeks—or months—she could see disease progression. The first game gave her a base from which to compare progress or deterioration. In this case, she prayed she wouldn’t see the latter.

She let the magician comment stand, instead of going into that kind of explanation. Maybe later.

Nodding at the spot on the bed next to her, she said, “Move closer, Doc, so I can deal.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, but he finally got up and sat on the mattress, watching as she dealt the first hand and placed the rest of the deck face down between them. She hoped he didn’t see the slight tremor in her hand as she did so.

Although she’d come prepared to play, Theo’s presence was threatening to derail her. And although she’d invited him to sit next to her, she was now wishing she hadn’t. She was hyper-aware of everything about him. His scent. The way the fingers of his left hand rested on his thigh.

The way he was avoiding looking at her.

Lordy. She was in trouble.

When dealing with children, she sometimes adopted rather goofy voices as a way to make her patients laugh. Ha! There was no way she was going to do that today.

Ivy picked up her hand, although it took some effort to do so. The little girl’s struggle poured an icy dose of reality over her. Madison tensed, resisting the urge to offer help, and when Theo looked like he might intervene, she spoke up. “She can do it. Let her.”

“Yeah, Daddy, I can do it.” She carefully separated her cards, fumbling a little and dropping one of them in the process. There was silence as she recovered and picked it up again.

“Player to the left of the dealer goes first.” She would have had Ivy go first, no matter which side she’d been on.

The girl’s eyes swiveled between the two of them before focusing on her father. “Do you have any threes, Daddy?”

Theo handed over a card. “I have one.”

Ivy’s grin lit up the room. “I knew it.” She asked for another card, this time from Madison, who didn’t have the requested item. Then it was Theo’s turn.

“Madison, do you have any aces?”

“Go fish.”

He didn’t move for a second. “How about up your sleeve? Do you have any there?”

She froze as his eyes finally met hers. Nerve endings crackled as she stared back at him.

“Daddy! That would be cheating, and Madison doesn’t do that.”

Madison snapped her gaze back to her cards, none of the numbers coming into focus.

She would cheat in a heartbeat if it meant outsmarting whatever was going on inside Ivy’s small body.

It took them fifteen minutes to declare Theo the winner, and to Madison it seemed like an eternity. All she wanted to do was retreat to the safety of her office, lay her head down on her desk and try to come up with some kind of answer. For Ivy. And, heaven help her, for her father.

Especially after seeing slivers of change in Ivy over the course of the game. Her cards appeared to get heavier and heavier, the young girl having to set them down in between hands. But her mind was as sharp as ever. In fact, she seemed to make up for her deteriorating condition by memorizing what was in her hand. And when she said, “Go fish,” without even looking, neither Madison nor Theo challenged her. By the end the girl was yawning, even though it was only six in the early evening.

“Tired, kiddo?” she asked.

“No.”

Theo gathered the cards into a neat stack then leaned over to kiss his daughter’s head. “Why don’t you rest for a little while, and I’ll help Dr. Archer put these away, okay?”

“Will you tell me a story later?”

“Of course.”

Ivy lay back against her pillows, her face pale, the muscles in her thin arms lax and still. She made no move to hug her dad. Or wave goodbye. For a child who was normally so affectionate, it struck a chord of fear in Madison.

If she felt it, then that chord had to be a million clanging gongs going off in Theo’s head.

God, why couldn’t she figure this out?

A hot wave of nausea seared up her esophagus as she pictured Theo tucked in next to his child, reading her a bedtime story.

How many stories did she have until that bed was empty? Just like Pablo’s.

Twenty? Ten?

Two?

The pain grew, engulfing her with a terrible sense of responsibility.

She needed to fix a picture of that bed in her head and stare at it. Force herself to get to grips with the reality that this was life or death.

Wasted time can’t be recaptured. Hadn’t she just said that not very long ago? Yes, and it was true. It couldn’t.

Neither could lost opportunities.

She straightened her backbone. So she needed to do something about it. Needed to work faster. Harder.

Theo led the way from the room and handed her the rest of the cards. “I gather there was a reason for that. Quite clever, actually.”

It took her a few seconds to realize he hadn’t read her thoughts but was talking about the game.

She drew a careful breath, trying to tamp down the chaotic emotions that had been racing through her a few seconds ago. “I wondered if you would figure it out.”

“Only after I caught those eagle eyes studying Ivy as she played. After the third or fourth time it hit me that you were monitoring her.” He sighed. “She’s getting tired more quickly.”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Theo...”

He shook his head. “I want to know.”

And he deserved to. She just didn’t want to be the one to tell him. But she owed it to him to be honest.

“Her arms have developed a tremor when holding them in front of her.” Muscle wasting from lack of use. The problem was, no one had any idea what was causing them to atrophy. “By the time we were ready to leave the room she was completely spent. I have a feeling she forced herself to keep going. For you.”

“Hell.”

Theo put his hands behind his neck and stretched his arms out to the side. A pop sounded in one of his joints, the sharp sound making her flinch slightly.

“Sorry. Bad habit.”

She could understand that. She had her little quirks as well. But they were more along the lines of insomnia when she was dealing with a puzzling case. She’d had more than her share of nights doodling symptoms on a whiteboard and looking for something that would ring a bell. Ivy’s symptoms were plastered on a board she’d propped in the dining room of her apartment. And she had definitely spent more than one sleepless night searching for a clue.

“Her treatment team wants to do more blood tests,” he said.

“I know. I asked that the report be sent down. The list of what it’s not is growing longer, which is good in that the list of what it could be is getting shorter.”

“Is it?” His arms went back to his sides. “How long can she go on like this? At some point it’s going to reach a point of no return.”

Hadn’t she thought something very similar moments earlier?

Fighting through the catch in her throat, she turned toward him, wrapping her fingers tightly around his wrist. She wasn’t sure if she was clutching him to reassure herself or to lend weight to what she was about to say.

“Hey. We’re not there yet. She’s still breathing.” Not the best way to word it. She hurried to add, “The weakness is only in her limbs and hips at the moment.”

“Thank God for that.” The second he reached up to cover her hand with his, she knew touching him had been a big mistake. The heat from his skin was electric, unseen calluses scraping across her nerve endings and bringing them to life.

She should move. Tug her hand free. But since she’d initiated the contact, she had no one to blame but herself.

“I’ll take as many of those ‘at the moments’ as I can get,” he murmured. “Until we can figure this out.”

The hallway was completely empty. There were fewer people staying in this section over the holidays, since everyone who could go home to be with their families did.

Ivy could probably have a great team of caregivers if she went home as well, but Theo wanted her here. Near him. They had an amazing bond. One she’d never had, growing up.

A tightness in her chest warned her that her emotions were venturing far too close to the surface.

She glanced up and caught him staring at her. She wanted to promise him miracles and happy endings and anything else he was looking for. But she couldn’t. “Sometimes we just have to do our living in those moments.”

“Yes. I agree.”

The seconds stretched into minutes. Neither of them moved. Until—real or imagined—his thumb brushed the back of her hand.

Her body erupted instantly, nipples drawing tight inside her thin bra. God, she hoped he couldn’t see them. Hoped he couldn’t—

“Madison...”

A sharp ping! signaled the arrival of the elevator. Jerking free, she took a hurried step back. Then another, struggling to catch her breath.

She needed to escape while she could. “I’ll see you tomorrow for our meeting.”

“And another game of cards?”

“Cards?” Her brain was a huge mudslide of buried thoughts and emotions at the moment, and so it took her a second for the words to make sense. “Oh. You don’t have to be here for that, if you don’t want to.”

The less contact she had with him the better. At least it was looking that way. What had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been.

Evidently neither had he, if his response to her living-in-those-moments comment was any indication. It had certainly veered away from the professional and into the personal.

Her lack of dating life had shown its ugly face. She’d lapped up the attention like a lovesick teenager.

“I’d like to be, if it’s okay. It gives me a chance to measure her abilities as well.”

Two people stepped off the elevator, one of them giving Theo a wave that asked him to wait before heading toward them.

Madison did not want to hang around. Her face was already burning. Someone was sure to notice, since she had the worst poker face in history. Theo seemed to be thinking the same thing. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Call me when you know a time.”

“Okay.”

And with that, she fled down the hall in the opposite direction of the approaching staff members. It would take her longer to get back to her little cubicle this way, but she didn’t care. Right now, all she was worried about was how she was going to face Ivy’s father tomorrow. Or keep herself from doing something else stupid. Like hurtling down a road that led from professional courtesy toward unprofessional crush.

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