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CHAPTER ONE
UH-UH. THERE WAS absolutely no way Dr. Eleanor Aston was wearing that itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny scrap of sparkly spandex her sister had sent for her to wear tonight!
“Take it back,” she ordered Norma, the darling, elderly woman who’d headed up the Aston household for over twenty years and a woman who was more like family than—well, than Eleanor’s biological family.
Looking out of place and uncomfortable in the hospital doctors’ lounge where Eleanor had pulled her to talk in private, Norma shook her head. “Sorry, but I can’t do that. Brooke gave me specific instructions. You are to wear that dress and those shoes to the ribbon-cutting ceremony.”
Right, because she could squeeze her more than generous curves into the dress. Eleanor shuddered just at the mental image.
“I’m giving you specific instructions, too. Take it back, because even if I could squeeze into that …” She eyed the glitzy red dress and matching stilettos her sister had picked out. “Well, it’s not exactly my style, is it?”
Staring at Eleanor with her almost-black eyes, Norma shrugged her coat-clad shoulders. “Perhaps your sister thinks your style needs an update.”
Norma’s tone implied that Brooke wasn’t the only one who thought that.
Ha. No doubt about it. Media darling Brooke Aston definitely thought her sister’s style as ugly duckling in the midst of a family of swans should change. Mostly because Brooke thought Eleanor’s usual wardrobe of hospital scrubs to be the bottom of fashion’s totem pole.
Eleanor loved her hospital scrubs.
For so many reasons. Never had she felt more proud than when she’d donned a pair after she’d completed her training as a pediatrician specializing in neonatology. Plus, shapeless hospital scrubs hid a lot of body flaws.
“A lot” being the key words. She’d never be a size two like Brooke and she’d quit beating herself up over that years ago.
She eyed the scrap of fancy material again, crinkled her nose and shook her head. “I’m sorry my sister wasted your time, but you can keep the dress because I’m not going to wear it, or those torture devices my sister calls shoes.” She glanced at her watch. “Sorry to run, but I’ve got to get back to the NICU. My patients need me.”
Norma winced, but didn’t look surprised by Eleanor’s answer. “Brooke won’t be happy.”
Was her baby sister ever happy with anything that didn’t involve all the attention being on her? Too bad she’d had an allergic reaction to some new beauty cream that had left her unable to bask in the limelight of Senator Cole Aston’s latest publicity project.
At least this time Eleanor agreed with how her father was spending his money. Actually, she was quite pleased, which was the only reason she’d agreed to take Brooke’s place at the ribbon-cutting ceremony this evening. He’d donated an exorbitant amount to build a new neonatal wing for premature babies at the Angel Mendez Children’s Hospital where she worked.
She loved being a part of something as wonderful as Angel’s, New York’s first and finest free children’s hospital. Working with her preemies left her with a feeling inside that no other aspect of her life had ever achieved. She felt needed, whole, as if she made a difference. In her patients’ families’ eyes, she did matter, was the most important person in their tiny baby’s world.
Her patients didn’t care that she wasn’t glamorous or wearing the latest Paris styles. They didn’t care if her hair was plain black and always clipped tightly to her scalp in a bun. They didn’t care that she never bothered with makeup or taking time to put in her contact lenses so her thick-framed glasses didn’t hide her dark brown eyes.
Neither did they care that she’d never be beautiful and svelte like her petite sister, not with her bone structure and too-generous curves that no amount of starving herself seemed to cure. So she just maintained a healthy diet and lifestyle and ignored that the media liked to point out the differences between her and her Hollywood-thin, perfectly coiffed sister.
Pain knotted Eleanor’s gut at the recall of some of the comments that the gossip rags had made about those differences over the years.
Her sister might love the limelight, but Eleanor detested it, did everything she could to avoid putting herself in the media’s glare. Yet tonight she would be representing her family at a very important event for Angel’s. The press would be there in droves.
What had she been thinking?
The sheer impact of what she’d agreed to do hit her, made her hand shake, reminded her that she was being forced to attend a social event. Still, think of all the families the new wing would benefit.
She took a deep breath, praying a full-blown panic attack didn’t hit. “Brooke isn’t going to be happy anyway, Norma. She’s not the one cutting the ribbon this evening.”
Having been a constant fixture in their lives and knowing them as well as their own mother did, probably better, a semblance of a smile played on Norma’s twitching lips at Eleanor’s accurate assessment of her sister.
“Agreed, but you’re going to have to return that dress yourself.” At Eleanor’s frown, she continued, “If I’m going to have one or the other of you upset with me, it’s going to be you over your drama-queen sister.”
Eleanor took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. Hadn’t it been that way her whole life? Brooke always managed to get her way one way or another, whether it was with their parents, the hired help, the media, or the many enamored people who flocked to be close to such “perfection” as the lovely and superfun Brooke Aston.
Eleanor had spent a great portion of her life in the shadows. Fortunately, she liked it there.
She glanced at her watch again. She’d been away from the neonatal unit too long already. “Fine. I’ll deal with this later.”
Eleanor’s heart squeezed as Rochelle Blackwood’s tiny fingers wrapped around her pinky finger. So precious.
Even with the tubes and wires attached to the twenty-six-weeks-gestation little girl, nothing was more beautiful or precious to Eleanor than new life.
Not so many years ago, Rochelle wouldn’t have had any chance of surviving outside her mother’s womb short of a miracle. Thanks to advances in modern medicine, the little girl’s odds had greatly increased, although certainly she was high risk. Still, each day she survived raised those odds.
Eleanor intended to give her tiny patient everything in her favor that she could.
“What do you think, Eleanor?” Scarlet Miller, the head neonatal unit nurse, asked from beside the tiny
heated incubator. “Is she going to pull through?”
Rochelle had been born with part of her intestines outside her abdomen, with underdeveloped lungs and eyelids that were paper-thin and not yet open. She couldn’t eat or breathe on her own. But the little girl had a strong will to live. Eleanor felt the strength of her spirit every time she was near the baby.
“I hope so. She’s a fighter, that’s for sure.”
Rochelle’s mother had been sideswiped by a drunk driver and had suffered multiple crush injuries. Rochelle had been in trouble and the decision had been made to deliver by emergency cesarean section. Sadly, her mother hadn’t survived the night.
Eleanor felt a special bond with the baby, perhaps because the five-day-old baby’s father was grieving the loss of his wife and had yet to visit the little girl who’d already undergone multiple surgeries and treatments during her short life. The medical staff of the NICU was the only human contact the baby had.
“Agreed,” a strong masculine Texan voice drawled from behind her. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been keeping tabs on this little darlin’.”
As it always did when Dr. Tyler Donaldson was around, Eleanor’s face caught fire. Not literally, of course, but it may as well have for how hot her skin burned anytime the man was near.
Just as it also always did, her tongue refused to do anything other than stick to the roof of her mouth, leaving her unable to answer him and feeling like an awkward teenager with a first crush.
Urgh. How could one sister be such a consummate flirt and known for the many hunks wrapped around her manicured finger and the other sister be a shy, inept mute just because a good-looking man spoke to her? Not even spoke to her about anything personal but about a patient. Yes, she really was pathetic.
Probably taking her silence as disapproval—or who knew what he thought of her since he usually ignored her—Tyler stepped closer to the incubator. “I was on duty the night she made her entrance into the world. She’s such a sweet little darlin’, ain’t she?”
His Southern accent got to her, just as it did most of Angel’s female staff. In a big way. His voice was so inviting, like a fire on a cold winter’s night. She just wanted to bask in the warmth of everything about the man. Which was crazy. He was a total player who charmed women right out of their pants. Yet all his exes still adored him. Go figure.
She risked a look at him and immediately wished she hadn’t. Just as if she really did stand next to a fire, her face burst into a new wave of flames. If there was a pill to cure blushing she’d be first in line at the pharmacy, because she hated the nervous reaction almost as much as she hated her panic attacks.
“You met her father?” Tyler asked, his warm brown gaze focused on the baby.
Still unable to prise her tongue off the roof of her mouth, Eleanor shook her head.
