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She’d been safe.
Not that he’d meant to date her, to become part of a couple with her, but from the moment they’d met he and Liz had hit it off. She was funny, intelligent, and sexy as hell. Without him realizing what had been happening, she had become more and more entrenched in his life until he couldn’t imagine not having her smile brighten his day.
With Liz he’d found himself wanting marriage, children, all the things he’d once found superfluous to his medical career. Had she been free, he’d have begged her to walk down the aisle with him, to be his wife, the mother of his children.
But Liz’s priority had been to her grandfather and he’d understood that. Understood and loved her all the more for her loyalty and big heart.
All the reasons hindering their relationship from moving forward had dissipated the moment Gramps had taken his last breath.
Another sharp pain cut through Adam’s temple, momentarily blurring his vision and reminding him that perhaps not all the reasons were gone. A pain that had become more and more familiar over the past two weeks, as had the blurred vision.
So familiar that he’d seen a family physician friend of his to get a prescription for a headache medication on Friday.
Only his friend had been concerned his symptoms were more than just stress-induced. Particularly when upon being questioned Adam had admitted to feeling tired and having had muscle cramps recently. Larry had scheduled Adam for fasting bloodwork and a magnetic resonance imaging—MRI—scan of the brain on Monday. Only Adam had rescheduled the tests because of Gramps’s death.
Surely Larry was being overly cautious?
But Adam couldn’t suppress the niggle of fear that his friend was right. Something more was going on inside his body. Something bad.
Something that Adam wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Had he not been driving, he would have closed his eyes.
“What are you thinking?” Liz interrupted his thoughts, causing him to glance her way. She’d quit staring out the car window and watched him with her soulful brown eyes.
“Just h
oping I left the place clean,” he prevaricated. Now was not the time to tell Liz about the symptoms he’d been having. She already had enough to worry about.
“Mrs Evans keeps your condo immaculate and you’re a neat freak of the worst kind, Adam.” Her lips hinted at a smile. “I’d be highly shocked to find your underwear strewn around.”
“That’s because you visit after Mrs Evans has been there,” he warned, pleased at the smile on her pale but beautiful face. Neither the dark circles ringing her eyes nor their red puffiness could hide Liz’s beauty. She radiated from the inside with a natural exquisiteness he found irresistible.
Adam stared out at the road, squinted to clear his right eye of its haze. Unsuccessfully.
What if something bad was wrong with him?
He’d seen the concern on Larry’s face and he hadn’t even revealed his other symptoms to his friend.
Somehow saying out loud that his surgeon hands had gone numb for a few minutes last week, that at times pins and needles prickled his fingertips and that had been the real catalyst to his visit to Larry, seemed to make his symptoms all so much more real.
No, he hadn’t admitted to anyone that his internal circuits had seemed to be going haywire from time to time over the past two weeks. Not even to himself.
CHAPTER TWO
ADAM stared at the shadowy living-room ceiling and listened to the soft chimes of the mantel clock that had once been his mother’s.
One o’clock.
He owed it to his patients to get some sleep, but no matter how much his brain knew that, how many times he told himself to close his eyes, sleep remained elusive.
Probably because every fiber of his being was aware that while he was lying on his sofa with a cotton throw tossed over his body, Liz slept in his bed.
He’d planned to join her, but she’d been sound asleep. He hadn’t wanted to risk going into his bedroom since any noise he inadvertently made might wake her. She needed to sleep. He’d never seen her look so worn out.
He’d changed out of his suit into a pair of shorts he’d pulled from the dryer, and hit the sofa. Maybe if he checked on Liz, knew she was OK, maybe then he could catch a few hours before going to the hospital.
Who wanted a doctor taking out their gallbladder or repairing their hernia when he hadn’t slept much for three nights straight?
