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She considered asking J.C. to ax either the reenactment or the film clip, then decided against it. The network had already spent the money on the computer graphics and to interview the woman. The only argument she could muster was that Shane wouldn’t like it, and she didn’t think that would carry much weight with J.C. It wouldn’t have carried much weight with her, either, three days ago.
Before she’d met Shane.
That realization scared her right down to her shoes, and made her wish she’d turned down Shane’s date request instead of accepting it with alarming alacrity. Because if she was looking at herself and her actions differently after only knowing Shane for two days, any more time spent in his company was a disaster waiting to happen.
Chapter 5
“Wow,” Shane said when Carly opened the door of her Georgetown town house at his ring. “You look fantastic.”
Carly knew from the warmth in her cheeks she was blushing under Shane’s admiring stare. Again. She’d blushed in his hospital room and had chastised herself for it. But apparently it wasn’t a onetime thing. Not with Shane.
“Thanks. You look pretty fantastic yourself,” she said. And he did. From his close-cropped golden-brown hair right down to the spit-and-polish shine on his black dress shoes, Shane looked the epitome of a well-dressed man. His tuxedo, which she could see because his black, camel-hair overcoat was unbuttoned, fit him as if it had been sewn together with him inside it. A gleaming white handkerchief just barely peeked out of his breast pocket. And the white carnation in his lapel was the perfect touch.
He held out a small plastic box, which contained a gorgeous white gardenia wrist corsage. “You said you’d be wearing blue, so I figured white was safe,” he said.
Carly managed to get the box open, and the fragrant scent wafted upward. “I love gardenias,” she admitted in a low voice. She wasn’t going to tell him he’d hit upon her favorite flower, one she hadn’t worn since Jack... Gardenias would have been in her bridal bouquet.
She blinked away the sudden tears and stepped back. “I’m not quite ready, so why don’t you come on in,” she invited, although at that moment she would rather have invited a rattlesnake into her home—and she had a phobia about snakes. She glanced at the schoolhouse clock on the wall in the foyer. “Five minutes,” she promised as she dashed up the stairs. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”
* * *
Shane watched Carly ascend the staircase, grateful for a moment alone to pull himself together. She’d looked so unbelievably lovely when she’d answered the door—her dark hair still in the sophisticated chignon she’d worn during his interview, her sapphire-blue dress shimmering as it clung discretely in all the right places—and he’d been stunned. His heartbeat had quickened and he’d hardened in a rush. Wanting was such a pitiful word compared to what Carly made him feel.
He stood right where he was in the foyer, unwilling to make himself at home without Carly there, but glanced at his watch. Plenty of time. He took off his overcoat and slung it over the banister railing, then his eye caught the antique mirror beside the clock and he moved toward it, making a minute adjustment to his bow tie.
That’s when the sudden chill hit him.
Shane froze. Not because the chill and the goose bumps incapacitated him, but because he’d believed the doctors at the Mayo Clinic when they told him the seizures would be controlled by the medication he’d been prescribed. Yeah, he’d only been taking it for two and a half days, but still...
“Damn it,” he whispered. “Damn it all to hell and back.”
“Shane?”
He whirled around. He hadn’t heard Carly come down the stairs, but there she stood at the foot of the staircase, her hand clutching the banister, her eyes wide in a face from which all color had fled. “It’s happening, isn’t it?”
A statement, not a question. And Shane knew she knew. He didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it, either. He waited a few more seconds, and the symptoms disappeared, as always.
“I thought you said the seizures were controllable.”
