What the h.e.l.l was he going on about? Mac thought impatiently. Right or wrong, he fought the urge just to take the folder out of the neurosurgeon's hands.

Howard placed the folder down on the desk and regarded his hands. "You know, I think I forgot to wash my hands after my last patient. Can't be too careful these days." He winked, as if talking to himself. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Mac. Feel free to drink your coffee while I'm gone."

When he returned several minutes later, the office was empty. Mac's coffee cup was full.

"n.o.body takes the time to enjoy a good cup of coffee anymore," Howard murmured.

Moving the cup aside, he took the folder and returned it to the file cabinet, then sat down. He picked up the cup and held it in both hands, savoring the aroma. He hated seeing a good cup of coffee go to waste.

Mac called the sitter on his cell phone while he was driving, checking to make sure she could stay with Tommy until he got home. The woman, Adriana, was only too happy to remain. The mother of three grown children, she missed having children to look after.

His mind was at least at rest on that score, Mac focused on the battle that he knew lay ahead. He was having trouble keeping his temper in check. He felt slighted and discarded.

Squeaking through yellow lights that were about to turn red, he made it to Jolene's door less than fifteen minutes later. When she didn't answer the doorbell, he knocked. Hard.

Still nothing.

"If you don't open this door, Jolene," he yelled, not caring who heard, "I'm going to break in through the window."

That got results. Just as he was stripping off his jacket, the front door opened.

Jolene glared at him. Why couldn't he leave her alone? Why did he have to make this even more difficult than it already was?

"I can't afford a new window."

"I was counting on that." Not waiting for an invitation, he walked in. "Where's Amanda?"

"She's at my mother's." She'd asked her mother to take the little girl for the night, needing some time alone. She still hadn't been able to bring herself to tell her mother about the aneurysm, but she could tell that her mother suspected something was wrong.

Everything was just a finite matter of time.

Mac turned on her without warning. "What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?"

She shouldn't have let him push his way in. Now she was going to have to make him leave. "I told you, I don't want to see you anymore."

He wasn't about to get into that waltz again. "I meant why didn't you tell me?"

"I just did-"

She was playing dumb and he didn't like it. It didn't suit her. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, woman, why didn't you tell me about the aneurysm?"

She paled. No one knew about that. Only Dr. Monroe and her. "Who told you?"

He wasn't about to go into an explanation about cups of coffee and hand washing. "No one told me, I just found out." She was doing it again, trying to distract him. "And that's beside the point."

Her temper flared. This was supposed to be a secret. "No, it is the point-"

He took hold of her shoulders, as if that could somehow make her see reason. "No, what is the point is that you didn't trust me to tell me about this."

Trust. The last time she'd trusted someone to be there for her, he'd disappeared, leaving her emotionally alone. Leaving her with a broken heart. That wasn't going to happen again.

"So you could do what?" she demanded. "Start a chorus of 'Good-night Irene' and make a quick retreat? I didn't need that on top of everything else." She felt hysteria bubbling up within her. Why couldn't he just be a gentleman and leave? Why did he have to keep chipping away at her like this, until there was nothing left? "What I have or don't have is none of your business."

Did she actually believe what she was saying? "Don't you get it yet? You are my business."

"Right," she retorted. "For how long?"

The woman had a short memory for someone so bright. "Are you asking me to recite the definition of forever again?"

"No," she said wearily, waving him away, "and I don't want to hear any other lies, either. I'm not up to it." She turned away, rubbing her brow. "Now just go, I have a headache."

When she heard no movement, she turned around. He was exactly where she'd left him.

"I'm not going."

Why was he doing this to her? Why was he torturing her like this, getting her to believe that he really was one of the good guys when she knew there was no such animal. "I can have you removed. I can get a restraining order."

Mac looked at her pointedly. "Now who's running away?"

Tears were pushing their way through her system, threatening to spill out. She didn't want to cry in front of him.

She had no choice. The tears came anyway, despite all her attempts to block them. She had no say, even in this.

"I don't want to be left," she told him. "I want to walk away on my own. I have my pride."

So that was it. She was afraid. Well, so was he. Afraid of losing her. "Pride's a pretty cold thing to curl up with at night."

She sniffed, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. "But it's better than nothing."

"How about better than something?" She looked at him. "Is having your pride better than having someone in your life who loves you?"

He was being unfair, she thought. She didn't have the strength to fight him off, not when all she wanted was for him to hold her, to make everything better.

But he couldn't. He could only make things worse. She'd let herself believe him and then he'd walk away, the way Matt had.

"I don't know. I haven't had that happen yet. I thought it did, but then I was rudely awakened."

"Not every man is like your ex-husband," he told her patiently. "Not even every doctor is like him."

"But you were," she insisted. "You are." Now she was the one who wasn't being fair, but she was fighting for her survival now. "The only difference is that you never got married."

He resented the comparison to a man he had come to loathe on principle, but he held his reaction in check. "And I was always honest. I never told a woman she was my one true love."

She had to give him that. She knew his reputation. There had never been any promises from him. They'd only lived in the moment. "No-"

He cut her off before she could continue. "Until now."

Jolene stared at him. She'd misheard. There was no other explanation. "What?"

He leaned over and whispered the words in her ear. "Until now," he repeated.

She drew back as if he'd just burned her flesh. "You're saying you love me."

"Yes." He moved to take her into his arms.

Jolene sidestepped him, refusing to let her guard down. What he felt wasn't love. "That's pity," she insisted.

He looked at her incredulously. Was she out of her mind?

"Why the h.e.l.l should I pity you? If anything, I pity me for standing here, banging my head against the wall, putting up with a tongue-lashing. I can't think of a single reason to pity you except maybe that you're just too stubborn to see beyond your memory. Too stubborn to see that history is not doomed to repeat itself if you make the right choice."

He was wearing her down and she didn't want him to. "Meaning you."

Mac touched her face. "Yeah."

She curled her fingers, digging her nails into her palms, trying to focus on that instead of melting.

"You said yourself you can't stand to see a child in pain. You've just broadened your base, that's all. You're not a self-centered b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you're a good, kind man when it comes to the downtrodden. I know that. But once this-this thing is behind me, then maybe you'll rethink your feelings, come to your senses and go on to the next woman."

How did he make her understand? "I'm not interested in you as the disease of the week, or the month, or my cause of the year, Jolene. I am just interested in you, period."

She held her head. The headaches rarely stopped now. This one had been plaguing her all day and was now at its apex. "I can't process this right now. My head feels like it's coming off."

Though he wanted to press her for a decision, for a commitment, Mac backed away. Nothing would be settled tonight.

It felt strange, he thought. He'd run from commitment all of his adult life only to have someone withhold it from him now that he wanted it.

There was irony in that. He knew a few who would call it poetic justice. But this wasn't about him. It was about Jolene. Which meant that his feelings had to be shelved for the time being.

"When are you having the surgery?" There hadn't been any indication of that in the notes he'd read in her file.

Jolene began to shake her head, then stopped. The pain was too great. "I don't know. I haven't set a date." She saw him stride to the phone and pick the receiver up. "What are you doing?"

He was already pressing b.u.t.tons. "Calling Howard at home to set one up."

She put her hand on the cradle, disconnecting him. "You can't do that. It's my life."

His fingers curled around the receiver, channeling his anger. "Wrong again. It's not your life. It's Amanda's and your mother's. And mine," he insisted firmly. "No matter how much you want to be, you're not in this alone."

She didn't want to be in this alone. She just was. "You're hurting my head."

"You're hurting my heart. We're even." He looked at her expectantly, his eyes indicating the receiver. "Now can I make the call?"

"No." She took the receiver from him, then sighed. "I'll make the call."

He stood beside her as she dialed.

Chapter Sixteen.

E rika looked up from the coloring book spread out before her. She was helping Amanda choose a color for the clown's feet. Tommy was beside her on the sofa, carefully examining the crayons in the box before rendering his opinion. When he offered her an orange crayon, Amanda took it from him solemnly, her impatience melting.

Mac was pacing around the room like a caged tiger that was searching for a way out.

Leaving the children with each other, Erika walked up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "She'll be all right."

He covered her hand with his, silently thanking the woman for the comfort she was offering. He wasn't used to this, wasn't used to waiting, to not knowing. Not doing. Time dragged on longer when you couldn't do anything about it.

Mac turned and smiled at Jolene's mother. "I'm supposed to be the one telling you that."

"I know." She lifted her shoulder in a half shrug. "Just in case you forgot, I thought I'd say it out loud for both of us." And then anxiety pushed forward, getting the better of her. She looked at her watch. "Is it supposed to be taking this long?"

They hadn't exceeded the customary surgical time range, even though it felt like several eternities had gone by since they'd watched the operating room doors close on Jolene and filed into the lounge to wait for word.

Mac went into his best physician's mode, realizing now from this vantage point how little comfort the words actually were. "It's not something you want to rush through. They want to make sure that nothing vital gets affected while they're draining the aneurysm."

He'd already explained it to her earlier, before Jolene had gone in for the surgery. The patient remained awake through the operation and the surgeon proceeds cautiously, asking a battery of questions for every minute movement that was executed.

It had been just two days since he'd stormed into Jolene's house. Two days since he'd fully realized just how much she meant to him.

He'd never felt so helpless, so useless.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he began to pace around the lounge again, grateful that there was no one else in it beside Erika and the kids. He would have preferred leaving Tommy with the sitter, but the boy had begged to come once he'd discovered that Jolene was having surgery. When Tommy continued to plead, Mac had given in and brought him along. Under the pending circ.u.mstances, he thought it only fitting.

He realized by the look on Erika's face that Tommy had asked him a question and was waiting for an answer.

Crossing to the boy, he squatted down to his level. "I'm sorry, what?"

Tommy took a deep breath. "Is her doctor as good a doctor as you are?"

Mac laughed, touched at the boy's obvious adulation. "Better. He's at the top of his field. None better." The testimony was supposed to comfort Erika and Tommy. He clung to the words himself as if they were a life raft he was using to navigate his way through the rapids.

Tommy's face was a wreath of smiles. "Then Jo's gonna be okay."

Mac hugged the boy to him. Who was comforting whom? "Yes, she's going to be okay."

She had to be, Mac silently insisted. He wasn't going to allow his thoughts to go in any other direction. Jolene was going to pull through. Any other possibility didn't enter into it. Because it just couldn't happen.

"Why don't you go over there and help Amanda? I think she needs you to pick another color for her."

Tommy sighed. "Women." But he was obviously happy to be of service.