“And book me a flight to Phoenix on Tuesday. Schedule a meeting with finance and Preston.”

“Which order?”

Presley considered. “Finance.”

“How long will you be gone?” Carrie asked.

“A few days. Book a return flight for Thursday, and we can always change it if need be.”

“All right.” Carrie hesitated. “By the way, I sent some other information you might find interesting.”

Presley paused. Carrie was too good an admin to ignore and, besides that, they were friends. “What other kind of information?”

“Population density in the county, patient-physician ratios, and the network—or I should say, lack of network—of urgent care facilities.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Presley tempered the bite in her voice that she was almost too tired to hide. Carrie was not to blame for her sleepless nights or her sore heart.

“I know in other locations SunView has tied new acquisitions into local networks. There doesn’t seem to be one here, but if there were, it would be a pipeline of patients to the hospital.”

“Yes, but as you say, there is no network.”

“I just thought you should have all the information.”

“Thanks, I’ll look at it but, Carrie…”

Carrie looked at her expectantly.

“Don’t get too…attached. Short term, remember?”

“Right. I know.”

Presley shut her office door behind her, sank into her chair, and closed her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Too damn quiet at night. She worked when she got home until her eyelids were closing, but that didn’t seem to help. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed—restless dreams filled with frustration. Missed planes, doors that wouldn’t open, phones she couldn’t use. She awoke feeling frustrated, helpless, and—even more aggravatingly—aroused. Not the kind of arousal easily dismissed or sated by a few extra moments of attention, quickly forgotten. She couldn’t find her rhythm here, in this place where time flowed differently, and hoped that if she went back to Phoenix, she would find her balance again. Besides, she needed to make an appearance to remind everyone that she wasn’t going away, particularly Preston. A quick trip to update everyone on this project was a good excuse.

Work. That was what she needed to be thinking about. She reviewed what she intended to tell Edward Rivers. In the midst of her mental planning, she wondered how Jimmy Reynolds was doing. The thought, popping into her mind out of nowhere, was just another sign of how she’d carelessly let herself be caught up in things outside her domain. Harper was taking care of him, and that was all she needed to know.

Harper. How many times a day had she thought of her? Too many to count. She groaned under her breath. She had no one to blame but herself that she could still feel Harper’s hands on her, still taste her, still catch the scent of her skin on an errant breeze. Still want her.

She reminded herself daily that Harper was not the first woman she’d awakened with, not even the first one she’d wanted again, albeit briefly. Why then was Harper the first one she couldn’t forget? The first one she ached for.

“Enough,” she muttered, opening her eyes and pulling up her email, determined to put Harper out of her mind.

When Carrie rang her, it was after one thirty and she’d missed lunch again. She didn’t have much of an appetite. If Lila hadn’t left food, morning and night, that smelled too delicious for her to ignore, she probably would’ve lost twenty pounds by now instead of eight. “Yes?”

“The doctors are here.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Drs. Edward, Harper, and Flannery Rivers are here to see you.”

“I asked for Dr. Edward Rivers.”

“Yes, I have that ready for you,” Carrie ad-libbed. “I’ll be right there.”

Carrie let herself into Presley’s office and closed the door behind her.

“What’s going on?” Presley asked.

“Edward Rivers says that since Flannery is chief of surgery and Harper the assistant chief of staff, they should be here for anything pertaining to the hospital.”

“And if I don’t agree, I’ll appear to be uncooperative at best, or hiding things at worst,” Presley said stiffly. “Why not. Send in the Rivers contingent, by all means.”

She rose and pulled on her suit jacket, steeling herself to face Harper for the first time since she’d walked out of Harper’s bedroom. Edward entered first, with Harper and Flannery side by side behind him. Flannery, as usual, was in scrubs. Harper wore casual black pants, a gray shirt, and loafers. Her dark hair needed a trim, although Presley liked the roguish contrast to her otherwise conventional style. An inappropriate desire to ruffle the ends of hair drifting over her collar flickered through her mind, and she quickly quashed it.

“Doctors,” Presley said, looking away from Harper with effort. Shadows deepened her eyes to nearly black, and for an instant, Presley’s throat tightened with longing. She lifted her chin, smiled. “Thank you for making time in your busy schedules. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

“That’s quite all right,” Edward said. “This is too important to rush.”

“Please sit down.” Presley gestured to the small conference table that faced a screen on one wall. She smiled in the direction of Harper and Flannery. “And the other Drs. Rivers too, of course.”

“Thanks,” Harper said, sitting across from Flann while her father sat at the head facing the screen. Harper had hoped the next time she saw Presley, the meeting would seem no different than any other professional encounter. She’d been fooling herself. She did that a lot where Presley was concerned. Just looking at Presley stirred her up. Presley appeared a little tired, a little thinner, but as totally cool and in control as ever. She stood facing them from the far end of the table, her hair held back with a burnished copper clasp, her pale green shirt the perfect complement to her beige suit jacket and pants. She was a beautiful woman. Harper knew just how beautiful. She didn’t have to close her eyes to see her again, naked and pliant and unrestrained—the image came to her at the most inconvenient times, igniting a rush of desire followed quickly by disappointment. The best times were when she woke in the morning and, for just an instant before her mind registered reality, she thrilled to the possibility of reaching out and touching her. But that was not going to happen. She forced herself to concentrate on Presley and see only the businesswoman and no one else.

“Let me bring you all up to date,” Presley said, taking a small remote from her pocket and clicking on her computer.

A slide appeared onscreen. A pie chart with a variety of colors and numbers. More charts and graphs followed. For the next fifteen minutes, Presley concisely and lethally explained to them why the hospital was failing and why the board had, for all intents and purposes, sold it out from under them. When she was done, she clicked off the projector and the screen went blank behind her. She leaned forward, the fingertips of each hand pressing lightly against the table. She made eye contact with each in turn and focused on Harper’s father at the end.

“I’m sorry that it’s come to this, but the hospital is not viable. SunView has rehabilitated any number of institutions such as this, and in this case, I’m afraid it’s clear. Within the next six to ten weeks, we will close the hospital. You’ll need to inform the physicians to make arrangements to transfer inpatients who cannot be discharged in that period of time and to begin setting up new lines of referral for those who will need to be admitted in the near future for anything more than a day or two.”

Edward said, “Are there no alternatives?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“May we have a few weeks to explore alternate possibilities before advising the staff?”

Presley’s inclination was to decline. She understood the doctors’ need to resist; she’d seen it before. No one wanted to hear they were about to not only lose their own jobs but would have to advise hundreds of others of the same thing. However, delaying the inevitable rarely made a difference. “I don’t—”

Harper spoke up. “You’ve had the opportunity to look at all the facts and figures. We’re just hearing this now.”

“But surely you knew this was coming.” Presley had told Harper as much weeks before.

“The three of us know more about the medical systems in this area than you could possibly have learned since you’ve arrived,” Harper said. “Let us talk about it. We might be able to present you with an alternative.”

“Dr. Rivers,” Presley said with as much patience as she could muster, “I don’t presume to tell you how to treat patients. It’s my job to look at all of these issues from every side before reaching a decision. Believe me, we’ve done that. As things stand—”

“Yes,” Harper said, “as things stand now. But perhaps we could make some changes that would make a difference.”

Presley shook her head. “You can’t put more money in the pockets of your patients. You can’t force insurance companies to pay more for your services. You might be able to influence your fellow practitioners to some degree, but the system remains the system.”

Flannery said, “There must be somewhere we can find a new revenue source.”

“There isn’t,” Presley said. “You may not believe this, but I’ve looked. There are basically three sources of revenue for an institution like this—government funding, insurance reimbursement, and patient self-pay. You have precious little of any of those.”

“What if we could get more government subsidy,” Harper said.

“How?” Presley said.

“I’m not sure yet. Give us a little time—”

“Ten days,” Presley said, knowing they would be more willing to do what needed to be done when they failed to find an alternate solution. She could give them ten days. “Then we will make an announcement to the staff that the hospital is closing.”

“We’ll do our best to see that doesn’t happen,” Edward said flatly.

She nodded and the three Rivers doctors rose. Edward and Flannery started toward the door, but Harper hesitated. “Thank you.”

Presley nodded, the tightness in her throat making it hard for her to speak for a moment. When Harper turned to leave, she said, “Harper.”

Harper paused, letting the door close, leaving them alone.

“How’s Jimmy?” Presley asked. How are you? Do you know I wish we’d met somewhere else? Sometime else?

“Holding his own. He’s not responding as quickly as we hoped, but he’s stable.”

“Good. That’s good, then.”

Harper studied her for a long moment, then nodded silently and left.

Presley waited a few minutes until she was sure they were gone before packing her laptop. It was only midafternoon, hours before she usually left the hospital, but she couldn’t stand the confines of the office any longer.

“I’m going to spend the rest of the day working at home,” she told Carrie.

“There’s a game tonight,” Carrie said cautiously. “Why don’t you come? You’ve been spending eighteen hours a day on this. Take a break.”

“No. But thanks.”

It was bad enough she couldn’t get Harper out of her head. The last thing she wanted was to see her again. Phoenix couldn’t happen soon enough.

Chapter Twenty-five

A crack like a rifle shot punctured the warm afternoon air. A white projectile rocketed straight toward Harper and jerked her to attention. She extended her glove and dove to her right. The missile impacted earth, altered its trajectory, and caromed upward, its speed barely diminished by the ricochet. The ball sailed over her glove and hit squarely on the left side of her jaw. Pain lanced through her head, and for an instant, the world disappeared.

“Lie still,” a faraway voice ordered.

Harper opened her eyes, blinked, and watched strands of cotton candy drift and tumble overhead. Calliope music tinkled faintly and she was a kid again, back on the fairground, holding on to the huge plaster horses as they glided up and down the poles, screaming with joy as the platform went round and round, so fast it felt as if she would fly off if she let go. Her father stood beside her, his arm gripping the pole above her head, his body a shield ensuring she would not fall.

She lay on her back, trying to understand how she had fallen off this time.

Flannery’s face came into view, the set of her mouth uncharacteristically serious.

“I’m fine,” Harper said. The words seem garbled. She swallowed, tasted blood. The sky stopped spinning and the clouds slowed their movement to a lazy glide across her field of vision. She checked her upper and lower teeth with the tip of her tongue. All intact, none broken. A sore spot on the inside of her left cheek seeped blood. She must’ve bitten it. She tried the words again. “I’m fine.”