Designs on the Doctor Read online

  That was totally different from Claudia. And it was as much as he could have asked for Estelle even before he’d known the whole story. Certainly it was more than he could have asked after learning how rough Ally’s childhood had been.

  It was no wonder he’d come to admire and respect Ally and all that was beneath the surface.

  And it wasn’t only the way Ally had stepped up when she’d needed to. There was so much more about her that impressed him. So much more depth than he’d expected to find at the start of this.

  The kind of depth that had her looking at things through Estelle’s perspective and finding some understanding for her mother’s harshness. Feeling compassion for what Estelle had gone through, for what she’d lost, and why she’d responded the way she had.

  No, it was no wonder that he’d been disarmed by Ally. No wonder she’d touched on a soft spot in him.

  Besides coming through for her mother, she was beautiful, intelligent, quick and clever. She made him laugh. She had insight and wisdom. She was easy to talk to. She was interesting. She was even so down-to-earth that knowing and working with celebrities hadn’t seemed to affect her.

  And on top of all that, there was something about her that made him feel as if he was home when he was with her. Something about being with her that had given him the feeling he’d longed for all his life.

  That baffled him the most and as he sipped his coffee he turned his back on the window, leaned on the sill and really thought about it.

  Home. He’d never really been too sure what that was. It sure as hell hadn’t been the foster homes he’d been in—he’d never felt like anything but an interloper in any of those. And the group homes had been worse.

  He’d loved being with Nina and Bubby, but again, always with the awareness that he didn’t actually belong with them. That he was the outsider they’d let in.

  There was just something about being with Ally that made him feel as if he was with the person—the one person—he was supposed to be with.

  There was a…a calmness, he guessed, that had come over him. A sense of completion, somehow, when he was with Ally. There was something about being with her that took away his loneliness the way it had never been taken away before.

  Damn if he didn’t have the feeling that she was what he’d been looking for all his life.

  And now that he’d found her, he had to hang on to her.

  That realization settled over him like the solution to a puzzle he’d been working on for as long as he could remember. She was his home, his center.

  But any minute now she was going to decide what to do about Estelle and—best bet—Ally would go back to L.A. And there was no way everything he wanted with her, from her, could be had with her there…

  “Now you’re in dicey territory,” he warned himself, pushing off the windowsill and beginning to pace as he felt the need to take action.

  Because now not only was there a stake for Estelle in Ally being in Chicago, there was a stake in it for him.

  And the stakes were high.

  “Nina,” he said out loud.

  He went to his desk, set his coffee mug down and snatched up the receiver on his phone. Then he dialed his friend’s number.

  “Nina?” he said when the other end of the line was finally picked up.

  “Great minds work alike,” Nina said with a laugh, recognizing his voice. “I was just going to call you.”

  She’d told him on Tuesday that David hadn’t been able to talk to Helen before leaving for Japan, but that David would keep trying.

  “Were you going to call me with good news, I hope?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Nina confirmed.

  “So they’re interested in hiring Ally as designer for the hotels?”

  “Hmm…Why do you sound so desperate?”

  Jake laughed. “Give me a break” was his only answer.

  “What’s going on, Jake?”

  “More of the same,” Jake admitted, knowing Nina well enough to know she’d just get it out of him anyway. “Ally’s the one, Nina. She’s it for me.”

  “I knew it! I told Bubby something was different with Ally. I could just feel it.”

  “So what about the job?” Jake persisted.

  “Things are even worse in San Francisco than they thought. The decorator there—Riki—is in Thatcher’s pocket, plus he’s been taking kickbacks and demanding bribes. He’s history, but whoever takes over there is not only going to be in a crunch to get the place finished on time, they’ll have to deal with some very unhappy suppliers and contractors who have been having the squeeze put on them.”

  “Not the issue at the moment, Nina,” Jake reminded, caring only that what he’d just realized he wanted, needed, be put on track to happen.

  “Ooh, you are desperate,” Nina said with smug satisfaction. “Well, David got hold of Helen late last night and she called me a few minutes ago—that’s why I was about to call you. Helen hasn’t found a designer she’s satisfied with yet, she did some quick investigation into Ally, and is definitely interested in her—although she was surprised that Ally would consider moving here and wants to make sure she knows that that’s a must.”

  It’s a must for more than decorating Taka Hotels, Jake thought.

  “Did you talk to Ally about this the way I keep telling you to?” Nina asked.

  “Not yet,” Jake admitted.

  “Jake! You should have told her!”

  “Isn’t it better I break it to her now with good news?”

  “Not if she’s anything like me.” Nina sighed. “Helen wants to meet with Ally as soon as possible.”

  “Great!”

  “It’s not a done deal or anything, you know,” Nina cautioned.

  “Especially since Ally doesn’t know I’ve even put her in the running,” Jake muttered. “But it’s still a big step in the right direction.”

  “So when do you think you can get Ally to Helen? Or at least to me so I can get her to Helen?”

  Jake checked his appointment book. His afternoon schedule was light. “I think I can clear some space in an hour or so. Any chance maybe Bubby could get Estelle out of the house? Lunch could be on me…”

  “Well, if you’re paying, I think I might be persuaded to pick up Bubby and Estelle, and take them somewhere really nice.”

  Jake laughed again. “Right, stick it to the lovesick jerk.”

  “Seems only fair,” Nina confirmed without conscience.

  “Just get Estelle out so I can have Ally to myself to talk her into this.”

  “Leave it to me,” Nina promised like a coconspirator.

  “And keep your fingers crossed for me that Ally has rediscovered the appeal of the Windy City.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed that she’s discovered the appeal of big, dumb shrinks who are silly for her,” Nina teased.

  “That, too,” Jake confirmed, hanging up and hoping like hell that he really could convince Ally to stay in Chicago.

  “You arranged for me to be left out of a fancy lunch with the girls? I hope you have something really good planned to make up for it,” Ally said as she and Jake climbed the stairs to her apartment just before one o’clock on Wednesday.

  After Tuesday night’s lovemaking, Ally had been low energy and full of yawns. Until she’d learned that Jake was having Nina take Estelle and Bubby out to lunch so he could come over, and he and Ally could have some time alone. Then, while Estelle got dressed up, Ally had revamped her own appearance.

  She’d taken her hair from its ponytail and brushed it to fall free around her face and shoulders. She’d applied fresh mascara, blush and lip gloss. She’d changed out of the loose-fitting jeans and T-shirt into tighter-fitting versions of both—over much more sexy underwear.

  And the yawns she hadn’t been able to control all morning? Gone. Knowing Jake was on his way, assuming the fact that he’d made sure they’d have some time to themselves meant more of the many-splendored-lovemaking, had reenergized her
completely.

  So once they went into her apartment, she closed the door and waited for him to take her into his arms.

  Only he didn’t.

  Instead, he turned to face her and said, “I have some great news. I got you a job offer.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said in disbelief, stepping close in front of him and placing her hands on that chest that was too magnificent to be hidden behind his shirt and tie.

  Jake covered her hands with his, squeezing them, holding them tight. “The Taka hotel chain needs a new designer—and they want you.”

  It took Ally a moment to take in the information. “The Taka hotel chain?” she repeated.

  “There have been complications with their current designer that you can get into with Nina or Helen or—”

  “Helen? Who is Helen?”

  “Helen Taka-Hanson, David’s sister-in-law and one of the heads of the Taka-Hanson hospitality division. Anyway, I suggested you for the job, and there’s a very real possibility that they’ll hire you. And if they do, you’ll be able to move back to Chicago and Estelle won’t have to go into assisted living—”

  “Wait, what?” Ally said to slow him down. “I’ll be able to move back to Chicago? I never said—”

  “You said you couldn’t move back here because relocating would mean reestablishing your business and that would take years. But if you get the Taka job they want someone based in Chicago. And not only would you take over the job on their San Francisco hotel and the one that’s not quite built yet in Japan, but as I understand it, there are more hotels in the planning, so you’d be instantly established.”

  “But I didn’t say I wanted to move back here,” she pointed out, stunned by where this was going.

  “You said you couldn’t do anything else because you didn’t have the option of moving back here, that if you did, you’d consider it. But now you could have the option, so you can consider it, and you wouldn’t have to move Estelle.”

  Ally reared back slightly. “So not only have you gotten me a job that relocates me, you also think I should live with my mother?”

  He smiled a crooked smile and Ally tried not to be influenced by how incredibly handsome he was.

  “Actually, that gets into part two,” he said.

  “Part two,” she echoed him again.

  “Part two is you and me.”

  She liked the sound of that better, but she was still wary. “Okay…What about you and me?” she asked.

  His smile turned soft and warm as he told her how his opinion of her had changed since they’d met, that he admired everything she’d done with her mother.

  How important she’d become to him. That she’d filled the gap that had been in his life. That she was actually who he’d been looking for all along.

  “This morning,” he concluded, “it hit me. The way I feel about you…I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. I’ve never felt this way about being with anyone else. I just knew in my gut that you and I have been following our own separate paths just so we could be led to each other now. Everything you said about your mother and father and what they meant to each other? How important they were to each other? That’s how I feel about you, Ally. No, I don’t want our kids to be left out in the cold by it—I want them embraced by it and included in it—but beyond that, what your parents had together is how I want it to be with you and me.”

  Ally just stared up at him, more stunned than she had been a moment earlier over the job issue. Stunned and confused by conflicting feelings of her own—half of them fed by words that were wonderful to hear, the other half outraged by the liberties he was taking. The liberties he’d already taken.

  But he just went on taking them. “I know this is whirlwind,” he said. “And I know you have work commitments you’d still have to finish up in L.A., not to mention that there would be travel involved in decorating the hotels. But the thing is, if we’re together, we could build a place of our own right here. One or both of us would be near enough to take care of Estelle so she wouldn’t have to move. Plus, I could help you work through all that old baggage with your mother and mend the tear in your relationship so we could all share Estelle’s last years as a family—”

  “Whoa! Wait! Wow!”

  That had come from the outraged half but she hadn’t been able to stop it. She’d just needed to stop him.

  She pulled her hands out from under his and stepped away from him. “It’s barely been half a day since I saw you last and you’ve closed down my business in L.A., opened one in Chicago with a major new client that needs entire hotels decorated, built a house that has me basically living with my mother, moved yourself into it, and you think you can make Estelle and me best friends?”

  He grinned. “Too much all at once?”

  He was joking, but Ally saw no humor in the situation. He had so thoroughly mapped out her entire future without even consulting her.

  “To start with, I can’t believe you put me up for a job—a huge, career-altering, change-my-whole-life job—without even mentioning it to me.”

  “I wanted to find out if it was a possibility before I got your hopes up.”

  “You didn’t even know that it would get my hopes up, that I’d even want to do something like design for a hotel chain!”

  His grin faded and his eyebrows rose in surprise. “This is a good thing. I’ve solved all your problems.”

  “I can solve my own problems! For instance, today it occurred to me that I could do some remodeling on this apartment and get someone to come in and look after Mother in exchange for a free place to live—that is a solution to a problem. What you’re doing is the same thing you did on the phone when you first called me and again when I got here—you’re giving me orders, making demands, telling me what I have to do!”

  He frowned. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “Yes, you are, Jake! You’ve decided what should happen, how it should happen and you’ve gone behind my back to make it happen.”

  “I just listened to what you said and acted accordingly,” he said defensively. “I thought I was helping. I thought you’d already started to see Estelle in a new light, to have some sympathy for her. I thought you were serious about disrupting her life now because you couldn’t be here to take care of her.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I thought if you had the chance, you could come back here and take it the rest of the way, that you could get to know each other as adults, repair the relationship—”

  “You just can’t resist pushing the family thing, can you?” Ally shot at him. Everything he was saying was true, but it still felt as if he was putting unreasonable expectations on her.

  He didn’t answer that. “I also thought that we really had connected. Fast, yes, but I thought we’d made the kind of connection that happens fast because it’s right, because it’s meant to be, because it’s destined…”

  That sounded good, too. But still, she couldn’t just let Jake completely and totally change her life without having so much as offered her a choice in the matter.

  And what kind of a life would it be, anyway, with someone who was always so convinced that he had all the answers? That his way was the only way? Especially when she was feeling at that moment the way he’d made her feel at the start of this—backed into a corner, bossed around, overwhelmed, not sure exactly what was going on or if she could deal with it or…

  “No!” she heard herself shout, then collected herself. “It isn’t meant to be that I take orders about the direction my life should go in.”

  “In the first place,” he said with deadly calm, obviously having become as angry as she was. “I’m not telling you what job to take or where to live or how to live there or what should happen between you and Estelle. I’m telling you what I’ve done to facilitate what I thought you were leaning towards. I’m offering to try to help ease the two of you into a better relationship with each other.”

  He shook his head fatalistically and his voice got
lower. “And in the second place,” he added, “I’m telling you what I want. Which—by the way—I said last night, if you’ll recall, when I said I wanted more than a fling with you.”

  “What you didn’t say was that you wanted to control me and that you’d already taken steps to accomplish it.”

  That one made him madder. She saw it in the broad shoulders that squared themselves, in the darkening of his charcoal-colored eyes. Then she heard it in the tightness of his voice.

  “I’m not trying to control you. Like I said, I thought I was helping you. I also thought I wasn’t the only one to see a future for us. But apparently I was wrong.”

  He stepped around her, returned to the apartment door and opened it.

  But before he left he turned back. “Just in case you’re interested in the business opportunity—Helen Taka-Hanson wants to talk to you as soon as possible. Nina can put you in touch with her. Otherwise, you can tell Nina to let Helen know you aren’t interested.”

  Then, before Ally had even turned around, he was gone.

  And Ally was too angry to care.

  Or at least that was what she told herself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ally was in a daze. Her stomach was one big knot. She’d been on the verge of tears since five minutes after Jake had walked out of the apartment and was worried that, at any moment, she could spontaneously burst out crying without provocation. She was miserable and confused and furious and nauseous and in more emotional pain than she’d been in since her father had been killed.

  So, she asked herself, what was she doing late Wednesday afternoon, sitting in Nina’s living room across from Helen Taka-Hanson?

  I must have lost my mind…

  It was Nina who had persuaded her. Ally had been waiting when Nina brought Estelle and Bubby back from lunch. Ally had told Jake’s friend that she wasn’t interested in the job with Taka Hotels.

  Nina hadn’t pushed. But she had pointed out that the job was a big opportunity and asked if Ally was sure she didn’t want to at least talk it over with Helen.

  Ally’s business acumen had kicked in. Regardless of how this had come about, she hadn’t been able to deny that it was a great opportunity. The kind that any designer would jump at.