The Billionaire's Christmas Wish Read online

  “Okay. That should do it.” The tech’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Do you want to sit with her while we read the scans?”

  He was looking at Theo.

  He was torn. He wanted to be with Ivy, but he also wanted to be there when the tech and Maddy scrolled through those images. He wanted to read the results on her face the moment she realized whether her hypothesis was right...or wrong.

  “Can I do both? Can we go through them in the room with her?”

  Maddy shook her head, her hand inching toward his before thinking better of it. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t want her frightened if she hears us discussing the findings. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go down with her to Recovery while we look over the scans? I’ll call you as soon I know something.”

  He had never been on this side of the equation before. He now knew how parents felt as they were forced to wait in a room while people decided what would and wouldn’t happen to their child. Or debated treatment protocols and diagnoses. But he couldn’t straddle the fence. Not this time. His place was with his daughter.

  “Okay. But I want to know the second you have an answer.”

  “I’ll call. I promise.”

  Theo left without saying another word, meeting the nurse as she wheeled the bed into one of the recovery rooms. Ivy was still sound asleep, her sweet angelic face wiped clean of any traces of worry. Or pain.

  And that sent a landslide of fear through him. It was too close to how he pictured Hope’s face.

  He could not lose her. Surely whatever deity was up there wouldn’t take her from him as well.

  Hope and Ivy were the only two people he had ever really loved other than his parents.

  Really? Was that the absolute truth? Wasn’t there...?

  He swallowed hard as a horrible, gut-wrenching possibility stole over him. One he shoved aside. This was not the time or the place.

  And if he had his way, it would never be.

  A minute later, Ivy’s voice broke through. “Daddy?”

  Relief swamped over him. “I’m right here, baby.”

  The nurse smiled at him. “She’s going to be just fine. And so are you, Dad.”

  Ha! That was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. Only it wasn’t funny. At all.

  His phone chirped. He snatched it up and jabbed the talk button. “Hawkwood here.”

  He had no idea why he did that. He already knew from his screen that it was Maddy. Maybe the desperate need to salvage this situation and put their feet back on professional ground had forced the move.

  “Um... Theo?” The confusion in her voice was plain and his gut tightened. He was a bastard. No doubt about it.

  “Yes, sorry. Ivy’s awake and talking.”

  “How are her legs?”

  “I haven’t asked.” And he didn’t want to ask. Not right now.

  “Well, can you get Judy to come up and sit with her? I have something I think you’ll want to see.”

  He gulped down a quick wash of bile. He wanted to ask her if it was a tumor or any number of catastrophic diagnoses that came to mind. But to do that would just frighten Ivy.

  “Yes. Give me a minute to get her up here.”

  That minute seemed like hours, when in fact it didn’t take long at all for Judy to speed up in the elevator and swing open that door. “How is she?”

  “She’s awake.” He brushed Ivy’s dark hair back from her face. “Judy is going to sit with you for a moment while I go and talk to Dr. Archer, okay?”

  “Why are you calling her Dr. Archer, Daddy?” Ivy’s tiny brows scrunched together before she gave a huge yawn. “She wants us...to call...her Madison.”

  She wanted him to call her Maddy. But he couldn’t do that anymore. Not if he had any hope of coming out of this in one piece.

  “I know she does, pumpkin. Go to sleep. I’ll be back in just a little while.”

  He needn’t have said anything. Ivy’s eyelids were already heavy and sinking lower by the second. It had been a long night that had taken a lot out of them all. And dawn was beginning to relentlessly creep up over the horizon.

  Judy took the seat next to the bed. “I’ll be right here if she wakes.”

  His housekeeper had been up as long as he had, probably even longer, since he’d been busy having a good old time with Ivy’s best hope for a cure.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Thank you for everything.”

  “You don’t need to thank me, Theo. I love this girl as if she were my own.”

  And since Judy had never married or had children of her own, in a very real way Ivy was like a granddaughter to her. That bond had just grown closer over the last four and a half years.

  He slid from the room, closing the door with care so as not to wake Ivy. His legs carried him along, going too fast and yet feeling like he was in one of those nightmares where every step was dragged backward by some unseen force. Still he put one foot in front of the other, wanting to get there and yet not wanting to. What if there was no hope for Ivy? What if it was some incurable disease that would silently steal her away from him?

  He gritted his teeth and forced himself to think of something else. She’d told him this was the time for hope, so he needed to hold onto that with all his might.

  He found the tech in the scanning booth, but there was no sign of Maddy. “I have another patient coming in, sorry. Car accident victim. Dr. Archer is waiting for you in exam room one, just down the corridor and to the right.”

  He knew where the room was, but forced himself to thank the guy and head back out again. This time the trip was faster since the room was just around the corner.

  The door was open, and Maddy was sitting inside with her back to him, her entire attention focused on the computer screen in front of her. And there it was again. That tug to his gut that appeared every time he was within ten feet of her. He’d thought spending a night with her might erase it, although it had been pure attraction that had brought them together, not a need to banish her from his system. He hadn’t thought there’d been a need to do that.

  Until today.

  The overhead light caught the highlights in her hair, giving them a warm glow that was normally impossible with a harsh florescent tube.

  His brain told him to call her by her title. His heart would not let him. Whatever else he did, he didn’t want to hurt her or try to deny what had happened in that hotel room. She deserved more than that.

  “Maddy?”

  She whirled around on the swivel stool. When she went to push a few locks of hair behind her ears, he noticed her hand was trembling.

  A cold wind blew across his soul. “What is it?”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before now. Grab that stool and sit down.”

  Her hand wasn’t the only thing that was shaking. Her voice had a quaver to it as well. Only it didn’t sound like fear. She sounded almost excited.

  Was that a good thing?

  He pulled the stool over from beside the exam table and set it beside hers. “Okay. Tell me.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you. Remember when my legs fell asleep?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she began rolling her finger across the laptop’s mouse pad and the images changed as quick as lightning.

  “Slow down. I can’t see what I’m looking at.”

  “Sorry. Not quite there yet.” But she did as he asked and slowed the pace of the changing images as they showed the detailed snapshots of his daughter’s spine, vertebrae and blood vessels.

  Maddy scrolled back and forth between a couple of images before stopping abruptly. “There. What do you see?”

  There was still that odd intonation to her voice that signaled urgency.

  Theo peered at the images, his chaotic brain struggling to make sense of
anything he was seeing. “Where am I—?”

  “Here.” She took her pen and pointed to an area on the screen and his world suddenly went silent.

  This section of her spinal cord flowed in a smooth even line until it reached one area where it bulged out a bit. Right next to it was a tangle of blood vessels that looked...enlarged.

  When he turned to glance her way, he found her staring at him. She already knew what it was. He was certain.

  “Why do people’s legs fall asleep?”

  He swallowed, realizing now why she’d gone back to that. “Because something presses on the nerve.”

  “Exactly. And here it is.” She circled the area. “This is what’s pressing on the nerves that control her legs.”

  “Her veins have been causing this? The whole time?”

  “Yes.” She turned to look at the image again. “We’ll need an angiogram to be sure, Theo, but I would bet it’s an arteriovenous fistula.”

  “Dural?”

  When she nodded, he said, “My God. It’s been sitting there in plain sight all along.”

  Color leached from her face. “I know. I am so sorry I haven’t seen it before now.”

  “How could you have? I would have gone months before thinking to look at the vessels near her spine, and even then it’s doubtful I would have found it. Or if I had, it might have been too late to restore function. If it’s not already.”

  “I don’t think it is. A lot of these cases take a year or longer to be diagnosed. It’s only been a couple of months.”

  “But it’s progressed so fast.”

  Spinal dural arteriovenous fistula. He searched his memory for the condition and came up with just snatches of information. The fistula part was easy—it was an abnormal connection between two differing things. In SDAVF, the capillaries that joined arteries to veins were missing. Instead, arteries were connected directly to veins, putting a strain on them until they bulged under the increased load. Those bulges—which were slowly growing in size—put pressure on her spinal cord, resulting in damage that was hopefully reversible.

  She’d said they needed an angiogram, but Theo knew she was right. The angiogram would just confirm the diagnosis and give them a definitive location, something not always visible in an MRI.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We get one of Hope Hospital’s excellent neurosurgeons to zap those suckers and shut them down.”

  The way she said it, in her typical American fashion, made him laugh, although he knew part of that was the sheer force of the relief that was sweeping over him. “You did it. You told me it was a time for hope and you were right.”

  Before he could stop himself, he took her face in his hands and stared deep into her eyes before his gaze dropped to her lips. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Y-you don’t need to thank me.”

  He leaned closer.

  “Dr. Archer?” The sudden sound had him jerking back, sending his stool rolling several inches.

  They both looked toward the door where the MRI tech was shifting from foot to foot. “I’m sorry for interrupting.”

  “You’re not.” The growled words didn’t help. If anything, the young man’s face turned ten shades of red before he addressed Maddy.

  “Do you still want me to schedule that emergency angiogram for the patient?”

  “Yes, please. And have a neurosurgeon standing by.” Maddy didn’t belt out the words or show emotion of any kind. She stood, smiling at the tech. “I appreciate you getting back to me so quickly.”

  There was something about the way she said those words that made him think she was glad the man had come in when he had.

  Maybe he wasn’t the only one who was having regrets over what had happened between them last night. Hell, that hadn’t stopped him from swooping in on her the second they found themselves alone in a room again.

  Relief. Pure and simple. He would have planted a kiss right on Judy’s lips if she’d been the one to come up with the solution.

  It would have been a completely different kind of kiss, though, wouldn’t it?

  Yes, it would have been.

  And that’s what made this situation so hard to face. He would have to get over it, though. For Ivy’s sake. Once all of this was done, he could come back and dissect his feelings all he wanted but right now the only thing that was on the table was his daughter’s health.

  * * *

  By eight in the morning the exams were all done and, as Theo knew it was going to be, Maddy’s hunch was confirmed. The location of the fistula fit the area of weakness, which was mostly in her legs and creeping upward as the veins continued to swell. It was also why she suddenly had no sensation in her legs. There had probably been a rapid change in the vessels over the last couple of days. Those kinds of things could progress quickly or move forward and then plateau for a while.

  Her arm weakness was probably caused by her upper body trying to compensate for her inability to use her legs to do common tasks—such as using them to shift herself or helping to move from a chair back to her bed. But that had just confused the issue, since everyone had thought it was generalized weakness over her whole body rather than it being confined to her legs.

  But Maddy had found the answer. In the end, the sudden paralysis had been the key they’d needed to solve the mystery.

  He was grateful. Overwhelmingly grateful. And he had no idea how to express that to her in a way that was appropriate. And the inappropriate ways were out of the question.

  That was another thing he wasn’t used to. He was used to being on the receiving end of his patients’ gratitude. Here he was trying to sort through how to say thanks without it being just words and nothing else.

  All of that could wait until Ivy’s surgery was over and she was on the mend, though. Then he would work it all out.

  And decide once and for all what to do.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE SURGERY WAS a success. The neurosurgeon had performed an endovascular embolization, going in through a catheter and injecting a tiny bit of glue into the offending vessels. Like the lights on a runway going out one by one, Maddy had gotten to see the affected veins disappear off the screen as their blood flow was cut off. The body would use other—normal—veins and capillaries in the area to take over for the ones they’d just obliterated.

  And hopefully as the swelling in her spinal cord subsided, Ivy would slowly regain sensation in her legs, and with hope and a lot of prayers her atrophied muscles would regain their strength. She was slated to start physical therapy in two days as soon as things started quietening down in her back.

  Madison had only seen Theo for a few minutes after the surgery. He’d seemed to be acting strangely, barely making eye contact with her before muttering a quick thank you and taking off to see his daughter.

  That was understandable, though. Of course he wanted to spend every second he could with her. It was like he’d been given a new lease of life. One that matched the one Ivy had been given.

  She wandered down the corridor of the surgical suite. It was midday and medical staff were flowing in and out of the rooms at a constant rate. Everything had happened so fast. She’d been up for twelve hours already.

  Only twelve hours since she’d woken up in that hotel room to the sound of her cellphone ringing. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Theo had seemed to age before her eyes over the day, his sentences getting shorter and shorter. The only time she’d seen a true spark of emotion in him had been when she’d shown him the spinal dural arteriovenous fistula on the MRI scans. She could still feel his palms cupping her face as he’d leaned in to kiss her.

  And he had been going to kiss her. Oh, she’d almost talked herself out of believing that, but after reliving the moment a thousand times in her head, she knew if that tech hadn’t shown up when he had, Theo’s mouth would have b
een on hers. If that had happened she’d have been just as powerless to stop her reaction to it as she’d been last night. Theo was like a tsunami. One that crashed over the walls that surrounded her heart and knocked down every defense. She’d been a willing participant.

  If he asked her up to his office today or a week from today, she’d go and to hell with the consequences.

  Except ever since that moment in the exam room, Theo had been the consummate professional, barely speaking to her. During surgery she’d sat in the observation area to watch. Theo had come in and had chosen a chair on the other side of the room. Her insides had squelched in embarrassment.

  How could things have changed so drastically?

  You came up with the answer, that’s why. He no longer needs to coddle you.

  No, Madison refused to believe that. That he’d simply been humoring her, hoping that by showing preferential treatment—hadn’t he even used that expression one time?—she would work even harder on his daughter’s case.

  By having sex with her?

  Surely not. Unless that’s what he’d thought she’d wanted.

  And, oh, God, she had wanted it. Had he somehow read her mind and obliged?

  She swallowed. She’d gotten it in her head that in the same way Ivy was special to her, Theo was beginning to think she was special too.

  But why would that even be true?

  She was just a colleague. One that he’d made the mistake of sleeping with.

  She had repeatedly told herself that she was not picturing Theo as anything more than a work partner. Until they’d slept together and she’d wondered if they might somehow become more than that.

  A family?

  Ha! Not very likely. He loved his wife. Didn’t the picture that was still sitting on his desk tell her that, along with his late wife’s medical degree hanging on his wall?

  Maddy was a fool.

  A fool who had stupidly fallen in love with a man who was unreachable.

  Yes, she could finally admit it. She loved him. And it was impossible. For both of them.

  She made her way to the elevator and then to her office, wondering how she was going to finish out the last five months of her stay in England. The last thing she wanted was to run into Theo day in and day out. Unless she could somehow convince herself she didn’t really love him. That working so closely together was what had done a number on her—dredging up emotions that were temporary and would fade as Ivy returned to health. As the reasons for she and Theo working so closely together came to a halt.