Flann sighed. “Jesus, Harp—don’t go all metaphysical on me.” She paused, her expression distant and dark, a rare glimpse beneath her mask of casual indifference. “Maybe it’s just that we’re all afraid of the dark—too many ghosts.”

“Maybe,” Harper said quietly.

“What else happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’re winning with Jimmy, or at least holding the line, there’s got to be some other reason you look like your dog died.”

“Me, my dogs, and all the other animals are just fine.”

“Woman problems, then. What’s happened now?”

“Nothing. Let it go.”

“Last night at the game, Carrie mentioned Presley was headed to Phoenix today.”

Harper contemplated throttling her. “Did you come down here just to annoy me?”

“I’ll go and let you sulk as soon as you tell me what put the burr in your saddle.”

“Presley.”

“Well, yeah. I got that part.”

“Every time I think I’m getting closer, she gets further away.” Harper’s skin still burned from the memory of Presley pressed against her. Every time she wasn’t totally absorbed in making a medical decision, her entire being was consumed with wanting Presley—and her absence left her starving. She shuddered. God damn it.

Flann snorted. “That’s appropriately vague, and considering the subject, probably accurate. Try small sentences with simple words. What. Happened?”

Harper sighed. “Presley seems to think we don’t have anything in common.”

“Probably because you don’t.”

Harper shot up straight on the sofa. “That’s bullshit. We’re part of the same world, we’re just coming at it from slightly different directions. She understands what I do. And even though I don’t always like it, I understand what she does.”

“Same world, maybe—different continents. Come on, Harp. You’re on opposite sides on this. The two of you couldn’t be further apart.”

“No, that’s just the thing. We should be, but we’re not.” Harper recalled opening the on-call room door and finding Presley outside in the hall, how grateful she’d been to let someone she trusted take charge for just a little while. She didn’t have to hide how scared she was, how the fear of losing Jimmy Reynolds was eating her alive. Presley knew. “She—gets me. Gets what I do, what I need.”

“Uh-oh. That sounds bad.”

“It wouldn’t be, if she’d just let herself believe it.”

“Maybe she doesn’t feel the same way,” Flann said with a gentleness she rarely showed to anyone other than her patients.

Harper braced her elbows on her knees and put her face in her hands. Maybe Presley really didn’t feel what she felt, the connection, the understanding, the desire. Maybe it was one-sided and she’d been deluding herself the whole time. “I guess that’s possible. I guess when you want something so bad, it blinds you to what’s real.”

“Crap,” Flann muttered. “Look, what exactly did you tell her? Did you use the L-word?”

Harper almost laughed. “What are we, in high school now? No, I didn’t tell her I loved her.”

“But? I hear a great big fat but at the end of that sentence.”

“But I do. I don’t even have to think about it. It just is.” Harper rubbed the spot in the center of her chest that hurt every time she took a breath. It wasn’t a physical ache, this longing in her soul for the sight and sound of the one person who filled the empty spaces inside, but every bit as real…and agonizing. “She fits. She fills me.”

“Yeah, and she’s smoking hot too.”

“You keep it up, and I might throw you out the hatch headfirst.”

“Are you sure it’s not just that? That, you know, you’re thinking with your hormones? You wouldn’t be the first.”

Harper shook her head. “You might be a sucker for a hot body, but I’m not. I don’t work that way. Sure, she’s gorgeous and I want her, but there’s always been more than that.”

“This is sounding worse and worse.”

“It isn’t, at least it wouldn’t be if I knew that she cared. That I wasn’t alone in all of this.”

Flann shrugged. “Okay, fine. Then you need a plan. What exactly did she say?”

“That she won’t talk about anything between us until things at the hospital are settled.”

“That makes sense. Things will get rough if she closes the place. A lot of people will have hard feelings. That’s gonna make any kind of relationship twice as hard. Maybe you should just wait—”

“Wait? For what?” Harper jumped to her feet and paced in the small space, circling the oak. “Until life is easy? Until there are no obstacles, no challenges? There will always be those things. I know what she does, and I understand the decision that she’s made. I might not agree with it, but I understand it.”

“Harper,” Flann said sharply, rising too, pacing in the rest of the space so they barely had enough room to pass one another. “Think about it. If she closes the Rivers, how are you ever going to resolve that between you? The Rivers is everything to you. Always has been.”

Harper abruptly stopped. “You’re right. It has been. Past tense. I understand now that the Rivers isn’t everything and can never make me completely happy. Maybe you’re right, maybe Dad should’ve tried to balance things better—”

“Bullshit,” Flann said. “I was wrong to criticize him. He wasn’t alone in making the decisions. Mom is no pushover. If she’d wanted something different, she would’ve seen to it.”

“Maybe.” Harper recalled the conversation she’d had in the kitchen with her mother. “And maybe she just understood that that’s what he needed.”

“What do you need, Harper? Do you know?”

“I always thought I did. I wanted a life like Mom and Dad’s. I wanted to be as good a doctor as Dad. I wanted to be important to people in the community, to be part of their lives. I didn’t realize that even if I had all of those things, I would never be happy if I was still alone.”

“And Presley is the one?”

“I want her. I need her in my life.”

Flann sighed. “Well, sitting around up here isn’t going to get that done.”

Harper grinned. “Finally, we agree.”

*

As Presley’s plane circled Detroit, she closed her laptop and stowed it in her computer bag under the seat. She flipped open the file folder on her lap and reread the few pages. Harper had been busy. As it stood, Harper’s proposal to affiliate ACH with the Albany Medical School and RPI’s combined BS-MD program to train medical students and residents in community-oriented specialties like family medicine and geriatrics was intriguing, but it wasn’t enough. Harper was correct in concluding that such an association would bring in federal funding for every student and resident they trained, but it would be too little too late. They’d need more staff to run the program, for one thing. Student housing, more insurance. She rubbed her eyes. In all likelihood the initial investment to get the programs up and running would offset any new sources of revenue, at least for a few years. For long-range planning, the idea had promise, but it was not the salvation the Rivers needed.

She couldn’t see any way to make it work. She’d give anything if things were different, but they weren’t. That was the easy answer and the easy out for her. She’d tried, but the Rivers was beyond saving. Only each time she came to the same conclusion, the less happy she was about it. She kept seeing Emmy Reynolds’s terrified eyes and Harper’s bone-deep fatigue, and knew neither woman would ever quit. Emmy and Harper were warriors, and the community was filled with them—ordinary people fighting every day for the ones they loved. Harper would keep fighting to save the Rivers until the padlock went on the gates, and she’d come to Presley for help. Presley was failing her, and the failure was a bitter ache in her heart.

The plane taxied to the gate and Presley thought of the next few hours when she’d finally be home. She had her own fight in Phoenix. That was her battleground, and it was time for her to marshal her forces and take the fight to Preston. She wondered why the idea of winning what she’d wanted all her life left her feeling so empty.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Presley stopped at her condo on her way through the city to SunView’s headquarters. The two-bedroom apartment in one of the most sought after high-rises was clean and orderly—she had a service come in weekly whether she was in town or not—but the air smelled artificially pure with the faintest undertone of chemicals she’d never noticed before. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city skyline, affording her a million-dollar view that held none of the pulse of life she was used to seeing out the leaded-glass panes of her hospital office window. No birds nesting, no branches fluttering, no flowers in bloom. There were planters along some of the avenues and elaborate window boxes on the fronts of many upscale boutiques, but the cityscape was one of concrete and glass rather than living plants and beings, unless you counted the people, and then the city teemed with life—the identities and faces of passersby anonymous and unnamed. The doorman in her building was one of the few people she saw outside the office whose name she knew. Within a few weeks back in Argyle, she’d learned the names of everyone on Harper’s softball team, the nurses in the ER and many of the clinical areas, and the clerks at the gas station and mini-mart.

When she’d left Phoenix she couldn’t wait to return. Now she was here and felt like a visitor. Maybe the airplane really was a time machine and she’d just been hurled into a different world. She wasn’t sure she belonged here any longer, where success was measured in currency rather than inner satisfaction and where family meant status and obligation rather than support and loyalty and love.

Presley sighed. She might be straddling two worlds and fit in neither, but she was here now and she had a lot to finish. Resolutely, she put thoughts of Harper and the past—or future—aside. She showered off the fatigue and grime of travel, aware of the absence of the rattling pipes that usually accompanied her morning shower, dressed quickly in a skirt and jacket, stepped into medium heels, and relocated her papers and laptop into a briefcase that was coordinated with the outfit. As an afterthought, she slipped Harper’s proposal in along with the preliminary reallocation report she’d printed out to review with Preston and the other managers.