Double Jeopardy (6 page)

She’d noted the unusual drawings immediately, charcoal sketches of almost grotesque faces that drew the eye and held it. Each stark drawing emphasized one feature, an unusual nose, or one ear larger than the other, or a dominant mouth. Only one sketch was more conventional, a free form drawing of a small boy with impossible hair, devilish eyes and a rogue’s grin.

Probably Halsey’s son, Sera decided. Halsey wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but lots of people didn’t these days. Or maybe he lived with someone.

“Gemma’s coming along really well. I’ve scheduled her surgery for the twenty-third,” he remarked.

Sera glanced over at the calendar on his wall. Today was the seventeenth.

“It can’t be too soon. She’s almost out of her mind about the way she looks.” Even that was an understatement; Gemma had been so hysterical when she first saw her ravaged face she’d had to be sedated all over again, and since then, she’d alternated between bitter rage and depression.

“That’s quite usual. She’ll feel much more optimistic when the reconstruction is done and the swelling subsides enough for her to see that she looks normal again.”

“She will, won’t she?” Sera gave him an anxious glance. “Look normal again?” He’d assured them all that the chances were good that Gemma would look the same as she always had, but as each day passed, it became harder to believe. Her sister’s face was shockingly disfigured, to the point where it made Sera nauseous to see her. Sera needed reassurance almost as desperately as her sister.

“Absolutely.” He didn’t even make his usual careful qualifications. Instead, he smiled, and she noticed how kind his smile was, and how it extended to his eyes. Behind his round, wire rimmed glasses, those clear green eyes crinkled at the corners, filled with warmth.

She’d seen him numerous times in the past few days, coming or going from her sister’s room. He’d always stopped and taken the time to fill Sera in on any changes in her sister’s condition, even though she knew he’d already gone over every detail with her mother and father, and probably, as well, with the hordes of Cardano relatives who flowed in and out of the Intensive Care unit.

She’d seen him talking to Jack Kilgallin once or twice, too. Jack was a constant visitor now that others were allowed in Gemma’s room. He brought small bouquets of flowers, and tapes for the player Sera had transported in.

Her sister seemed barely to notice his presence, but Sera had concluded that Jack was a kind and considerate man.

Ben Halsey was also kind. The difference was, Sera found Halsey sexy, as well. She couldn’t help but notice how attractive he was; no woman with breath in her body could miss it. He was deeply tanned, with an athlete’s body, broad shouldered, not extraordinarily tall. Not an extra ounce of fat was visible beneath the checked short-sleeved shirt and tan slacks he was wearing today.

His dark brown hair was beginning to turn prematurely gray at the temples, and although it was thick, he wore it cropped close to his well-shaped head. He had a strong, straight nose, and the round glasses emphasized beautiful green eyes and long dark lashes. His mouth was just full enough to be sensuous; his chin and jaw were strong and cleanly delineated; his teeth, white and even.

That he had wrinkles made his face interesting instead of just handsome. There were deep laugh lines at the comers of his eyes and mouth, horizontal creases on his forehead; it was obvious that in spite of his profession he hadn’t had any nips or tucks himself. His face looked lived in.

“I like your drawings. Who did them?” Sera turned to inspect them again, using the movement to try to get comfortable. Didn’t he realize these chairs were back breakers?

“I did, and thank you. Dana, my office nurse, was scandalized when I hung them. She thought patients would be put off by them, maybe conclude I was making light of their problems. Funnily enough, most patients don’t seem to even notice.”

“They’re probably too busy thinking about what they want you to fix for them, and wondering how much it’s going to cost and whether it will hurt” And trying to get out of here fast to escape these damnable chairs.

He laughed. “You’re perceptive. Those are the exact issues that are raised in the first ten minutes of the first visit.”

“Do you ever get tired of saying the same things all the time?” He made it easy to ask questions, even personal ones. In spite of his chairs, he made her feel comfortable, she supposed because he was so relaxed and easygoing himself.

“Nope, never. I love my work. It sounds sappy, but I consider it a great privilege to be able to help people feel better about themselves.”

“I don’t think that’s sappy at all.” She considered it noble, but she was too shy to tell him that. “Voluntarily having bits of me changed is not something I’d ever do. I guess that perfect or not, I like myself fine the way I am.”

Plastic surgery wasn’t something she’d given a lot of thought to before Gemma’s accident, but she’d seen enough actresses in L.A. change their appearance to know that plastic surgery was the norm these days.

“
For people who aren’t satisfied with how they look, I think it’s great to have a choice,” she went on. “And for Gemma, of course it’s essential.” The idea of Gemma having to live with the face she had now didn’t bear even thinking about. Sera shuddered. She was afraid her sister would commit suicide if there was no hope of repair.

“Thanks again.” That affable smile came and went. “And what about you? Do you enjoy your work, Ms. Cardano? What do you do?”

“Sera, please. With an E, because it’s short for Seraphina.”

“Seraphina,” he repeated slowly. “That’s unusual. I like it.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t It makes me feel as if I ought to be wearing a white robe and hauling a harp. Ms. Cardano, on the other hand, tells me I oughta be wearing a striped business suit and carrying a briefcase.”

He laughed. “Okay, I’ll settle for Sera. My name’s Ben. So if you’re not an angel, I gather you’re not a lawyer, either. No striped suit or briefcase?” He waited as if he had all the time in the world for her to answer his question.

“Nope, not a lawyer, although my dad would have been thrilled if I’d gone that route,” she said. “I’m a set designer, an assistant set designer at the moment, doing the set for a sitcom. And I’m the same as you, I absolutely love my work.”

He was obviously interested. “Now, that’s a fascinating job. You must have a lot of artistic ability. You have to draw the set first, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Sera nodded. “Then we build a model to scale. The trick is to make sure the set doesn’t look like a set.”

“And it would have to take on the personality of the lead character, I imagine. If they were showing where the character lived, for instance?”

“That’s right. Wow, not many people understand that.” Sera was amazed and impressed by his immediate comprehension of some of the subtleties of her job.

“Do you always work here in Vancouver?”

“Nope, this is the first time I’ve been back to Vancouver on a job. I go wherever the work takes me. I worked in Chicago after graduation, doing stage sets, and then in Seattle for several years before I moved to L.A. I wanted to see if I could get into movies and television, which as you probably know do a lot of shooting in Vancouver. I was lucky to get this job, and it’s such a bonus to work in my hometown.”

“Will you be here long?”

“For the next few months. Unless they decide to move the production somewhere else, which isn’t unheard of.”

“Well, your being here is a stroke of luck, for your sister and for me.”

He stood up. “If you’ll come in here, we can begin.” He opened the door to an adjoining room and Sera leaped up, grateful to leave the crippling chair behind.

She gestured at the drawing of the child as she passed it. “Is this cute guy your son?”

“My godson. I’m not married, and have no kids of my own, for which I’m thankful each time I visit him. Stanley’s what my mother used to call a ‘holy terror.’ ” There were pride and affection in his tone. “How about you, Sera? You married? Kids?”

“Nope, never been married. Gemma was for a short time, but I’m sort of married to my job, I guess.”

“I know what you mean.” He gestured at a high stool. “If you could sit up there, it’ll make my life easier and your back sore, but I’ll try to be quick.” He turned on several lamps and aimed them at her face, doing his best not to shine them in her eyes.

“It can’t be any worse than that chair in your outer office,” she said without thinking.

What was she doing, making cracks like that? Gemma’s face was in this man’s hands, and here she was antagonizing him.

But he laughed instead of getting annoyed. “Those were gifts from my mother when I first opened my office. I’ve been planning on getting new ones, but I keep putting it off. Mom goes for form instead of function.”

With a professional looking camera, he snapped photos of her from every conceivable angle. As he did, he talked, a crazy stream of words that didn’t require any response and were obviously intended to help her relax and take her mind off the fact that the stool was uncomfortable.

“I should have enrolled in a few classes in photography, but they never tell you that when you’re a med student.” He tilted her chin up with a gentle finger. “Perfect, that’s perfect. Actually, it’s amazing what they consider unimportant in a doctor’s training. I guess everybody’s heard by now about the two hours of nutritional instruction the average physician gets in training, but would you believe we never had even one hour’s instruction in what the well-dressed physician should wear once he can afford to buy clothes? You’d think somebody from GQ would catch on that there’s a lucrative potential market out there.”

He moved to her other side, again tilting her chin with a finger and rapidly snapping one photo after the other.

“They never even tested us for color blindness, can you believe that? What if a doctor ends up not recognizing blood because it looks gray to him? I’m not color blind, thank heavens, so I don’t mix up blood and drool, or I don’t wear purple shirts with yellow pants, but I don’t have much clothes sense. I’ve got to rely on an outspoken office nurse who’s quick to tell me which shirt doesn’t go with whatever pants.”

Sera couldn’t help but giggle and he went right on snapping, coming in close, moving farther away. He was taking more photographs of her than she’d had taken in her life.

“I’m pretty lucky,” he continued without a halt. “As I said, I’ve got Dana to clue me in if I go off track, but what about those poor devils just out of med school who don’t have an office nurse to guide them? I suppose that’s one of the reasons the majority of us marry in haste and repent at leisure.”

Abruptly, the flow of words stopped. Sera had the definite feeling that he hadn’t planned to reveal himself quite that much. He was silent for several long moments.

“Sorry,” he said in a subdued voice. “I didn’t mean to bore you with my personal history. My tongue works independently of my brain when I’m concentrating.”

“Did you really marry just to get advice on your wardrobe?” Sera was teasing, but his answer was both shockingly straightforward and serious.

“I married because of hormones.” His tone was rueful. “There was this incredible physical attraction.” He set the camera down. “The problem is, sex is not always the best basis for a lasting relationship.”

It certainly was appealing for the short-term, Sera mused. Having him so close to her activated her hormones, that was for sure. He smelled good, a clean woodsy scent. His breath was pleasant, natural, not masked by mint. This close to him she could see that his beautiful eyes had tiny flecks of gold mixed in with the green. He was a find, in Maisie’s terminology.

“That’s about what Gemma said after she divorced Raymond, that the big appeal was her ex’s body, not his brain.” Sera wondered if Halsey was a tiny bit chauvinistic in his attitudes. She challenged him on it.

He laughed. “Works both ways, of course,” he conceded.

“Why did you decide to become a plastic surgeon, Ben?” Using his first name felt strange, but he had suggested it.

“Because of my great grandfather. My father’s family was from England. Great grandpa Edward was a soldier in the First World War. He was trapped inside a bombed building in France in 1918, just before the war ended.” He grabbed a straight-backed chair and sat down on it. “He got burned. Face mostly. Hands, too. Body not as bad. He was sent to Queens Hospital at Sidcup in Kent. The doctors there were experimenting with grafts and other early techniques for restoring facial features, and they did what they could for him.”