Page 21 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

Okay, Janice. I'm ready. Set up the date.

I put the phone face-up on the cushion and looked at my own dim reflection in the dark window. Seconds later it lit.

THAT'S SO AWESOME!! This is gonna be the most fun thing EVER!!

13 - VOLUN-TOLD

Lacey

Monday morning, I was in my office by 6:45, the building still quiet the way it only gets before the day commits to itself. It was the best part of the day, the part that belonged to medicine, before the administration and the politics arrived to complicate it. I’d also picked up two extra call weekends this quarter. Nobody had asked me why, which was fortunate, because the honest answer had a dollar sign and six digits in it.

My door opened without a knock.

Dr. Allison Hawke stepped inside and closed it behind her. Chief Medical Officer, five-foot-two of iron will in a tailored gray suit, silver hair cropped. She didn't sit. In six years, I'd learned to read the difference between Allison standing and Allison sitting, and standing meant brace yourself.

"Lacey," she said, folding her arms. "A word."

I closed the report window and gave her my full attention. "Of course."

She got straight to it, because she always did. "The hospital gala is in a couple weeks. You'll be sitting at the head table."

I blinked. "I usually sit with the peds team."

"Not this year."

"Is there a seating issue? Because if it's about the Hendersons, I can talk to—"

"No issue." Allison's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "You're sitting with Derek Harrington."

My stomach dropped. "Derek Harrington."

"The same."

I sat back in my chair. "Allie."

"I know."

"He and I don't exactly—"

"I know that too." She stepped closer, dropping her voice to the register she used when she wanted something to stay in the room. "He's our single largest individual donor. He's also still carrying a grudge against half the medical staff, and there isn't a person on this floor he doesn't regard with some degree of active suspicion." A pause. "Except you."

I laughed, short, disbelieving. "Allie, I don't think you've watched us together. He doesn't like me. He argues with me about activity restrictions, about whether Jessica can play soccer, about whether I'm being too conservative, too cautious, too quick to say no. Every visit ends with him looking at me as if he's quietly calculating what it would cost to buy the hospital and have me replaced with someone more agreeable."

"Exactly." She held my gaze. "He argues with you. He doesn't argue with anyone else. He stonewalls them, polite, strategic stonewalling, the kind that costs us donations, access and goodwill we can't afford to lose. With you at least he engages. He pushes back. He shows up." She let that settle. "That's not hostility, Lacey. That's investment. And investment is leverage."

I opened my mouth. She continued before I could use it.

"We need the new pediatric MRI suite funded. The equipment alone is six million. Altogether it might be north of ten million. Derek Harrington has the capacity to fund that with a single signature if he's in the right mood and the right company." She tilted her head, and the not-quite-smile returned. "Your assignment is to sit next to him at the gala. Talk to him. Not about medicine, not about Jessica's activity restrictions, not about anything that lets him put on his board-member face. Just talk to him. Like a human being, at a dinner. Soften the ground a little."

"You want me to charm him." Charm Derek fucking Harrington.

"I want you to be yourself. Which, when you're not being his daughter's cardiologist and he's not being the man who second-guesses everything you do, appears to be enough." She straightened, already turning for the door. "As with every other impossible job you've pulled off here, I'm confident you'll exceed my expectations."

"Allie, how exactly does he make all his money? Nobody has ever told me, but you and Pamela were close, right?"

Allison hesitated. "I'm not sure I completely understand myself, to be honest. His company does some kind of contract with the military, and he used to be Special Forces, that's about all I know." She looked at me significantly. "And that's all I care to know."

She was gone before I could protest.