Nora Roberts - The Stanislaskis - Taming Natasha

“Hear what?” How could he hear anything when he was trying not to kiss her again?

“In here.” She turned toward the door, straining her ears. “Yes, in here, I heard—”

That time he’d heard it, too. Lifting a fist, he pounded on the door. “Mrs. Wolburg. Mrs. Wolburg, it’s Mik.”

The shaky voice barely penetrated the wood. “Hurt. Help me.”

“Oh, God, she’s—”

Before Sydney could finish, Mikhail rammed his shoulder against the door. With the second thud, it crashed open to lean drunkenly on its hinges.

“In the kitchen,” Mrs. Wolburg called weakly. “Mik, thank God.”

He bolted through the apartment with its starched doilies and paper flowers to find her on the kitchen floor. She was a tiny woman, mostly bone and thin flesh. Her usually neat cap of white hair was matted with sweat.

“Can’t see,” she said. “Dropped my glasses.”

“Don’t worry.” He knelt beside her, automatically checking her pulse as he studied her pain-filled eyes. “Call an ambulance,” he ordered Sydney, but she was already on the phone. “I’m not going to help you up, because I don’t know how you’re hurt.”

“Hip.” She gritted her teeth at the awful, radiating pain. “I think I busted my hip. Fell, caught my foot. Couldn’t move. All the noise, nobody could hear me calling. Been here two, three hours. Got so weak.”

“It’s all right now.” He tried to chafe some heat into her hands. “Sydney, get a blanket and pillow.”

She had them in her arms and was already crouching beside Mrs. Wolburg before he’d finished the order. “Here now. I’m just going to lift your head a little.” Gently she set the woman’s limp head on the pillow. Despite the raging heat, Mrs. Wolburg was shivering with cold. As she continued to speak in quiet, soothing tones, Sydney tucked the blanket around her. “Just a few more minutes,” Sydney murmured, and stroked the clammy forehead.

A crowd was forming at the door. Though he didn’t like leaving Sydney with the injured woman, he rose. “I want to keep the neighbors away. Send someone to keep an eye for the ambulance.”

“Fine.” While fear pumped hard in her heart, she continued to smile down at Mrs. Wolburg. “You have a lovely apartment. Do you crochet the doilies yourself?”

“Been doing needlework for sixty years, since I was pregnant with my first daughter.”

“They’re beautiful. Do you have other children?”

“Six, three of each. And twenty grandchildren. Five great…” She shut her eyes on a flood of pain, then opened them again and managed a smile. “Been after me for living alone, but I like my own place and my own way.”

“Of course.”

“And my daughter, Lizzy? Moved clear out to Phoenix, Arizona. Now what would I want to live out there for?”

Sydney smiled and stroked. “I couldn’t say.”

“They’ll be on me now,” she muttered, and let her eyes close again. “Wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t dropped my glasses. Terrible nearsighted. Getting old’s hell, girl, and don’t let anyone tell you different. Couldn’t see where I was going and snagged my foot in that torn linoleum. Mik told me to keep it taped down, but I wanted to give it a good scrub.” She managed a wavery smile. “Least I’ve been lying here on a clean floor.”

“Paramedics are coming up,” Mikhail said from behind her. Sydney only nodded, filled with a terrible guilt and anger she was afraid to voice.

“You call my grandson, Mik? He lives up on Eighty-first. He’ll take care of the rest of the family.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Wolburg.”

Fifteen efficient minutes later, Sydney stood on the sidewalk watching as the stretcher was lifted into the back of the ambulance.

“Did you reach her grandson?” she asked Mikhail.

“I left a message on his machine.”

Nodding, she walked to the curb and tried to hail a cab.

“Where’s your car?”

“I sent him home. I didn’t know how long I’d be and it was too hot to leave him sitting there. Maybe I should go back in and call a cab.”

“In a hurry?”

She winced as the siren shrieked. “I want to get to the hospital.”

Nonplussed, he jammed his hands into his pockets. “There’s no need for you to go.”

She turned, and her eyes, in the brief moment they held his, were ripe with emotion. Saying nothing, she faced away until a cab finally swung to the curb. Nor did she speak when Mikhail climbed in behind her.

She hated the smell of hospitals. Layers of illness, antiseptics, fear and heavy cleaners. The memory of the last days her grandfather had lain dying were still too fresh in her mind. The Emergency Room of the downtown hospital added one more layer. Fresh blood.

Sydney steeled herself against it and walked through the crowds of the sick and injured to the admitting window.

“You had a Mrs. Wolburg just come in.”

“That’s right.” The clerk stabbed keys on her computer. “You family?”

“No, I—”

“We’re going to need some family to fill out these forms. Patient said she wasn’t insured.”

Mikhail was already leaning over, eyes dangerous, when Sydney snapped out her answer. “Hayward Industries will be responsible for Mrs. Wolburg’s medical expenses.” She reached into her bag for identification and slapped it onto the counter. “I’m Sydney Hayward. Where is Mrs. Wolburg?”

“In X ray.” The frost in Sydney’s eyes had the clerk shifting in her chair. “Dr. Cohen’s attending.”

So they waited, drinking bad coffee among the moans and tears of inner city ER. Sometimes Sydney would lay her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. She appeared to be dozing, but all the while she was thinking what it would be like to be old, and alone and helpless.

He wanted to think she was only there to cover her butt. Oh yes, he wanted to think that of her. It was so much more comfortable to think of her as the head of some bloodless company than as a woman.

But he remembered how quickly she had acted in the Wolburg apartment, how gentle she had been with the old woman. And most of all, he remembered the look in her eyes out on the street. All that misery and compassion and guilt welling up in those big eyes.

“She tripped on the linoleum,” Sydney murmured.

It was the first time she’d spoken in nearly an hour, and Mikhail turned his head to study her. Her eyes were still closed, her face pale and in repose.

“She was only walking in her own kitchen and fell because the floor was old and unsafe.”

“You’re making it safe.”

Sydney continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Then she could only lie there, hurt and alone. Her voice was so weak. I nearly walked right by.”

“You didn’t walk by.” His hand hesitated over hers. Then, with an oath, he pressed his palm to the back of her hand. “You’re only one Hayward, Sydney. Your grandfather—”

“He was ill.” Her hand clenched under Mikhail’s, and her eyes squeezed more tightly closed. “He was sick nearly two years, and I was in Europe. I didn’t know. He didn’t want to disrupt my life. My father was dead, and there was only me, and he didn’t want to worry me. When he finally called me, it was almost over. He was a good man. He wouldn’t have let things get so bad, but he couldn’t…he just couldn’t.”

She let out a short, shuddering breath. Mikhail turned her hand over and linked his fingers with hers.

“When I got to New York, he was in the hospital. He looked so small, so tired. He told me I was the only Hayward left. Then he died,” she said wearily. “And I was.”

“You’re doing what needs to be done. No one can ask for more than that.”

She opened her eyes again, met his. “I don’t know.”