Lilac Lane (Chesapeake Shores #14)(28)
He glanced over and caught Kiera studying him intently, her expression filled with skepticism. Eventually she nodded.
“I’ll take you at your word, then,” she conceded. “And perhaps we can give that truce of yours a try, as well.”
Bryan pulled into a parking space behind the pub, shut off the engine and turned to her. He was surprised to see a faint spark of excitement in her blue eyes. It gave them the brightness of sapphires, he decided, then shook off the thought as another of those unexpected and inappropriate digressions he should be avoiding.
He did not need to be noticing Kiera Malone’s bright eyes or her lush hips or the creaminess of her skin. He didn’t need to start thinking of her as a woman at all, he reminded himself fiercely.
Because in his past experience, females did little beyond driving a man crazy and then leaving him with a broken heart. He’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. In fact, years later, he was still recovering from the last time.
Chapter 7
Deanna Lane sat in the doctor’s office at the University of Virginia campus health center, her nails biting into the palms of her hands. She’d been feeling lousy for over a week. Her energy level, which usually kept her going from dawn till midnight, had fallen to a new low. She could barely force herself to crawl out of bed in the morning.
With finals coming up in another week and the semester due to end, she normally would have waited to see her family doctor back home in Richmond, but she was afraid whatever she’d caught would play havoc with her ability to study and keep her grades up. Her roommate had noticed her pale complexion and lack of energy and asked point-blank if she was pregnant, but that wasn’t even remotely possible. She was dating, but not seriously enough for there to be any chance of that.
In her premed courses, she’d learned just enough to be terrified that she might have some sort of blood disorder or cancer. That was the danger of all those courses, she’d been told. They could make even the healthiest student susceptible to hypochondria. Before they knew it, they’d start imagining they had a dozen fatal illnesses by the time the semester ended. Surely that’s all this was, her imagination working overtime. Mononucleosis would be a much more logical explanation. A light case of an energy-sapping flu even more likely.
When Dr. Robbins, who was not only one of the physicians, but a professor and Deanna’s adviser and mentor, came into the room her expression gave away nothing.
“Well,” Deanna prodded. “What’s the verdict? What do the blood tests show?”
“That you’re perfectly healthy,” the doctor said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Deanna, your blood work is absolutely normal in every respect.”
The reply should have reassured her, but Deanna wanted answers. She needed solutions, not a pep talk. “Should we be doing other tests of some kind?”
“I honestly don’t feel they’re necessary right now.”
“Then why am I feeling so crummy?” She mentally flipped the pages of various textbooks. When nothing obvious jumped out at her, she seized on her psychology course. “Am I depressed?”
Dr. Robbins fought a smile. “Do you think you’re depressed?”
“No, but there must be some explanation. You looked for mono, right?”
“You’re a college student. Of course I did,” she replied patiently, “though we haven’t seen many cases on campus this year.”
“Help me out here. I need to figure out what’s going on and fix it,” she said in the goal-oriented way that had driven her all her life.
“Okay,” Dr. Robbins said. “While I can’t find anything specific in your test results to go on, my educated hunch is that you’re staying up way too late studying, panicking a bit over finals in your premed classes and already thinking ahead to that summer job you’re planning to take back home working for your stepfather.”
That all made perfect sense, but Deanna wasn’t entirely convinced. “This isn’t all in my head, Dr. Robbins. It can’t be.”
“Oh, the symptoms are real enough,” she said. “But trust me, they’ll go away once you get some rest and put your exams behind you. One of these days you’ll grasp the significance of the mind-body connection. I believe it’s possible to make yourself sick and to make yourself well,” she said, then added, “though an educated diagnostician and physician certainly can play an important role.”
She leveled a somber look into Deanna’s eyes. “There’s another thing that might be at work here, something we’ve talked about before. Perhaps you need to admit to your stepfather that you really don’t want to work in his construction business, not only for this summer, but definitely not forever. I know that decision you made has been weighing on you.”
Deanna winced, almost regretting that she’d confided in this woman she’d come to trust. “It’s not that I don’t want to work with him,” she insisted. “It’s just that...” Her voice trailed off.
“It’s just that your heart is in medicine. Don’t you think he’ll understand that, especially given how much time the two of you spent in hospitals when your mother was ill? From everything you’ve told me, he’s a reasonable man. And you are taking premed courses.”