The Stanislaskis: Taming Natasha. Нора Робертс

      “I’ve seen enough to know you’ve made a good start.” She was hurrying down the steps as she spoke. “Be sure to contact my office when it’s time for the next draw.”

      “Damn it. Slow down.” He caught up with her at the bottom of the steps and grabbed her arm. “What’s wrong with you? First you stand in my room pale and out of breath. Now you run away, and your eyes are miserable.”

      It had hit her, hard, that she had no community of people who cared. Her circle of friends was so narrow, so self-involved. Her best friend had been Peter, and that had been horribly spoiled. Her life was on the sidelines, and she envied the involvement, the closeness she felt in this place. The building wasn’t hers, she thought again. She only owned it.

      “I’m not running away, and nothing’s wrong with me.” She had to get out, get away, but she had to do it with dignity. “I take this job very seriously. It’s my first major project since taking over Hayward. I want it done right. And I took a chance by…” She trailed off, glancing toward the door just to her right. She could have sworn she’d heard someone call for help. Television, she thought, but before she could continue, she heard the thin, pitiful call again. “Mikhail, do you hear that?”

      “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,