‘What are you talking about? You don’t have to do anything for me. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself!’
Jay bowed his head, drew in an audible breath, and then looked into her eyes. ‘Helen, will you please listen to me –’
‘Am I interrupting?’ Peter Hart stood in the doorway, his normally bland face avid with interest.
Helen shot to her feet and forced a smile. ‘No, come in, Peter. I was expecting you.’ She glanced at Jay. ‘Do you want to continue this conversation later?’
‘Sure.’
He strolled across to a vacant chair by the window and sat down.
Helen glared at him. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to wait outside?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Nope.’
Peter Hart cleared his throat. ‘Mr Turner, we will be discussing private hospital business. It might be better if you leave.’
‘That’s OK, Prof.’ Jay waved a hand. ‘I’m so dumb, I won’t understand any of it anyway.’
Helen clenched her jaw so hard it hurt. Today was definitely turning into a disaster so why not make it complete by letting Jay see the real her at work? She smiled sympathetically at Peter Hart.
‘Jay’s right, Peter. He’s way too stoopid to understand what we’re talking about. Let him stay in the corner.’ She had the brief satisfaction of seeing Jay’s smile wiped off his face.
‘I’ll wait outside,’ he grunted, leaving the room.
‘Very well, then.’ Peter took the chair in front of her desk. ‘What did you want to see me about, dear?’
Helen took a deep breath. ‘It’s about the research papers we produced. I wasn’t entirely honest with you at the start.’
Peter frowned. ‘In what way?’
‘I didn’t come up with the chemical formula for the new polyethylene compound all by myself.’
‘Well, I know that. If you remember, I perfected your basic suggestion.’
‘No, you didn’t. I let you take credit for that, but I also let you believe the basic idea was mine.’ Peter looked as if he wanted to speak but Helen kept going. ‘In fact, I wasn’t the originator of the formula at all. Ten years ago, the summer after you became my mentor, I met a guy called Robert Grant. He was an exchange student from England studying at M.I.T.’
‘Go on.’ Peter sat forward.
‘One night, we got drunk at a bar and I started complaining to him about the problem of using the current polyethylene implants for professional athletes and children. We ended up having a really deep technical discussion about the different ways we could crosslink the elements to improve resistance.’
She took a folded bar napkin out of an envelope and held it up. ‘Robert wrote down a series of chemical formulas on this napkin. That’s the basis of what I brought to you.’
‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’
‘Because I was desperate to succeed. Because I knew that once Robert returned to England, he’d probably forget all about our evening together and I’d be able to benefit from his insight.’
‘And why are you telling me this now?’
Helen went still. ‘Why do you think? I can’t take all the credit for something I didn’t do.’
‘But you said this man was in England and that he probably had no recollection of what he’d told you.’
Helen put the napkin back in her desk drawer. ‘Are you suggesting I should just keep quiet?’
Peter shrugged. ‘It depends what you want to happen, my dear. If you go public with this information now, the only person you’ll damage is yourself, particularly at this delicate stage of the selection process.’
Helen tried and failed to capture his stare. ‘Professor Hart, your name is on those academic papers. You chose which parts of my research went into the content. In fact, you did your best to minimize my contribution.’
Peter got to his feet. ‘Helen, relax, it’s a win-win situation. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear your confession and you just carry on confirming that the majority of the work was mine. I’ll get my job at Nifenberg and I’ll make sure you’re in line to bring a nice big fat grant to the hospital when you get that promotion.’ Helen stared at her mentor and he finally met her gaze, his expression unmoved. ‘Hospital politics is no place for a weakling. You can’t change the past, nor should you want to, especially when you have benefited from it. Let’s just pretend this conversation never happened and carry on as before.’
Helen stood up too. ‘But Peter, you don’t understand . . .’
‘I do understand. You’ve allowed yourself to get rattled during the selection process. When you’re running this department you’ll realize what a mistake you almost made and you’ll laugh at your own foolishness.’
He nodded and turned to the door. Helen watched him walk down the hall, her mouth open in disbelief.
Jay knocked once on the open door and strolled back into the room toward Helen. ‘Professor Hart didn’t look too happy. What did you say to him?’ he asked.
Helen had her head in her hands. ‘Why do you want to know? You’re leaving, aren’t you?’
Jay sat on the chair Peter had vacated. ‘Spit it out. What did you do?’
‘It’s complicated.’
Jay crossed his arms and sat back. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. Surprise me.’
‘Oh hell, why not? It will only confirm your worst suspicions of me. Ten years ago I lied to get my name on some academic papers.’
Jay shrugged. ‘So what?’
‘Jay, I lied.’
‘So what?’
She gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘To get to where I am, at such a relatively young age, I had to do something out of the ordinary. I co-authored a series of academic papers with Peter Hart about a new formula for crosslinking polyethylene elements to enhance resistance to wear.’
‘Oh
right
, of course, yeah.’
‘I realized that athletes and people who were more active, needed orthopedic polyethylene implants that were more resistant to wear and tear than average folk.’
‘Well, that makes sense.’
‘But the thing is, the new formula wasn’t all mine.’ She finally looked up at him.
‘Whose was it then?’
‘An English guy I met that summer called Robert Grant who was studying at M.I.T.’
‘What did you do? Torture the information out of him?’
She gave a defeated sigh. ‘No, we got drunk and he came up with it and scribbled it down on a bar napkin.’
‘Wow, impressive. I suppose I should be glad that you didn’t sleep with him.’
‘Jay, that’s not fair.’
‘What’s fair?’
Her blue eyes bored into him. ‘I found the napkin in my pocket a few days later and realized Robert might have been on to something.’
‘But you kept that bit of information to yourself, right?’
‘Well, I didn’t tell Robert. He’d gone back to England. But I did tell Peter Hart and the rest is history.’ She swiped a hand across her eyes. ‘I just wanted him to notice me. I didn’t really understand that he had the connections to make my pathetic little attempt to succeed into a whole big drug company sponsored mess. After continuing my own research, I wasn’t even sure if it would work anyway. But Peter wasn’t really interested in my opinion by then. All he cared about was the academic acclaim.’
‘OK, I’m no medical expert but if your paper was published, doesn’t that mean that your Robert guy, or some other brainiac, could’ve seen it and said that your deductions were all wrong?’
Helen held his gaze. ‘You’re absolutely right but Robert wasn’t involved in the medical community and lives in a different country and Peter . . . well, Peter used the information I gave him very creatively.’
Jay stared at her. ‘So what did you just do?’
Helen groaned. ‘Why haven’t you left in disgust? You must realize by now that I’m not a very nice person.’
Jay’s lips twitched. ‘You found Robert, didn’t you? You told him what you did.’
She peered at him through her fingers. ‘Yes, I did and it’s your fault making me feel I have to be honest with everyone. He’s a very nice man.’
‘How nice?’
‘Nicer than you. He was always a perfect gentleman.’
‘So why didn’t you hook up with him, then?’
She removed her hands from her eyes to glare at him. ‘Because he was too nice. I used him, Jay. That’s what I do with men. I use them and then I move on.’
He studied the toecap of his boot. ‘You don’t use me.’
‘That’s because you won’t let me.’
‘That’s right.’
He fought a smile as she tried to regain her usual icy composure. She looked at him, her hands twisted together on the desk.
‘You have to remember I was very ambitious then and I needed something important to get his notice. I didn’t really think it through. It never occurred to me that there would be interest outside the small world of academia and that Peter and I would end up being courted by several drug companies.’
She gripped her hands together until her fingers whitened. ‘Peter took nearly all the credit and I was OK with that. Even then I felt guilty about taking Robert’s idea and presenting it as all my own work. But hell, I liked the attention and the prestige too much to dream of giving it up. It was all I had.’
Jay nodded. He understood her desperation all too well. When Beau offered him the opportunity to succeed at the rodeo, he’d walked out on his mother without thinking it through either. He crossed one leg over the other. ‘What did Robert say when you contacted him?’
Helen’s lips twitched. ‘He told me that Nifenberg would soon find out that the chemical formula I used in the original proposal wouldn’t hold up in high-level testing.’ She shrugged. ‘He said he’d tried something similar in his lab and abandoned the effort. He even apologized for not contacting me earlier when he decided to test out our theory. There was some complicated reason why things didn’t work out, but his explanation went way over my head.’
She glanced down at the napkin on the desk and smoothed it with her fingers. ‘Robert did say he’d be happy to work with me and Peter to see if we could come up with any new solutions. I intended to pass Robert’s phone number and all the additional information over to Peter, but he didn’t really give me a chance to explain. He prefers to leave it all buried in the past. He seems to think we could continue to protect each other’s asses.’
‘So Nifenberg isn’t going to be able to develop the product after all?’
Helen nodded. ‘That about sums it up. It’s not an uncommon occurrence. A very high percentage of ideas fall by the wayside during intensive research.’
‘But Professor Hart doesn’t know that yet.’ He met her gaze. ‘Are you going to try to tell him the truth again?’
‘I’m not sure. Part of me thinks he deserves whatever happens to him, but the rest . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in today without him.’
Jay raised his eyebrows. ‘Will this affect your chances of getting the head of department job?’
‘I don’t know.’
She slumped in her chair. He’d never seen her look so defeated.
‘Maybe I should withdraw my application. I feel like such a fraud. It’s going to get complicated from here on in. It takes months for the selection committee to make a decision. If Nifenberg pulls the plug on the research during the wait, Peter might decide not to leave after all and if that does happen, I doubt he’s going to want me working with him anymore.’
She sighed. ‘It might be better to just give up and resign now.’
To her surprise Jay avoided her gaze and studied his fingernails. ‘You’re right. You don’t have to take the job if you don’t want to.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because I’ll take care of you.’
She got to her feet, her stomach churning. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
He stood up too. ‘I’d like to take care of you. That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. I have it all worked out. I’ll go and slave for Beau for a couple of years to earn a load of money. Then I’ll focus on building the boot-making company and another more commercial idea I have going with Grayson.’
‘Really.’
Helen barely restrained herself from vaulting over the desk and smacking his handsome, smug face. He straightened as she stormed toward him.
‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘you can give up work if you want to, and just look after me.’
He flinched as she poked him in the chest. ‘Is that how you’d like me, Jay? Barefoot and pregnant? Catering to your every whim?’
He met her gaze. ‘Well, hell, yeah.’
She tried to breathe deep, tried to remember that inside she was still an intelligent, civilized human being. Her voice rose to a screech.
‘And are you seriously contemplating going to work for that bloodsucker of a father of yours? Are you nuts? He’d destroy you in five seconds flat.’
He frowned. ‘I want to give you a good life, Helen. I need money to do that and Beau has more than enough to go around.’
‘I am perfectly capable of giving myself anything I want.’ She emphasized each word with another jab to his chest. ‘And I am perfectly capable of getting this job. I deserve this job, I’ve worked hard for this job and even if I have to tell the world about Robert and acknowledge his part in my achievements, I still deserve to succeed.’
‘You think?’
‘I know!’
He smiled down at her. ‘That’s my girl.’
She stared at him, her breathing ragged. ‘Did you just say all that to make me mad?’
‘Some of it.’ He shrugged. ‘The bit about you stopping work was just to get you riled up and ready to fight for what you really want.’
There he went again, forcing her be honest to the person who mattered most – herself. What did she really want? She wasn’t sure if she would take the job, even if it was offered to her. Part of her yearned to be free of the hospital completely. Perhaps it was time to return to her roots and work full time as a rodeo doctor. She sure had a lot to think about. Jay flinched as she laid her hand on his chest.
‘Tell me you’re not going to work for Beau.’