The woman was a doctor? What if Ian wasn’t well? No, it couldn’t be that. He was the ideal specimen of male health and vibrancy. If she couldn’t tell that just by looking at him, he’d presented her with proof when he’d handed her the results of his latest physical a while back in order to prove to her he was clean for sex.
“Do you know Dr. Epstein well?” Francesca mused.
“No. I’ve only met her briefly a time or two when she’s visited here at the penthouse. I got the impression she practices somewhere in London, but I’m not certain what sort of a doctor she is, come to think of it. Francesca? Is everything all right?” Mrs. Hanson asked anxiously, making her wonder what the housekeeper had seen on her face.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she squeezed Mrs. Hanson’s forearm in reassurance and let go, starting to back out of the kitchen. Just how much would a ticket from Chicago to London cost? “But I think I might have to leave town for a few days as well.”
Part VIII
Because I Am Yours
Chapter Fifteen
Davie offered to come with her to London, but Francesca flatly refused. When she’d told Davie about her plans, she’d been purposefully vague and misleading, saying that she’d learned from Mrs. Hanson that Ian was having a family crisis in London and she’d decided to go there to offer support.
In truth, she didn’t want Davie to realize she’d undertaken such a foolish plan without having a clue as to what she was going to do when she alighted from the plane at Heathrow. The only thing she knew is that whatever Ian was doing in London, it caused him anguish, and that he’d chosen to protect others in his life from that pain.
He would be furious at her, if, by some miracle, she ever actually located him. Yet she couldn’t stand the idea of him suffering alone in any way, and she had become utterly convinced that these “emergency” visits to London related to the spiritual demons that plagued him.
Besides, if what was in London was destined to destroy whatever they might have together in the future, wasn’t it best just to find out now instead of delaying the inevitable?
Ian had called her during the flight from O’Hare to Heathrow, she noticed as she deplaned. This had been what she’d hoped for, considering she really had no plan of action once she arrived in London. However, when she tried to return his call, she got his voice mail.
Discouraged, she lingered in the airport, exchanging currency, picking up her luggage, hoping for some kind of miracle revelation as to the location of Ian’s apartment or his whereabouts. When nothing came to her, and she still hadn’t successfully made contact with Ian, she got into a taxi and told the driver the only place she’d ever connected to Ian and his London trips.
“The Genomics Research and Treatment Institute,” she told the driver, referring to the hospital and research facility for schizophrenia that she’d read about on Ian’s tablet. She recalled how Dr. Epstein had mentioned “the Institute.” Could she be referring to the Genomics Research and Treatment Institute? What other clues did she have to his possible location?
Forty minutes later, the cabdriver pulled up to the ultramodern glass-enclosed entrance to the facility, which was housed on beautifully landscaped grounds within a wooded park. In the far distance, she glimpsed several pairs of people walking in a lush green meadow, one of the pair always wearing white. Were they nurses or attendants with patients?
Uncertainty hit her like a blow now that she sat there in the back of the cab. What in the world was she doing? What madness had made her jump on a plane and come to a hospital in a remote part of London, where she knew no one and had no reason to be present?
The driver was giving her a questioning look.
“Would you mind waiting for me?” she asked him nervously as she handed him payment.
“I can wait ten minutes, tops,” he said brusquely.
“Thank you,” she said. If this trip ended up being a dead end, she’d know soon enough.
She blinked when she entered the lobby a moment later. It wasn’t precisely like the Noble Enterprises lobby in Chicago, but there were similarities—the elegant, warm woods, pink-beige marble, and neutral-toned furnishings.
“May I help you?” a young woman sitting behind a circular desk asked her when she approached.
For a few seconds, Francesca just stood there speechless. Then something hit her brain, and she said the thought before she’d fully processed it.
“Yes. I’d like to see Dr. Epstein, please.”
Her heart seized in her chest for a split second that stretched surreally long as she stared at the woman’s blank expression.
“Certainly. Who shall I tell Dr. Epstein is visiting?”
She exhaled in a burst of relief and immediately experienced a subsequent wave of anxiety. “Francesca Arno. I’m a friend of Ian Noble’s.”
The woman’s eyes widened at that.
“Right away, Ms. Arno,” she said, picking up the phone.
She waited on pins and needles as the receptionist spoke to several people, the last Dr. Epstein herself. What could the doctor be thinking, being told that a complete stranger who said she was a friend of Ian Noble had shown up at the Institute asking for her? Unfortunately, Francesca couldn’t glean much from the one-sided conversation she overheard. The receptionist set down the phone.
“Dr. Epstein says she’ll come to the lobby to get you herself. May I offer you any refreshment while you wait?”
“No, thank you,” Francesca said. She didn’t think anything would stay in her stomach, it was frothing so much. She pointed at a comfortable seating area just behind her. “I’ll just sit and wait.”