Free The Apartment by Danielle Steel Page B

Abby or Sasha, although they would have been willing to listen too.
    “Happy to do it,” Morgan said, and then went back to work, as Claire went back to her drawings for the spring line, which she hated. And Walter seemed to be looking over her shoulder constantly, as though he didn’t trust her. And the little twit from Paris was driving her insane.
    Sasha didn’t have to be at work until noon after their Sunday-night dinner, so she could sleep in, and still almost overslept anyway. She was rushing again as she got to the hospital. She was wearing black jeans and a white sweater, and grabbed her white doctor’s coat with her name on it out of her locker. She was surprised to see the resident from the NICU hanging around the doctors’ lounge again.
    “You seem to spend a lot of time here. Business must be slow in NICU,” she teased him, and he didn’t want to admit that he’d checked the schedule and had been lying in wait for her.
    “I never got to introduce myself the other night,” he said, feeling awkward. She was so damn beautiful it took his breath away, and she looked calm and cool. “I’m Alex Scott.”
    “Sasha Hartman,” she said simply as she hurried to the door. She already knew she had three women in labor, one of them almost ready to deliver. She was a surrogate giving birth to someone else’s twins, and the parents of the twins were planning to be in the delivery room with her—it was going to be a zoo. The surrogate was married, in her thirties, and had three children. It was the second time she had lent her body for surrogacy. She thought it was a noble cause, and it was a good source of income for her. The twins’ biological parents had been desperate to have a baby, and had been willing to pay almost anything.
    “Can I take you to dinner sometime…or lunch?” he blurted out as Sasha started to hurry away. She turned to him with a look of surprise on her face. The thought of sharing a meal with him, or anything more than coffee in the doctors’ lounge, hadn’t even occurred to her. He just seemed like a friendly guy at work, and she thought of him as collegial and nothing else. She didn’t have the vaguest idea that he was interested in her.
    “Either one,” she said, noncommittal and businesslike, thinking about the babies she was about to deliver and hand over to their legal parents.
    “Tomorrow?” he said quickly, looking hopeful.
    “Tomorrow what?” She was in a rush to leave, and he could see it.
    “Tomorrow dinner?”
    “Lunch. In the cafeteria. I’m on duty.” He could sense that it was the best deal he was going to get for now.
    “Sounds good. So am I. I’ll check in with you at noon to see how your schedule is looking.” She nodded, touched her forehead in a military salute, and flew out the door, and he almost let out a whoop as he threw away his empty coffee cup and went back to the NICU. It had already been a terrific day, and it was just minutes after noon. He could hardly wait for lunch the next day.
    Sasha was already in the labor room, checking her patient, who was handling the contractions well. The parents were so excited they were already crying, and it wasn’t even time to push. They could hardly wait to get their babies in their arms. But for now, the surrogate was her patient, and Sasha was focusing on her. The babies were lined up nicely, and the monitors looked good, and Alex Scott was the farthest thing from her mind.
    —
    The theater was dark on Monday nights, but Abby went in that afternoon anyway. She had more scenery to paint, and a little carpentry to do. She and a janitor did the heavy cleaning on Mondays, and she had been calling Ivan since that morning, but he didn’t pick up, and hadn’t returned her calls. He had been MIA since the day before, and by the time she got back to the apartment at six o’clock, she was panicked when she ran in to Claire in the hall. They came up the stairs together while Abby told her that she hadn’t