by Nora Roberts
“It’s no problem, really.” Kirby followed her up the stairs. “It’s better to have a look. If I think it’s more than a strain, we’ll x-ray and ship her off to the mainland.”
“One way to get her out of my hair,” Kate muttered. She knocked briskly on a door. “Mrs. Tores, the doctor’s here to see you. Bill the inn,” Kate added to Kirby in an undertone, “and add whatever you like for a nuisance fee.”
Thirty minutes later, and more than a little frazzled, Kirby closed the bedroom door behind her. Her head was aching from the litany of complaints Mrs. Tores had regaled her with. As she paused to rub her temples, Kate peeked around the corner.
“Safe?”
“I was tempted to sedate her, but I resisted. She’s perfectly fine, Kate. Believe me, I know. I had to give her what amounts to a complete physical before she was satisfied. Her ankle is barely strained, her heart is as strong as a team of oxen, her lungs even stronger. For your sake, I hope she’s planning on a very short stay.”
“She leaves day after tomorrow, thank the Lord. Come on down. Let me get you a nice glass of lemonade, a piece of that cherry pie Brian made yesterday.”
“I really need to get back. I’ve got stacks of paperwork to wade through.”
“I’m not sending you back without a cold drink. This heat’s enough to fell a horse.”
“I like the heat,” she began, then came to a dead halt as Brian walked in the front door.
His arms were full of flowers. They should have made him look foolish. She wanted him to look foolish. Instead he looked all the more male, all the more attractive, with his tanned, well-muscled arms loaded down with freshly cut blossoms.
“Oh, Brian, I’m so glad you got to that.” Kate hurried down with her mind racing at light-speed. “I was going to cut for the fresh arrangements myself this morning, but this crisis with Mrs. Tores threw me off my stride.”
She chattered on as she transferred flowers from his arms to hers. “I’ll just take it from here. You don’t have any sense at all about how to arrange them. I swear, Kirby, the man just stuffs them into a vase and thinks that’s all there is to it. Brian, you go fix Kirby a lemonade, make her eat a piece of pie. She’s come all the way out here just to do me a favor, and I won’t have her going off until she’s been paid back. Run along now, while I take this upstairs.”
She headed up the steps, willing the two of them not to behave like fools.
“I don’t need anything,” Kirby said stiffly. “I was just on my way out.”
“I imagine you can spare five minutes to have a cold drink and avoid hurting Kate’s feelings.”
“Fine. It’s a quicker trip home through the back anyway.” She turned and started down the hall at a brisk pace. She wanted to be away from him. When he found out about his mother, she would do what she could for him. But for now she had her own pain to cope with.
“How’s the patient?”
“She could dance a jig if she wanted to. There’s not a thing wrong with her.” She pushed through the door and stood stubbornly while he got out a pitcher of golden-yellow lemonade swimming with mint and pulp. When her mouth watered, she swallowed resolutely. “How’s your hand?”
“It’s all right. I don’t really notice it.”
“I might as well look at it while I’m here.” She set her bag down on the breakfast table. “The sutures should have been removed a couple of days ago.”
“You were leaving.”
“It’ll save you a trip out to see me.”
He stopped pouring her lemonade and looked at her. The sun was streaming through the window at her back, licking light over her hair. Her eyes were a dark, stormy green that made his loins tighten.
“All right.” He carried her glass to the table and sat down.
Despite the heat, her hands were cool. Despite her anger, they were gentle. She saw no swelling or puffiness, no sign of infection. The edges of the wound had fused neatly. He would barely have a scar, she decided, and opened her bag for her suture scissors.
“This won’t take long.”
“Just don’t put any new holes in me.”
She clipped the first suture, tugged it free with tweezers. “Since we both live on this island, and it’s likely we’ll be running into each other on a regular basis for the rest of our lives, perhaps you’d do me the courtesy of clearing the air.”
“It’s clear enough, Kirby.”
“For you, apparently. But not for me.” She clipped, tugged. “I want to know why you turned away from me. Why you decided to end things between us the way you did.”
“Because they’d gone farther than I’d intended them to. Neither one of us thought it would work. I just decided to back off first, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. You dumped me before I could dump you.”
“More or less.” He wished he couldn’t smell her. He wished she’d had the decency not to rub that damned peach-scented lotion all over her skin to torment him. “I’d see it more as just a matter of simplifying.”
“And you like things simple, don’t you? You like things your way, in your time and at your pace.”
Her voice was mild, and though he wasn’t sure he could trust it, particularly when she had a sharp implement in her hand, he nodded. “That’s true enough. You’re the same, but your way, your time, and your pace are different from mine.”
“I can’t argue with that. You prefer a malleable woman, a delicate woman. One who sits patiently and waits for your move and your whim. That certainly doesn’t describe me.”
“No, it doesn’t. And the fact is I wasn’t looking for a woman—or a relationship, whatever you choose to call it. You came after me, and you’re beautiful. I got tired of pretending I didn’t want you.”
“That’s fair. And the sex was good for both of us, so there shouldn’t be any complaints.” She removed the last suture. “All done.” She lifted her eyes to his. “All done, Brian. The scar will fade. Before long, you won’t even remember you were hurt. Now that the air’s all clear, I’ll be on my way.”
He remained where he was when she rose. “I appreciate it.”
“Don’t give it a thought,” she said with a voice like frosted roses. “I won’t.” She left by the back, quietly and deliberately closing the screen behind her.
She didn’t start to run until she was into the shelter of the trees.
“Well, that was fun.” Brian picked up Kirby’s untouched lemonade and downed it in several long gulps. It hit his tortured stomach like acid.
He’d done the right thing, hadn’t he? For himself and probably for her. He’d kept things from stringing out, getting too deep and complicated. All he’d done was nick her pride, and she had plenty of it to spare. Pride and class and brains and a tidy little body with the energy of a nuclear warhead.
Christ, she was a hell of a woman.
No, he’d done the right thing, he assured himself, and ran the cold glass over his forehead because he suddenly felt viciously hot inside and out. She would have set him aside eventually and left him slackjawed and shot in the knees.
Women like Kirby Fitzsimmons didn’t stay. Not that he wanted any woman to stay, but if a man was going to start fantasizing, if he was going to start believing in marriage and family, she was just the type to draw him in, then leave him twisting in the wind.
She had too much fuel, too much nerve to stay on Desire. The right offer from the right hospital or medical institute or whatever, and she’d be gone before the sand settled back in her footprints.
God, he’d never seen anything like the way she’d handled Susan Peters’s body. The way she’d turned from woman to rock, clipping out orders in that cool, steady voice, her eyes flat, her hands without the slightest tremor.
It had been an eye-opener for him, all right. This wasn’t some fragile little flower who would be content to treat poison ivy and sunburn on a nowhere dot in the ocean for long. Hook herself up with an innkeeper who made the best part of his living whip
ping up soufflés and frying chicken? Not in this lifetime, he told himself.
So it was done, and over, and his life would settle back quietly into the routine he preferred.
Fucking rut, he thought on a sudden surge of fury. He nearly hurled the glass into the sink when he spotted her medical bag on the table. She’d left her bag, he mused, opening it and idly poking through the contents.
She could just come back and get it herself, he decided. He had things to do. He couldn’t be chasing after her just because she’d been in a snit and left it behind.
Of course, she might need it. You couldn’t be sure when some medical emergency would come along. It would be his fault, wouldn’t it, if she didn’t have her needles and prodding things. Someone could up and die, couldn’t they?
He didn’t want that on his conscience. With a shrug, he picked the bag up, found it heavier than he’d imagined. He thought he’d just run it over to her, drop it off, and that would be that.
He decided to take the car rather than cut through the forest. It was too damn hot to walk. And besides, if she’d dawdled at all he might beat her there. He could just leave the bag inside her door and drive off before she even got home.
When he pulled up in her drive, he thought he had accomplished just that and was disgusted with himself for being disappointed. He didn’t want to see her again. That was the whole point.
But when he was halfway up the steps, he realized she’d beaten him back after all. He could hear her crying.
It stopped him in his tracks, the sound of it. Hard, passionate sobs, raw gulps of air. It shook him right to the bone, left him dry-mouthed and loose at the knees. He wondered if there was anything more fearful a man could face than a weeping woman.
He opened the door quietly, eased it shut. His nerves were shot as he started back to her bedroom, shifting her bag from hand to hand.
She was curled up on the bed, a tight ball of misery with her hair curtaining her face. He’d dealt with wild female tears before. A man couldn’t live with Lexy half his life and avoid that. But he’d never expected such unrestrained weeping from Kirby. Not the woman who had challenged him to resist her, not the woman who had faced the result of murder without a quiver. Not the woman who had just walked out of his kitchen with her head high and her eyes cold as the North Atlantic.
With Lexy it was either get the hell out and bar the door or gather her up close and hold on until the storm passed. He decided to hold on and, sitting on the side of the bed, he reached out to bundle her to him.
She shot up straight as an arrow, slapping out sharply at the hands that reached for her. Patiently, he persisted—and found himself holding on to a hundred pounds of furious woman.
“Get out of here! Don’t you touch me.” The humiliation on top of the hurt was more than she could stand. She kicked, shoved, then scrambled off the far side of the bed. Standing there, she glared at him through puffy eyes even as fresh sobs choked her.
“How dare you come in here? Get the hell out!”
“You left your doctor’s bag.” Because he felt foolish half sprawled over her bed, he straightened up and faced her across it. “I heard you crying. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I didn’t know I could.”
She pulled tissues out of the box on the bedside table and mopped at her face. “What makes you think I’m crying over you?”
“Since I don’t expect you ran into anyone else in the last five minutes who would set you off like this, it’s a reasonable assumption.”
“And you’re so reasonable, aren’t you, Brian?” She yanked out more tissues, littering the floor with them. “I was indulging myself. I’m entitled to that. Now I’d like you to leave me alone.”
“If I hurt you—”
“If you hurt me?” Out of desperation she grabbed the box of tissues and threw it at him. “If you hurt me, you son of a bitch. What am I, rubber, that you can slap at me and it bounces off? You say you’re falling in love with me, then you turn around and calmly tell me that it’s over.”
“I said I thought I was falling in love with you.” It was vital, he thought with a little squirm of panic, to make that distinction. “I stopped it.”
“You—” Rage really did make you see red, she realized. Her vision was lurid with it as she grabbed the closest thing at hand and heaved it.
“Jesus, woman!” Brian jerked as the small crystal vase whizzed by his head like a glittering bullet. “You break open my face, you’re just going to have to stitch it up again.”
“The hell I will.” She grabbed a favorite perfume atomizer from her dresser and let it fly. “You can bleed to death and I won’t lift a finger. To fucking death, you bastard.”
He ducked, dodged, and was just fast enough to tackle her before she cracked him over the head with a silver-backed mirror. “I can hold you down as long as it takes,” he panted out as he used his weight to press her into the mattress. “Damned if I’m going to let you take a chunk out of me because I bruised your pride.”
“My pride?” She stopped struggling and her eyes went from hot to overflowing. “You broke my heart.” She turned her head, closed her eyes, and let the tears slide free. “Now I don’t have any pride to bruise.”
Staggered, he leaned back. She simply turned on her side and curled up again. She didn’t sob now but lay silent with tears wet on her cheeks.
“Leave me alone, Brian.”
“I thought I could. I thought you’d want me to do just that sooner or later. So why not sooner? You won’t stay.” He spoke quietly, trailing a finger through her hair. “Not here, not with me. And if I don’t step back, it’ll kill me when you leave.”
She was too tired even to cry now. She slipped a hand under her cheek for comfort and opened her eyes. “Why won’t I stay?”
“Why would you? You can go anywhere you want. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re smart. A doctor in any of those places is going to make piles of money, go to the country club every week, have a fancy office in some big, shiny building.”
“If I’d wanted those things, I would already have them. If I wanted to be in New York or Chicago or L.A., I’d be there.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because I love it here. I always have. Because I’m practicing the kind of medicine here that I want to practice and living my life the way I want to live it.”
“You come from a different place,” he insisted. “A different lifestyle. Your daddy’s rich—”
“And my ma is good-looking.” She sniffled and didn’t see the quick, involuntary quiver of his mouth.
“What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean.” Her head felt like an overblown balloon ready to burst. Idly, she told herself she’d take something for it. In just a minute. “I don’t care much for country clubs. They’re usually stuffy and burdened with rules. Why would I want that when I can sit on my deck and see the ocean every day of my life? I can walk in the forest and spot a deer, watch the mists rise off the river.”
She shifted just a little so she could see his face. “Tell me, Brian, why do you stay here? You could go to any of those places you named, run the kitchen in a fine hotel, or own your own restaurant. Why don’t you?”
“It’s not what I want. I have what I want here.”
“So do I.” She turned her cheek back against the bedspread. “Now go away and leave me alone.”
He got up and stood looking down at her. He felt big and awkward and out of his depth. Hooking his thumbs in his front pockets, he paced away, paced back, turned to stare out the window, to stare back at her. She didn’t move, didn’t speak. He cursed under his breath, hissed out a breath, and started for the door. Turned back.
“I wasn’t truthful with you before. I didn’t stop it, Kirby. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. And it wasn’t just thinking, it was ... being. I’d rather not be, I’ll tell you that straight out. I’d rather not be, because it’s bound to be a mess somewhere along t
he line. But there it is.”
She brushed a hand over her cheek and sat up. No, he did not have the look of a happy man, she decided. There was resentment in his eyes, stubbornness in his mouth, and annoyance in his stance. “Is this your charming way of telling me you’re in love with me?”
“That’s what I said. It so happens I’m not feeling very charming at the moment.”
“You boot me out of your life, you humiliate me by catching me at a weak moment, you insult me by denying my feelings and my character, then you tell me you love me.” She shook her head, pushed her damp hair back from her face. “Well, this is certainly the romantic moment every woman dreams of.”
“I’m just telling you the way it is, the way I feel.”
She let loose a sigh. If in a corner of her heart joy was blooming, she decided to hold it in check, just for a while. “Since for some reason that I can’t quite remember I seem to be in love with you too, I’m going to make a suggestion.”
“I’m listening.”
“Why don’t we take a walk on the beach, a nice long walk? The air might clear your brain enough for you to find a few drops of charm. Then you can try to tell me again, the way it is, and the way you feel.”
He considered her, discovered his head was already clearing. “I wouldn’t mind a walk,” he said and held out a hand for hers.
TWENTY-EIGHT
SOMETHING bad was in the air. Sam could sense it. It was more than the thick heat, more than the hard look to the sky. He had some worries about Hurricane Carla, which was currently kicking the stuffing out of the Bahamas. The forecasters claimed she was primed to dance her way out to sea, but Sam knew hurricanes were essentially female. And females were essentially unpredictable.
Odds were she’d give Desire a miss and take out her temper on Florida. But he didn’t like the feel to the air. It was too damn tight, he thought. Like it was ready to squeeze over your skin.
He was going to go in and check the little weather station Kate had gotten him last Christmas, do a run on the shortwave. There was a storm coming, all right. He wished he knew when it was coming.
