Hot Touch

by Deborah Smith

  “Sounds like a problem for Dr. Ruth.”

  The boys grinned.

  Caroline pointed toward a closed office door. “Blue’s?”

  “Yes.”

  She went over and knocked, wishing her heart weren’t drumming in her chest.

  “Yeah,” she heard him say. His deep, slightly accented tone sent shivers down her spine and made her breath pull short. Caroline squared her shoulders, straightened her sunglasses, and invaded Blue’s small office with haughty grandeur.

  He sat at an old wood desk cluttered with files and letters. The floor was stacked with professional journals, charts were thumbtacked to every available inch of wall space, and his bookshelves overflowed with medical texts. This was one place where the Belue penchant for spareness and simplicity had failed to take hold.

  Because he cares so much about his work, she thought with admiration.

  His head jerked up at the sight of her, his blue eyes flaring, his mouth a grim line of distaste. His long black hair was ragged, as if he’d been running his fingers through it violently. He flattened his big hands on the desktop and leaned forward, a muscle flexing in his jaw. He radiated a crackling energy that made him seem bigger, more dangerous, and more breathtaking than she’d remembered.

  “This building is off limits to Hollywood people.”

  Caroline fought to keep from gaping at him. Her proud demeanor nearly drained away in the face of his hostility. She’d expected him to be puzzled, maybe a little angry, but not furious.

  “I … I just came to tell you that I was back and that I’d take charge of Wolf on the set today.”

  “Fine. I’ll let you take care of him from now on. Just stay out of my way, ’cause I’m busy, see? Good-bye. I have work to do.”

  She raised her brows at him and shot back, “And a lovely Monday morning to you too.”

  Caroline pivoted on one heel and strode to the door. His voice assaulted her with low, controlled anger.

  “Was he worth the long trip home? Did he take care of the itch I gave you, yes?”

  Shock poured through her. Of course he’d think that she’d returned to California for the weekend to see one of the man friends she’d mentioned.

  The ridiculous pads in her jacket shoulders disguised the sudden slumping of her back. This was for the best, she told herself. The perfect way to keep Paul from pursuing her anymore.

  “He was terrific,” she answered softly, and slammed the door behind her as she left the room.

  It was a good thing Paul’s animals adored her, because they were her only company.

  She barely saw him over the next two weeks. Caroline found herself keeping a quiet vigil on the movie set. When they filmed in the marshes bordering the barns she strained her eyes to glimpse Paul as he walked from one to the other.

  When they filmed in the mansion she kept a watch on the doors, hoping that he’d have some reason to come in during the day. He never did.

  Rain poured down one night. Caroline got out of bed and opened her window so that she could inhale the wet, fresh darkness. She was startled when she heard a phone ring upstairs, followed by hurried sounds.

  She identified Paul’s heavy footsteps plus the clicking cadence of Wolfs feet as Wolf followed him; the two rhythms descended the long front staircase quickly and ran out the front doors.

  There must be an emergency; she recalled hearing Ed say that an elderly gazelle had developed pneumonia.

  Caroline considered the consequences for a moment, then threw some clothes on and ran after Paul. There was too much at stake to let his anger or her defensiveness intrude.

  She headed for the veterinary building, where lights blazed with watery luminescence in the heavy rain. Soaked and shivering, Caroline burst into the anteroom. Wolf, dripping water, got up from his place on a muddy rug and came to her, his eyes solemn.

  Master needs you.

  I’ll help him.

  One of the students, a veterinary intern she’d met before, came through double doors at the back of the building’s central hallway. Her eyes were swollen from crying.

  She stopped at the sight of Caroline and wiped them with quick, embarrassed motions. “Yes?”

  “I came to see the gazelle.”

  The young woman sighed raggedly. “Dr. Blue’s with her in the back. She’s dying.”

  Caroline ran past her. The woman gasped and grabbed for her arm. “You can’t.” But Caroline was already shoving the doors open by then. She walked swiftly through the large-animal quadrant of the hospital, a snug, brightly lit place of large stalls and concrete floors.

  Her heart racing with dread, Caroline stopped by an open stall door and stared at an array of sophisticated equipment that surrounded a small, fragile creature that must have been designed as a fairy’s steed.

  It lay on its side on a blanket, tubes crisscrossing its fawn-color body. Its eyes were closed and it breathed with a labored, rattling sound.

  Paul, his hair and work denims slicked to his wet body, sat beside the gazelle. He had a stethoscope pressed to its chest, and his head was bowed in an attitude that conveyed both concentration and weary defeat.

  Caroline crept into the stall and knelt by the gazelle. Paul’s head snapped up, and he looked at her in astonishment, his eyes trailing down her soaked body.

  As he removed the stethoscope Caroline gazed at him stoically, knowing that her hair was slicked back so that her scar must look particularly ugly against the side of her face and that her choice of clothes was not the most practical—tangerine trousers and an oversize purple shirt covered in sequins and gilded butterfly appliqués.

  His expression became hard, a retaining wall that kept his emotions in check, by the time his gaze rose to her face. He held her neutral green-gold eyes for a long moment, his blue ones intense and searching. Slowly he nodded toward the gazelle.

  “You can do something that will help her, yes?” he asked hoarsely, and the resistance drained out of him.

  Caroline’s throat burned with unshed tears. He cared so much for his animals that he would discard his pride gladly if she could save the gazelle’s life.

  “I’m not a healer,” she said truthfully.

  “She’s too far gone for that, even if you were. You create comfort and trust somehow. Do that for her. Let her die in peace, at least.”

  “All right.” Caroline lay down by the gazelle and snuggled an arm around her neck. The touch ignited knowledge swiftly and sadly; Paul was right, it was too late. It was the gazelle’s time; she was old and unhappy, and she wanted to die. But she was afraid to let go.

  Sleep. It’s safe. You’re not alone.

  The gazelle’s breathing became less tortured. Tears in her eyes, Caroline looked up to find Paul’s frowning, deciphering gaze on her. He didn’t want to like her or believe in her, she thought sadly, and the realization was almost unbearable.

  “Go back to the house. I’ll do better here alone,” she told him crisply. “I’m quite cynical about death and dying. I don’t need you to stare at me and wonder what it is I do that makes animals feel better. I just … I just understand how to give affection to animals. Other than children, they’re the only things on God’s green earth that are worth the effort.”

  Something tragic crept into his gaze, and he looked sad rather than forbidding. “Aw, chère, you know so little about the world.”

  He rose to his feet. She blinked back tears and a traitorous desire to ask him to stay. He looked down at her grimly. “Anna will be here all night to check on things. Thank you for coming to help. You’re not so heartless as you’d like to think, no.”

  He left the stall quickly, as if that were the only way he could make himself go, and Caroline blessed the fact that the first tear didn’t slide down her cheek until after he departed.

  What a woman. What a bewildering, frustrating, heartbreaking woman, Paul thought as he sat in a rocking chair by his bedroom window, staring out at the black night and the rain. He hadn’t chang
ed clothes; he didn’t attempt to sleep.

  His thoughts were bonded to the odd scene he’d left in the hospital; Caroline as beautiful and sleek as any high-fashion model, even soaked with Louisiana rain, even with the scar that caused her so much torment; Caroline lying there in the coarse confines of a concrete stall hugging a gazelle as if it were her child.

  He didn’t understand her; he’d never understand her, probably. He didn’t understand his dangerous need for her and the tenderness she created inside him with her perplexing vulnerability. No. No.

  He’d loved before, but never enough to lose his ability to reason. This had to be conquered, this foolish impulse to break down her defenses at all costs. She couldn’t be won; she wasn’t meant to be tied to one man or stay in Louisiana among her memories.

  Not long before dawn the rain slacked to a warm drizzle. Feeling ancient, nothing resolved, Paul got up and walked back to the hospital. Anna sat at the desk in the anteroom.

  She shook her head at him wretchedly. “It’s almost over. I checked ten minutes ago.”

  His eyes grainy, Paul quietly opened the doors to the large-animal section. Someone had dimmed all the lights except the one over the gazelle’s stall. Wolf lay just outside its open door, his head on his paws.

  The tip of his tail fluttered in greeting, but he seemed weighted down by the impending presence of death.

  Paul walked softly to the door and stopped, his throat twisting.

  Caroline knelt beside the gazelle, her fingers brushing tenderly over the tiny, fine-boned head. Anna had removed all the tubes.

  “You’re free now,” Paul heard Caroline whisper in a gentle voice. “There. Go home. I feel it, yes. Go home. No more pain, no more fear. Yes, you’re safe. That’s right, you’re not old and sick anymore. Go on, go on. Yes, I see the light, I see it.”

  What did she see? What did all this mean? Paul shook his head. It was just the way she talked to animals, commiserating with them as if she knew what they felt. It was part of her technique.

  Caroline rested her forehead against the gazelle’s neck. Her other hand tightened on the animal’s shoulder, then stroked tenderly.

  “Good-bye,” she murmured. “It’s wonderful. I understand. You’re not alone anymore. Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye.”

  After a long, tortured moment, Paul whispered, “None of us has to be alone, unless we want it that way.”

  Caroline looked up slowly, her eyes limpid with sorrow but also glowing with awe. It was the most amazing sight, and he stared at her as if he’d just glimpsed heaven. What had she seen?

  “Some creatures are meant to live and die alone,” she said, and the light faded from her eyes.

  He sighed in disagreement, knelt beside the gazelle, and checked the silent artery in her neck. He caressed the gazelle’s head. “Others will be born to take your place,” he promised gruffly. “We won’t let your kind disappear.”

  Caroline made a crying sound. “I wish I were a healer.”

  “Shhh. You were her friend. You kept her from being afraid tonight.” He held his hand out. “Enough. You need to rest. Allez.”

  She took his hand and wobbled upright, exhausted from the hours she’d spent by the gazelle. Paul led her from the stall, but she stopped so that she could look back one more time.

  “I see that you’re very cynical about these things, just the way you told me you were,” he said gently.

  She ducked her head in chagrin and walked ahead of him, her movements hampered by fatigue and stiffness. When she stumbled leaving the building, Paul caught her by one elbow.

  Before she could protest he swung her up in his arms. Shocked, she clasped the front of his shirt desperately and held on. “This isn’t necessary, doc.”

  “I owe you one,” he said simply. “Relax.”

  The comfort in his voice pushed a button inside her; she rested her dried, matted hair against his shoulder and was asleep by the time he reached the house. Her childlike response flooded his chest with tenderness, but again a perturbing question ate at him—would he ever understand this complicated woman?

  Once inside the house Paul hesitated at the base of the staircase. Then, his decision made, he carried her up to his room, put her on his bed, and sat down beside her.

  “What?” she asked groggily as soon as her body settled on the unaccustomed luxury of his big, comfortable mattress.

  “Sleep, chère, sleep. You can go back to your own bed tomorrow. I’ll sleep there tonight.” He ran his fingertips over her face, studying her in the darkness, coaxing her to be still.

  A languid shudder ran through her. “The things you do with your touch”—she said the words vaguely, but with a thread of worry—“cause trouble.”

  “For both of us,” he agreed, and quickly sat back. Paul grasped her feet and removed her wet jogging shoes. Then he clamped a hand on her knee and squeezed for attention. “Get undressed, chère. Don’t lay here and catch cold.”

  “Okay.” She rolled over on one side, curled her hands under her chin, and went back to sleep.

  “Caroline,” Paul whispered in exasperation. When there was no answer, he reached around her and unfastened her fashionably baggy trousers.

  She stirred a little when he anchored both big hands in the floppy material around her ankles. He knelt by her feet and gracefully whipped the trousers down her legs. Gasping, she flopped over on her back and tried to jerk her feet away from him.

  “Doc? Doc Belue! Blue! Paul!”

  “That about covers it, yes,” he quipped as he lifted one foot and pulled the trousers off, then did the other. “Or uncovers it. Dieu!”

  She crossed her legs and clasped her hands over herself. “I didn’t have time for panties.”

  Paul stared down at the spot her hands covered, then at the pale, luscious hips unmarred by evidence of lingerie. He got up and slung a blanket over her, then stood beside the bed frozen with control, his fists clenched.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “I’m not mad at you. I’m just trying to remember all the reasons why I shouldn’t want you.”

  “Then I’m not sorry,” she murmured, her voice strained. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to be held in your arms. Just to be held … to share what we feel about the gazelle. That’s all I ask.”

  She sat up, her lower body covered by the blanket and her upper body still covered by her shirt. Paul almost groaned when she held out her arms to him. “I swear,” she said tearfully. “I don’t want to seduce you, because I know you’d resent me for it later. Can’t we just be friends for a minute?”

  He was tortured by the desire to offer comfort of many kinds. Lost in this vulnerable moment, he could make love to her without thinking; it would be so easy to finish undressing her and give her the tender passion she seemed to need, at least for the moment.

  Paul shut his eyes and told her fiercely, “I don’t want to start something that someone else would get to finish. After you go back to California I don’t want to sit around here wishing that I could kill whoever you make love to.”

  She cried out with a tormented sound that surprised him. He looked at her as she slid from his bed, grabbing for her pants.

  “Don’t leave,” he amended as she wrapped them around herself like a skirt. “Dammit, Caroline, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right,” she said in a choked voice. “I wasn’t thinking straight. It’ll be better if I go to my own room.”

  He grabbed her shoulder and looked down at her grimly. “If you wanted the same things I do, I’d put my arms around you and never let you go.”

  She shivered under his touch. “What things do you want?”

  “I’m a one-woman man and I want a one-man woman.”

  “A one-man woman who’d be content to stay here at Grande Rivage.”

  “Right.”

  “Sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t do it.”

  He cupped her chin in one hand. “What? Be a o
ne-man woman or live here in Louisiana?”

  “Which is most important to you?”

  “Both,” he said immediately.

  “No options, eh?” she asked wearily, then took a ragged breath. “Okay. I’ll make this easy for us. I can’t do either.”

  He let go of her and stepped back, his posture rigid. “And I can’t play the field the way you do. I wish I could be modern and say ‘What the hell? Who cares?’ But I can’t. I want commitment. I’ve never gone into a relationship where I didn’t hope that it’d lead to marriage.”

  “Then why aren’t you married?”

  “There’s someone special out there, and I’ve been waiting to find her.”

  “You’re very old-fashioned. Good luck.”

  “Don’t you ever feel that way, Caroline? That there’s someone worth waiting for?”

  She shifted from one foot to the other and rammed her free hand through her hair. “I … damn. It’s late. What’s the point in this discussion?”

  Before he could answer she gave him a kiss on the cheek and said raggedly, “I admire old-fashioned attitudes.”

  Then she turned and ran from his room.

  When Frank trucked everyone deep into the swamp for four hellish days and three bug-bombed nights, she grew so desperate to see Paul and hear his voice that one afternoon Wolf began whining in shared anguish.

  We go home to Master.

  Not yet, Wolf. Master would be angry.

  Bad you? Bad Wolf?

  Yes. He’d think we were both bad.

  Wolf slept under her cot that night, and she hung one arm over the side so that her fingers could tangle in his ruff. Caroline dreamed wistful dreams about seeing Paul again.

  When she woke up the next morning, Wolf was gone.

  After she calmed down Frank and the director, she took a truck and made the long drive back to the plantation along muddy swamp roads. Caroline parked by one of the barns and climbed out gratefully. The muggy air had turned her neatly creased hiking shorts and crisp T-shirt into something resembling Paul’s accordion.