North of Heartbreak

by Julie Rowe

Her fingers tangled in his hair and she pulled away. “Liam, I want to have fun. Lots of fun.”

  “Me too,” he said, trying to kiss her again.

  “I trust you.”

  He paused and looked at her intently. “I trust you too.”

  “Good.” Willa pulled out of his arms then took one of his hands, tugging him down the hall.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My bedroom.”

  “Bedroom?” His voice broke. “Bedrooms are for serious fun.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Yes, they are.”

  “Are you sure about this? There’s no pressure to do…” Liam seemed to lose his voice as she stopped in front of the bed, “…anything.”

  She dropped the towel.

  He stared, his breathing heavy. “You’re perfect,” he said reaching out, cupping both breasts, lightly teasing the nipples with his thumbs.

  Willa moaned and her head fell back, her eyes closed. Liam leaned down and covered her with his mouth, rolling and sucking at the nipple.

  Her hand found the front of his pants, her fingers outlining the shape of him, and he jerked. He pulled away, one hand circling her wrist to hold her still. “I don’t have any condoms.”

  Willa opened her eyes and blinked a few times. “I think I’ve got one, but we don’t…I mean, I can’t get pregnant if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “You can’t get pregnant?”

  “No, I had an…accident. The scarring is so extensive my doctor says my chances of getting pregnant are less than one percent.”

  “That’s better odds than with a condom.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked down at her breasts and licked his lips.

  “I haven’t been with anyone in several months,” he said. “Before I came up here I got tested for every disease known to man. I’m clean.”

  “It’s been years for me and I get tested often for work. I’m clean too.”

  Liam’s eyes dilated. “Years?”

  She nodded.

  He cleared his throat. “Okay, so…no condom?”

  She drew in a deep breath. “I’m fine with it if you are.”

  “No condom. Naked. Oh God, I’m going to lose my mind.” He kissed her hard, his tongue driving into her mouth, making it clear how much the idea turned him on.

  “Shirt off,” she mumbled.

  Liam struggled to get it over his head and ended up ripping off several buttons. He pressed his chest against hers, groaning.

  “Your turn.” She attacked his jeans, starving for a morsel of him. Willa got the zipper down and peeled the denim down his legs, snagging his underwear with it. “Bed,” she ordered, pulling him with her. He crawled over her. She gasped as his erection sprang free. “Wow, you’re big.”

  Liam started to laugh. “Are you trying to give me a swelled head?”

  “Yes.” She glanced down and encircled him with one hand, stroking slowly upward to caress the tip. “It’s working too.”

  His laughter died as she continued to stroke. “Come here,” he growled.

  He slid her up until he could kiss her then proceeded to learn her body and how she liked to be touched. He found a sensitive spot on her neck and licked, sucked and nibbled on it.

  Willa squirmed, her hands roving his back and shoulders. She kissed whatever part of him she could reach, moaning his name.

  He worked his way down her neck to her breasts and treated them with the same attentiveness.

  “Liam, please. Please, please.”

  He answered by slipping his free hand down, his fingers seeking out her hot slick core.

  “You’re so wet.”

  “I’m dying here. Please, do something.”

  He settled himself between her thighs then stopped, poised above her.

  “It’s not too late to stop,” he said, breathing hard.

  She clutched at him with her hands and legs. “I’m so close, please.”

  He took himself in hand and rubbed his tip in her wetness, teasing them both. Willa pulled him close and he entered her slowly, pulling back once before pressing all the way in. “You feel unbelievable.”

  She wiggled in response.

  “Don’t. Holy…” Liam moved, thrusting hard and fast, changing angles slightly, going deeper yet.

  Willa groaned then began to shiver, her teeth clattering as her orgasm rolled over her.

  Liam bucked against her and groaned as he came. Then he rested his head on her shoulder.

  She couldn’t stop the tears streaming from beneath her closed eyes. She’d never felt anything like that before. Never made love with a man as interested in her pleasure as his own.

  His breath whispered past her ear. “Willa? You okay?”

  She smiled then laughed. “Okay? That was…” She still couldn’t catch her breath. “Wow.” Her entire body felt lighter, renewed, yet she couldn’t stop crying.

  Her hands clutched at him as she struggled to find an emotional safe harbor. But calm was impossible, her breathing ragged as she shook in the aftermath of pleasure so intense she was amazed she was still conscious.

  “Shh, shh.” Liam wiped the tears from her face with his thumbs. “It was pretty wow for me too.” His gaze moved over her face as if memorizing each feature. “So beautiful.”

  He sounded like Prince Charming, always with the right words dancing on his tongue. “I don’t know where you got those rose-colored glasses, but wait until I leave the room before you take them off.”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “How absolutely gorgeous you are.”

  Now he was being silly. “What I don’t know is how you can say that with a straight face. I’m plain.” It was safer to be ordinary. At least that’s what she had always thought. Safer than letting a man get too close. But Liam was already closer than anyone else had ever gotten.

  Ridges appeared between his eyes, his expression altogether too serious. “You’re not plain.”

  Her chest constricted. Why was he talking like this? “You’re much too kind,” she said, her smile dying.

  He leaned down to kiss her, lingering as if savoring every moment. “That’s the best compliment I’ve ever been paid.” He kissed her again. “Beautiful.”

  Panic threatened to rise from a deep, dark place in the pit of her belly, but she ruthlessly tramped it down. No, she wouldn’t let her fear rule her ever again. He’d done nothing wrong.

  “So,” Willa whispered, running her hand down his back to squeeze one muscled buttock. “Any chance of an encore?”

  His easy smile returned full force. “Oh, yeah.”

  Chapter Eight

  Willa worked through the next two days with her mind running in circles. Sex with Liam was amazing, wonderful and scary. She liked him way too much, more than was safe, but she couldn’t make herself turn away from the sheer joy she felt whenever they were together.

  They were together a lot.

  Most of Tuesday had been taken over by an emergency in Summerset Inlet. Willa and Liam responded to a call from a patient with abdominal pain. A young woman who’d been suffering all weekend but had put up with the pain until early Tuesday morning.

  Willa was certain she was looking at a case of appendicitis, and given the girl’s fever of one hundred and five, elected to fly her straight to Fairbanks for emergency surgery.

  None too soon.

  The girl’s appendix had ruptured and an abscess had formed. The surgeon told Willa that had the young woman not been brought in promptly, she probably would have died.

  There had been no time for Willa and Liam to talk about anything outside the job. He questioned her about the young woman’s case a
nd why Willa seemed so certain she needed surgery. After handing off the patient and hearing the doctor’s concerns, Liam had even more questions for her on the trip back to Summerset Inlet to see her regular clinic patients. He seemed genuinely interested in all aspects of the emergency, and she was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly they worked together.

  They were acting like a real team.

  Then, as soon as she got back to Stony Creek, the mayor, Stan Utomyuk, was waiting for her at the clinic. With bad news. The council had voted down her request for a larger building and a doctor, saying it was too much money. And they hadn’t received any new applications for the nursing aides she needed. They had, however, decided to increase her equipment and materials budget. Lovely—she’d have more stuff to try to fit into her already full storage but no extra people to help administer any of it.

  Crap.

  Well, she wasn’t giving up. She would nag them until she got what she needed, no matter how long it took.

  Today, with the Stony Creek clinic filled to overflowing, she stared down a red and inflamed throat and tried not to think about Liam. Half the town had come down with the flu. Both her receptionist, Elizabeth, and her aide, Joanne, had it, forcing Willa to handle the load alone. Which wouldn’t have been too bad except for the two kids who’d vomited all over the floor next to the bathroom door. In the fifteen minutes since, she had yet to find time to clean it up.

  The smell was hardly appetizing.

  Noise and yelling from the waiting room disrupted her concentration. A crash, more yelling and heavy pounding like several people jumping up and down with steel-toed boots on had her handing her otoscope to her patient and running out front.

  Two grown men wrestled in front of the reception desk. They disappeared from view, rolling around on the floor, bumping into chairs and the desk alternately as they pummeled each other. Her patients watched with varying degrees of mild interest.

  This was ridiculous.

  Willa stepped around the desk to break up the fight and nearly slipped. Blood coated the floor.

  “Stop it.” She reached out to grab the man currently on top, but they rolled away before she could touch him, kicking her in the shin in the process. “Ouch,” she cried, clutching her foreleg and hopping up and down.

  “Damn miners. Just let them fight it out,” one middle-aged flu victim said from the sideline. “It’s safer.”

  “I can’t just let them beat each other to death.”

  The man shrugged. “They’ll pass out before that happens.”

  “How reassuring,” Willa mumbled as she hobbled back into the fray. “This isn’t some wrestling free-for-all.”

  The two men bowled over a chair with a teenage boy in it. They now resembled a mobile new-age sculpture composed of thrashing legs and arms and metal chair legs.

  “That is enough,” she yelled, trying to get the chair out before it skewered someone. A head rose above the fray and Willa didn’t stop to think. She grabbed an ear and twisted. “I said that’s enough.”

  “Hey, let go,” the miner whined, trying to jerk his ear free, but she refused to release him, twisting harder.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” he complained as she hauled him off his adversary and their hapless victim. “Come on, lady, let go.”

  “This is a medical clinic, not a bar,” she snapped, finally letting go of his ear. “There is no fighting allo—”

  A bellow from the floor was the only warning she got before the other miner tackled the first one to the floor again. Two of her waiting patients calmly got up and moved their chairs out of the way. She helped the teenager to his feet and herded him to the side then took a deep breath, unsure of how to keep the two miners separated.

  The front door opened, but before she could warn the new arrival the combatants gained their feet, fists flying.

  Willa took a step toward them. She had to stop this before they seriously injured each other.

  A fist shot out, slamming into the side of her face. She fell to the floor, dazed. For a moment she relived the blow the monster had once landed on her lower back, the one that pushed her down the stairs, the one that caused her miscarriage.

  But someone pulled her out of the way before the idiots could step on her or kick her.

  Liam.

  He stepped between the two men, arms and legs moving in short controlled bursts. A second later both miners lay on the floor moaning.

  Willa blinked. That was fast. She looked from the miners to Liam.

  “Wow, man,” the teenager said. “You looked just like Jackie Chan. What was that, Karate, Kung Fu?”

  “June Keet Do, another martial art form.”

  “Cool.”

  Martial arts? She swallowed her fear. Her ex-husband had been a karate expert, but he’d never used his skills to end a fight.

  One of the miners tried to stand. “I’m going to kill that SOB,” he slurred.

  His words jerked Willa back to the here and now. “You most certainly will not,” she said, placing herself between him and his adversary.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Edward Reynolds stood in the doorway.

  Liam didn’t look at his father. “Willa, you got the stuff to do enemas here?” he asked casually, though she knew from past experience that his stance was hardly casual. Knees slightly bent for better balance, he looked ready to fight. She swallowed, her eyes darting to Liam’s father as he moved to stand next to his son then back to Liam. She forced a neutral expression onto her face. “Of course, why?”

  “I think that would be just the sort of medicine these two need to help them get control over themselves. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  The miner on his feet paled. “I don’t need no enema.”

  “Then I expect you to mind your manners, sir,” Willa said to him. “No more fighting.”

  “Virgil and I were just having a friendly tussle.”

  “Friendly?” Incensed, she shook a finger at him. “You call battering each other to the point of bleeding all over my floor friendly?”

  “Geez, it looks like someone’s been gutted in here,” Liam’s father said, looking around.

  The miner shrugged. “There’s no permanent damage.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Sam,” Virgil said, trying and failing to stand. “You stabbed me.”

  “Stabbed?” Liam helped the man to his feet.

  “In the back,” Virgil added, glaring at Sam.

  “Bring him into the exam room,” Willa ordered, taking charge. She pointed at Sam. “You stay here.” She glanced at Edward. “You, watch him.”

  “Wait a minute, you can’t order me around.”

  “Dad, just do as she says.” Liam slung Virgil’s left arm over his shoulder. “Where do you want him, Willa?”

  “My exam room, but don’t hurry,” she said, rushing ahead. “I’ve got a patient to move out of there first.”

  “We’ll just go for a stroll, isn’t that right, Virgil?”

  “I’d rather punch Sam.”

  “I know, but life isn’t fair. We can’t always get what we want.”

  “You got that right.”

  She agreed. Willa helped her elderly patient off the exam table and led her out to sit in the receptionist’s chair.

  “Folks, I’m sorry,” she said to the waiting room full of people. “But I have to take care of these two idiots—I mean, gentlemen—before I can continue with any other patients.”

  There was grumbling, but almost everyone remained seated. Only one or two got up to leave.

  Liam dragged Virgil into the exam room and dumped him facedown on the table. “I’m staying,” Liam told her before she could speak.

  She lifted one eyebrow. “That’s fine.”

  His hands ca
ught her chin and turned her toward him. “Your eye.” He glared at Virgil. “Did you do this?”

  “How bad is it?” she asked.

  Liam leaned down and studied her face. “Not bad now, but you’ll have a real shiner tomorrow.”

  He was close enough to kiss.

  She backed away from temptation, pulled on a pair of gloves, unbuttoned Virgil’s shirt and examined his bloody torso, searching for the wound. “Here it is,” she said, probing a bleeding cut on his right side. Clotted blood covered the area, masking the size and severity of the injury.

  Liam leaned forward to get a good look. “It looks nasty enough.”

  Willa rolled her eyes. “It won’t be so bad after I clean it up.”

  She stepped out of the room to grab a triage tray out of the storage closet and glanced at Edward standing over Sam. Neither man looked happy.

  At least they were doing as they were told.

  She flushed Virgil’s wound with saline then again with alcohol, the latter causing him to groan, his eyes fluttering.

  “See how clean the edges are?” she said, pointing at the now visible five-inch slice down his side. “The skin was cut, not torn. Definitely a stab wound. Thank goodness it’s shallow or I’d be bleeding donors for him.”

  Liam grunted.

  Virgil wiggled, thrashing his arms and legs.

  “Hang on to him,” Willa ordered Liam. “Virgil, keep still.”

  Liam pressed down on Virgil’s shoulders, forcing him to lie flat.

  Virgil glared at her with bloodshot eyes. “My side feels like it’s on fire.”

  “That’s normal.” She swabbed with more alcohol.

  “Sam, you lousy bastard, I’m going to kill you when this is done.”

  Willa heard Sam’s snort from all the way across the clinic. “You couldn’t kill a mosquito.”

  “You won’t be saying that after I tear you into itty bitty pieces, you damn backstabber.”

  “Shut your mouth, Virgil, and that goes for you, too, Sam,” Liam said, raising his voice. “As soon as Willa gets you two cleaned up, you’re going straight to the police station and into lockup.”

  “Why should I go to jail?” Virgil demanded. “He stabbed me.”