Never Been Kissed

by Linda Turner

  There’d been a time when it wouldn’t have taken much more than the other man’s totally bewildered expression to make Reilly smile. But that was before—before Victoria died, before all the joy went out of his life. Appreciation glinted in his eyes, but his lips didn’t so much as twitch with humor. “Trust me, you’re not asking anything I haven’t asked myself,” he said dryly. “Actually, I’m moving here. I’m joining Dan Michaels’s practice.”

  Nick couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d told him he planned to grow marijuana once he was settled into his new home. “Dr. Michaels? You’re going to work with Dan?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. You know him?”

  “He delivered just about every baby in town for the past forty years,” Nick said with a smile. “He’s a good man.”

  And if Dan was taking on a partner, it went without saying that he wouldn’t trust his practice to just anyone. He would have made sure Reilly Jones was a good man himself. Relaxing, he held out his hand with a grin. “It looks like I’m the welcoming committee. Welcome to town, Doctor. I’m Nick Kincaid. If I can do anything to help you get settled in, just let me know.”

  Just that easily the introductions were made and Reilly was accepted. “Thanks,” he said, returning his handshake. “And the name’s Reilly. I don’t stand much on ceremony.”

  “Then you should fit in just fine around here,” Nick replied, his brown eyes twinkling. “We’re a pretty casual group. C’mon, let’s take a look at your car and see what’s wrong with it.”

  Standing in the cold mist, Reilly watched the tow truck driver hook up his BMW for the tow into town and wondered what the hell he was going to do now. When Nick had lifted the hood, he’d spotted the problem immediately—a broken fan belt—which Reilly had assumed could be easily fixed. All he had to do was get a new fan belt.

  In L.A. that wouldn’t have been a problem. But he wasn’t in L.A., and the tow truck driver—and owner of the only garage in town—had quickly informed him that he didn’t keep spare parts for BMWs in stock since no one in town owned one. The fan belt would have to come from Colorado Springs—on the bus. If he was lucky, Reilly would have his car back in a couple of days!

  “Damn!”

  Sympathizing with him, Nick made no attempt to hold back a grin. “Don’t look so glum. Things aren’t as bad as they seem. This isn’t L.A.—you don’t really need a car. The town’s so small, you can walk just about anywhere you want to go in ten minutes. C’mon, I’ll show you. Where are you staying?”

  Reilly grimaced. “Good question. I don’t know yet.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Just what I said. I didn’t want to make arrangements long-distance without getting the lay of the land first. That’ll be hard to do without a car, so if you wouldn’t mind taking me to the nearest hotel, I’ll stay there until I get the car back.”

  This time it was Nick’s turn to grimace. “I’ll take you if you want, but you might want to reconsider.”

  “Why? Is it a dump or what?”

  “No, actually it’s a very nice place,” he replied. “In Gunnison—thirty miles away.”

  Reilly swore. “There’s no hotel in Liberty Hill? What the hell kind of town is it?”

  “A small one,” Nick said wryly. “Myrtle Henderson rents out spare rooms, but she’s booked the rest of the week with a writers’ group, so you’re out of luck there.” Studying him through narrowed eyes, he said, “What kind of place were you looking for?”

  With no conscious effort on his part, Reilly found himself thinking of the Tudor house he’d shared with Victoria in West Hollywood and still thought of as home. Built in the twenties, he and Victoria had fallen in love with it the second they stepped through the front door for the first time. They’d never even considered looking at anything else.

  He’d thought he would live the rest of his life there, but he’d sold it and everything else when he’d left L.A. His heart flinching at the thought, he reminded himself the whole purpose of moving to Colorado was to let go of the past and get on with his life. He just hadn’t expected it to be so painful.

  “I don’t want anything fancy,” he said gruffly. “There’s just me to consider, and I don’t plan on doing any entertaining, so something small would be nice. And secluded, if I can find it. After living in the city for so long, I really just want to be left alone.”

  A man was entitled to his privacy, Nick thought. And his pain. And Reilly Jones’s went soul deep. Oh, his tone was casual enough, and his expression gave away little of what he was feeling. But his eyes spoke volumes. Dark with misery, they were the windows of a tortured soul. Whatever his story was, it was eating him alive.

  Feeling for him, Nick knew he should talk to Merry before he offered him his cabin, but the poor guy was obviously hurting and needed a place to hole up and lick his wounds. And it wasn’t as if he and Merry were using the cabin. Since they’d gotten married last year, he’d moved into her place on the ranch, and the cabin had been sitting empty. He’d actually been thinking about renting it, and here was the ideal renter, complete with excellent references. If Dr. Dan was willing to trust him with his patients, Nick thought he could certainly trust him with the cabin.

  Making a snap decision, he said, “I’ve got a log cabin north of town you might be interested in renting. You said you didn’t want fancy. Trust me—it’s not. Some friends helped me build it seven years ago, so I’ll warn you up front that it’s not perfect. Some of the doors stick on humid days, and the upstairs floor has a tendency to creak. But it’s airtight, warm in the winter and surrounded by trees. If you want privacy, you ought to take a look at it. The nearest neighbor’s a half a mile away.”

  “How far out of town is it?”

  Nick winced. That was the kicker. “A mile and a half. But your car’s only going to be out of commission for three days,” he reminded him. “When do you start working with Dr. Dan?”

  “Tomorrow,” he replied, “but the distance isn’t a problem. I can walk if I have to. When can I see it?”

  “Right now,” Nick said, grinning, and led the way to his patrol car.

  There was a time in his life when Reilly wouldn’t have looked twice at a log cabin. He wasn’t an outdoorsman, and the rustic look had never appealed to him. But when Nick drove down the winding drive that led to the cabin, Reilly had to admit there was something about the place that immediately caught his eye.

  Just as Nick had promised, the cabin offered all the privacy anyone could possibly want. Nestled among a thick stand of pines and set well back on a two-acre lot, it blended in with the trees and was virtually impossible to see from the road. The nearest neighbor may have been a half mile away, but it might as well have been a hundred. You couldn’t see another living soul for what looked like miles in any direction.

  He liked the idea of not being bothered by neighbors as he had been in L.A. He’d known they were concerned about him, and he appreciated that, but all he’d wanted was the silence of his own company. Living out here, so far from anyone, he wouldn’t have to worry about someone dropping by to borrow a cup of sugar, thank God. And for no other reason than that, he was prepared to love the place even if it turned out to be an architectural nightmare.

  The cabin that Nick had built with the help of some friends, however, was far from the leaning shack that Reilly had expected. It may have been rough-hewn and a quarter of the size of his old house in L.A., but it had a porch across the front and back, a fieldstone fireplace, and paned windows that gave it an old-fashioned charm that would be nice to come home to after a long day at work. As Nick braked to a stop in the circular drive and cut the engine, Reilly took one long look and didn’t need to see anything else.

  “I’ll take it.”

  Already in the process of stepping from the car, Nick leaned down to swivel a sharp look at him. “Don’t you want to look inside?”

  “Sure, but it’s just a formality,” he retorted. “This is just what
I was looking for. Is it furnished?”

  Amazed that he could make a decision so easily, Nick nodded. “I didn’t take much when I married Merry and moved into her place—just a chest and a couple of end tables. When do you expect your things from California? You can go ahead and move in today if you like, but it’s going to take me a couple of days to find a place to store everything—”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll take it the way it is, if that’s okay with you. I sold all my things in California with the house.”

  Surprised, Nick wanted to ask him what could bring a man to sell everything he owned and cut all ties with his past, but Reilly’s expression had turned distant, his eyes shuttered. Wondering what his story was, Nick didn’t push. In his business, he’d learned that people talked when they were ready. And judging from the wall he had built around himself, Reilly was a long way from ready.

  Respecting his privacy, Nick said easily, “Sure. No problem.” Naming a fair market price for the rent, he arched a brow at him. “How does that sound to you?”

  “More than fair,” Reilly replied, and stuck out his hand. “So we have a deal?”

  Pleased, Nick grinned and shook his hand. “Deal!”

  “Sorry, Wanda, darling, but a full house beats three of a kind. If my calculations are right you now owe me six million big ones and a handful of M&M candies. I’ll take the candy now, thank you very much.”

  “Not so fast, Robin Hood,” Janey drawled before Scott Bradford could grab the colorful candy piled high in the middle of the table. “You may have a full house, but if I remember correctly, that can’t hold a candle to a royal flush.” Smiling hugely, she laid down her cards on the table to the cheers of Scott’s wife, Wanda, who was down to her last piece of candy. Her brown eyes dancing, Janey smiled smugly at Scott. “Now what was that you were saying about candy, pretty boy?”

  For an answer he shot her a less-than-polite hand gesture.

  Far from offended, Janey only laughed. She’d known Scott all her life—his uncle’s ranch boarded her family’s, and they’d gone through school together. And for the last few years he and Wanda invariably spent two evenings a week with Janey at the local volunteer fire department volunteering as emergency medical technicians. And tonight, as most Thursday nights, they passed the time playing poker while they waited for the radio to crackle to life with the report of an accident or the phone to ring with an emergency call.

  They rarely got either.

  Oh, they got their fair share of calls, but the calls were usually for something minor—like a twisted ankle or heart pains that turned out to be heartburn, and then there was the time Margaret Hopper got stuck in the bathtub and it took not only the entire EMT team but two firefighters, as well, to get her out. Tonight the phone was thankfully silent. Janey hoped it stayed that way.

  A grin twitching at his lips, Scott watched her rake in her winnings and groaned in pretended pain. When Janey arched an inquiring brow at him, he pressed a hand to his stomach and moaned again. “I think I must be going through withdrawals. Help me, Janey. You wouldn’t deny your old friend a few M&Ms, would you? I’m dying here.”

  “Then we’ve got to do something!” Jumping to her feet, she grabbed her stethoscope. “Quick, Wanda, help me get him into the ambulance. We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

  “Do you want me to call your mama, honey?” his wife crooned, laughing when he scowled at her. “I’m sure she would want to know about this—”

  Enjoying themselves, she and Janey would have continued to tease him unmercifully, but before they got the chance, the radio suddenly started to crackle and Nick’s voice, rough with static, filled the room. “This is County One calling County 911. Janey? Are you there?”

  Her smile fading, Janey stepped quickly over to the radio and grabbed the mike. “Yes, go ahead, Nick. What’s the problem?”

  “We’ve got a one-vehicle accident out on Eagle Ridge Highway ten miles north of town. The driver took a curve too fast and rolled his SUV. He and his girlfriend weren’t wearing their seat belts, and were both thrown from the vehicle. You’d better get out here as quick as you can.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. Already reaching for her bag, Janey said, “We’re on our way.”

  They may have been volunteers, but they, like the rest of the local residents who worked the station on a regular basis, prided themselves on always being ready for whatever emergency cropped up. And this time was no exception. The ambulance was stocked with everything they needed, and by the time Janey ended the call a few seconds later, the rest of the team was already in the cab of the vehicle and waiting for her. She quickly jumped in next to Wanda, who sat in the middle, and was still reaching for her seat belt when Scott pulled out of the garage of the volunteer fire department with sirens blazing. Seconds later they turned north on the Eagle Ridge Highway and left town far behind.

  If it hadn’t been for the flares Nick had set out marking the spot of the accident, they might have driven right past without even noticing it. In the dark it was impossible to see the wrecked car at the bottom of the ravine that ran parallel with the highway.

  Nick had, however, managed to get his patrol car down there, and Scott carefully followed his path in the ambulance. “Ouch,” he said when the vehicle’s headlights landed on the smashed SUV. A foreign make that obviously didn’t stand up well to crash tests, it was banged in on all sides and nearly as flat as a pancake.

  “It looks like a tin can that’s been run over by a semi,” Wanda said.

  Janey had to agree. “I don’t know how anyone made it out alive.”

  As it was, the two survivors weren’t in the best of shape. The driver was bleeding and unconscious, while his girlfriend was suffering from a broken leg and arm and going into shock. Janey and her team took one look at them and went right to work. They knew the routine, and although Janey was the only one who actually worked in the medical field, both Scott and Wanda had had extensive training in emergency medical care. They didn’t need instructions to know what to do.

  Within minutes the girlfriend’s broken bones were immobilized, and she was given fluids to help counteract the shock. Her boyfriend wasn’t so lucky. He’d regained consciousness, but his pulse was thready, his blood pressure falling, and Janey was sure he was bleeding internally. They didn’t have a lot of time to waste. Hurriedly easing both victims onto stretchers, they quickly loaded them into the ambulance, then raced back to town.

  Scott radioed the hospital with a report of the victims’ condition and their estimated time of arrival, but Janey hardly noticed. With all her attention focused on her patient and his rapidly falling blood pressure, she never even noticed that they made it back to the hospital in record time. Suddenly the back doors of the ambulance flew open, and there were hands to unload both patients and rush them inside.

  In the organized chaos that was the emergency room, the driver and his girlfriend were taken to separate cubicles and quickly examined. Vital signs were hurriedly taken and called out, and in the madness, Janey heard a nurse working on the girlfriend tell someone to call for X rays and Dr. Easton, the only orthopedic surgeon in town. But it was the driver that Janey was worried about. He’d slipped back into unconsciousness again. If he didn’t get into surgery soon, they were going to lose him.

  Hurriedly she helped cut away his clothes and hook him up to a heart monitor. During the entire procedure she never took her eyes off his still figure. “Where’s Dr. Michaels? Has anybody paged him? Somebody send an orderly for him—”

  “There’s no need to send an orderly,” a cool, husky voice cut in smoothly. “I’m taking over for Dr. Michaels tonight.”

  Startled, Janey looked up from the patient, directly into the deep-blue eyes of the stranded California motorist she’d stopped to help the day before yesterday when his BMW broke down on the side of the road. She’d only seen him that once, and then only for a few minutes, but she would have known those eyes of his in the far reaches of
Mongolia. As dark as the sky before a winter storm, they were tinged with a sadness that touched her heart.

  She’d never been able to stand to see anyone in pain and wanted to ask who or what had put that look in his eyes, but he had a reserve about him that didn’t encourage questions. Then, with a blink, recognition flared and his only expression was surprise.

  It was her—the woman who’d stopped to help him his first day in town. He’d thought she was some rancher’s wife—she’d had the look of one, driving a Jeep and wearing jeans and cowboy boots that were scarred from use—but here she was in an EMT’s uniform and right at home in the emergency. Who the hell was she?

  If a patient hadn’t lay there bleeding to death right in front of him, he would have asked. As it was, all he could do was growl, “Let’s get this man to surgery,” and quickly help push the stretcher down the hall to the surgical wing of the small two-story hospital.

  She didn’t accompany him and the other nurses, but stayed behind in the E.R. Watching him disappear behind the double doors that led to surgery, she frowned, questions swirling like a swarm of bees in her head. Who was he? There was no question that he was a doctor—she only had to see him in action in the E.R. to know that—but what was a doctor from California doing in Liberty Hill, for heaven’s sake? She’d just thought he was a traveler passing through town who’d made a wrong turn.

  “Isn’t he the best-looking man you’ve ever seen in your life?” a dreamy voice sighed beside her. “It’s the eyes, you know. So sad and lonely. I’ll bet he needs a good woman.”

  Turning to face the head nurse of the E.R., Janey tried not to flinch. Tanya had never been one of her favorite people—she was too bold and wild, and since her recent divorce, she’d become even more so. She’d already come on to every eligible man in town, not to mention a few married ones, since she’d walked out on her husband. Considering that, Janey wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if she’d set her sights on the new doctor without bothering to ask—or care—if he was married or not.