He turned to look at her. “What makes you think anything happened?”
“And here I thought that being a doctor made you brighter than the average guy—”
His laugh was bitter. “Not so much.”
When he moved toward the door to leave, she rushed around him and stood in front of it. “Not so fast.”
For the first time the smallest hint of a smile showed at the corners of his mouth. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not letting you leave until you talk to me.”
“What if I don’t want to talk?”
“I have my ways.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and saw the movement draw his gaze there followed by a deep swallow. “Now, tell me why it was so important that you see Annie.”
He took her measure and finally nodded. “I needed to make sure she was all right. That she’s healthy, breathing, happy and normal.”
Oh, no. “You lost a patient, didn’t you?”
He nodded miserably. “A little girl. Three years old. Car accident. Depressed skull fracture and abdominal injuries.”
“Oh, Cal—I’m so sorry.”
“We stabilized her in the E.R. and she made it into surgery but Jake lost her on the table.” Misery clouded his eyes. “The thing is the parents did everything right. She was in the car seat, properly secured in the back passenger seat. Their SUV was broadsided by a pickup that didn’t stop for a red light.”
“It’s not your fault,” Em said firmly.
“No?” He shook his head. “I didn’t do enough. I must have missed something or I wouldn’t have lost her.”
“You’re not God.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” He curved his fingers around her upper arms. “If I were all powerful, I’d be able to protect kids. I could stop the things people do to each other. The lies, manipulation. They break the rules of human decency. If I were God, I’d be able to save innocent lives from the bad stuff.”
He was talking in generalities, but there was something in his eyes, in his voice, in his expression that told her whatever he was feeling was profoundly personal. And not necessarily about the little girl he’d lost, but something innocent in himself that had died.
“You’re a good man and a good doctor.” The words didn’t take away the pain and grief in his expression.
“I hate to lose,” he ground out.
“But you can’t always win.”
Em was desperate to reassure him and didn’t know what to do except press her body to his and put her arms around him offering him comfort through her touch. She felt the tension in his body and tightened her grip, resting her head on his chest, feeling the powerful pounding of his heart beneath her cheek.
She felt the conflict rage in him and his resistance to her reassurance but held on until he pressed his hand to the back of her head and his fingers tangled in her hair. Gently he tugged, tilting her face up.
“Em—”
The agonized whisper of her name on his lips was the last thing he said before lowering his mouth to hers. The touch unleashed all the storm of need inside her and drowned rational thought, silencing all the reasons why this was not a good idea. Greedily his mouth took hers, sending jolts of excitement arcing through her that fried her nerve endings.
He traced her bottom lip with his tongue and she opened. Without hesitation he dipped inside and eagerly took what she offered. He kissed her cheek, her jaw, the sensitive place just beneath her ear and down her neck.
Breathing hard, he swung her into his arms and said in a voice that scraped over her skin and made her tingle, “I want you, Em. If you have a problem with that, speak now—”
She touched her fingertip to his mouth and shook her head. “You’ll get no argument from me.”
Looking fierce and so very wonderful, he said, “That would be a first.”
“Not true.” She locked her arms around his neck as he carried her into her room. “I’m not a confrontational sort of woman.”
“Yes, you are.” He stopped by her bed and removed his arm from behind her legs, letting them slide down his front until her bare toes brushed the carpet. “But I don’t need sparks of conflict to build a fire.” His heated gaze seared to her soul as he stared down. “All I need is to look at you.”
He took the bottom of her T-shirt and slowly slid it up and over her raised arms and satisfaction glittered in his eyes. “Pay dirt. You’re not wearing a bra.”
“I didn’t think I had to,” she said.
“Not on my account.”
His gaze darkened when he touched the red discoloration on her breast, all that remained of the lump. Bending slightly, he tenderly kissed it and she nearly dissolved from the liquid heat that surged through her. While his lips had their way with her breasts, his thumbs hooked in the elastic waistband of her shorts and pushed down. When they pooled at her feet, she stepped out of them and stood before him completely naked except for the watch on her wrist.
He slid his palm over her abdomen, then dipped a finger into the curls between her legs, his breath catching as he felt her waiting warmth. Her thighs quivered and practically begged for more. With one sweeping movement, he pushed her comforter down until the sheets beneath beckoned them. Then he yanked off his scrubs, retrieving his wallet from the back pocket and setting it on her nightstand.
Em crawled onto the bed and waited for him to join her, watching him lift a condom from his wallet. He opened the foil packet and covered himself. Need and intensity glittered in his eyes as he put one knee on the mattress and braced his hands on either side of her, trapping her in the most sensuous and sexy possible way.
Breathing hard, he settled on top of her and she gloried in being beneath him. He pushed inside and filled her. It was like she was finally where she belonged with who she was meant to be with.
He buried his face in her neck and slowly moved in and out, each thrust sending her higher, stoking the tension building within her. Every stroke intensified the pressure until finally she shattered and pleasure punched through her very center, rippling outward to every part of her.
Moments later he went stone still and groaned out his own release, holding her to him as if he’d never let her go. She slid her arms around him and held on tight because she was exactly where she wanted to be.
Where she wanted to stay.
Chapter Twelve
Cal felt Emily shiver from being naked under the air-conditioning vent and pulled the sheet up over them as he snuggled her more securely to his side.
“You know what they say about combining body heat,” he said, then brushed his mouth over her forehead.
She rested her arm over his belly, her breasts pressed against him and her only reply was, “Mmm—”
The single sound, not even a word really, was just about the sexiest thing he’d ever heard and parts of him responded. He wanted her again, as much or more than he had when he’d walked in here tonight. He’d needed to see Annie, but deep down inside it was Em he wanted. Some instinct told him that only she could take away, for just a little while, the guilt and pain of losing a kid.
He knew it was way past time to go and there were nine different ways that what he’d just done with Em was wrong. Right now, with her in his arms and her soft, sweet, satisfied curves pressed sleepily to his side, he couldn’t think about that. There would be plenty of opportunity to kick himself six ways to Sunday, but for now that could wait.
Em put a soft kiss on his shoulder. “How do you feel?”
He turned his head to look at her. The nightstand light was behind him but illuminated her face and the sympathetic concern in her dark eyes. She wasn’t asking if the sex was good, and he didn’t really want to talk about anything else.
He forced a smile. “It’s pretty hard to feel bad after that.”
“I meant are you still thinking about what happened in the E.R.?”
He shrugged. “You never get used to it when a young life is cut short.”
She
was quiet for a few moments, but he could almost feel the energy of her whirling thoughts pumping through her. A frown hinted that the thoughts were troubling.
“Cal, I—”
“Are you going to get serious on me?”
“It’s okay for you, but I’m supposed to be the good-time girl?” she said.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you did.” She brushed a finger over his abdomen and his muscles tensed involuntarily. “But I demand equal time.”
“Okay. Go.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said before we—you know.”
It surprised him that she was still shy. She had always been that way afterward, but when their bodies were giving and taking her passion and responsiveness always blew him away. “We had sex.”
“Yeah. That.” She wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I said a lot of things. What specifically?”
“About hating to lose.”
He nodded. “It’s true. Obviously losing a patient is unacceptable to any doctor and that’s especially the case with children. But I’m competitive in most ways. When I played sports it was running up the score. In school it was about having the highest grade point average. Being a doctor means saving my patients.”
“What about being married?” she asked out of the blue.
“What do you mean?”
“How do you judge success in marriage?” She met his gaze. “Your father told me you were married once. When I had questions, he said I’d have to ask you. So, I’m asking.”
When he sat up the sheet pulled away, revealing her breasts, the softly feminine flesh he’d just touched and kissed, the healing scar from her recent procedure. Looking around he noticed the softly feminine pink-and-lavender floral print comforter and lace crisscross curtains over the blinds on the windows. Even the dangly crystals sparkling on the lamp-shades marked this room as a girly space.
A space that he should never have set foot in, but regret and remorse didn’t stop him from wanting her again. It stirred within him, even now when she was asking about failures he spent every day trying to forget.
He threw the sheet back and stood then found his scrubs and dressed. When she joined him in the living room she’d put on a short yellow terrycloth robe that hid her nakedness but didn’t erase the memories of her body that were branded into his mind.
She walked past him and stood in front of the door as she’d done just a little while ago. “Obviously I touched a nerve.”
“It’s not a time I enjoy talking about.”
“Maybe if you did it wouldn’t have as much power over you.”
Staring at her, he put his hands on his hips. “So your diagnosis and treatment are to use my words?”
“I’m not minimizing your experience, but you might feel better.”
Maybe she was right. Not about feeling better, but about talking. It was time to tell her, let her know that he wasn’t just a judgmental jerk and had good reason for his feelings.
He blew out a long breath. “It happened when I was just nineteen.”
“So young—”
When she caught her top lip between her teeth, he fixed his gaze on the door behind her, the deadbolt. That seemed appropriate. “I was quarterback of the football team and the guy with the highest grade point average in the class. She was homecoming queen and captain of the cheerleading squad. The golden couple.”
“What happened?”
“We dated all of senior year. I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. My dad is, and it runs in the family. Lori knew that but when graduation got closer, she started talking about going to the same college, about staying together.”
“I understand that.”
“She didn’t get into the college where I was going. Her grades weren’t good enough.”
Em shifted her bare feet. “So you married her to be together.”
“Not exactly.” He stared so hard at the deadbolt the edges got fuzzy. “Just before graduation she told me she was pregnant.”
“I see.” Her frown said she was lying.
“Being a doctor isn’t the only Westen characteristic hardwired into my DNA. Doing the right thing is right there at the top. Every time I went against that I got burned—from playing with fireworks to BB guns. By the time I’d gone through high school, I’d learned my lesson. Doing the right thing meant marrying the girl carrying my baby, so I did.”
“And the baby?” she whispered.
He looked at her then as his stomach knotted. Bitter memories flashed through him and resurrected his rage. “There was no baby.”
“What happened to it?”
“There never was a baby,” he said, putting a finer point on it. He knew she got the message when her eyes grew wide.
“She lied to you about being pregnant?”
“Pretty much.”
“So you divorced her,” Em said.
“If only.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “See, that’s where my moral compass bit me in the ass. In my family when you get married, the right thing is to stay married. So I did.”
“But you’re not now.”
He shook his head. “We stayed together while I went to school, worked and studied. That didn’t leave a whole lot of time left over to build a relationship.”
“She was unhappy?”
He laughed, but it was a harsh sound, devoid of amusement. “That’s a safe bet, although she never once came to me and said she was lonely, neglected and unhappy. I found out when the E.R. called and said my wife had taken pills and tried to kill herself.”
Em gasped and touched her fingers to her mouth. “Oh, Cal—but she pulled through?”
“Yeah. That time and every other time she cried out for attention and ended up in the E.R.”
“So you finally left her?”
“Nope.” If only he thought bitterly. “I was still determined to do the right thing. When I was doing my residency here in Las Vegas at the county hospital, she decided she’d had enough and walked out. No drama. No warning. She just said it was over.”
Emily looked confused. “After the lies and the drama, I should think you’d have been relieved.”
“You’d think.” He grabbed his car keys from the coffee table.
“I’m very sorry that happened to you, Cal.”
“What you really mean is that for a smart guy with a GPA somewhere in the stratosphere I was pretty damn dumb.”
“No, you were pretty darn noble.” She shook her head. “But I can certainly understand why you felt the way you did about—”
“Finding out I had a daughter?”
“Yes,” she said, looking pretty guilty.
“I didn’t think it was possible to be that stupid again, but I was wrong. The first time, I’d started to love a baby that didn’t exist.” He moved in front of her and stared down until she stepped aside. “The second time I didn’t know a baby existed that I needed to love.”
She sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry, Cal.”
“You told me you weren’t going to say that again.”
“I was wrong. It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last.”
“That makes two of us. I wasted too many years living a lie and promised myself it would never happen again. The truth, the whole truth. Nothing but the truth for me.” He opened the door, then glanced over his shoulder at the moisture in her troubled dark eyes.
He closed the door behind him and wondered why he felt like the world’s worst bastard. It was time she knew what had happened to him. Maybe he should have told her when they were dating, but he hadn’t. Part of him was glad he’d waited until now because it put distance between them. It was a way for her to understand that he’d drawn a line in the sand and why he didn’t intend to cross it.
Now there were no secrets.
Except what he felt for Em.
He couldn’t stop wanting her and wasn’t sure why. The only thing he was sure of was that there was no
win in a relationship with a woman who’d deceived him. If you couldn’t win, what was the point of playing? Or maybe that was an excuse because he wasn’t willing to take a chance.
Em parked on the top floor of Green Valley Ranch Hotel and Casino’s self-parking structure because she knew it wouldn’t take an elevator ride to get her where she needed to be. She was late meeting Sophia for dinner at the Grand Café and hurried through the maze of slot-machine lights and sounds, turned right at the Player Rewards Club counter, raced past the water wall at the Feast Buffet and stopped at the restaurant desk to check in with the hostess. The woman in the long-sleeved crisp, white blouse and black pants directed her to a table in the far back corner where the casino noises wouldn’t intrude.
She sat down in the booth across from her friend. “Hi. Sorry I’m late.”
“No problem.” Soph smiled, then sipped red wine.
Em saw the glass of soda water with lime waiting and smiled at the friend who knew her so well. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
The waitress came and took their salad orders, Cobb for Em and chicken Caesar for Sophia, then left them alone.
“How are things at work?” Em asked.
“I love my job. The children are adorable and so normal.” Her gray eyes clouded over for a moment, but a new and recent concern pushed away the memories. “But I need to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“What’s going on with Patty?”
“The usual. She has a toddler while working and going to school and juggling a relationship with her child’s father.” Em realized that two out of those three applied to her. The only difference was she didn’t have to contend with school. “Why?”
“Are she and Jonas having problems?”
“Not that I’m aware of. But I haven’t had a real heart-to-heart talk with her for a while. We’ve both been busy.” If anyone should win man-problems-of-the-year award, it was Em. Considering she’d slept with her child’s father. Again. And he all but gave her the brush off. None of which she wanted to think about, let alone discuss. It just hurt too much. But concentrating on someone else would take her mind off her own imploding life. “What makes you think Patty and Jonas are going through something, Soph?”
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