by Lexy Timms
Joseph neither confirmed or denied. He simply…ran. One minute there, the next, very noticeably absent. To be replaced by Carmen, who blocked the doorway, a disapproving totem pole that had just suddenly appeared.
“What are you doing?” The question died on her lips as she peered on tiptoe over Carmen’s shoulder to see what all the fuss was about. The resort’s Jeep was parked in the courtyard, looking normal enough. Tom was unloading the boxes that had been carefully packed only to be returned halfway around the world, only to return to very room they’d started from in a true exercise in futility. They made an uneven tower next to the rear tire, but looked normal enough.
As though sensing her stare, Tom straightened and shrugged, holding up his hands in a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ sort of way, which only served to draw her attention to the second man who was busily still unloading the Jeep as though his life depended on it.
“Brant?” She blinked at the sunlight and the mirage of Brant untying and stacking boxes. She shoved past Carmen, stumbling down the steps and almost faceplanting at his feet. She scrambled up. Literally. Ending on the top step, safely out of his reach. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Seriously?” Carmen snapped from behind her. “You didn’t see this coming? Really? All that education and you didn’t see this coming?” She shook her head sadly and waved all educated fools to the margins. But she didn’t leave either, crossing her arms and taking up a post at the entrance to the clinic as though guarding it against wayward surgeons.
Not that he made any move toward the building.
Mel caught her breath, unprepared for the raw pain of seeing him. Here, everything had been making sense again, the clinic, her people—hell, her family, and now he was back to complicate it all over again. Every plane of his face, the way he stood, his very smell…damn, she could almost swear that she scented his uniquely masculine odor from where she stood awkwardly in borrowed scrubs, even though she knew logically that she was too far away.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked the question again, less accusation this time around. More heartrending wail, unable to keep the despair locked down when confronted with his presence only a few yards away.
He opened his mouth to speak but Joseph chose the moment to try to slink across the courtyard, realized belatedly that his escape was not exactly going unnoticed, and went to ‘help’ with the cords tying the boxes down in the back of the Jeep. Help like he was giving would delay the transfer by days. Keeping his head down and ears open.
Heaven help her.
“We need to talk…” she said finally when it appeared that, far from their audience disappearing, the rest of the staff had been quietly collecting about the edges. She could swear she saw not only the nurses at the clinic window but their erstwhile burn victim as well, who, if he could get up and indulge in the local soap opera, was likely past due on being sent home.
Brant’s eyes never left her face. Stoic. Pale. It was as though he were trying to devour her entirely with his eyes. He made no move toward her. Or toward her office. Or anywhere.
If anything, he crossed his arms and looked for all the world like he welcomed this audience to their confrontation.
Really? He’s going to do this to me?
Like you didn’t make a big fat scene in front of an audience back in L.A.?
Fine. May as well have this out here. Then he could get right back into the Jeep and drive away to whatever small country he bought next in the name of do-gooding.
“Have you come to fire me?” Mel’s face felt flushed. All of her felt flushed. Her stomach twisted, doing backflips.
“No,” Brant said shortly. He pulled a bag, his bag, from the Jeep and left the rest to the others. For their part, they didn’t seem in any great hurry.
Mel crossed her arms across her chest. “What, you were in the neighborhood? Thought you’d drop by for tea?” Each word came out sharp. Biting.
“Something like that, yeah.” Brant began walking toward her, step by irrevocable step. Mel felt herself began to tremble a little. This was fear. This was anger. This was screaming desperate pleasure at seeing him again. He was here. He was here.
She stomped on that hard and resisted the urge to backpedal right back into the clinic. He was still coming to her, his expression hard and unreadable, his right arm bulging with the weight of the bag he carried. She stood over him, four steps higher than him, and still he seemed to take up the entire clearing, as though there was no more room for air and she couldn’t tell if she breathed or not. The pounding in her ears got worse and worse as he mounted the steps, never breaking eye contact.
He stood in front of her, towering over her. He dropped the bag at her feet.
“I’m here,” he said simply.
“I see that.” She set her jaw firmly and met his gaze. “The question is why.”
He stared at her a long time. His eyes. How could she have not noticed his eyes, the soft lines at the edges that spoke of pain, of a burden to great to carry anymore? When he spoke, his voice was raspy. Raw. “I need you.” He gestured at the building behind her. “You need this.”
Was it really that simple?
Had it really been that simple all along?
Mel stared at him. She couldn’t stop staring at him.
“He said he needed you,” Joseph said, sotto voce, as he dropped a box on the porch next to her. “I think he’s waiting on some kind of answer.”
Brant’s face had gone from urgent to hopeful to resigned in a matter of moments. He was turning away. Why couldn’t she stop staring at him?
Mel reached out a hand. Couldn’t find the words, and her body did the only thing it knew how to react with.
She burst into tears.
Mel wiped at her eyes, furious with herself. Wanting to be furious with Brant but finding out that it’s impossible to be furious with someone who, maybe, was never the one at fault in the first place.
I don’t deserve to be loved like this.
She’d been angry with herself, she realized. Never with him in the first place. He’d been…wonderful. Amazing. Like he was now. And she’d been the one too full of pride to take what he was offering.
So what about now? Still going to turn this down?
“I can get a priest here in four hours,” Carmen said from behind her.
“Really?” Joseph asked with one eyebrow raised.
“Three with a police escort—”
“Carmen, please,” Mel pleaded, swiping at her eyes that continued to leak tears despite her every attempt to stop crying.
Carmen held up a single hand. “Just pretend I’m not here.” She crossed her arms under her chest and looked at Brant for a moment. “You need her. She needs this. Go ahead.”
Mel shook her head. “Let’s go inside.”
Brant gave a cautious smile, equal parts relief and fear, and followed her into the office, his bag collapsed and forgotten on the porch. The screen door snapped shut with a crisp retort and Carmen turned on the men. “Well, get to work; I’m not running a boarding house here!” But Tom and Joseph were busily hauling the boxes away before she finished judging from the sounds of things from the courtyard.
Mel shook her head and closed the curtain on the show outside. Turning around wasn’t an option, as he was behind her. He was HERE. She half expected his hands on her, dreading it, needing it more than the air that she’d not breathed since she’d seen him there. Suddenly, tears were the least of her problems.
He was here. Behind her. His hard body, his supple mind, great heart… flawed and perfect all at once. There was too much hurt between them—too much excess, as her father used to say. But his smell, his sound, his… if she turned around to look at him, she would be lost.
“Why are you here, Brant?” she asked the curtain, because it was easier than asking him.
“It hurts too much to be anywhere else.”
She closed her eyes. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve
him. Maybe this had been her problem all along. Not being able to accept things because she didn’t think she deserved them. She swallowed hard, suddenly unsure. “It hurts to have you here, too.”
“I know. I don’t know why, but if I’d stayed—”
“You don’t know why about what?”
“I don’t understand what I did that was so horrible, I really don’t. I have the means, I have the ability to help a lot of people. I created something that I hope will exist for several generations, and I solved a problem that was tearing you up inside.”
Wait a minute.
“You took everything from me, Brant.” Mel did turn. For the moment, she let him see the hurt, the frustration, the pain. “It was all I had left!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t know about you, Brant. You didn’t mention any of this. I knew you were a hot-shot surgeon, I knew you had money from your job, I thought maybe a big house, one or two pretty cars, and maybe, maybe at most, you have a… I don’t know, a vacation home or a fishing cabin somewhere. But this is Beverly Hillbillies money!”
“So what? It’s never meant anything to me!”
“No, it hasn’t, that’s the point. It means something to me. It means a lot. Money is the one thing that I struggle with every day. Money is the scraps I fight for to keep the place open. Money is the very life blood of this clinic. Money is the difference between life and death for these people. That’s not figurative, Brant; I mean it literally!”
“Then that problem is gone…”
Mel growled or screamed or ground her teeth. It was all the same to her at this point. “It’s not the problem you’ve eliminated, Brant, it’s me. Think about this; I walk into this arena every day, every day and fight. I fight until I can’t breathe, until I’m bleeding. Until I can’t see any more from the sweat dripping into my eyes. I fight and I win!” She stepped in close, laying a hand on his chest. It looked so small on such a big background. The rise and fall of his chest was mesmerizing. For a moment she thought she should avoid touching him, to keep from getting lost in the sheer presence of the man. He was there. She couldn’t not touch him. He was real. “It’s what I do, Brant. I fought the jungle to create this place. I fought administrators and resort managers and superstitious old men and… I don’t know, I forget the number of fights I’ve fought. I can’t remember them all, but I won. This place exists, the jungle has rolled back for now, the lights work, there’s even bandages waiting in organized bins. And much as I try to shoulder the blame in all of this by calling it pride or what have you, I’m the one who did this. And maybe it’s okay to take pride in what you accomplish. Maybe it’s okay for me to say, ‘yes I did that.’”
He stared at her, his mouth slightly open, his eyes intent on hers.
She took a breath. Struggled to find the words that would make him understand. “And then with a sweep of your hand… no more fights. Everything’s made easy and all the struggles are declared null and void. There’s no more room for…me.”
“It’s not like that. There was always room for you—”
“How, Brant? As a pretty figurehead? As the woman who stands next to you at all your fancy dinners? I… I can’t figure out your world. I can’t. I wear shorts and t-shirts and boots that don’t come from designers. They’re army surplus, Brant. Actual fucking army surplus. And sometimes my hair looks like it’s under a bird’s ass. I make things happen. In your world, I’m your fiancée. I’m Linda’s daughter-in-law. Do you know how many times I had to remind people that I’m a doctor, too, since I’ve been in L.A.? I even had to remind Carmen once over the phone!” And she’d given him back the ring. She wasn’t technically his fiancée anymore. She reached up to touch his face. Allowing herself the luxury of his skin beneath her fingertips. “Brant, I love you, I always will. But I love you too much to see you married to someone who doesn’t exist. In your world, Brant, I don’t exist.”
“Then I’ll come live in yours,” Brant said. “It’s why I’m here.”
“For how long, Brant? How long before you get bored and want to go home? Back to civilization and society where’s you’re important. Where you’re SOMEBODY, not just some jungle doctor?” Mel looked at him forever. A lifetime of jungles and fevers and cuts and infections and accidents and burns ran behind her eyes. He didn’t fit.
He’d never fit.
Mel opened her mouth to say goodbye.
Except the world suddenly took a hard shift to the left.
Chapter 14
“What the hell is that?” Brant braced himself against the wall, scrabbling for balance.
Mel grabbed his hand and hauled him outside, stumbling and falling as the ground shifted, almost fluid in its movement, everything feeling like it was down and to the left of where it used to be.
“Earthquake!” Mel shouted, keeping her feet only by some small miracle. She held up a hand for silence while she counted the seconds until the earth settled again. “Fifty-three. Shit!” She whirled, trying to count figures in the courtyard when dust and falling leaves swirled around them. “CARMEN!”
“We’re okay!” Carmen burst through the door to the clinic. “The patient’s okay, just shaken up. All staff accounted for.”
“How long?”
“I made it fifty-four.”
“Pull out the back board, get the first aid kits, and tell Joseph to fire up the Jeep!” Mel turned and almost ran into Brant on her way back into the office.
“Fifty-three, fifty-four… what’s that all about?” he asked, matching his stride to hers.
The office was a mess. Papers from the inbox had tumbled into a heap on the floor. She stepped carefully over things and began tearing through the drawers of her desk. “Rule of thumb, the longer a quake lasts, the higher the number. If it lasted a full minute, we’re looking at a five or six for someone somewhere.” She looked up at him. “You’re from L.A., how could you not know this?” She ignored the shrug. “City people,” she muttered under her breath, slamming one drawer and going to the next.
“What can I do?”
“Brant, depending on where the epicenter was, we could have frightened wildlife or collapsed buildings with people buried in them. If it’s the first, we need to stay put. If it’s the latter, we need another doctor.”
“Of course,” Brant said with a sharp nod. “Where do you need me to be right now?”
“Thank you.” Mel pulled something from the back of the drawer with a shout of triumph. “Found it! I need you to go with Tom. Take this,” She handed a rather battered walkie-talkie to Brent. “Pray the batteries are still good. It’s got a five-mile limit, so the reception is spotty. Go check on the resort. Report in. If you can’t reach me, send Tom back with the resort’s Jeep.”
“What about a satellite phone?”
She gave him a look. “You think Doctors International had a budget for anything like that?”
“Well, that’s going to change…” he muttered, half under his breath, taking the walkie-talkie. “Think they have one?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Last time they had a crisis they found that someone had emptied out the first aid kits and was using the containers to hide booze. Go figure. I’m not expecting anything from the resort staff at this point, other than more problems needing to be solved. Assume phone lines are down and that their radio may or may not be working.”
“Got it.”
Then, before she realized he was going to do it, Brant grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her. His lips found hers. Or maybe it was her lips finding his. They came together in a kiss that left them both breathless. As they parted, their eyes met for an eternity. Too many things unspoken passing between them.
Then he let her go and was gone, pelting out the door, calling for Tom and medical supplies. A man fully in control.
Mel steadied herself once more against the desk and took a deep breath, fingertips pressed to lips that still tingled.
Then she called for Carmen.
>
“Do you have your car today?”
“Yes, Tina and Angelica came together in Angelica’s car, and the orderlies have the beat-up old pickup, the one without doors, or a bed.”
“Get Joseph and Tina to check on the two closest villages; they’ve got the most training. Maybe one of them can take Angelica’s car. They’ll need to do triage, bring back the worst. Send a couple orderlies with them if you can find any. I think half of them lit out for home before the ground stopped moving. Tell them I want them back on deck ASAP. I sent Brant and Tom to the resort.”
“What about the outlying villages?”
“Too far; I don’t want too many people scattered in case we start getting refugees coming in. We can only do what we’re able.”
Carmen nodded, disappearing back inside, shouting orders.
Mel turned and watched the Jeep with Tom and Brant speed down the dirt road, the feel of his lips against hers still a warm pressure, his arms around her leaving delicious echoes across her body.
She pushed the thought away as fast as it had come. They had a job to do now. And she prayed there wasn’t going to be another quake or any bad aftershocks.
* * *
The Jeep slammed to a halt, the tires skidding sideways as Tom fought the wheel to keep the vehicle moving in a forward direction. Brent kept his eyes trained on the rough road. Terrified the earthquake would repeat and they’d wind up going down the cliff.
“Tom!” he shouted.
Tom slammed on the brakes and stood up, taking a long look at the road ahead. Or, more accurately, the space where the road used to be. The quake had removed a section of the road closest to the cliff and the wheels slid within a few precious feet of a long drop.
“We have to go back,” Tom said, and sat down to shift gears.
“There may be people hurt over there,” Brant objected, waving a hand at the debris and the area beyond it.
Tom shrugged. “Maybe, but the road’s gone.”
