The Greatest Risk

by Cara Colter

  He felt an unfamiliar ache in his own chest.

  Guilt?

  How many times had he done this to a woman who had given her heart to him? Too many to count. The thought shamed him, and he was really not a man accustomed to shame.

  There was one woman in particular, and suddenly he could feel the softness of her eyes on him, the way he had felt when he was with her.

  So long ago…the damage he had done was way too much to ever repair.

  But, he thought, unused to thinking esoterically, so a bit surprised by himself, perhaps people were allowed to make amends with someone other than the one they had done the actual damage to.

  He didn’t know if he could repair Maggie’s world. But he did know there was a man out there who was walking away from a really good woman. One of those rare women—so deep and sincere, so true, that their love could haunt you forever.

  Could he use his own experience to help another man off the empty road he himself had chosen? And help Maggie at the same time?

  “What did you say your chap’s name is?” he asked.

  “Does it matter?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes, it does, my dear. Yes, it does.”

  The very next day Richard drove to the construction site of Luke August. He had gotten a work address from the hospital files.

  He was feeling very pleased with himself, like Robin Hood, out doing his good deed for the day. He was dressed in a lovely gray Armani suit that made him look extremely successful and that commanded respect. He drove up to the site in his Cadillac, a small symbol of his status that he had treated himself to on his appointment as Chief of Staff.

  Unfortunately, he got out of the car into a mud puddle.

  And things went downhill from there. No one came out from the job to see what he wanted, and so after a few minutes he was forced to pick his way gingerly through the mud.

  “I’m looking for Luke August,” he said to the first man he encountered.

  The man, unshaven and dirty from head to foot and wearing a T-shirt that said “Pick a Stud, Pick a Carpenter” nodded curtly to another man.

  Dr. Richard looked at the man who had been pointed out to him and felt a moment’s doubt. Somehow Luke August was not what he’d expected. The man was as big as a mountain, physically strong, toughness in every line of his face.

  He was one of those men who radiated absolute confidence in himself, who wouldn’t watch a program called “Living Airy with Dr. Terry” if his life depended on it, nor would he sign up for a seminar called Bold and Beautiful, either.

  “Mr. August?”

  The man fastened his eyes on him. They were astonishingly green and snapping with impatience.

  Dr. Richard could see why he would appeal to women, and felt a little finger of annoyance, or maybe it was jealousy.

  Only one woman had ever found him attractive before he put the title Doctor in front of his name. After that it was different, of course.

  “Yeah?” August said rudely, as if Dr. Richard Strong was a bothersome flea, a salesman or an insurance broker.

  “I need a word with you privately. I’m a doctor.”

  The man’s expression changed. His brow furrowed. “I didn’t think doctors made house calls anymore. Something come back on one of those tests?”

  Dr. Richard felt surprisingly nervous in the other man’s presence. He realized he shouldn’t have left his home territory, where he was the big man on campus, and everyone knew it and acted accordingly. “Actually, I’m here about Maggie Sullivan.”

  The man was on him in a second. Dr. Richie felt his shoulders pinned in a grip that was frighteningly powerful.

  “Has something happened to Maggie? Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine,” he said hurriedly to buy the release of his shoulders, which it did. “I mean, she’s physically fine. I’m a psychologist. I’m the director of the Healthy Living Clinic.”

  “Oh, not a real doctor,” Luke said with what sounded suspiciously like relief.

  Richard wasn’t quite sure how to handle the insult of that statement, so he forged ahead. “Maggie takes a seminar from me. It’s called The New You: Bold and Beautiful.”

  If the man mountain in front of him had ever heard of it, he didn’t appear impressed.

  “I gave a homework assignment, Mr. August.” He could feel himself getting flustered. For one thing, from Luke’s reaction when he had thought Maggie was hurt, Richie was almost positive the man had real feelings for Maggie. Could you feel like that and have another woman on the go at the same time?

  Richard blurted out why he had come in a disjointed statement that showed none of his normal poise as a speaker.

  He finished with, “I’ve regretted it all my life, leaving that woman. Learn from my mistakes, Mr. August.”

  Luke August looked faintly amused and not the least as if he intended to learn from anyone’s mistakes except his own.

  Richard was furious that he had wasted his time on the man and shown his most vulnerable side. He felt foolish and somewhat less than the man who stood before him.

  “Of course,” he said haughtily, “if you plan to let her go, I may ask her out myself.”

  Something tightened in the man’s face, and the muscle along the strong line of his jaw jerked. Richard could not help but notice the almost unconscious flex of the man’s sculpted biceps as he squeezed the huge hammer in his hand.

  “Good day,” Richard said, and without waiting for a reaction, he scurried away from the piercing light in those green eyes, got in his Cadillac and drove away, certain he had made an enormous mistake.

  What had he been thinking, spilling his guts, his secrets to a stranger? It had been a stupid thing to do, an error in judgment.

  And yet, despite the lack of reaction, of any kind of empathy from the other man, Richard had to admit his burden, the one he had been carrying for so many years, felt lighter.

  “Just don’t do it again,” he warned himself. It was the type of emotionally motivated hogwash that Dr. Eatwell would approve of.

  Would he really ever ask Maggie out? He thought of the way she had looked in that red dress and felt his mouth go dry and his good sense go out the window.

  Seven

  “Somebody else want a house built?” Brian asked Luke.

  “Yeah. I told him I was too busy.” Luke watched the Caddie pull out of the mud puddle it had been parked in and drive away. He managed, just barely, not to throw his hammer at the departing vehicle.

  “Too bad. It looked like he had some bucks.”

  And didn’t women just love that? The big bucks, the big cars, the big fancy offices, the title.

  “He’s a doctor,” Luke offered up grudgingly. Maggie didn’t seem like the type who would be overly impressed with that kind of stuff. Did she?

  “Somebody you met at the hospital?”

  “No, a friend sent him.”

  A friend? Whoo boy. That didn’t begin to describe his complicated relationship with Maggie, not that Brian needed to know the details.

  That doctor had seemed to Luke to be a bit of a flake. Why was Maggie taking seminars from him? She didn’t seem like a person who needed any help with her life. The big question, of course, if Doctor Dweeb asked her out, would she say yes?

  The thought of Maggie playing pool at Morgan’s Pub with that man made Luke feel unaccountably angry. Not that the good doctor would take her to play pool.

  Probably the opera or a fancy dinner or both. Isn’t that what Maggie deserved? No! There had been something very off-putting about that guy, and nothing about his story of heartbreak and regret had inspired Luke to trust him even a little bit.

  And how insulting was it that he, Luke, had been Maggie’s homework assignment?

  He stopped himself short. He had to look at this another way, before he tracked down that Caddie and its driver and did some serious damage.

  And the other way of looking at it was this: he had gone out with Maggie Sullivan twice. He had know
n her five days—and she’d consulted a head doctor about it? Luke August had done as much damage to Maggie’s sweet little life as he intended to do.

  He’d let her go, and he wasn’t looking back! And yet for the rest of the day he had the uneasy feeling he was punishing himself for that decision, or at least trying to outrun the feeling of regret that tried to take over his mind. Luke ignored his injuries and pulled out all stops on the house he was building. Long after Brian had called it a day, until the summer light was fading from the sky, Luke nailed and lifted and tore apart, hoping to exhaust himself.

  It didn’t work. When he finally climbed into bed, he was aware of his aching back, the oppressive heat in his room, and the oppressive direction his mind wanted to take. Unwillingly he recalled the moments before Dr. Strong had revealed he had designs on Maggie.

  In that moment when Dr. Strong had first introduced himself, before Luke had any idea of his business, Luke had experienced a shattering moment of fear. He had thought that for the doctor to have personally tracked him down to his job site, something must be terribly and urgently wrong with the latest round of tests Luke had undergone at the hospital.

  For a man who had flirted with death often, Luke was not even remotely acquainted with fear. Where most people felt panic, he felt only a rush, the blissful euphoria of testing the boundaries of earth and emerging a victor. For all the times he had looked into the yawning abyss of death, Luke had never had a moment where his life had flashed before his eyes.

  Not that his life had flashed before his eyes in those seconds before Dr. Strong had clarified his business. No, it was more as if he, Luke, had been given a moment of crystal-clear clarity. And in that moment he felt he had thrown his life away, that he had not done one thing of meaningful or lasting importance.

  That moment of spiritual desolation paled in comparison to the moment when Luke’s concern shifted to Maggie.

  If something had happened to her, Luke had known in that instant, it would have felt as though his world, the whole world, had become a desert, with no oasis and no hope of an oasis.

  If he felt that way, why had he told her the one lie that was guaranteed to keep her away from him? He admitted the truth to himself. Feeling that way, so connected to her, so concerned about her, was twice as scary as leaping small chasms on motorcycles.

  But in the final analysis, Luke knew he had done the right thing by breaking it off with Maggie and doing it in terms that made him look like the world’s worst jerk to her.

  Because if she had come back one more time, he would not have had the strength to resist her.

  And the fact that after seeing her twice he had hurt her so deeply that she had to consult with the weird doctor meant that he was just not the kind of guy for her.

  “Something you always knew,” he reminded himself restlessly.

  He gave up on trying to sleep and prowled out to his kitchen. Amber was still facedown on the table where he had left her. Hesitating, he turned her over.

  He hoped their fight was over.

  And it was. But not in the way he wanted. His relationship with Amber was terminated. He could see so clearly what he had done. His infatuation with a photograph had been the most immature of attempts to keep himself safe from any chance of real intimacy, from any chance of being hurt.

  Luke August had made himself invulnerable to love’s arrows.

  “You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” he told himself. But that feeling he’d had when he’d thought, for seconds before the doctor had told him the real reason for his visit, that his life might be coming to an end was still fresh enough that he knew it was a bad thing to have made himself invulnerable.

  He might have missed out on what was most important in life. And it wasn’t seeing whether a motorcycle designed for a top speed of ninety miles an hour could do one hundred and ten.

  In his bumbling way the doctor had probably accomplished something after all—he’d given Luke a wakeup call.

  Savagely, Luke tore off Amber’s page in the calendar. With one more hard look, of regret and self-disgust, he crumpled up the page she was on and stuffed her in the garbage. Then he realized that might be a mistake.

  Even questioning himself on such a simple decision let Luke know he was on a slippery slope that he didn’t want to be on. He had never been a man who questioned himself. He made decisions quickly and decisively and he didn’t look back.

  Of course, that did explain seven trips to the hospital in five years.

  So, he wasn’t quite ready to dispose of Amber yet. He had planned to see Billy soon. Why not take Amber along? Find a new loving home for her with somebody at exactly the right maturity level to enjoy her?

  He plucked her out of the garbage, thankful real food was rarely eaten here so the picture was still clean. He did his best to erase the wrinkles from her picture with his fist. Finally, he went back to bed. But he did not sleep.

  Luke had always slept the deep sleep of a man who pushed himself to his physical limits. Was this going to be his life from now on? Wide-awake nights of tossing and turning and thinking and questioning?

  According to the doctor, a regret over the road not taken could haunt for a long, long time. Maggie might marry that doctor. Luke had given her nothing to hope for. He had no right to want to interfere in her life.

  “You need to get on a motorcycle,” Luke told himself. He looked at his bedside clock. It was Wednesday now, three in the morning. He had to work in a few hours. He had to have lunch with his mother. It was always best to be on full alert for lunch with her. But no amount of ordering, wishing or demanding could make him sleep.

  And suddenly riding a big bike through an inky night seemed like just the remedy for the restlessness of his soul. He took his Harley and within minutes was on Interstate Number Five heading south to Salem. The road was nearly empty; he shared it only with big transport trucks and not that many of them. There were places where the road was long and straight and free of traffic. The ribbon of road seemed to meet the stars on the horizon. Instead of feeling sleepy, Luke felt more and more awake, and though no answers to the troubling dilemma of his life came to him, he felt a certain measure of peace.

  At five, he used his cell phone to call Brian and tell him he wouldn’t be in until later in the afternoon. He was never late. He rarely trusted anyone to look after the job site, not even Brian who was more than capable, and he could hear the pleasure in Brian’s voice that he was being given this opportunity to show what he could do.

  Luke turned the bike around, and rush-hour traffic was beginning as he hit the outskirts of Portland once more.

  Luke was feeling much better by the time he arrived at the hospital. It was still very early when he got there. He crept through the halls, avoiding any encounter with Nurse Nightmare, not because it wasn’t visiting hours, but because by now she might have heard—along with the head doc—how badly Luke had treated Maggie.

  “Hey, kid,” he whispered from the door. “You want to sneak out of here for a while?”

  Billy turned and looked at him. “Luke!”

  He looked at the light that went on in the boy’s face. He felt unworthy of it. And at the same time it made him feel maybe his entire life hadn’t been a meaningless screwup after all.

  Luke put his finger to his lips. “I’ve got my motorcycle outside. Want to go for a ride around the block?”

  “Your Harley?” Billy whispered. “One of my life dreams is to ride on a Harley.”

  Such a simple life dream. Maybe that was part of what was missing from Luke’s life—dreams. Still, if he could give Billy a life dream, that was pretty cool.

  While Billy found his street clothes, Luke went and donned Fred’s uniform and found a gurney, put Billy on it, and then stacked folded linens and pillows around him.

  Every time he said good morning to someone in his Fred voice, or asked someone to make way for the linen cart, he would watch the bedding tremble from Billy’s concealed laughter.
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br />   Luke was sure he probably could have got a pass, now that he knew such a thing existed, but why bother? This was more fun.

  At his favorite back door, they unloaded Billy, who was laughing so hard he was bent over double.

  Luke brought him out to the parking lot. The boy touched the bike with the reverence of one who understood completely what this machine meant. Power. Speed. Freedom.

  “It’s an exact replica of the one used in the movie Terminator,” Luke told Billy.

  “Wow,” Billy said on a breath, needing no more explanation. Luke doubted if Maggie would know what Terminator was. But he wasn’t thinking of Maggie anymore, he reminded himself sternly.

  Luke showed Billy how to strap on the helmet, and they were off. He had planned on a short trip, but when Billy yelled with pure delight and threw both his arms open wide to embrace the wind, somehow it just ended up differently. Luke realized he wasn’t going to be just late. He wasn’t going to make it to work today at all. He followed the Willamette River to Scappoose. They stopped and had breakfast there, Billy chattering away with excitement, eating more food than Luke had ever seen him eat.

  Still, Luke noticed a tired pallor beginning to overtake the joy that shone in Billy’s eyes, so instead of going on after breakfast he turned around and headed for home.

  “One of my favorite rides is a huge loop,” he told Billy when they were back at the hospital. “I follow the Columbia up to the coast, through Astoria and come back along the ocean for thirty or forty miles before I return to Portland. It’s a day trip. And it’s great. When you get out of here, you and I are doing it.”

  “Really?”

  Luke nodded, again humbled by the look on the boy’s face, hope and hero worship mingled in embarrassing proportions.

  “I got something else for you, too.” He took Amber from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “This is a reminder of today.”

  Billy’s eyes were nearly popping out of his head when he opened the folded piece of calendar paper. “She’s hot,” he said hoarsely.