His to Seduce

by Stacey Lynn

  God, I loved how she’d been so wild and free on the island. Seeing her like this, like I’d been the one to rush her back behind walls, made me want to punch something.

  “It’s not that simple.” I pulled in a breath and tried to get to the point. “Have you ever done something in your life, lived your life in such a way that you start to wonder if there’s any point in it at all? Or you forget why you began it in the first place?”

  Her lips pushed together. “No. Not really.”

  I laughed softly. “Yeah, somehow I have a feeling you’ve always planned everything for a reason.”

  She flinched. I hadn’t meant it as an insult.

  “I know exactly why I’ve always lived the way I do. It doesn’t mean my choice was any better than yours.” Her voice was soft, tender. Almost pulled from her against her will, like she was now the one admitting something she didn’t want to talk about.

  We’d get to her later. Because just as I was hiding and running, I knew she was doing the same thing. Forcing myself to face all my bullshit only made me want to help her, too.

  Licking my lips, I leaned forward and pressed my elbows to my thighs. “So, I became a doctor. I studied and I learned. I worked really fucking hard and I’m really fucking good at it.” My hands balled into fists and I forced them to relax. When I met her gaze, I asked, “But what happens when you realize that the whole reason you became a doctor in the first place isn’t possible? What happens the day that you realize it was killing you from the inside out, that there were more losses than wins, that you didn’t have the passion or the ego necessary to deal with all the death you saw surrounding you and that every time you somehow miraculously saved a life, you lost five more?”

  Gavin Merryfield’s face when I told him about his wife dying, the fact that I hadn’t been able to save her, flashed in my mind and I cringed, fell back into my chair. I pressed my hands into my pockets and shuddered, unable to stop my reaction. I had never seen a man so completely fucking destroyed by news I’d had to deliver before.

  “Did…did something happen?” Camden asked hesitantly. “Something specific?”

  When I opened my eyes, Camden was no longer in her protective ball. Her blanket was at her feet and she was leaning forward, as if the mere sight of me fucking losing it in front of her made her feel safer with me.

  I hated that, too.

  “Lost a woman,” I coughed out. Hell. I needed another beer. Water. Something to wet my throat to get the rest out. “I worked downtown at Chicago General in their emergency room. Twenty-four-hour shifts. Drug deals, pimps, drive-bys, gang shootings. I saw the worst of the worst, and this one patient—” I stopped and focused. She wasn’t just a patient. She’d been a woman. A mother. A wife. Someone’s soul mate. I had no use left for clinical descriptions. “A woman. Her name was Ella Merryfield. Beautiful. A few years older than us. But hell, she was pretty, and she had this daughter brought in. Ten years old, spitting image of her mom, and all I could see was blood staining their blond hair. There was so much it was red.”

  “David—”

  She choked my name out, but I was gone. Back to that night, to the brightness of the ER. To the shouts and the explanations and the bleeping machines that I still heard ringing in my ears, late at night when everything else was quiet. “You don’t have to—”

  “I do.” I hadn’t talked about it at all yet, and even I knew the best doctors had to unload that shit on someone. Either that or it all ended up drowned in a bottle of alcohol, and I didn’t want to be that guy, either. I had just thought moving back to Latham Hills, being there for Aidan after he lost Derrick, would help me refocus all of it. I’d hoped helping Aidan and Declan after Derrick died would be my redemption.

  “Thirty-two years old, her little girl was ten, and they were minding their own business, leaving Chicago after a night out at The Lion King for her daughter’s tenth birthday, and they were carjacked. Either by a gang member or a druggie looking for a fix.”

  “God, that’s horrific.” Camden’s chin wobbled and she blinked rapidly.

  “And the husband…God, I’d never seen anyone like that. When I had to tell him that his wife didn’t make it, that I couldn’t save her, it was like he died right in front of me.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed and Camden gave me a moment of silence. I didn’t particularly want it, but I needed it before she asked, “The daughter?”

  “She’ll walk again someday.”

  I gritted my teeth so hard to main control of my emotions, I thought they might crack when I turned back to her and let her see how tortured the memory made me. “I became a doctor, Camden, so no one would ever have to go through what I went through when I saw my dad.” Tears burned my eyes, and fuck if I could hold them back any longer. I didn’t give a shit if she thought I was a pussy. I was crumbling and I didn’t have the self-respect to hide it any longer. “What in the fuck was I supposed to say to that man, or to his little girl, when it was my fault I couldn’t save their mom and wife? When at the end of the day, it was my hands that couldn’t stop her from dying? I was the one who filled them with the same pain I didn’t want anyone to feel.”

  “Oh…David…” She rushed from the couch, scrambled around the coffee table between us.

  As she reached me, her arms outstretched, I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her waist. Her arms went to my neck and I squeezed her harshly, shoving my head into her shoulder.

  “It wasn’t your fault; it was the man’s fault who shot the gun.”

  “Everything happened hours after I got the call about Derrick,” I muttered, admitting the truth for the first time. “I shouldn’t have even been fucking doing the surgery. I wasn’t focused; I was shaky and not ready.”

  “Oh, no,” Camden whispered, holding me tight. “That can’t be true, David. You just said you were a really good doctor. I’m sure you did everything you could.”

  It hadn’t been enough. If I hadn’t been distracted, wanting to get the hell out of the ER and take time off for the funeral. If I hadn’t been reeling at the news about Derrick…would it have been different?

  “We’ll never know, will we,” I said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that she still died at my hands and I wasn’t focused like I should have been.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She hugged me tighter and I let her. It had been little over a day, but it felt like weeks since she’d been in my arms.

  I hadn’t even told her why I’d held all that back from her, and there was still more truth to reveal.

  But I waited. I waited until my breathing slowed and the stampede in my chest calmed to a trot. I inhaled the scent of her hair; and when I was beginning to think I could continue, I raised my hands at her back, untwisted the fucking tie in her hair, and slid it onto my wrist.

  She pulled back and rolled her eyes. “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “I have more to say, and you might not like the rest, either.”

  Chapter 18

  Camden

  I pulled back from David, the humor of his untying my hair and sliding the band on his wrist evaporating at his words.

  “What is it?”

  He cleared his throat and looked away.

  It felt like a punch to the gut that he wouldn’t look me in the eye after everything he’d already shared. God, how did he live with the guilt he carried? But I also understood it in some way. “If-onlys” could kill his being able to move past anything. I would know. I was the poster child for them. If only I hadn’t dressed a certain way, if only my mom had better taste in men, if only I hadn’t smiled so much…

  I pushed the thoughts out of my head. “Are we going to need more alcohol for this?”

  David laughed softly, but coldly. “You might.”

  I raised my brow, but his quiet laugh told me it couldn’t be all that bad. I pressed my hand to his cheek. “Thank you for sharing all of that with me. I’m sorry you’ve gone through that. But can we get to the other stuf
f—can you tell me why you hid it from me?”

  He blinked rapidly, several times, suddenly looking uncertain. “Because I’m not sure if I ever want to go back and practice medicine. And until I figure that out, what’s the point?” I opened my mouth to argue that it’s still a part of who he is, or was, and he hid it from me, when he said, “And to be honest, I’ve been running from all of it. I don’t want to think about it, that night or the ones before it when I delivered similar news to hurting families. I wanted to be able to avoid it for as long as possible. I haven’t even told the guys yet.”

  “But Trina knew.”

  “Only because she twisted her ankle in Chicago and Declan had me check her out. When I got to town, I went to their house first and made it pretty clear I didn’t want to discuss it.”

  It made sense. If I thought back to the comments she made, she always stopped herself from saying anything more.

  “I thought she was purposely hiding something from me.”

  He shook his head. His hand went to the back of my neck and then pushed through my hair. He pulled me toward him until our foreheads pressed together. “Only because she knew I didn’t want to talk about it. I never told her to keep it from you.”

  I stared into his blue eyes, still rimmed with red from unshed tears and exhaustion, and believed him. “Okay.” I pushed off him and he let me go, seemingly reluctantly. “I’ll go get us some drinks and you can tell me the rest.”

  “Super.”

  I rolled my eyes at his sarcasm. “Would you like another of the same or something different?”

  “Surprise me,” he called out after I’d already turned the door to the kitchen.

  —

  “Before I start, can I ask you a question?”

  He’d moved to the center cushion while I went downstairs and then back to the kitchen, where I cut up cheese and crackers and lunch meats to snack on. One drink on an empty stomach was okay, but two would get me tipsy, and I wanted to be fully alert for whatever was about to come next.

  I was facing him, one of his arms draped over the back of my couch. His fingers played with my hair in a way I never thought I would have liked before. At his question, my shoulders bunched together.

  It was only fair, after he’d shared so much.

  “What is it?”

  He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, then let it go. “What makes you so hesitant to date a guy who’s a bartender? They can make a lot of money.”

  “It’s not about the money. Not entirely, anyway.” I looked at the fireplace behind him. The familiar prickle of irritation buzzed in my veins. Diving into my past wasn’t easy. It was best done in the safety of my therapist’s office. Bringing it up when I wasn’t prepared still made me panic.

  My pulse increased and I forced myself to meet David’s eyes, so blue and clear, and focused directly on me and my hesitation. “I need security and safety. Someone who can leave at any moment, who can walk away or who doesn’t care about those things, frightens me.” The constant jingle of coins that I still heard every time someone dug through a glass jar where they saved quarters and pennies…I couldn’t handle the sound. I wasn’t prepared to tell him that yet.

  He wiped his hand over his mouth like he didn’t believe me but didn’t want to argue or push, and who could blame him. Sometimes I wanted to kick my own butt for being such a coward.

  Setting his hand back at the end of the couch, he asked, “When you hear the name McGregor, what does it make you think of?”

  “Irishmen and whiskey,” I said instantly. I didn’t even know why it made me think of whiskey, but I’d seen David drink it often.

  He grinned. “Cute. Think bigger, more local, and with more steel than leprechauns.”

  I frowned, not understanding for a moment until his implication hit me.

  As if he knew I’d jump, his hand settled on my shoulder and he held me in place. “Don’t run.”

  “You’re—”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head. He had to be kidding. I scrambled out of his light hold and pushed myself back on the couch, just out of his reach. “You’re a McGregor. Those McGregors.”

  “McGregor Motors.”

  Holy crap. One of the largest automobile manufacturing companies in the world. They had a long history of local philanthropy and somehow had been able to survive the automobile crash during the economic collapse. I hadn’t even considered he might be part of that family.

  My hands shook and I set down my beer bottle, unable to stomach more. “You said your dad worked an office job and wore a stuffy suit.”

  “That was true. I just didn’t mention that he happened to wear the suit while sitting behind the desk as president of McGregor Motors.”

  “President…” My tongue went numb as I said the word. I gaped at him, my mind swirling with questions. “And you interned there to learn the family business. To what…take over someday?”

  Shock coursed through my system and I jumped from the couch. He followed me, slower and with hands facing palms out.

  “I get your not flaunting it, I do,” I assured him, my pulse racing. “But you’re telling me this because you feel like you were hiding it. Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t want there to be secrets between us. I told you yesterday, no more lies.”

  I shook my head. I knew what people thought of me. It made me a hypocrite, but I pushed forward when I didn’t want him to demand the same of me. “You hid it from me. Why?”

  He licked his lips and stepped around the coffee table toward me. I backed up. “Camden.”

  “Why, David?”

  He huffed a heavy breath and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. I was beginning to recognize the gesture. He did it when he didn’t want to have to say what he was about to say. Heaving another breath, his chest moving with the force of it, he said, “I spent my life growing up with people who tried to use my family for money. I dated girls, almost got engaged to a woman once, who wanted the McGregor name and money but never really wanted me.”

  His insinuation stung like arrows to my chest and I reeled back from the force of them.

  “And that’s me, right?” I couldn’t hide the snideness in my tone. “I won’t date a bartender, so I must only be after a man with money, right? I’m uptight and judgmental, so I have to be a gold-digger, too?”

  Anger suffused my blood to the boiling point. It was the bed I’d made, but it still stung to have the reality of it so clearly thrust into my face.

  “It wasn’t that.”

  “No?”

  “Not after the first twenty minutes, no.” His lips twitched into a smirk, and I couldn’t help myself. My self-righteous indignation began seeping through my pores. “You got me, Camden. I admit it. And the first time I saw you at Aidan’s house after Derrick’s funeral, when I asked Declan who you were, he told me to stay far away. So yeah, I listened to that. And when you made that comment about not dating a bartender to Trina, I heard that. So don’t fault me for wanting to protect myself, just like you wear those tightly buttoned-up clothes and your hair pulled back all the time to protect yourself. So, I’ve been honest with why I did it…why do you?”

  I scrunched my nose. “We’re not talking about me.”

  “No.” He stepped forward, closing the space between us with two long strides, and placed his hand against my palm. “We’re not talking about you, but someday we will.”

  I leaned in to his touch, instinctively, as if I had no other choice. When it came to him, I was weak. “David,” I murmured. He’d shared so much, been so honest, laid himself bare for me, and I felt the pull to do the same. “I’m not ready yet.”

  “Finally.” He bent forward, brushed his lips against mine, and moved back toward my ear. “We’re being honest. Forgive me for hurting you, Camden. I was going to tell you; I just needed more time, too.”

  His honesty wrecked me. How he could so easily lay everything out for me? And I knew, by the thick tenor of his voice, that
he meant every word.

  He would have told me everything, when he was ready.

  I wasn’t certain I could say the same.

  He was a better person than I was, but as his hands wrapped around my lower back and he pulled me flush against the firmness of his chest, his heart beating against my cheek and his lips pressed against the top of my head, I wanted to do that for him.

  Even if I didn’t know how.

  “David,” I whispered, sliding my hands up the planes of his stomach to his chest until I clung to his shirt. “I’m sorry, too.”

  His hands went to my hair, slid to the back of my neck, and he tilted my head. “Forgiven.”

  He kissed me, and I melted into him. I pushed back the doubts I had, the fears still swarming inside me at a rapid rate, and I made a decision. To move forward.

  To try to be the person I’d always wanted to be. One not confined by my past and my fears and my lists and the baggage I carried that could fill a 747 airline jet.

  Three quick raps on my front door grabbed my attention, and I pulled back from David, the haze of his kiss and my resolve making me smile. “Hey.”

  He grinned. The sexiness of it made me want to melt into a puddle at his feet. Another knock hit the door and David tipped his head in that direction. “You should get that.”

  “Okay.” My hands slid down his chest and I released him. When I checked the side window at the front door, a genuine grin broke through. “Hello, Mr. Lorenz,” I said, opening the door.

  My elderly neighbor peered over my shoulder and smiled. “I brought some banana bread and my cribbage board. Hoping you’d change your mind about that game.”

  A bark of laughter from behind startled me, and I whipped around to see David, choking down more laughter. “I should probably leave you to it, then.”