Healing Her Boss's Heart

by Dianne Drake

  She’d thought about this. Maybe not so much in real terms as in fantasy ones, but there was something in his brooding she understood, something she wanted to touch... And she’d wanted him to want her the way she wanted him. But there’d been no indication, nothing to show her that he was interested in any kind of way, let alone that. And now this. It was where she wanted to be. Under him, on top of him...maybe a little in his heart. “Are you sure?” she asked him, as he pulled her up to her feet, and they stood pressed together, naked, wet.

  “No.” He wrapped a towel around her, his hands slow and steady as he pulled it across her breasts, taking care to skim his fingertips lightly over them before he secured the towel. Then he stepped out of the tub, and stood there for a moment simply staring at her. Jack, in his naked beauty, looking so intense, so full of thoughts. “Are you?” he finally asked, extending a hand to help her out.

  “Yes,” she said, moving closer to him. “I’m not...well, let’s just say I’m not a woman of the world. But, yes, I’m sure I want this.”

  He pulled her roughly to his chest. “And you always get what you want.”

  “I try,” she murmured against his lips. “I surely do try.”

  Chapter Eight

  SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL, sitting on the side of his bed, putting on her shirt. No apparent afterthoughts or guilt over what they’d done. In fact, she’d been rather bold about it. No shyness, no inhibitions. It had been nothing like he’d ever experienced. The freedom. The pure joy of touching and feeling and exploring. In his married life these moments had been...planned. Carrie had been so giving, which had made him want to give everything.

  From the moment she’d fallen into his arms up on that boulder, he’d thought to hell with plans and guilt and all the other things that weighed him down. She’d pulled him into what she wanted, made him want the same thing, too. Made him put aside, for a little while, everything that held him back.

  And now, watching her, he loved it that Carrie Kellem was her own woman. It was refreshing. Natural. Were the circumstances different, he would have welcomed it back. But he didn’t. Spontaneous moments like this were good, but buried beneath them was...him. And now he was full of the afterthoughts, and guilt. Not because of any vows he’d made to himself after Evangeline had died but because he’d never made himself available to her the way he had to Carrie. Their marriage had been cordial, not passionate. He’d gotten her pregnant and had done the honorable thing, hoping the rest would come. But it never had.

  And now, with Carrie, there was so much passion. She was so open, and in a lot of ways naive. And with that he feared there would be an aftermath. Or expectations. Or worse...hopes and dreams.

  Wasn’t that the way it always worked? It had with Evangeline. They’d dated casually. Friendship, some sex. Then...Alice, which had made their circumstances entirely different. But with Carrie... Damn, he didn’t know. He just didn’t know. “You OK?” he finally asked as he pulled on his cargos.

  “A little surprised,” she said, “but good.” She smiled at him. “And you?”

  No way he could tell her the truth, that he’d enjoyed every moment with her. It had been amazing. She’d been amazing. But now his world was crashing down around him. What the hell had he been thinking? What the hell had he done? “Good,” he said, wishing he could bask in the afterglow or stretch out and simply hold her. Kiss her. Tell her things he’d never said before. Romantic notions. But his reality was that he lived with her now, and he was going to make sure nothing like this happened again. Besides the personal feelings that went along with it, there were also the professional ethics.

  Who was he kidding? The instant she’d fallen into his arms, the only thing he’d wanted was her. And not just the physical aspects. While they were nice, it was also nice to simply connect again. But he couldn’t let that last. He wasn’t in the emotional place for it and didn’t want to drag her into it with him. “Like I said before, you know we can’t do this again, don’t you?”

  She stood, and stepped into her cargos, adjusted her T-shirt, then gave him a long, pointed stare before she spoke. “I figured that would be the case. It always is, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean by that?” He stood as well, but took great pains not to get too close to her. Because to do that would be to succumb. He wanted to. Dear God, he wanted to. But he couldn’t, because somewhere in the mix of the afternoon he’d come to terms with the fact that he had feelings for Carrie. And while he wasn’t ready to admit it was love, he would admit that what was happening to him now had never happened before. But with those feelings came his need to protect her...from him. Which meant pulling back or pushing away.

  She shrugged. “Nobody stays, Jack. They get what they want and they move on to something else.”

  She was so pragmatic it almost choked him. How often had she been hurt in her life? He’d certainly never meant to add to the toll, but that was what she thought this was. Just another time in a long, long line. “Not everybody,” he said, as a lump of cold, hard sadness pounded his chest. “You just haven’t found the right one.”

  “Or I have, and he wants no part of it...or me.”

  “I don’t have anything to give you, Carrie. Not emotionally. Not since...” All these years, and he’d never spoken their names. He couldn’t. He wasn’t worthy enough to. “It’s complicated.”

  “Not really. You’ve stopped moving ahead. Contented yourself with the punishment you think you deserve, the punishment you heap upon yourself every day. But you loved them, Jack. Your wife and daughter. Which means you’re capable of loving someone else. Only if you want to, though.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you’re right where you’re always going to be. Stuck. And what we did here—since it seems to be of no consequence to you, I’m quite capable of making it just as inconsequential. What I don’t want, though, is for this to affect my training. I like it here and I’m not about to let this afternoon take that away from me. I wanted to make love to you because I am falling in love with you. What you do with that is up to you. What I’ll do with that—well, I don’t know yet. But my feelings for you, and maybe even your feelings for me, are standing as a pretty sturdy barrier between us, rather than breaking down the barriers the way love should. So, to make things easier on both of us, I’ll find someplace else to live and sit in the back row of your class so you won’t have to notice me so much.

  “But one last thing, Jack. You have feelings for me. You’re not hiding them too well. And you’re also not hiding the fact that you don’t want to have them.” She moved around him, then headed out into the hall but stopped before she’d gone too far. “I’ve got feelings, too. Most of the people I’ve had in my life haven’t known that, but I do. And I’m as good at hiding them as you are. You don’t have to worry, though. As far as this afternoon goes, I’m over it. I’m moving on because that’s what I always do. I always move on. I hope you can, too.”

  Then she left. She walked down the hall, packed her few belongings and walked out of his house with her dog. “Why not?” he said, watching from his bedroom window as she headed to town. Now he was alone again. Now he had plenty of time to think about all the ways he deserved this. Deserved worse, for turning a nice afternoon into misery, the way he had done. The heck of it was, he might have been falling in love with her, too. At least, it seemed like he was. One perfect afternoon—maybe the only perfect afternoon he’d ever had—then he’d gone and spoiled it. Another reason to feel not good enough. As Evangeline had said to him, the last time he’d ever heard her voice, “Jack, why can’t you just do better for once?”

  Good question. Why couldn’t he?

  * * *

  A week in class now, and Carrie was nothing more than a student, the one in the back row who hoped to go unnoticed, as she’d promised him. And it was working, as other than getting her to answer a few requisite questions, J
ack had totally ignored her. Which was what she wanted. But she felt a little empty because of it. And totally alone.

  She was living above Millie’s Diner now, hating it because Bella wasn’t allowed inside, and she wasn’t allowed to make noise after nine o’clock. Not that she was a noisy person, because she wasn’t. But it made Carrie feel like she had to walk on tiptoe in her own apartment, and she even got paranoid about running the shower after cutoff time.

  Plus, it was like she was doing the walk of shame every time she had to pass Janice. The way that woman scowled at her... Sometimes, Carrie swore she’d hear her growl. But she did understand love unrequited now, so she sympathized with Janice, who was feeling the same thing because of the same man.

  “It’s temporary,” she told Bella, as they sat together on the back stoop. “Another seven weeks and we’ll be doing something different. I promise, girl.” Leaving Marrell for Saka’am, she hoped.

  The night was wearing on and Carrie hated to go to bed, but it was going on to nine o’clock, which meant that the Millie-imposed silence was about to commence, and it was hard being silent when the floors creaked as she walked around on them, or the pipes groaned when she turned on the tap for a glass water. So she scratched Bella’s, head then stood, torn between going back inside and taking another walk, even though she and Bella had just come back from one. “I wish I had a better solution than this,” she told her dog. “But there aren’t many options around here.”

  “You could move back in,” Jack said, stepping out of the shadows.

  “What are you doing here?” she said, not sounding any too friendly even though her heart skipped a beat.

  “I came to apologize.”

  “Nothing to apologize for. You have a perfect right to feel the way you feel. It’s got nothing to do with me, even though I made the mistake of seeing something where there’s nothing. I assumed something I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  Bella sidled up to Jack and leaned against his leg. He didn’t shove her away. Instead, he reached down and scratched her behind her ears. “I’m a mess, Carrie. I have been for a long, long time. And I hurt the two people I loved most in the world. Hurt them deeply.” When they’d been alive to be hurt.

  “Your wife and daughter?”

  He didn’t acknowledge the question, neither did he deny it. “I’ve made some choices that weren’t the easiest, but it’s how I get along. How I have to get along, and I don’t want this to get serious between us because, us, together, can’t be one of those choices. You’ve got so much potential, so much life ahead of you, and I’m not able to be part of that, other than what I’m doing now. You’ve got a lot of higher ground ahead of you and I’m most of the way down the other side of it. I can’t drag you down with me.”

  “Be sure before you close that door, Jack. Because once you do, I won’t open it again. That’s not me. I move on, I look for something else. It’s probably my self-defense mechanism to keep me from getting hurt again, but I can’t move back in with you because, if I do, that’s not putting things into proper perspective. It’ll become too easy. We’ll forge some kind of laid-back relationship where I’ll make bad coffee and we’ll have great sex. It’s not what I want for myself.

  “I want...stability. I’ve never had it, I’ve never had any kind of permanence. Most of the time that’s fine. Most of the time I don’t even want it. But there are times when I do. Times when I want to belong somewhere. Maybe even with someone. But not with you, Jack, because you don’t want the same things I do. You want to avoid, while I’m trying to embrace. And I can’t be in this...this...whatever it is we’ve got going on between us, knowing that I must still face the world out there on my own. I’ve done that, and I’m not going to keep doing it forever. So, no, I’m not coming back.”

  “But after the training, are you staying? Or did I ruin that, too?”

  “There was nothing to ruin, Jack, because nothing got started. And as for staying, yes, if I can go to Saka’am, as you said I might. But the one thing I won’t do, Jack, is let time stand still for me the way you let it do for you. My goal is always to get past the pain, while your goal is to stand around and let it beat you down. I can’t be part of that. I can’t watch it. I can’t watch what it does to you because, yes, I do care for you. More than I should. More than you would want me to.” She hadn’t wanted to say these things, but she had to, as with one little push she’d give in to all the things she didn’t want, just because Jack was the one doing the pushing.

  He nodded. “I wish it could be different,” he said.

  “So do I,” she whispered, hoping he wouldn’t see the tears forming in her eyes since it was dark out now, and tears were best saved for the dark.

  “How about I keep your dog for you while you’re staying at Millie’s? That way, she wouldn’t have to be tied outside. She could have my spare bed. And you could come see her anytime you want.”

  The tears did start to fall then and she brushed them back. “Her name’s Bella. And, yes, I’d like that, if you don’t mind.”

  He reached over and brushed a tear off her cheek. “I don’t mind,” he said tenderly. “Look, Carrie, all I can do is be honest. My life, my past...it’s too complicated to have someone else involved with it. I’ve reconciled myself to what I can have, and I never should have stepped over that line with you. Or even come close to it. I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” she said, handing Bella’s lead over to him. “Bella’s been fed for the evening, so I’ll stop by in the morning, before class, with her bag of food and maybe take her for a walk, if that’s OK with you.”

  “Anytime,” he said, bending down to attach the lead to Bella’s collar. “And she’ll be fine.”

  “I know,” Carrie said sadly, wishing that she, too, would be fine. But she wouldn’t. She loved Jack. And he loved her back. Nothing would come of it, though. So how, in that, could she find anything fine?

  * * *

  Jack had already left for class by the time she arrived at his cabin to feed Bella. She’d been late, by design. She hadn’t wanted to face him, not on a personal basis. Not yet. “So, I see you’ve moved into the spare room,” she said to her dog, who was stretched out on the bed like it was hers.

  Bella thumped a lazy tail but made no move to get up. “Have you already had your morning walk?” she asked, examining the dog’s lead, as if that might give her the answer. “And breakfast? Did Jack get up and fix you breakfast?” She asked that, because her always hungry dog was not interested in the bowl of food Carrie had poured. Had he actually cooked for her?

  Bella’s response was to snort out a doggy sigh, stretch out even more, then close her eyes. “He’s spoiling you,” she said, surprised and pleased at the same time. It showed a side of Jack she hadn’t expected. “And since that’s the case, I’m going on to the hospital now to grab myself a cup of coffee and...” Take her usual spot in the back row? She wasn’t sure about that. “I’ll be back at lunch to take you out,” she said, giving Bella a pat on the head, then scurrying out the door.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting in the first row of the tiny classroom, causing the other six students to shift their normal positions since the spots everyone chose on their first day seemed to be the spots they took every day after that.

  “Classroom this morning, field this afternoon, after lunch,” Jack announced on his way in the door. “We’re going to go bouldering, so if you don’t have your equipment with you now, I’d suggest you go get it during your lunch, because we’ve got a busy day ahead.” He glanced at Carrie, but didn’t acknowledge her any differently than he did anybody else. He did, however, compose and send her a text, right after he sat down at the desk at the front of the room.

  She watched him text, then felt the vibration in her pocket so, instead of ignoring it, as she normally would in class, she pulled out her phone and read the short message: I assume you’ve b
een practicing without me?

  Carrie looked up, gave him a discreet nod. Then in another few seconds felt the vibration again. And read: Are you good enough to instruct bouldering?

  Again, she nodded discreetly. Because she was. She and Bella had gone up to that very same rock on Eagle Pointe every day, and she’d climbed up on that boulder and fallen off, then gotten back up again until she could not only dead hang without her muscles giving out but she could traverse the entire boulder at the same speed she’d seen Jack do it. Hours of practice, and she had it down. Now she was anxious to get to the next level. She wanted to go up that boulder instead of across it. But she wanted Jack there, not only to teach her but to see her do it. Because, yes, she wanted to impress him.

  “This morning we’re going to talk about rescue techniques in low-resource areas. You’re all qualified medics in one specialty or another, so you have your first-aid skills down. But you won’t always have access to all the fancy gear you’ve trained with. So I want you to start thinking about how wilderness and rescue medicine differs from urban rescue, which you’re all highly qualified to do. We’re going to talk about things like what to do when a quick trip to the hospital isn’t an option, when you get yourself involved in prolonged patient care, severe environments and maybe even improvised equipment.

  “Keep in mind that this is only an introductory course. If I hire you to stay and work here, there will be continuing education courses on a regular basis, covering everything from rafting to avalanche rescue, with a goal toward getting you certified in the field. It’s a big field, and a difficult one, but it’s my intention that once you finish the entire course, including the continuing education classes, you’ll be among the best anywhere.”