by Caro Carson
Her heart was pounding. Her mouth was dry. That was regret in his voice. Pain and regret that they’d lost six years.
Braden MacDowell still cares for me.
Chapter Ten
Beyond Braden’s shoulder, Lana looked at the muted lights in the chapel’s wall sconces. They formed star-shaped bursts through the tears in her eyes.
She closed her eyes, forcing the last tears to fall from her lashes, and felt Braden’s thumbs wipe them away. After that, everything looked more clear.
“You were right. We needed to talk,” she said. She hadn’t realized how much those self-doubts had weighed her down, how much the guilt had oppressed her—not until he’d lifted it away.
She was still holding his wrists. He was still holding her face, and in place of the bitter memories they’d just exorcised, other, better memories were rushing in.
How it felt to have him look at her like this. At only her. How it felt to have him listen to her. Support her. How it felt to have the right to touch him and be touched.
Precious feelings, priceless memories.
But tonight, he’d needed to talk to her because he wanted to move on. Lana, there’s another woman.... It’s been six years.... I went to the jeweler to buy her a ring.
Still, he’d come to West Central yesterday to walk the corridors one more time, just to be sure the feelings that had grown there were truly over before he made a commitment to someone else. Lana felt some twist of satisfaction that at least she hadn’t been as easy to leave behind as she’d once feared.
“Is that what you needed to know?” she asked softly, so very aware that she still cared for this man. “Is that what you needed, before you could be heart-whole for someone else?”
“No,” he said. “I also needed to know what would happen if I did this.”
Still cupping her face, he brought his mouth to hers, hovering over her lips for just a breath, before surrendering to a kiss.
The feel of a man’s mouth—of his mouth—was foreign and exotic for one surprising second. Surprisingly warm, surprisingly supple lips pressed against hers. His mouth lifted a fraction of an inch from hers as she breathed oh, and then they were mouths together again, questing, nudging open, wanting more. His tongue swept over hers, and her knees buckled with the rush of thoughts and sensations that all clustered together to mean want.
Memories crashed in, obliterating doubts, leaving her with basic wants. She wanted the sweep of that tongue again. More of him. More of them.
Her body ruled her brain. Mindlessly, she let go of his wrists to wrap her arms around his chest, a movement in sync with him as his hands left her face to rake their way down her hair, until he pulled her lower body into hard, direct contact with his. Mouths were not enough; she wanted his tongue more, everywhere, to lap her breasts, to caress her belly, to tickle the bends of her knees.
She wanted to feel his skin, the skin she recalled with utter clarity, warm and smooth, with the rock-hard underlying muscles that she could feel now, through his shirt, through her hands. She kept mating with his mouth, tongues sliding, bodies struggling to get closer—
“Well, what do we have here?” boomed a male voice from the doorway.
Lana’s eyes flew open and she jumped back from Braden.
The stranger was laughing. He held a Stetson in one hand but gestured with a pink-ribboned bud vase in his other hand. “Be careful, y’all, or you’ll end up with one of these.”
Lana was mortified at being caught kissing in the chapel, of all places, in the hospital that employed her. Thank goodness she wasn’t wearing her white doctor’s coat.
Braden wasn’t as paralyzed as she was. “Congratulations on your baby girl,” he said and shook the man’s hand. “We’ll give you some privacy.”
She let Braden push her gently out of the chapel with a hand on her lower back. His fingertips weren’t quite steady. She wasn’t the only one whose heart was pounding from passion.
I can’t do this. I can’t fall under his spell again.
It was how their relationship had fallen apart before. When they hadn’t known how to say what needed to be said, they’d let their bodies find the closeness their hearts could not. Great sex had been only a bandage, temporarily covering a schism between them that had been growing too deep. Their values and their goals were too disparate.
She’d known marriage to him would no longer be the equal partnership she’d wanted. She didn’t share his fascination with matters of business, and she’d resented being left behind, expected to support his newfound ambition regardless of its impact on her life. Physical passion had only delayed their inevitable parting of ways—but not before leaving her with that devastating pregnancy.
Braden kept his hand on her lower back as they walked quickly through the parking lot in the silent predawn. The temperature was wintery, and neither of them wore a jacket. Fortunately, the physicians’ parking lot was a short distance from the building. Braden opened the passenger door of his car for her before their eyes met.
“I want to see you again,” Braden said, at the same time Lana blurted out, “We shouldn’t get involved again.”
Neither of them was ready to hear a third voice call out from a few cars away. “There you are, Braden. I’ve been worried sick.”
Lana turned to see a beautiful blonde woman in smartly casual clothes striding toward them. Her winter vest was trimmed in white fur, and her breath came out in matching white puffs in the cold night air.
“I flew in early to surprise you, but you weren’t at your hotel. Thank God the rental-car company has a GPS locator for emergencies, but I had a heart attack when it showed you were at a hospital at this hour of the night, so I rushed right down here, and...now...” Her gaze moved from Lana to Braden to the open car door, then back to Lana again.
“Claudia,” Braden said, and Lana knew from the guilt in his voice and the sinking feeling in her gut that she was looking at the future Mrs. MacDowell. “You weren’t supposed to fly in until the weekend.”
“Surprise.” With a terribly perfect smile, the blonde woman gestured toward Lana and enunciated each word with precise diction. “Who—is—this?”
Lana wondered if Claudia heard Braden’s resigned sigh as clearly as she did.
“This is Dr. Lana Donnoli, my...my former fiancée.”
* * *
“The former fiancée?”
Claudia’s smile was brittle and didn’t fool Braden for a moment. Nor, he suspected, did it fool Lana.
“The one you’d never bothered to mention until last night?”
Braden felt Lana’s back stiffen under his hand. Well, hell, was he supposed to have talked about an old fiancée with a new girlfriend?
“It was a long time ago,” he said and knew instantly that both women hated that answer.
“Really?” Claudia asked. “How long?”
Lana answered, to his surprise. “Over six years ago, actually. We haven’t seen each other since then, not until yesterday.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” Claudia said, looking at Lana less suspiciously than she was looking at him.
Understanding dawned on Braden, and he felt insulted. “I haven’t been seeing her behind your back.”
“You two seem to have been recalling old times.” Claudia jerked her chin toward Lana’s middle, shocking Braden into thinking she somehow knew about that long-ago pregnancy, until he realized Claudia was pointedly looking at where his hand was resting in the curve of Lana’s lower back.
Braden dropped his hand and searched for the right thing to say.
And searched.
Claudia walked right up to the car, so the three of them could have reached out with their arms and had a big, friendly group hug. “You look like you’ve been crying,” she said to Lana, and then suddenly, tears were filling Claudia’s big blue eyes, too.
“Claudia,” Braden said, guilt tearing at him. “This isn’t about you.”
“It’s not about me? How
can it not be about me? We’ve been exclusive for nine months, and now you’re meeting an old flame, and it’s not supposed to be about me?”
“It was entirely about you,” Lana said firmly. “He has strong feelings for you, and—and he wanted to let me know, before—”
Don’t tell Claudia I bought her a ring, because I didn’t.
“—because I’ve just moved back to town, and he knew we’d run into each other every time he visited his family.”
Judging by the look on Claudia’s face, that wasn’t a completely awful explanation. Braden was relieved that Lana hadn’t gotten Claudia’s hopes up about a ring. Breaking up with Claudia was going to be bad enough; she didn’t need to know he’d been on the brink of proposing.
Lana turned to him. “So, I guess this is goodbye and good luck. Thanks for—thanks for fixing my car tonight.” She looked at him earnestly. “And things. Thanks for fixing things. It really helped.”
She started to walk away, but Braden caught her arm. “Wait. We left your car at the restaurant, remember?”
The slap that followed came from Claudia. A slap wasn’t as loud in the parking lot as it sounded in the chapel. This one hurt his heart less, but it hurt his face a hell of a lot more.
“Jeez, Claudia.” He let go of Lana and rubbed his cheekbone.
“At the restaurant? You bastard. We had a gala to attend. You canceled our plans to take your ex to a restaurant?” She whirled on Lana. “You can’t have him back. I don’t know how you talked him into taking you on a date—”
“Me?” said Lana, clearly indignant.
“—but it won’t work. Braden’s not the kind of man who’d two-time a woman—”
That was nice of her to say, especially because she’d just accused him of doing that.
“—but you knew that, didn’t you? So you came up with some kind of broken-car thing to lure him out here so late at night. Did you suggest dinner at a restaurant while it was being fixed?”
A catfight between two beautiful women was every man’s fantasy. The reality, though, sucked. It had been an exhausting night, he was in a hospital parking lot in the cold dark of predawn, and neither of the women had a clue how he felt about her, because he hadn’t had a chance to tell either one. Hell, he’d just figured it out himself in the past hour.
Six years and one hour.
Claudia abruptly threw herself against his chest, and the tears in her eyes spilled prettily down her cheeks. “I love you, Braden. I love you, and you love me, and nothing can change that. Nothing. We’ll go away this weekend to your mother’s ranch, like we planned. Everything will be okay.”
Braden knew he’d never said I love you to Claudia. He’d planned on making it part of the speech that went along with the diamond ring.
He’d been a fool, an idiot, to think he would grow to love Claudia, just because he should. Just because he was tired of being a bachelor and she was the perfect companion and hostess for an executive like himself. But he didn’t love her, and he’d never lied to her. Not until this afternoon, when he’d left Quinn at Zilker Park. He’d called Claudia to cancel their date to some gala at the Met tonight, telling her he wouldn’t be returning to New York in time. A business meeting in Austin had come up, he’d said, knowing that business was not what he wanted or needed to discuss with Dr. Lana Donnoli.
Claudia closed what little gap existed between them and pressed a tearful kiss on his mouth, desperate and salty—and, Braden suspected, designed to demonstrate for his ex-fiancée just how ex she was.
Braden didn’t want to be cruel, but he stayed impassive as she kissed him, until she kept her lips pressed against his for so long that he thought she was the one being intentionally cruel—to Lana. He gently unlocked her arms from around his neck and put her away from him.
Lana was already halfway across the parking lot, rubbing her arms briskly as she walked, heading toward the hospital, her refuge, the center of her world.
That damned hospital would never need her like he did.
For now, he let her go.
* * *
It was past dawn, early morning on Wednesday, by the time Lana hitched a ride from a nurse getting off duty. Her car sat alone in the restaurant’s parking lot. Across the street, the wrecked pickup truck was gone, the glass swept away. Plywood was nailed over the gaping hole in the building, like a giant bandage on a nasty wound.
Lana turned back to her car and pressed the unlock button on her key chain. It worked now, of course. Braden was good at fixing things.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to herself as she opened her car door and tossed her portfolio across the seat.
Her life with Braden was over. Her shoulders were less bowed with guilt over her miscarriage; Braden had fixed that, too, and probably would have years ago, if she’d only let him. But her heart...her heart felt as if it had a hole in it that gaped like the one across the street.
Braden’s life with his Claudia was just beginning. He should have a good life. Claudia obviously valued him. She’d care for him, Lana had no doubt, and she’d keep him climbing the ladder of corporate success, too. Braden would go from single and successful to married and even more successful. Good for him. Really.
Her life would go on, too, as a single and successful woman. She’d never been suited for bearing the burdens of a big family, anyway. Caring for patients would not have left her the time or energy that good mothers invested in their children, and Braden had always wanted children. Claudia would undoubtedly produce perfectly beautiful children, and she’d dress them in the latest fashion and stroll with them in Central Park while Braden made multimillion-dollar decisions in a corner office at PLI.
Lana sat in the driver’s seat heavily and stirred the scent of him in the air. She could smell a trace of him, clean soap and warm skin. Braden had sat here, starting the car’s engine after replacing her battery. He’d probably driven the car around the block, making sure everything was okay.
Everything was okay.
But she didn’t want to be single. She wanted to be loved and cared for. She wanted to be handed sandwiches for her empty stomach and shoes that didn’t hurt her feet. She wanted to be saved from long waits in automotive-repair shops.
She wanted to be married. To Braden. She always had.
Lana put her head down on the steering wheel, too exhausted to think about driving to her unpacked apartment. She could swear she smelled where Braden’s hands had held the wheel. Lana inhaled deeply and cried.
More than two hours later, a knock on her car window jarred her awake. She smiled tiredly at the concerned-looking man in chef’s clothes who’d rapped on her window. As she started her car and backed out of the parking space, she saw him unlocking the restaurant’s kitchen doors.
It was time for people to start their workdays, even people who had worked all night and slept in their cars. But she was tired, bone tired.
That was nothing new. She’d done it before; she could do it again. Or...
She could play hooky. Not completely, of course, but she could drive to the office, get the books she needed and work on them at home.
She was the department chair. The hospital’s CEO was her only superior, and she already knew from their brief phone interview that he rarely called any meetings or asked for reports from any departments. She was the boss, and the boss needed to work from home.
She looked a wreck, of course, in her black dress and her white Keds, but that wasn’t unusual in a hospital. Physicians came at all hours from various activities. Last night, another physician called into the E.R. had been wearing a baseball uniform under his white jacket. “Nice socks” was the only thing anyone had said. Or snickered.
Lana pulled into the physicians’ parking lot. Shrugging into her white lab coat as she walked, she made it to her office before having to greet anyone or say anything coherent, a blessing in her sleep-deprived state.
“Good morning,” Myrna said with an odd smile Lana hadn’t seen before
.
“Good morning.” Lana walked past her assistant to her own desk and stopped short. A slender vase with three perfect roses, each a different color, stood on her desk. “Oh.”
Myrna was behind her in an instant. “Aren’t they beautiful? They’re from the PLI executive, the one who knows you very well, but you don’t know him at all. How was your dinner last night?” She folded her hands in front of her middle and waited.
All Lana could think was that she was tired, too tired for explanations and surprises and one more emotional drain.
“Anyhow,” Myrna continued briskly, “it’s unusual to see three roses, isn’t it? Usually it’s one or it’s a dozen. So I did a quick internet search. Guess what three means?”
Lana leaned against the desk. If she sat, she’d fall asleep. “I have no idea.”
“Three roses stand for a couple and their love. He thinks you’re a couple.”
“Three means two?”
“Practically every website agrees.”
Lana tried to imagine herself and Braden as a couple, but she saw a tall, blonde woman pressed against him. Two was company; three was a crowd. “I don’t think men look up the meaning of flowers the way women do.”
Myrna apparently didn’t want to hear that. “Then he went with three instead of just one, because why?”
“I don’t know. You’re sure these are from him?” They’d left the chapel only hours ago. Their Tuesday-night dinner had blurred into Wednesday’s dawn in the E.R. parking lot. Didn’t the man sleep?
Myrna looked at her as though she was terribly impressed. “You mean, there are other men out there who might also send you flowers? I’m going to really enjoy working with you if we get a parade of flowers in here from many, many men. Dr. Montgomery wasn’t nearly as interesting, I’ll tell you that.”
Lana chuckled as she touched the soft petals. She liked Myrna. She needed some friendliness after these crazy first days back at West Central. “Maybe the florist was just getting rid of leftover colors. Red, white and orange is an odd combination.”
“Don’t you want to know what the colors mean?”
