by Caro Carson
Abstract concepts like future wives and children went up in smoke. In the here and now, his mouth was delicious, his body was hard and warm, and his hair felt soft under her fingers. Its color was lightening from brown to blond with each day of approaching summer sun. The man himself was everything bright and light, chasing away her black cloud with a sensual, physical joy that was every bit as addicting as he said it was.
A wolf whistle pierced the air. It didn’t occur to Brooke that it was directed at them, because she’d never done anything in her life to cause that kind of reaction from a stranger, until Zach cooled their kiss and then finished it with a chuckle.
“I guess the hospital parking lot isn’t the best place for this.” He kissed her one more time, lightly, a G-rated kiss in case any families wandered by.
Brooke kept her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead into the solid muscle of his shoulder, hiding her face. “I hope that was no one I know. I’m a doctor. I’m not supposed to act this way.”
She peeked at him when he said nothing. He was smiling at her in a way that looked distinctly smug and terribly masculine. He was a great kisser, and he knew it. This was no family man. Zach Bishop, playboy paramedic, darling of the ER nurses, was back.
Thank goodness. She could handle this version of Zach.
“You don’t have to look so proud of yourself,” she said, arching one brow in mock disapproval.
His smile only deepened. “If you say so, Dr. Brown.”
She kept her arms loosely around his neck, enjoying their physical compatibility. She shouldn’t wish for anything more.
I wish this wasn’t so temporary. Life will change; it always does.
At any moment, he could get hurt. The race itself looked risky to her. In the blink of an eye, Zach could be taken away from her, gone like her sister.
It was easy to keep her supposedly stern expression. She really did wish she could order him to stay safe at all times. “As a doctor, I have to advise you that we should be icing down your muscles before the semifinals.”
He only shrugged, neck muscles bunching and relaxing in the circle of her arms. “That’s okay. I’m fine.” He turned to sit on the chrome running board of the fire engine, giving her plenty of room to sit beside him.
He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned his broad shoulders against the side of the truck. He was so healthy, such a contrast to the ill and injured patients with whom she spent the majority of her time. Yet with one false step on that staircase, one stumble over a heavy dummy’s dangling limb, he would be hurt. The possibility made her heartsick.
She couldn’t tell Zach that. Zach wouldn’t want to be with a woman who obsessed over statistically unlikely accidents. All of the other girlfriends were smiling and enjoying themselves, but Brooke felt compelled to do something to minimize the risk of harm.
“I’ll get some ice, anyway,” she said. Their kiss had left her hair a little messy. As she reached up to tighten her ponytail, she offered an explanation she thought would sound good to an athlete. “You’ll thank me for it tomorrow when you aren’t as sore as you’ll be without the ice.”
He tugged her ponytail loose again with a smile. “I’m not sore.”
“It’s not tomorrow yet.”
He laughed. “I run stairs all the time, Brooke, almost every day of the week. It’s part of the workout we do when we’re on shift. I feel fine, really.”
He’d be feeling differently in the blink of an eye if he placed one heavy boot on a stair at the wrong angle and his muscles were too fatigued to catch himself. Brooke stood, ready to get the ice, and tried another approach. “Think of it this way. You’ll be faster if we reduce the inflammation in your quads now.”
His nonchalant smile stayed in place, but she could see that he was watching her more closely. Maybe she was being too insistent.
“I forget that I’ve got a physician in my corner,” he said. “You’d be very good to have if this were a serious competition. There is a competition circuit, but this is more of an exhibition day. If I’m in a race where fractions of seconds count, I’ll let you ice me down all you want. Right now, it doesn’t really matter. We’ve already won the best prize.”
“Semifinals are the best prize?” She tried not to let her frustration show. The man didn’t want ice, and that was that.
“My engine gets a shift covered because I made semifinals.” He reached up to grab her hand and tug her down to sit beside him once more. He didn’t let go of her hand.
She kept her gaze on their intertwined fingers. “No wonder Murphy and Chief went so crazy after that last race.”
“The rest is just a matter of bragging rights.”
“If you don’t care whether or not you win the next round,” she began, and she heard the hesitation in her own voice, the insecurity. She kept moving forward, anyway. “Then why bother doing it again? Sit it out the rest of the day. Good enough is good enough.”
It could be dangerous. Please don’t risk it.
“What’s wrong, Brooke?”
That surprised her. “Nothing.”
He had her in his sights now, studying her intently. “I’m not going to be a no-show. I’m going to try to win.”
She studied her watch. He still had thirty minutes left before the siren would sound and send him up the tower again. The second hand swept its way around the numbers. Thirty minutes left for an athlete’s body to clear lactic acid from the interstitial spaces in the muscle tissue—
“Brooke.” His other hand covered her watch.
She had nowhere else to look except into his blue-green eyes.
“You keep checking your watch. Do you have to be somewhere?”
“No.” It wasn’t a lie. She had nowhere to be for hours and hours yet.
He didn’t look as if he quite believed her, but he let her wrist go.
“Getting into the semifinals means Engine Thirty-Seven doesn’t have to work tonight. Everyone will be headed out for a beer, but we could go somewhere else, just the two of us.”
Brooke looked away. Her black cloud loomed above them both. “I can’t. I made plans.”
“You’re working? Did you pick up a shift for someone?”
She was caught. She’d been so sure she’d arranged everything so he wouldn’t be dragged into her misery. He never should have found out. “No. It’s...it’s personal. I just have to...go somewhere.”
“On a Saturday night.” His voice was flat, no cowboy, no good times in the tone. “You have something personal to do on a Saturday night, something without me. Something I wasn’t supposed to know about.”
“I thought you’d be working overnight.” She’d never hated this day of the year more than she did at the moment.
Abruptly, Zach stood. She watched him turn his back on her and shove his fingers through his short, brown-blond hair. Just as abruptly, he was down on one knee beside her. “I thought it went without saying, but let me say it now. I want to be the only one, Brooklyn Brown. Since that first night, we’ve been together every single day, and I like it that way. That’s the only way I want it to be. You and me, exclusive.”
“Oh, Zach. You shouldn’t be worrying about this right now. You’ve got a race to run in—”
“Screw the race.”
Because he was on one knee, they were face-to-face as she sat on the running board. His eyes were narrowed with intensity, his mouth a grim line, no longer sensual or smiling. Brooke guessed this was how he looked when he was cutting someone out of a car or sledgehammering his way into a burning building. Her defenses were too flimsy for this. She’d wanted to pretend she was happy, but he was seeing right through to the real Brooke, the one who’d tried to hide a secret.
“Damn it.” The words were quiet, spoken softly under his breath. “I thought it was
so obvious that we were together. If I can’t stop you from going out tonight, I can sure as hell start trying to change your mind.”
“It’s not like that.”
But wasn’t it? Hadn’t she realized today that she shouldn’t keep dating him when she wasn’t the one who could give him a family?
It was flattering, thrilling, to hear him ask her for a clear commitment, but she’d forced this issue accidentally. She’d hoped to skate by for the rest of the weekend before doing the right thing. She knew she wasn’t the right woman for him. Heck, she wasn’t the right woman for anyone. He was offering her a commitment that would only hurt him in the long run. She had to let him go.
This was the worst day on the calendar in every way.
* * *
“Zach, you deserve so much better than me.”
If that wasn’t the opening salvo in a breakup speech, then Zach didn’t know what was. God knew he’d said it enough times to enough different women. Hearing Brooke say it to him made the ground drop out from underneath him, right where he knelt.
“Don’t say that.” His words sounded so familiar. A half dozen likable women had responded the same way to him. Don’t say that, Zach, you’re perfect for me.
Brooke couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. “I’m not the right woman for you.”
“We’re good together.” He nearly cringed at the cliché.
“I know,” Brooke said. “Just because we’re good together doesn’t mean we should be together for the long term.”
Were there no original phrases when it came to this breakup dance? The words were old, but the pain was new to him. In the past, he’d felt some remorse if he’d let a relationship go on too long and the soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend had fallen for him harder than he’d realized. Regret? Yes, he’d felt that, but letting a girl go gently had never really caused him significant pain. But this...
Zach would have driven his fist into the red metal of Engine Thirty-Seven if he thought it would make the sharp pain in his chest go away. This was too much like watching Charisse in her bridal finery as she walked into a church to marry someone Zach hadn’t known existed.
There’d been no words then. He’d stood on the sidewalk in silence. Charisse had never seen him. Zach would never know who or what or why.
“Who is it?” he demanded this time. “Who did you make plans with tonight?”
When Brooke was silent, Zach realized his hands were in fists. He forced his fingers to relax. “It’s okay. I’m not going to beat the guy up. Who are you going out with tonight?”
“It’s my mother.”
“Your mother?”
Brooke crossed her arms over her chest and studied something in the distance with her chin high, but the gesture looked more miserable than defiant. “I really can’t cancel on her. Really. It has to be today.”
“There’s no other man?”
Brooke finally looked him in the eye. Glared at him, actually. “We spent last night together, Zach. We ate breakfast together this morning. Of course I’m not seeing another man tonight. What kind of degenerate person do you think I am?”
Relief and confusion were a strange mix. He gestured in the general direction of the competition tower, as if he wasn’t certain what the structure was. “What are we fighting about?”
“We’re not. I didn’t mean to distract you. Your focus should be on this competition. We can talk about it later.”
“Talk about what?”
When she didn’t answer him, he stood up. He needed to think on his feet. His mind was racing, jumping to conclusions, each one worse than the last. He forced himself to slow down, to go in reverse over these past few minutes.
First and foremost, Brooke wasn’t seeing another man. Zach was relieved. Or rather, in his mind, he knew he was relieved, but his heart hadn’t quite caught up to the knowledge yet. All the muscles surrounding his rib cage were still tight, as if the end of this relationship would be a physical punch he had to defend himself against.
Because that was what loving a woman felt like. He was braced against another Charisse, anticipating the pain of loving someone who didn’t feel the same.
Screw that. He had no time for the ghost of Charisse and her fake promises of love and children and a future together. Brooke wasn’t cheating on him. She was justifiably mad he’d jumped to that conclusion. Of course I’m not seeing another man.
Before that, what had she said? You deserve so much better than me. That was still a breakup line, even if she didn’t have another man waiting on the bench. And before that, she’d talked about ice a lot. She was fixated on the ice, and she acted like having dinner with her mother tonight was a terrible secret he’d uncovered.
He threw his hands up in surrender. “I’m lost, Brooke. What do we need to talk about?”
She checked her watch again.
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said.
“No, you don’t. You have to be at the starting line in twenty-five minutes. I’m sorry all this about my mother came up. I don’t want you to lose focus.”
“Lose focus?” He hadn’t exactly been focused on the part about seeing her mother, but apparently she was.
She looked like a child, sitting so close to the ground. He held his hands out for her to take and waited until his silence caused her to look up. As soon as she noticed his hands, she placed hers in his, almost a reflex.
He pulled her to her feet. “I’m focusing on exactly what I should be focused on right now.”
Keeping this burn under control. Keeping the fire contained.
“You’ve been distracted all morning. Talk to me.”
She gave his hands a little squeeze, but when she would have let go, he held on. If she wouldn’t look him in the eye, he wanted to keep some kind of contact with her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not usually like this.”
“I know you aren’t. I’ve known you for how long now? Nine months.” More of the tightness around his chest eased at the reminder. He wasn’t rushing in like the fool he’d been with Charisse. He hadn’t fallen for Brooke in a matter of days. True, they’d only been together as a couple for two weeks, but he’d known her for much longer.
In nine months, he’d never seen Brooke so discomposed, not until yesterday morning, when he’d come off his night shift to find her sitting on his porch steps. “You’re thinking about that little girl.”
Her hands jerked in his.
He let them go. “Have you called and checked on her today?”
“Oh, that little girl. The car accident. Yes, she came through her first round of surgery with no complications. She’s awake with normal orientation.”
“That’s good. Really good.”
“Yes. Sometimes they never wake.” There was a little catch in her breath. She pressed one palm against her temple as if she could squeeze something into place. “This is so embarrassing.”
He shrugged. “Some patients are like that. You can’t forget them easily, especially children.”
She remained silent. His gut told him she didn’t know how to blow off steam. She wouldn’t throw the coffee mug yesterday; he had. The one time she’d vented her frustration about the ninety-six-year-old, she’d cut herself short almost immediately. She’d apologized then, too.
She ought to be able to talk to him. They were in the same line of work. He understood.
Come on, Brooke. Open up. You’ll feel better.
Since she was silent, he decided to say a few words to get the ball rolling. “I hate when kids are the victims, too. They’re innocent. They’re never the one who caused the car accident. Even if they’ve gotten themselves in trouble, stuck on a roof or something, it’s not really their fault. They can’t foresee how things can go wrong.”
“I
think you’re exactly right. You’re a natural with children. Do you see that? This whole day, watching you with your friends’ kids, has forced me to face the truth. You need the chance to settle down. You need children of your own.”
She was looking at him now, facing him fully. Zach recognized her expression, the one she wore on duty when she had to make a tough decision or deliver bad news. Today’s decision had to do with settling down and having children.
Well, damn. That had come out of left field.
“Are you offering?” he asked, after a moment of baffled silence.
“Me? Absolutely not.”
That shouldn’t have hurt. Children weren’t even on his radar, yet he clenched his teeth a little against the sucker punch that she’d absolutely not consider having any with him.
The bottom line, apparently, was that she thought he needed children, and she wasn’t willing to provide them. “Is this why you said I deserved someone better than you? For the sake of my future children?”
“I’ve decided against having children myself,” Brooke said, a teacher explaining a scientific concept. For once, he didn’t find that bossy librarian tone appealing.
“Is that right?” His cowboy drawl was deliberate. “But you assume I’m planning on having a passel of kids. Or do you think I’ll just leave a string of accidents behind me, given the way you assumed I slept with every woman I spoke to?”
She kept her chin up and her gaze direct. “I know you better than that now. I think you’d be a good father. You should marry a nice girl and have babies, be happy and have a good life.”
“But not with you.”
“I’m never going to have children, so there’s no reason for you or any man to commit himself to me. We may have had some fun, but the reality is, I’m a waste of your time.”
And then she did that quick dash of her hand to the corner of her eye again, the same movement she’d done outside her apartment building when she’d apologized for crying, although he’d never caught a glimpse of a tear.
She was sad?
The pieces started to fall into place.
