by Caro Carson
The band around his chest eased, but the pain shifted from being hurt by her to hurting for her. Zach took a deep breath. “Let me get this straight. You are telling me you never want to get married and never want to have children, and that’s supposed to motivate me to break up with you?”
“Perhaps that’s oversimplifying,” said his librarian, “but yes, there’s no sense in you spending time with me when I’m all wrong for you.”
These words weren’t the usual breakup lines. They bothered him. She was referring to herself as a waste of time, as all wrong.
“When you say I deserve better than you,” he said, “you really mean it.”
“Yes, of course.”
Jeez. The pain in his heart really was for her, no question.
“Brooklyn, no one really thinks they aren’t good enough, don’t you know that? It’s just a line people use when they want to look around for someone better to date. Someone different to date, at least.”
She frowned at him as if he’d just told her the sky wasn’t really blue or that gravity didn’t really make things fall.
He persisted. “Deep down, don’t you believe you’re a good person, good enough to date anyone you want?”
He stood her silence for one second. Two.
Enough.
He’d always preferred to take action, to handle the most immediate problems first.
So first, he kissed her.
He was the man who stopped the bleeding at the scene, not the office-based practitioner who waited for test results before making a decision. Brooke was like him, whether she realized it or not, a physician who handled the most urgent issues in the ER and deferred the rest to other specialists.
The space between them needed to go, so he pulled her into him, one arm securing her body to his, his other hand cupping her jaw and turning her face to the angle he needed to kiss her deeply. Thoroughly. And yes, damn it, lovingly.
With that connection restored, he spoke against her mouth, brushing brief kisses on her lips between sentences. “You are an amazing woman, Brooklyn Brown, so amazing that I was a little afraid to start dating you, because I knew I’d never want to stop. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
Her little gasp was silent, but he felt the quick inhalation beneath his lips.
“It’s crazy to think I could find someone better than you. You understand me. You know what it’s like to lose a patient and what it’s like to save one. And I understand you, too. I’ve got so much respect for you. It takes guts to jump in and try to make a difference, and you’ve got that kind of courage.”
“That’s just being a doctor.”
“No, it isn’t.” He smoothed his thumb over her cheek, feeling the soft, feminine skin. “Even more amazing, that courage is wrapped up in an incredibly beautiful package. Everything about you is soft and strong at once. You’re more than pretty, Brooke. You’re sensational. When I’ve got you in my bed, it’s beyond pleasure. You respond to my touch like I’m doing everything right.”
“Because you are, and you know it. Our sexual compatibility shouldn’t be—”
He smiled against her lips. “Sexual compatibility. How many syllables is that? Do you know what I thought the first time I laid eyes on you? You were leaving the ER, all neat and professional in your pinstripe skirt, and you looked like my fantasy of a sexy librarian.”
She went very still at that. “Really?”
“It’s a shame you don’t need glasses. Just so you know, if you start wearing reading glasses when you’re older, I’m going to be all over you.”
“You’re literally over me now.”
“Damn right.”
She almost, nearly, not quite chuckled. It was definitely a little sound of amusement, and he kissed her quickly.
Now that he’d gotten her to lighten up, he turned serious. “And I’m never, ever going to be willing to share you. When I thought you had a date with another man tonight, I might as well have been stabbed in the chest.” And that was as close as he was willing to admit that she had his heart. He would keep this fire contained.
She pushed against him, and he let her go, but only far enough that he could rest his hands on her waist and his forehead against hers. This was an intimate conversation, and he wanted to keep the space between them intimate.
Her hands clutched his shoulders. “I don’t know what kind of women you’ve dated in the past, but I wouldn’t sleep with two different men in twenty-four hours.”
Charisse would have. Charisse had. And he’d thought she loved him.
“I know that, baby, I know. It’s not just about sleeping with someone else. I want you in every way, not just in bed. It hurts to imagine you going out to dinner and a movie with some other guy. You might like him better than me, and that would—”
He stopped himself. Ease up. Contain it. “I don’t want to know how that would feel.”
“Oh, Zach.”
“I wouldn’t feel that way if you were just a nice girl I was wasting time with until I could find someone better. Don’t tell me to spend my time looking for other women. I’ve already found the right one.”
Her hands clutched his shoulders harder. He knew her physical responses from weeks in bed. He knew he’d done something right, said something exactly, perfectly right.
“No,” she whispered, pressing her forehead harder against his as if she could transfer her thoughts that way. “You’re focusing on everything we have in common. I’m thinking about everything we don’t. You’d make a great father—”
“You’d make a great mother.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t have to say that.”
Why was she fighting this so hard? It was as if she wanted him to think less of her. He couldn’t.
“I mean it, Brooke. I’ve watched you with kids in the ER for nine months. Days, nights, the ones who were hurt bad and the ones who were barely sick. You’re consistently kind. You have—I don’t know how to say it—you have a different touch with them than adults. You’d make a great mother, but neither of us are planning on having children. That’s more we have in common.”
“Why don’t you want a family? You could have it all.”
Hell, no.
But that was a knee-jerk response, and he knew it. For Brooke, he tried to say something more specific. “I tried the marriage fantasy on for size. It didn’t fit.”
“Four years ago?”
Her quick and accurate guess didn’t surprise him.
“What happened?” she asked.
He never talked about it. No one in his family knew what had happened while he’d been on that trip, but he’d never convince Brooke that marriage wasn’t in his future unless he explained some part of it.
With a sigh, he let go of her. A little space here wouldn’t be a bad thing. He didn’t want her touched by anything that had to do with Charisse.
“There was this woman.” He didn’t bother with the happy beginning. That had all been a lie, anyway. “It was a whirlwind thing during some time off. We decided to surprise everyone by coming home married. The day we were going to buy her white dress and meet the preacher on the beach, she ran away.”
“Did you find her?”
“Within days. Turned out she’d already picked out a dress and booked a preacher for another man long before I came on the scene. I showed up in time to watch her marry him.”
He’d shocked Brooke, that much was easy to see.
“How about you?” he asked. “Why don’t you want the two kids and minivan?”
“Nothing like that. I’ve never had my heart broken like that.”
“Good.” He meant it. He didn’t like the idea of Brooke being betrayed. He leaned against the familiar red metal of his engine and crossed his arms over his chest, settling in to w
atch Brooke. She’d been somber since the race, but now she was growing more animated.
“I never would have guessed you’d been through something like that,” she said.
He wondered if she realized she was pacing.
“Don’t you see, Zach? This is where we’re opposites. This is what we don’t have in common. Even after an episode like that, you still enjoy life. You still like women. Heck, you love women.”
“Generally speaking, yes. That particular one, not so much.”
“You laugh more than I do.”
He was grinning a little, now that she mentioned it. “And you’re more serious than I am.”
“Yes, exactly.”
He waited, but she seemed to think that she’d laid out her concern completely. She’d stopped pacing.
“That’s it?” he asked, just to be sure.
“I’ll drag you down. Do you remember the first night that we—the first night you came to my apartment? I said I was hoping you’d make me laugh after that shift. It’s unfair for me to expect you to make me laugh all the time. We’re so unequal.”
“I was hoping you’d be cool and calm. I was counting on you to help me gain some professional perspective on that god-awful ambulance shift.” He pushed away from the engine and eliminated the space between them again. She didn’t object when he pulled her into a plain bear hug. “We’re good together. We balance each other out.”
“Not that day.” Her voice was muffled against the side of his neck. “I didn’t help you cool down and you didn’t make me laugh.”
“True. We just fell into bed and had amazing sex.” He smiled at the memory and then down at Brooke, who started to smile, too. “It’s an excellent third option.”
“See? You’re making me laugh again.”
“Good.” He meant that, too. She seemed to have more than her share of self-doubts and past hurts, and he intended to learn more in due time. For now, he’d solved the immediate problem. She wasn’t going to break up with him. “We’ll laugh when we can and stay cool when we can’t. We’ll understand crazy shifts and when all else fails, we’ll have crazy good sex. You and me, only you and me, exclusive. Right?”
She hesitated.
He hugged her harder. “C’mon, Brooke. You can’t say no to that.”
“People do change their minds on the marriage and family part.”
“If you decide you want the two-point-five kids and the minivan, you let me know. We firefighters are good at performing dynamic risk assessments as the situation changes. What do you say? Will you be mine?”
“I think this is an offer I can’t refuse.”
“Good.”
“But that dynamic risk assessment better include roses and chocolate.”
“Very funny.” Since he had her in a bear hug anyway, he picked her up and spun her around once. “But remember, I’m supposed to be the funny one.”
“Duly noted.” Her stern words were at complete odds with the smile she gave him.
Her smiles were too rare, but that would change from here on out. This was love, yes, but it would be good for them. Not too consuming. No one had to get hurt.
A warning siren sounded from the top of the tower.
He set her down. “I think you agreed in the nick of time.”
She checked her watch. “Oh, my gosh. You’ve only got four minutes.”
“That’s plenty. Chief will have my coat and helmet ready.” He took off at a jog, knowing Brooke would jog, too, and stay beside him.
“Is this going to be enough of a warm-up for you?” she asked, and he didn’t need to look at her face as they skirted the edge of the crowd to know her smile was gone.
“It’s perfect. Don’t worry about me.”
“I shouldn’t have distracted you. I’m so sorry.”
There it was again, another glimpse of insecurity. He’d never suspected it, he doubted anyone would, but the decisive Dr. Brooke Brown had real insecurities. She thought she was a waste not just of his time, but of any man’s. Who the hell had put that idea in her head?
He came to an abrupt halt. “Just so you know, you are a thousand times more important to me than winning the semifinals. If it had taken me another hour to get you to say yes, then I would have taken another hour, and dropped out of the race.”
“Oh, Zach.”
As answers went, he liked it. It sounded as if he’d said something right.
“Come on. The starting line is waiting for us.”
Chapter Eleven
After the races, Zach had to babysit.
The baby was a red-and-blue helicopter named Texas Rescue One, and its pilots apparently trusted only Zach to stay with their precious machine while they grabbed lunch.
Zach had won the semifinal race after jogging straight up to the starting line, much to Brooke’s relief. If he’d lost that race, she would have felt guilty for accidentally igniting a big relationship talk when she should have been making sure he was preparing properly for the race: resting, reducing inflammation, rehydrating.
Nowhere in the list of sports medicine principles did intense emotional conversations come into play. Neither did kissing. She’d tried to stop him, hadn’t she? She’d tried to redirect his focus to his race, but then he’d told her she was amazing. Sensational. What a thing for a man like Zach Bishop to say. To her.
While Zach babysat the helicopter, letting the crowd pose for selfies but keeping them out of the cockpit, Brooke stood in line at one of the food trucks to buy Texas-sized hot dogs. Standing in the sun, smelling great food on all these grills, feeling secure that dating Zach wouldn’t cause him any regrets in a childless future, it was easy to pretend this Saturday wasn’t a tragic anniversary.
The community fair was helping her keep the grief at bay. When she remembered where she had to go tonight, when she remembered that today was the day the cutest kid sister had ceased to be, the monster took a swipe, but it couldn’t quite get a good swing at her.
“I’ll take two foot-longs, please. Extra relish.”
She made her way back to the helicopter, carefully keeping her hot dogs from falling out of their oblong paper trays. Already, she had her doubts that just one would be enough for Zach after the thousands of calories he’d burned in the morning’s competition.
After winning his semifinal, Zach had lost the final race to a firefighter from Killeen, but his congratulatory handshake to the victor had been sincere, and he’d waved at the crowd to acknowledge their cheers. It was as if there was no room in him for anger or pouting or kicking a dummy in disappointment, as one of the other firemen had done. He wasn’t devastated although he’d come so close and then lost the final round.
How did he manage to shrug off disappointment like that? To switch from the high of winning the semis to the low of losing the finals?
Any moment of happiness could change into a moment of tragedy. Her sister’s death had taught Brooke that life was short. Her career in the ER reinforced that truth too frequently. Zach had to know it as well as she did, but he wasn’t afraid to enjoy the happy moments. Maybe, just maybe, some of that optimism would rub off on her.
If they stayed together long enough, that was.
Ha. She was already anticipating the fall. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Speaking of enjoying things while they lasted, she checked her watch. She had a couple of hours, at least, before she needed to shower and don something black and drive to her childhood home. Hours to go, still.
Zach spotted her and gestured toward the nearest picnic table. She sat and took her first bite of something she’d never advise a patient to eat. Zach picked up a small child and set his helmet on the little boy’s head for a photo in front of the chopper. He kept his hand on the heavy helmet brim to keep its full weight off the child’s
fragile frame.
Determinedly, Brooke kept chewing. If she’d thought for one second that she was vulnerable to a biological clock or maternal instincts, she’d be feeling it now. Every sense in her would be looking at him and screaming, “That’s some major fatherhood potential there. Life partner stuff.”
She wasn’t thinking that, because she wasn’t going to have children. But Zach should. Just look at him, so protective, so caring. So undeniably adorable.
He’d said he didn’t want to have children. She wasn’t depriving him of anything.
The pilots returned, two women in flight suits. If their gender surprised her for a second, it amused her for the next. Naturally, Zach would be around a helicopter with a female crew. She should have guessed.
As one woman stayed with Texas Rescue One, Zach began walking Brooke’s way with the other pilot. She was petite and blonde and confident. She carried herself as if she was in charge.
Probably the same way I carry myself on duty. Was that the kind of woman Zach preferred?
Come to think of it, the gossip mill always had Zach paired up with a trauma nurse or some other type of career woman, someone who had a high-adrenaline job or was some other kind of go-getter. He was never known for dating bimbos. No one too young. No one too empty-headed.
Brooke had thought she was an anomaly for a ladies’ man like Zach, someone unique and out of the ordinary for him. Maybe she’d hoped being a novelty would keep him interested in her, but in reality, an ER doctor was just Zach’s style.
Or a pilot.
She glared at her hot dog. Had she not just promised herself she would try to emulate Zach? Yes, every peak was followed by a valley, but she would enjoy the happy moments. She would worry about the crash later. For now, Zach preferred an ER doctor, and he was determined that they see each other exclusively.
Brooke set her hot dog in its paper tray and dusted off her hands. She stood and held out her hand to shake with the blonde pilot.
“Captain Elliott,” Zach introduced her.
“You can call me Sam, of course,” the pilot said with a smile. “It’s Samantha, but people unfortunately love that Sam Elliott name—like the actor, you know. You can’t tell me a mustache joke I haven’t heard.”
