Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
Houston watched Josie shoot him a glance of disbelief and wondered how he was supposed to proceed from here. It had seemed so simple. Go to Josie, apologize, confess his feelings, coax her out of her clothes and back into his life.
He hadn’t counted on her looking at him like he was an alien.
“You’ve seen me,” she said. “I’m not so good.”
That was obvious. What he was supposed to do about it wasn’t. “Can I get you anything? Do you have any Gatorade? You need to replenish your electrolytes.”
Josie just looked at him. Then carefully, she pulled a tissue out of her pants and wiped her red and raw nose.
He was going to have to say something more important than doling out advice for the common cold. Which she already knew. Tucking his hands behind his back, he frowned. “I resigned today.”
The tissue tumbled out of her hands, landing between her thighs. Her jaw fell open. “You did? Why?”
It didn’t hurt as badly as he’d thought to admit the truth. “I’m not capable of conducting surgery at the level I was before. My thumb is never going to have a full range of motion, and I have no interest in retraining to compensate for the loss.”
Sympathy filled her eyes. Different than pity. Warmer, softer—a flash of the way she used to look at him emerging. Maybe, despite everything, she still cared.
“Houston...I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “Me, too. But I can’t give up medicine, it’s too much a part of me. I haven’t decided what exactly I’m going to do, but I’m hoping an orthopedic practice might have use for me.”
The idea had stolen over him after he’d left the hospital, and what had just been a thought now cemented. He knew that’s what he wanted, what he should do—continue to use his orthopedic skills without surgery. He could still be a doctor and help heal patients, just in a different way.
“And I want you to join me.” Now that came out of nowhere, but damn, it was a good idea. “We’d be great together. Complement each other.”
Josie gaped at him. “That sounds about as much fun as a liquid diet. I can’t work with you, Houston! I can’t even look at you.”
And to prove her point, she buried herself behind another tissue.
Shit, he was screwing this up. Why the hell had he brought up work first?
Dropping down on the floor next to her, he touched her knee. “Jesus, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m not doing this right. What I really came here to tell you is that I love you. Josie, I really, really love you, and I’ve missed you like crazy.”
It wasn’t even hard to say it. The words rolled off his tongue, true and fierce.
Josie didn’t look impressed with his liberation. She spoke through the tissue. “Wow. And it only took you five weeks to say it.”
“I’m not always in touch with my emotions.”
She snorted, then threw her crumpled tissue at him, bouncing it off his nose before it rolled down his chest. “Why are you doing this to me? I gave up my residency at Acadia without a fight, and I just want to get out, get away from you, repair my heart and dignity and here you are, trying to reel me back in with a bunch of bullshit. You keep doing this to me. Pushing me away and then pulling me back in.”
“It’s not bullshit!” He’d never been so damn serious in his life.
He loved her. He was desperate for her to say the same. He’d never wanted anything so much as he wanted her to forgive him. “I do love you. I’m a better-off man than I was before I met you.”
He stroked her knee through her cotton pants.
“You helped me heal, Josie, both emotionally and physically. I thought that I couldn’t ever love anyone because of my parents, and that loving meant giving up control.
You showed me it doesn’t have anything to do with that.
” He squeezed her knee, trying to get her to look at him.
She seemed incredibly absorbed in peeling apart two tissues that had stuck together.
“My physical therapist told me if I adjust and shift the way I use my hand, it will be better for me than to keep trying to use it the way I always have. When I realized that, I realized the same was true for us. I can’t make my feelings for you fit the selfish way I’ve always approached women.
Being with you has been a complete shift inside of me, and it’s easy and amazing and fun.
Loving you makes me happy, and I want to spend forever taking care of each other. ”
He’d done it. He’d laid it all out there. And it felt damn good. Burrowing his head into her thigh, he kissed her leg, the warm cotton of her pants smelling light and fruity, like Josie. His Josie.
“I knew how I felt five weeks ago and I should have told you, but I was scared. Thought you might squash me like that garbage truck compacter. I’m very sorry.”
Sorry he’d hurt her. Sorry he’d wasted time.
Josie stared down at Houston’s dark head leaning over her lap as he kissed her, and wondered if she were hallucinating.
If so, she was never taking NyQuil again.
She couldn’t prevent her fingers from smoothing the tips of his coarse black hair any more than she could prevent her heart from leaping to enthusiastic attention.
And then he begged. “Josie, please, honey, I love you. Please forgive me. Please.”
Oh, God. Tears pooled, knowing what it must have cost him to say those vulnerable words. She stroked his head, his cheeks. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I forgive you.”
He sighed, nuzzling his nose across her thigh before lifting his head. “Thank you. I promise you I won’t ever do anything that impacts your life or your career without discussing it first.”
Fingers found their way over hers, and he locked their hands together. He stared at her, eyes trailing over her face, jaw working, and Josie let the wave of tenderness wash over her, soaking her, comforting her.
She wanted to say something monumental, iconic. One for the memory banks.
Instead, she sneezed.
Groping for her tissue, eyes watering, Josie groaned, “Geez, I’m sorry!”
Houston just laughed. “I love you,” he said with great affection.
Why was a mystery, but she wasn’t going to question it. “Houston, are you saying you want a long-term relationship? With me?” Better be clear on that.
“Yes.”
For the first time in her life, words failed her.
Then burst forth in a rush. “Good. I want that too. With you.”
“I’m glad you clarified it’s with me,” he said. He looked up and smiled. A grin, really.
He was teasing her.
She rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m glad you’ve found a path forward in medicine.
But working together? I’ve really enjoyed working with kids.
It’s been going really, really well, and I’m totally confident I can excel there and really help kids.
And so I was really thinking more about pediatric orthopedics . ..”
She paused for air, which could only come through her mouth because of her inflamed nasal passageways.
His hand was on the go, ascending upwards from her knee and sliding sideways, probably being sucked into the gravitational pull of her eager inner thighs.
“You are a goddess. That’s what I said in the ER, right? It’s very true.”
His kisses were shifting, too, marching to meet his hand, and Josie pushed his head to stop him. But he was stronger and determined.
“You didn’t actually say that, remember...and what are you doing? I don’t look like a goddess, I’m sick. I’m in pajamas and haven’t brushed my hair.”
Which was such a sexy thing to bring up. Josie clapped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t say anything else, then had to spread her fingers so she could take in oxygen.
“You are a goddess. A love goddess. A sex goddess.” His fingers had found their mark, stroking across the apex of her thighs, while his lips reached the bare skin between her pants and her shirt.
“More like the goddess of cold products.” But her body was stirring, reacting to his touch.
Underwear and pants were no match for Houston. He was already inside both, sliding down, rolling across her clit, coaxing moist heat from her body. “Do you really forgive me? Do you still love me? Will you be with me, give me a chance to show you how well I can love you?”
Uhh, yeah. Please. Walking away from him had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. “Are you really okay, about your hand, and everything? How’s your leg?”
Kissing across her abdomen, he nodded. “I’m really okay. And my leg has healed with minimal scarring, thanks to my wonderful doctor.”
Josie closed her eyes, overwhelmed.
“Are you going to answer me, sweetheart?”
“Huh?” She bit her lip, then dropped her mouth open when she couldn’t breathe. Houston’s finger had slipped inside her and her nipples were hardening, her body tightening.
He bit her stomach lightly. “Do you love me, Josie?”
Josie swiped at her nose desperately, heart racing. Trust her to sniffle her way through the most romantic moment of her life. “Yes.”
While he smiled in triumph, Josie reached into the basket she had sitting on her end table. Straining to feel around in it as Houston held her prisoner with his tongue on her navel, she felt the sharp poke of the shark’s tooth.
Fingers closed around it, she struggled for composure. She wanted Houston now and for forever and she was going to have him. And she was a damn good doctor and her father would be proud.
“First of all,” she managed to say, valiantly ignoring his roving fingers, “I want to repeat, I don’t want to work with you, Houston.
I want to love you, live with you, be your best friend and lover, but trust me on this, I do not want to work with you.
You’re an intimidating colleague and I don’t want to mix work with pleasure moving forward. ”
Houston laughed. “So much damn pleasure. I can’t wait. What’s in your hand, honey?”
She held up the shark’s tooth. “It came from your leg.”
Houston watched the light reflect off the shiny dark surface of the inch-long tooth.
It touched a part deep inside of him that Josie had been hanging on to that stupid thing for two months.
“You know, in a weird way that bastard bull shark brought us together. I say we keep the tooth. Make it into a necklace for you.”
He grinned up at her, enjoying his perch between her legs, the soft give of her thighs beneath his elbows. “With a shark’s tooth necklace and that tropical bikini, you can be a regular beach bunny when you watch me surf.”
Josie laughed, delicately dabbing at her nose. “Forget that. You’re teaching me how to surf.”
“It’s a deal. We’ll do it together, you and me, everything from now on. Except work.”
Josie gave him a sweet smile, with all the goodness of her pure heart in it, and he felt his gut relax.
Then he sat up and with a quick hook of his thumbs beneath her waistband, peeled her pants down. For five weeks he’d been missing heir and every inch of her luscious body. “What are today’s panties? Hearts, maybe?”
That would be appropriate.
“No,” she said, her breath hitching.
A big green shamrock was stretched taut across Josie, cupping her, outlining that feminine arch of her body, the erotic dip between her soft silky folds. His gut wrenched. He groaned.
And he started towards that enticing clover. “Oh, yeah, perfect. I’m feeling damn lucky today. For more than one reason.”