11. Getting Better
Paige wobbled a bit on her feet, but she walked almost half a mile a day, doctor’s orders. She was mildly resentful that she still had to check in with the physicians at the hospital. Being a patient was harder than she thought it would be after so much time spent on the other side.
As she rounded the corner of the south field on her parents’ farm, she caught sight of Owen working in the adjacent patch of land between his corn fields and the wilder wheat plots. Yes, she may have walked this way because he’d be there, but she didn’t see the harm in just looking.
They’d kissed a few times since the dinner at her house, he’d taken her to Jules and Verne’s to play cards and eat, but she could tell he was keeping his distance, giving her time to heal. She respected him for it on the one hand.
But on the hand that had run down his taut, smooth skin and muscles other men had to begrudge him for, she wanted him to be less respectful. Much less respectful.
Her body was a live wire when he was around. The hairs on her arms stood on end, her limbs got all fidgety. Worse yet, the secret part of her that ached for him wanted him again in the way she’d had him on the mountain, twice.
That part of her was on house arrest for a couple more weeks, but she couldn’t shut it down, silence it. How was Owen so strong? He hadn’t so much as copped a feel since before the accident, no matter how much she’d thrown herself into his kisses. Only part of her was broken for Christ’s sake, and the part that wasn’t wanted him something fierce.
She waved when she caught his eye and the smile on his face rang alarm bells all over her body. Surely that wasn’t the smile of just a friend? He jogged over, his shirt littered with dirt, grass, and weeds. Though he dripped with sweat, his tight T-shirt wet and clinging to him like she wanted to be, the scent wafting off him was an aromatic and erotic mix of floral and earthy.
She breathed him in deep.
“Looking good,” he told her, and the lingering heat from the day sprung to her cheeks.
Definitely not the greeting of a friend. She tucked an errant hair behind her ear, in the moment hating her decision to grow her hair out.
“I mean, you’re out and about, huh? The healing looks like it’s coming along.”
OK, that had to be more friendly than romantic. Dammit, why couldn’t she get a clear read on him?
He hopped his fence, making the leap look easy as he landed soft on the ground not inches from her face. He kissed her cheek, but then added a soft peck on her lips. Ambiguous again.
She bit her bottom lip, then blurted out, “Do you like me?”
Oof. Could she sound any more like a needy tenth grader with a crush? Jeez.
Owen looked stunned, but his smile remained.
“Very much. Why do you ask?”
Paige wondered how much to say, but ultimately decided that the only way to it was through it, or so her dad used to say. She might as well lay it all out there.
“Well, for starters you tell me I look good. But only from a ‘you’re not a gimp anymore’ perspective. Then, you kiss me. Kinda. Then there’s the fact that we’ve been out to eat like four times since my parents’ house and you’ve barely kissed me good night in those three weeks. But you keep asking me out. If you want out of this, whatever this is…” she started, her pulse racing.
But she was cut off when Owen’s lips found hers and enveloped her in an all-consuming kiss. His tongue explored her lips, lightly brushing them before going deeper, drawing her tongue out, teasing it with the tip of his. His hands fisted in her hair and his length pressed hard against her belly.
It made her wet; God, why didn’t she have the all clear from her doctor already?
She lost herself in the sweetness of his tongue—part coffee and part just him —wanting this moment to last.
Owen pulled away, leaving Paige breathless and foggy.
“Does that tell you how I feel about you?”
Paige could only nod.
“Good.” Owen smiled and took her hands in his. “Because I’m crazy about you, Paige. I’m just trying to give you time to heal, and if we have too many of those kisses too soon, I won’t be able to do my job as your boyfriend if I hurt you because I can’t stop touching you. When you’re ready, though…” He drew her close to him.
She took all of him in—the bulge that pressed against her, the scent that snuck up on her again, rendering her useless when it came to pushing back against him.
Not that she wanted to. But still, he’d said something that rendered the rest moot.
“Did you just call yourself my boyfriend?” she asked.
The corners of her lips tilted up as she said the word aloud. She liked the way it sounded, what it meant, and for the first time since she got back to Banberry, she didn’t think the words “for now” as she said it. It scared her how comfortable she was with him, with how comfortable she was with the idea of doing more than just sleeping with her hot neighbor. But it wasn’t a fear she could run from.
That surprised her more than anything else.
“I did. How’s that sound to you?” he asked. His voice was husky, his breath hot on her cheek as he slid his mouth to her neck, nibbling at her skin with his lips, gently using his teeth to make her crazy.
God, she wanted him.
“I like it. More than I thought I would.”
She meant that.
He moved his mouth to hers again, plying her lips open with his tongue. She marveled that he tasted the same as he smelled.
She was about to ask him back up to her apartment—her surgery release be damned—when her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She ignored it, kissing Owen back with all the passion she could muster.
The phone buzzed twice more. Twice more she ignored it, making a silent vow to verbally destroy whoever wouldn’t leave a simple voicemail message for her to tend to when she wasn’t wrapped up in the arms of her gorgeous neighbor.
When the phone rang a fourth time, Owen laughed, pulling back from her.
“I think you’d better answer that before whoever it is sends out a search party for you. I don’t think you want them to see what I have in store for you next, Connors.” He growled against her neck again, and she cursed the phone with its tether to the outside world in that particular moment.
She took a step back, knowing the only way she was going to do anything other than Owen was to create a little distance between her and her desire.
She sighed as the phone went off again, and without looking at it, answered a brusque “What?” Her hands sat perched on her hips, her lips pursed.
“Don’t you ‘what’ me, Paige. If anyone is going to start the conversation pissed off, it will be me.”
Shit. Aurelie.
“Hey, honey. How are you? I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch. How was your mom’s service?” She’d sent flowers, but Paige felt like a genuine ass for not checking in on her friend afterwards. Not that she didn’t have an excuse, but still…
“It was fine. Expected. Not like finding out your best friend had surgery on a cancerous tumor , and didn’t think to call me.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“Aurelie—” Paige began, but Aurelie cut her off at the pass.
“No, you don’t get to ply me with excuses and make me pity you so you can get out of feeling horribly guilty for what you’ve put me through. And then you don’t answer the phone? No. Not okay, Paige. I thought I’d get your family telling me you were dead.”
Owen gave Paige a quizzical look, one eyebrow up and a smirk playing on the corner of his lips. He raised his arms as if to ask, “What’s going on?”
She shook her head.
Not now , she mouthed.
He nodded and backed up a step, pretended to work on his fence, but she could see the concern etched in the hard lines on his face.
Page bit her lip and pinched her nose, feeling like a chastised child and her mother at the same time.
She let Aurelie finish her tirade, waited to see if she would be ambushed again.
“Well are you there, or did you actually die on me?”
“Aury, I’m here. Okay? I’m here, and I’m okay.”
The voice on the other end erupted into sobs, long and breathless cries that shook Paige to her core.
“Aury?” Though the crying continued, her friend took slow breaths in between jags.
Paige looked at Owen and mouthed I’m sorry .
“It’s fine,” he whispered, his hand just under her breast, the pad of his thumb tracing her curve. “Can I take you to the movies tomorrow night?”
Paige smiled. Definitely not friends.
Yes , she mouthed. Please.
“I’ll pick you up at six,” he told her.
Her stomach flipped in response. Owen wiped at the sweat on his brow with a very muscular, very defined forearm. He was bar none the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on, even though normally the brooding cowboy wasn’t her thing.
Paige covered the phone microphone with her hand. “Let yourself in,” she told him. “My bell doesn’t work.”
He shook his head, frowning from behind a hidden smile.
“That’s not very safe, missy.” He feigned frustration, but the corners of his mouth twitched. She shrugged as if to say, “What’re you going to do?”
Owen walked back to where he’d been, a blanket laid out with a gallon water jug and personal cooler. He must be about to take lunch. Her mind drifted back to the not-friend zone, recalling what their last picnic had looked like. No food had been consumed, but it was one of the best picnics Paige had ever had. Heat pooled just below her stomach and she gulped back the longing.
When the tears on the other end ebbed, Paige checked in with Aurelie.
“I am going to be all right, Aury.”
“I know you will,” her friend sniffled. “But that doesn’t mean you get to not tell me when something like this happens to you. You’re like my sister, Paige. If anything happened to you, too…” She trailed off, the tears starting again, but lighter this time.
“I couldn’t tell you. You’d just found out…” She didn’t finish her sentence—her friend was very aware how it ended.
“I know. I get it.”
“What’s really going on, Aury? Because even though I know you love me, this is bigger than that.” There was silence on the other line, enough that Paige pulled the phone away from her ear to make sure Aurelie was still on the line. “Hun? You there?”
“I’m here.” Her voice sounded weak, but there.
“Talk to me,” Paige urged. She started walking, slowly and not completely without pain, but walking nonetheless, back to her apartment. The time spent trying to track down Owen was long enough on her feet.
“I don’t know, Paige. I mean this has always been my home. How can I wake up one morning to find it all gone, all changed?”
“Your mother,” Paige offered.
Two words that summed everything up.
“Yes. Why didn’t she get any more time? She won’t see me get married, have babies—” Aurelie trailed off and Paige’s hand reflexively went to her stomach.
The same fears she hadn’t been able to give voice to flooded her now. Except it wasn’t her mother who wouldn’t be there. She might not live to see those dreams unfold for herself. For too long she’d been selfishly flitting around the world, the only thoughts to her future revolving around whether or not she should put down another month’s deposit on an apartment. She never lasted anywhere, was never satisfied, and as a result of that, she was stuck in limbo, dreams for the life she didn’t know she wanted on pause indefinitely.
“I will, though,” Paige said, not caring if it was a lie, or just wishful thinking. “I’ll be there to talk you through the breathing exercises in Lamaze, to tell your husband that you’re too good for him, that he doesn’t deserve you, even if he does. I’ll be there if your brothers start acting up again. I’ll be the one to tell you how much you’ve got in your life when you forget it.”
She would do all those things, too. As long as her health saw fit to keep her on this planet. A deep, aching sense of all she had to lose if she didn’t get the results she was hoping for crept up on her from behind, causing a chill to consume her despite the heat of the early fall day.
“You should come out here, stay with me, nurse me back to health,” Paige found herself saying before she could think about what that would look like. It wasn’t a half bad idea, though, now that she’d said it aloud.
Aurelie could come, be her nurse, her objective opinion on all things medical and otherwise. Paige thought of Owen.
What would her friend have to say about the hot new neighbor who’d stolen her attention, and possibly more? Hell, now that Paige gave the idea more consideration, she needed Aurelie to come out. To see where she was raised, to offer up her less-than-subtle thoughts on everything, to help Paige see things objectively. For instance, was this illness her body’s way of saying she should stay in Banberry with Owen and her family, or was it telling her she only had one life and should stop screwing around and get to living it? Or were those the same?
She needed clarity.
She needed her friend, her sister.
“Aury? You there, hun?” she asked, realizing she hadn’t heard anything from Aurelie since she’d floated the idea.
“Just a sec. Busy on the computer, hold your horses.”
Paige laughed at how “Americanized” Aurelie’s manner of speaking had become. She had American idioms down, and her cadence was all-American—fast and to the point. She’d fit in great here.
Paige rumbled around for her keys before realizing she hadn’t locked her apartment.
“Aury? I’ve got to go in a bit. I’ve got to use my arms to get me up the stairs to my apartment.”
“Okay, okay, almost there.”
“Almost where?”
Paige wondered if she was talking to the same woman, the change from the first half of their conversation was so dramatic. But then again, that was Aurelie, always cresting one side of the emotional pendulum or the other. Rarely did she linger in the vertex—Aurelie was all or nothing.
“There. You are so impatient, my little Paige. You can pick me up at the airport in Hel-eena next Friday. Two ten in the afternoon. Don’t be late.”
The line clicked, leaving Paige alone at the base of the stairs to her apartment. She squealed, pumping her fists in the air, ignoring the dull pain emanating from her side when she did.
Her best friend , the only kindred spirit Paige had ever met, was coming to see her. It was all Paige needed to silence the little voice of doubt that popped up every few days to ask why she wasn’t working harder to figure out what came next.
This was the temporary stay of execution she needed.
Gingerly, Paige walked up the stairs, using the handrails her dad had installed so she could regain some of her independence. The better she got, the more she needed to search for jobs, not binge-watching cooking shows with her mom. Now, though, she had a purpose. Get ready for Aurelie. And to do that, she needed to get better, so…
So she needed rest in the form of a two hour nap. Until… her phone buzzed again.
Good gracious. Entire days went by with no one to talk to except herself, making Paige crazier than Banberry ever could. But today, she couldn’t get the universe to shut up.
Dr. Metcalf’s number flashed on her screen, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
“This is Dr. Connors,” she said. She took every opportunity to remind him that she was a physician, too.
“Paige,” he countered, and she rolled her eyes. He was insufferable. “Dr. Metcalf here. Can you swing by the office when you have a minute?”
Paige’s heart sank. Well, so much for the streak of good news.
He’d never called her in unless he had something crappy to tell her. Her ribs hadn’t healed right with one such call, and she’d needed X-rays to create a treatment plan. Another called her in for another blood draw after the radiation treatment since Dr. Metcalf’s scans didn’t seem to think they worked.
Now, this.
“I can be there in fifteen.”
“Sounds good. I’ll make sure my receptionist pushes my lunch back.” He hung up the phone on her, getting the last word. She scowled at the phone and might’ve thrown it against the wall if her mind didn’t veto that. She needed a ride to Dr. Metcalf’s office, definitely from Brad and not her folks. It killed her to see how her illness affected both her parents. Her mom put on a brave face, but the last time Paige’d fallen asleep at their house, her mom had brushed back her hair, softly sobbing. Paige pretended to be asleep as her mom whispered her fears into Paige’s hair, tears dampening the matted mess.
Her dad tried to be upbeat about the whole thing— You’ll beat it, Paigey , and if anyone’s going to show cancer who’s boss, it’s my daughter —but those platitudes pained her as much as her mom’s silent sobs. Especially since his worry lines grew deeper with each hospital or office visit.
She couldn’t—and wouldn’t—put them through that anymore if she could help it. She’d hear the news herself, process it in the quiet of the drive home her brother was inherently good at giving her, and then share the bare minimum her parents needed to go about their lives. Done.
The phone rang three, four, then five times. C’mon, Brad , she whispered. I need you right now.
When he didn’t pick up, she scrolled down in her list of contacts. The list was thin. Sure, there were colleagues from the various hospitals she’d worked at, the requisite family, but decidedly few friends made the list. Aurelie, of course, but otherwise, just Julia…
And Owen.
It was a big ask from someone she’d just started dating, but at the moment she didn’t have any other options. It was sad, really. She’d lived an exotic life of adventure and leisure in equal measure but had no friends to revel in the memories with.
So she closed her eyes and hit “call,” waiting as one, two, three rings passed.
Shit. Who would she call next if he didn’t answer?
“Well, I should buy a lottery ticket,” Owen’s husky but amused voice joked on the other end. Her heart rate fluctuated wildly, not sure whether to relax now that she potentially had a ride, or amp up as she listened to the voice that made her feel like all her morning cups of coffee never could.
Alive.
“I get to talk to you twice in one day. How’d I get so lucky?” Yep, heart rate speeding up.
“Actually, I need a favor, but it means seeing me twice in the same day, so maybe we can pick up some Powerball tickets on the way.”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“A ride. I still haven’t been cleared to drive, so…” She hoped he wouldn’t ask questions, just drive her to the appointment and bring her back like Brad would.
“You bet. Now?” She cringed, picturing him cleaning up his picnic, shaking off the blanket, spending his lunch in the cab of a truck instead of basking in the pre-Labor Day heat.
Just one more way being with her was unfair to him.
“Please. If it isn’t too much trouble,” she added, wanting to give him an out.
“I’ll be up in about fifteen minutes. Let me close down my work site and I’ll swing by. Say twelve thirty?”
“Thanks so much, Owen, you have no idea how much this means to me.”
“I’m the one who should be thanking you. You got me out of trimming back the berry bushes that are pushing up next to the fields. If they catch on in that soil, I’ll be selling blackberries until I retire or die. Plus, now I get to spend the day with the prettiest girl in Banberry. See you in a sec.”
The line clicked and this time she didn’t mind someone being the first to hang up.
Owen, no matter what else, always had a way of making her feel special and beautiful. The heat from her cheeks spread to her stomach. Is this what made a couple? She’d never teetered this close to the edge, even in the beginning. But could it last? What happened when he woke up one morning and saw a line of drool hanging from her lips? Would he still want her then?
Instead of calling Dr. Metcalf and telling him she’d be more like thirty minutes, she ran her hands through her hair, adding some mousse as an afterthought, just in case.
That same line of thinking had her adding a light touch of mascara and some blush to pinken up her cheeks used to a more tropical glow.
At twelve thirty on the dot, Owen knocked. The only thing stopping her from sprinting down the stairs was the fact that it might be the last thing she was able to do that week if she jarred her ribs that much.
She opened the door to an armful of daisies staring her in the face.
“I saw these growing wild in the brush across the street from our places. Thought you might like to appreciate them as much as I do.”
Did she ever. Especially when Owen appeared from behind the bouquet. It was all Paige could do to not to jump him. Damn, this injury was really getting in the way of her love life.