Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
She shot up straight as an arrow, slapping out sharply at the hands that reached for her. Patiently, he persisted—and found himself holding on to a hundred pounds of furious woman.
“Get out of here! Don’t you touch me.” The humiliation on top of the hurt was more than she could stand. She kicked, shoved, then scrambled off the far side of the bed. Standing there, she glared at him through puffy eyes even as fresh sobs choked her.
“How dare you come in here? Get the hell out!”
“You left your doctor’s bag.” Because he felt foolish half sprawled over her bed, he straightened up and faced her across it. “I heard you crying. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I didn’t know I could.”
She pulled tissues out of the box on the bedside table and mopped at her face. “What makes you think I’m crying over you?”
“Since I don’t expect you ran into anyone else in the last five minutes who would set you off like this, it’s a reasonable assumption.”
“And you’re so reasonable, aren’t you, Brian?” She yanked out more tissues, littering the floor with them. “I was indulging myself. I’m entitled to that. Now I’d like you to leave me alone.”
“If I hurt you—”
“If you hurt me?” Out of desperation she grabbed the box of tissues and threw it at him. “If you hurt me, you son of a bitch. What am I, rubber, that you can slap at me and it bounces off? You say you’re falling in love with me, then you turn around and calmly tell me that it’s over.”
“I said I thought I was falling in love with you.” It was vital, he thought with a little squirm of panic, to make that distinction. “I stopped it.”
“You—” Rage really did make you see red, she realized. Her vision was lurid with it as she grabbed the closest thing at hand and heaved it.
“Jesus, woman!” Brian jerked as the small crystal vase whizzed by his head like a glittering bullet. “You break open my face, you’re just going to have to stitch it up again.”
“The hell I will.” She grabbed a favorite perfume atomizer from her dresser and let it fly. “You can bleed to death and I won’t lift a finger. To fucking death, you bastard.”
He ducked, dodged, and was just fast enough to tackle her before she cracked him over the head with a silver-backed mirror.
“I can hold you down as long as it takes,” he panted out as he used his weight to press her into the mattress.
“Damned if I’m going to let you take a chunk out of me because I bruised your pride. ”
“My pride?” She stopped struggling and her eyes went from hot to overflowing. “You broke my heart.” She turned her head, closed her eyes, and let the tears slide free. “Now I don’t have any pride to bruise.”
Staggered, he leaned back. She simply turned on her side and curled up again. She didn’t sob now but lay silent with tears wet on her cheeks.
“Leave me alone, Brian.”
“I thought I could. I thought you’d want me to do just that sooner or later. So why not sooner? You won’t stay.” He spoke quietly, trailing a finger through her hair. “Not here, not with me. And if I don’t step back, it’ll kill me when you leave.”
She was too tired even to cry now. She slipped a hand under her cheek for comfort and opened her eyes. “Why won’t I stay?”
“Why would you? You can go anywhere you want. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re smart. A doctor in any of those places is going to make piles of money, go to the country club every week, have a fancy office in some big, shiny building.”
“If I’d wanted those things, I would already have them. If I wanted to be in New York or Chicago or L.A., I’d be there.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because I love it here. I always have. Because I’m practicing the kind of medicine here that I want to practice and living my life the way I want to live it.”
“You come from a different place,” he insisted. “A different lifestyle. Your daddy’s rich—”
“And my ma is good-looking.” She sniffled and didn’t see the quick, involuntary quiver of his mouth.
“What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean.” Her head felt like an overblown balloon ready to burst. Idly, she told herself she’d take something for it.
In just a minute. “I don’t care much for country clubs.
They’re usually stuffy and burdened with rules.
Why would I want that when I can sit on my deck and see the ocean every day of my life?
I can walk in the forest and spot a deer, watch the mists rise off the river. ”
She shifted just a little so she could see his face. “Tell me, Brian, why do you stay here? You could go to any of those places you named, run the kitchen in a fine hotel, or own your own restaurant. Why don’t you?”
“It’s not what I want. I have what I want here.”
“So do I.” She turned her cheek back against the bedspread. “Now go away and leave me alone.”
He got up and stood looking down at her.
He felt big and awkward and out of his depth.
Hooking his thumbs in his front pockets, he paced away, paced back, turned to stare out the window, to stare back at her.
She didn’t move, didn’t speak. He cursed under his breath, hissed out a breath, and started for the door. Turned back.
“I wasn’t truthful with you before. I didn’t stop it, Kirby. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. And it wasn’t just thinking, it was ... being. I’d rather not be, I’ll tell you that straight out. I’d rather not be, because it’s bound to be a mess somewhere along the line. But there it is.”
She brushed a hand over her cheek and sat up. No, he did not have the look of a happy man, she decided. There was resentment in his eyes, stubbornness in his mouth, and annoyance in his stance. “Is this your charming way of telling me you’re in love with me?”
“That’s what I said. It so happens I’m not feeling very charming at the moment.”
“You boot me out of your life, you humiliate me by catching me at a weak moment, you insult me by denying my feelings and my character, then you tell me you love me.” She shook her head, pushed her damp hair back from her face. “Well, this is certainly the romantic moment every woman dreams of.”
“I’m just telling you the way it is, the way I feel.”
She let loose a sigh. If in a corner of her heart joy was blooming, she decided to hold it in check, just for a while. “Since for some reason that I can’t quite remember I seem to be in love with you too, I’m going to make a suggestion.”
“I’m listening.”
“Why don’t we take a walk on the beach, a nice long walk? The air might clear your brain enough for you to find a few drops of charm. Then you can try to tell me again, the way it is, and the way you feel.”
He considered her, discovered his head was already clearing. “I wouldn’t mind a walk,” he said and held out a hand for hers.