“I don’t care if you are or aren’t . . . whether you do or don’t,” he whispered against her hair. “I’m just holding you, Kate. Until you tell me to let go. I’m just here.”
Her arms wound around him, small palms warm against his back. Her lashes brushed his skin, butterfly soft. “I think . . . I’m tired. That’s all.”
Tired of going it alone, Wes suspected, thinking of that house she leased. So empty. As if it was only a temporary perch and at any moment she’d fly away.
They stood there for a few moments in silence.
“I’m fine now,” Kate said finally, slipping from his arms and taking her soft warmth away. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.” He watched as she sifted her hair through her fingers, squared her shoulders. As if she were brushing away, distancing herself from the baby funerals and the emotion she’d felt. Distancing herself from me, too?
Kate managed to scrounge up a smile and a shrug. “I always react that way to cupcakes. Allergic—I should carry an EpiPen.”
Right. Wes shook his head. Then took a risk. He bent down, kissed her cheek.
“Um . . .” Kate’s eyes were luminous. “What’s that for?”
“A thank-you,” he said, taking her hand. “Safer than a cupcake, I hope. Thank you for what you did for Dylan yesterday.” He squeezed her fingers gently. “And for agreeing to spend the day with me.”
“I’m glad I did. On both counts.” Kate made no effort to slide her hand away. “And . . . thank you, Wes. Despite my embarrassing allergy, you’ve been nothing but kind. And honest. I appreciate that.”
“You do?”
“Of course.” Something in her expression—a surprising, approachable softness—gave him courage.
“Good.” Wes reached out and touched his fingertips to the side of her face. “I’d like to be honest again. Okay?”
- + -
Kate’s stomach betrayed her in a foolish dip. “Okay.”
Wes’s fingers traced her jaw, light and impossibly warm. The blue eyes held hers. “I want to kiss you again,” he said, his voice deep, certain. “But not like a brother this time.”
She wasn’t sure if she indicated aloud that she was okay with the idea or merely thought it. She wasn’t certain she nodded. She meant to. But before Kate could give it another thought, Wes’s hands were cradling her face. His lips touched the corner of hers. A gentle brush warmed by a sigh. Her pulse skittered.
He leaned back a few inches, smiled at her. “You’re amazing, Kate. Smart, tough when you have to be . . . funny, caring.” His thumb stroked her cheek. “Beautiful.”
She couldn’t speak. Wasn’t even sure she was breathing as Wes bent low and covered her mouth with his own.
His lips were warm and tasted of coffee and chocolate, the kiss somehow tender and profoundly dizzying at the same time. That he’d comforted her only moments ago made it all the sweeter. Her practical mind tried its best to wave a red flag, whisper caution, but that time was past. The moment was here. All Kate could do was close her eyes, hold on tight, and hope her legs wouldn’t give way as she returned the unexpected kiss as best she could.
“TRAILER FOOD? You couldn’t do better than that?” Gabe set the brake on his wheelchair. It was clear Wes’s account—an edited version—of yesterday’s outing with Kate was far better than hospital entertainment. “She’s from California. Probably knows ol’ Wolfgang personally.”
“Wolfgang?”
“Wolfgang Puck. Famous LA chef—don’t you watch the Food Network?”
“Not if I can help it. You do?”
Gabe grinned. “Mom. At the funeral home. Unless there’s a visitation or viewing. Then it’s Wolfgang Mozart.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Wes pointed at his friend’s leg, extended straight out from the hip in the wheelchair. “If you don’t pull that robe closed, there’ll be an unfortunate viewing right here.” He laughed at Gabe’s immediate scramble for modesty. “When are they springing you from this place?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Don’t change the subject. You were telling me about this date.”
Wes frowned. “It wasn’t a date. I told you, I was thanking Kate for what she did to help Dylan.”
“Nice try, Tanner. I got shot—I don’t see you offering the Hey Cupcake! tour to my trauma surgeon.” He raised his brows. “So?”
“I . . . don’t know,” Wes admitted. It had been a long time since he’d taken serious interest in any woman. “I get the feeling Kate’s kind of a loner. And that she might not stick around long.” He was surprised by the sudden thought, more so by the immediate discomfort it created. He hoped he was wrong. “The only ‘dates’ I’ve got planned are taking Dylan to the movies and Clementine out for training.”
“How is Clem?”
“Fine. Bored as you are. I thought I should take her down to the Braxtons’, though. Make her walk around that grove and near the trailer. Replace bad memories with good ones.” For some reason Wes thought of Kate, talking about her mother’s death. Her father’s absence. Her loss of faith? Bad memories.
“The trailer still there?” Gabe asked.
“Empty.”
Gabe’s brows drew together, and it occurred to Wes that Clementine wasn’t the only victim in that scenario who needed to replace bad memories with good ones.
Then Gabe’s face lit with a grin. “You should take Kate with you.”
“Where?”
“On your trail ride around Miss Nancy Rae’s property. You said she can ride. So I’m thinking . . .”
“You think too much. I’ll get Clem out there, maybe take Hershey with me. He won’t talk my head off like you do.” Wes tried to make his shrug nonchalant. “I doubt I could get Kate back on a horse. Besides, she works.”
“Right downstairs.” Gabe pointed over his propped leg in the direction of the elevators.
Wes narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you have some cooking show to watch?”
“She’s two floors down.”
The truth was that Wes hadn’t even talked to Kate yet. He’d sent a casual “Good morning” text from the barn while working on a pump motor, leaving a grease smudge on the keypad, then realized it was barely 7 a.m. So much for casual. He managed to avoid his parents’ curious glances but caught his mom’s barely concealed smile when Dylan asked him point-blank over a spoonful of Scottish oats, “Did you remember to tell Kate I think she’s pretty?” His family was as interested as Gabe, but . . .
Wes hadn’t called Kate because he wasn’t sure what to say after last night. It had been only one kiss—a great one—followed by a somewhat-awkward walk back to his truck. They’d managed to fill the ride to Kate’s place with a steady stream of disconnected conversation. Music, football, Pacific beaches vs. Gulf beaches, and crazy discourses on Texas-shaped tortilla chips and the nocturnal behavior of armadillos. Everything but the obvious: We just kissed. Where do things go from here?
She didn’t invite him in; he didn’t ask. She said she didn’t need him to walk her to the door; he didn’t press. And that was it. Except for the part where he lay awake rethinking it all.
“Wes?”
“Huh?”
Gabe was staring up at him. “Downstairs. It says Emergency in red letters. Can’t miss it.”
- + -
“He grabbed that cupcake paper right off the tablecloth.” Kate demonstrated, swiping her hand across the visitors’ table. “And then scurried underneath. I didn’t actually see it. It was dark, and I was . . .” Her face warmed. “What?” she asked, watching Lauren’s mouth sag open. “You’ve never seen a raccoon?”
“I’m still stuck at the part where you said, ‘I went out with Wes Tanner yesterday.’ Adding a masked rodent didn’t faze me at all.”
“No,” Kate said as casually as she could, considering that she’d just noticed what looked like Wes’s truck parked toward the rear of the lot, near the medical offices. “I don’t think raccoons are rodents.”
&nb
sp; “I didn’t think you liked Wes.”
Kate opened her mouth. Closed it.
“Mmm. That’s interesting.” Lauren smiled. “Kate Callison speechless.”
“No. Really, I’m . . .” Kate tugged at her wispy hairline. “I don’t know how to explain it. Wes helped me with my father. I offered help when his brother choked on the brisket. It was more like mutual aid. We helped each other; we were grateful. Liking Wes Tanner—or not—doesn’t fit anywhere.”
“Ah . . .”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Don’t do that to me. The whole peer counselor ‘ah’ thing. Where you sit there and ‘actively listen’ and I offer up deep emotion. It won’t work.” She glanced toward the parking lot again and saw two women in scrubs pushing a man in a wheelchair from the clinic toward the hospital. “I told you I’m not good with relationships. Meaning good relationships don’t happen with me. Far from it. I have this ugly magnetic pull for the bad ones.”
“The contractor in San Antonio?”
“Right.” Kate wished he were the only one. Or even the worst.
“But Wes isn’t like that,” Lauren offered. “I think he’s more the what-you-see-is-what-you-get type.” She was quiet for a moment, then met Kate’s gaze. “How do you see him?”
“Wes?” Kate’s pulse quickened at the memory of the unexpected kiss. “Close to family, protective. Easygoing. Funny sometimes. Sort of solidly rooted, I guess. Religious.” Her stomach sank with lead-heavy truth. “He’s the exact opposite of me.”
“I think you’re selling yourself short.”
“Oh yeah?” Kate nodded toward the parking lot. “Look over there. See the Mercedes pulling in? Barrett Lyon. Now that’s my usual type. I told you: magnetic pull. What do you bet he’ll walk this way?”
“Crum. I was just about to tell you—warn you. I had a call from him last night.”
“Warn me?”
“He asked me about having coffee with you the morning the baby was left in the bathroom.”
“I don’t understand.” Kate glanced toward the lot. The attorney was definitely headed toward them. Right behind the staff with the wheelchair. Its occupant flailed a bandaged arm, seeming agitated. Was that blood on his shirt? Kate turned her attention back to Lauren. “Why would Barrett Lyon care that we met for coffee?”
“We were on the security tape. Which also showed you talking to a young woman at the ER doors. Lyon said the police were asking questions.”
The girl. An image of the teenager’s pale face rose. Frightened, suffering, lost. “They think she’s—”
“Ladies, good morning.” Barrett Lyon moved briskly past the wheelchair, flashed his smile at Kate and Lauren. “I was on my way to find you, Kate. We need to—”
“Help! Oh, please, over here. We need help!” One of the women with the wheelchair waved her arms.
“Lauren, let’s go.” Kate leaped to her feet. “Barrett, run to the ER,” she ordered, “and tell them we need a gurney out here!”
In seconds they were close enough to see that the man in the chair, gray with pallor and sweating, was rapidly losing consciousness—and soaked in an alarming quantity of blood. As was the nurse’s aide trying frantically to keep pressure on his bandaged arm.
“What’s going on?” Kate reached for the man’s uninjured arm, pressed her fingers deep against his clammy wrist. Pulse thready, rapid. Footsteps thudded in the distance—gurney coming. “What happened to him?”
“He was drunk at the counseling office,” the aide gasped, eyes wide and gloved palm flattened against the saturated bandage. “He yelled at the billing clerk, then slammed his fist against the office window. It broke. One of the doctors said to bandage it and wheel him to the ER.” A thin stream of bright-red blood spurted into the air, speckling Kate’s shoulder and the side of her face like a scene in a low-budget horror film. The man groaned, mouth pale and gaping wide. Then his eyes rolled back and his body convulsed.
“Here!” Lauren shouted, signaling the staff with the gurney. “Arm lac—arterial bleed, shocky. Let’s get him flat and run ’im to the trauma room!”
“Quit jabbin’ me, woman!”
“Stay still, sir,” Kate instructed yet again, flinching against the alcohol fumes as much as the man’s glare. Conscious barely three minutes and he was fighting. “I’m trying to get another IV in—you need it. Hold still. Please.” I liked you better passed out.
She signaled to a tech. “Hold this gentleman’s arm for me, would you?”
“Got it.”
Kate slid the eighteen-gauge needle set into the vein, saw the flash of blood, advanced the needle a bit farther, and then slid the plastic catheter in to the hilt. “Okay, second line’s in. Blood’s off to the lab.” She glanced at the monitors. “How are his vitals?”
“BP’s 103 over 70,” the tech reported. “Heart rate 112.” He pressed his palm against the patient’s shoulder. “Don’t try to sit up, sir. We need you to stay still.”
“I need to see my daughter!” the man growled, frowning at the physician assistant applying pressure to the deep avulsion on his right forearm. “Tell her to come in here.” He raised his head off the gurney, pinned Kate with a threatening look. “Get my daughter!”
“Uh . . .” Kate glanced toward the ER physician. The thought struck her that her own father’s drinking patterns didn’t seem so bad right now. There was something to be said for absence. “Are we still planning to send him to the OR?” Please . . .
“Yes. Looks like it’s the ulnar vessel, not brachial, but the wound needs to be explored. Vascular and neuro—and for glass fragments.” The doctor shook his head. “And it’s not like we’d have his cooperation here. We’ll need to see the blood alcohol and tox—”
“Are you deaf?” the patient shouted at Kate. “I believe I told you to get my daughter. Hop to it!”
“Okay.” Kate pasted on a smile. “I’ll see if she’s out in the waiting room, sir.”
“I already told you she is. She’s waiting to drive me home.”
Risky time to mention he wasn’t going home. “What’s her name?”
“Trista,” he grumbled as if Kate should have known. “Mopey face, glasses. Has that baby with her.” He shook his head. “Named it Harley. Not married and has a baby named Harley. The girl can’t do nothin’ right.”
- + -
“There was a messy case, an arterial bleed,” Lauren told Wes as they stood in the hallway outside the ICU. “I bet Kate went to get cleaned up. She has a meeting off campus.” A small frown pinched her brows. “Did you text her?”
“No.” Wes shook his head. Not since that idiot 7 a.m. rooster crow. “It’s not a big deal. I was visiting Gabe, thought I might run into her. That’s all.”
“Ah . . .” Something in her expression said his subtlety was wearing clodhopping boots.
“Not important.” Wes glanced toward the ICU doors. “Have a good shift.”
“Thanks. By the way, how is Gabe?”
“Doing good.” And as curious as you are.
“Great.” Lauren smiled. “Hope you find her.”
Wes made a quick run to the cafeteria and bought an apple, telling himself it was a hunger quest and not a one-man hasty search for Kate Callison. Then he headed for the parking lot, munching the apple along the way. And getting back on track with his workday. There was a rainwater-catchment install at two o’clock and he still had to pick up some hardware fittings. Work. The best distraction.
By the time he reached the side exit to the parking lot, he’d stopped second-guessing everything—the cheesy trailer food, telling Kate about his mother’s drowning, and that out-of-the-blue kiss. It was crazy to read anything into the fact that she hadn’t texted him back. She’d been busy. Lauren said as much.
Wes pushed the door open, stepped outside, and—
“Oh . . . hi.” Kate blinked at him with an expression of mild surprise. She seemed to take in his Got Water? shirt. “Visiting Gabe before work?”
“Right,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t sound like his breath was stuck in his throat. It was. She looked beautiful, wearing a trim-fitting jacket the same seal-brown color as her eyes. Her lips were shiny, rosy almost, like she’d just added some sort of gloss. Businesslike but feminine and touchable too. Definitely not dressed for the ER.
Wes realized he was staring. “Gabe’s terrorizing the surgical floor,” he added quickly. “My guess is they’ll kick him out sooner than later.”
“Good news.” Kate glanced at her watch, then toward the parking lot.
“I’m keeping you.”
“No . . .” Her lips pinched in an expression Wes couldn’t read. “I still have a few minutes.” She shifted her briefcase from one hand to the other.
Discomfort. That’s what Wes saw on her face, in her eyes. Because of last night? He didn’t want to think that.
“Look . . .” Wes took a cautious step closer. “I don’t need to be at the work site until two. I have to pick up some supplies, but I could swing back by here. We could grab coffee, or—”
“Here’s my ride.”
He turned to look where Kate was looking, at the car pulling to the curb. A gold Mercedes roadster convertible. Driven by Barrett Lyon. The attorney sprang from his car like a big cat after a gazelle.
“All set?” Lyon asked, opening the passenger door after a dismissive nod at Wes. The sun glinted off his watch—same color as the car. “Got us squeezed in at Piranha Sushi. I’d rather it was Uchi, but they don’t serve lunch.” He smiled like one of those irritating guys in a dental office ad. “We should go, Kate. They won’t hold that reservation. Even for me.”
“Ready.” Kate’s eyes met Wes’s for a split second. “I’ll . . .”
“See you,” he said as she walked to the car.
Lyon held her briefcase as Kate slid into the luxurious leather seat, then closed the door and gave Wes one last nod.
After they left, Wes stood there for a few moments, wondering if Kate’s obvious distress had been because of what happened between them last night. Or because she was waiting to be taken to lunch by Barrett Lyon and Wes’s presence made it awkward. He eyed the remains of his apple, frowned. Piranha—he knew the place. And he wasn’t one of those men who had to haul his fish into a bass boat; he’d eaten his fair share of seared tuna and spring rolls. It was just that right now . . . Wes’s teeth ground together. Right now, the thought of sushi turned his stomach.
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