by Kate Hardy
She reached down to scratch the dog’s ears as he wagged his tail. “Is this Toby? You described him to me, but he’s even cuter than I expected.”
“He’s the best little doggie. He keeps me company and protects me just like the talismans.”
Noting that the dog hadn’t even barked when she’d walked in, let alone come out to see who was there, Rory smiled inwardly. Her mother believing the dog protected her was more important than whether or not it actually did.
The fact that she’d only started worrying about that after Rory’s father had died had been a surprise, since her sweet dad had been an invalid for so long he’d hardly have been able to deal with an intruder. But in her mother’s eyes he’d been a superhero. And she’d been right. The way he’d tried to be there for them even while bravely dealing with his illness had made him one tough, heroic man.
“I’m glad you found such a wonderful dog to be here with you.” She tucked her mom into the chair and kissed her forehead. “Are you hungry? I’m going to find you a little something to eat. And later I want to take a look at your incision. But before that I need to see all your hospital dismissal papers and read the instructions. Where are they?”
“In the kitchen somewhere. Linda brought me home and put them on the table, I think.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here in time to get you from the hospital. They told me you were being released tomorrow, and then when I called from the airport they told me you’d already left. That really makes me mad, by the way. I wanted to be there for you.”
“I know. I was hoping you’d see the hospital gown they had me in—it was a powdery blue, with these funny little cats on it that were too cute. One reminded me of our old Brutus...” Since nothing much ever irritated her mother for long, she gave with a smile and a shrug. “But you’re here now and I’m here now. We’ll have lots of big fun once I’m feeling better.”
Fun. The name of her mother’s game. It was going to be nearly impossible to feel like having fun while she was here, but she’d give it a try for her mom’s sake.
“You’re going to have to take it easy on the fun while you heal. They told me the rupture was an emergency and they had to use a full traditional incision instead of doing it laparoscopically, so it’s going to be a while before the pain is gone.”
The thought of how serious that might have been had Rory reaching for another, longer hug.
“I’m going to see if there’s food in the kitchen. If not, I brought some stuff in my bag to tide us over until I can get groceries from the store tomorrow. Sit tight for a minute.”
The kitchen light was an overly bright fluorescent strip in contrast to the low living room lights, and Rory made another mental note to get more lamps in the other room, so her mother didn’t trip over something.
Two gritty, slippery steps into the kitchen brought her to a halt.
From the look of the coffee cans full of colored sand all over the table, her mother’s newest creative project was sand art. Glass containers were filled or partially filled in landscape scenes, and Rory recognized one of them as being the Alaska Range they could see from the back of their house—those beautiful mountains she’d always stared at as a child, dreaming about climbing them someday and crossing over them to somewhere different and big and amazing.
She picked up the jar with the mountain scene and ran her finger across the glass, looking at the brown and green sand topped with fine grains of white. She’d done that, hadn’t she? Crossed that mountain. Become the kind of doctor few women were.
She’d thought she’d be looking at those mountain ranges forever, together with Jake. She’d thought they’d make a home and a family in Eudemonia, that they would work as doctors here and in Fairbanks and live happily ever after.
Except their “happy” had died, leaving an “ever after” impossible. She’d run hard and fast away from here—because she hadn’t been sure she would survive if she’d stayed. She’d made a new life for herself—going to medical school in LA instead of Anchorage, like she and Jake had planned.
But her life still felt hollow. Full to the brim with work to keep her mind busy and her heart detached from the rest of the world. That detachment had taken a lot of time and effort to achieve. It was exhausting.
She drew in a deep breath and glanced around the kitchen to see that there was as much sand on the floor and the table as there was in the cans. Crunching toward the refrigerator, she peered inside, deciding she’d better get the floor cleaned up as soon as she’d taken some food to the living room and read the discharge papers, so her mom wouldn’t slip on all the tiny grains. The last thing her mother needed was to fall and rip open her stitches.
The refrigerator was bare of anything but milk. There was also a little cheese, so Rory sliced it to serve with some crackers she found in the cupboard. She shook sand off the bottom of the hospital papers Linda had put in the middle of the table and went back to the living room.
“Here’s a snack for you. I’m going to read through this stuff, then get some more food from my bag.”
“This will be plenty. I’m not very hungry.”
“Just eat what you can and we’ll go from there. I understand if you’re not feeling like it, but you do need at least a little so you get your strength back.”
Rory straightened from putting the plate on her mother’s lap, and was about to sit in the only other chair that had a decent light when she heard the front door open and looked up.
Her heart stuttered, then slammed hard into her ribs.
Jacob Hunter.
She didn’t want to look at him for more than a moment, yet she found herself staring, riveted. He looked like he always had—and yet he didn’t. A little older but, impossibly, even better. He was still tall and lean, with angled features that were still startlingly beautiful: dark eyes that could see right through a person, and lips that were almost too full and yet perfect for his face. The black silky hair she’d loved to run her hands through long ago, when it had spilled to his shoulders, had been cut short enough to be respectable for the town doctor, but still it brushed his collar, not fully tamed.
He held a bag in one hand and, yeah, just as she would have expected, despite the chill in the air he was wearing a slightly shabby T-shirt that showed his shoulders and biceps were even more muscular than seven years ago, at her father’s funeral. No shorts, but the jeans he wore fit his physique perfectly, making him look more like an Alaskan cowboy than a medical professional.
Her heart beat its way up into her throat, making it hard to breathe. She’d thought she was prepared to see him—but not this soon. Not tonight. Not when she was barely ready to deal with being back in town at all.
“Hello, Aurora.”
He and her mother were the only two people who called her that. Her mom did because she’d always thought it such a romantic name for a baby born under the Northern Lights. The aurora borealis. And Jacob had often called her that because he’d known it annoyed her, and teasing had always been his way of telling someone he cared about them.
Not that he cared about her anymore. Not after all that had happened between them. Not with all the time that had passed since they’d spoken.
“Hello, Jacob.”
“I didn’t know when you were getting in, so I thought I’d check on Twinkie.”
Twinkie. It also struck Rory that he was the only person who called her mother that other than her. Until that moment she hadn’t thought about the familiarity that came with names and nicknames. None of her other friends had ever called her mom Twinkie—why had he picked that up?
Probably because he’d been around the house and participating in an awful lot of the crazy over the years. Funny how he had the kind of steady, predictable, wonderful family almost anyone would appreciate, and yet he’d enjoyed being at her zany, very unpredictable and unorthodox house just as much as his
own.
“That’s nice of you, but you don’t need to worry about her now that I’m...here.” She’d almost said home, but had stopped herself, because this wasn’t her home anymore. Never could be.
“Might as well take a look while I’m here.” Jake scratched the dog’s head and it looked up at him with the same delighted expression as her mother did. “How are you feeling? Have you taken the pain medicine they gave you?”
“Oh, yes. I’m following all the directions they gave me. But I’m still in a lot of pain, so it’s not working too well.”
“Sorry you’re in pain. It’s not always easy to control the first couple days out of surgery. Let me take a listen to your heart and lungs.”
He reached back to the stethoscope he had looped into the back pocket of his jeans, then pressed his long fingers to her wrist while looking at his watch. Afterward he even pulled a portable blood pressure monitor out of his bag to check that, too.
Meanwhile Rory just stood there, feeling strangely uncomfortable, having no idea what to say or do now that he was here. The awkwardness hanging between them wasn’t surprising, even though she’d foolishly hoped that seeing him might leave them both feeling indifferent. That had clearly been a pipedream, considering their parting years ago hadn’t exactly been full of rainbows and smiling understanding between the two of them.
Her legs felt a little wobbly, and she briefly considered sitting down, but that would have left her on an uneven footing with him—looking up even more than her five feet four inches required her to.
Jacob’s gaze suddenly turned back to Rory, and she swallowed at the mix of emotions in his eyes—the same anger and hurt and confusion that she felt tangling around her own heart...that had seared her to the depths of her soul when she’d left nine years ago.
“Your mom said your Aunt Patty’s coming to take care of her after you’re gone. She still working at the army base in Anchorage?”
“Yeah. She lives with her son Owen, who’s stationed there. She scheduled next week off, so I’ll only be here for a short time.”
Those dark eyes seemed to bore right into her, and the long pause after she’d answered left her fidgeting—until he finally broke the silence with the question she didn’t want asked.
“So, how’s your life?”
“Good. Everything is great.”
God, when had she become such a liar? If there was one person who had to know that wasn’t true, it was Jacob. But there were good things about her life, right? Although her job was about the only thing that came to mind.
“I just passed my board exams, so I’m officially a doctor of pediatric orthopedic medicine. I was supposed to be interviewing today, for a permanent position at the hospital, but I had to reschedule it for next week.”
Again, he didn’t speak, and even as she squirmed under his serious gaze memories of the time they’d been apart got mixed up with all the years they’d been together. It was as if nothing had changed between them.
For a brief moment she had the shocking urge to go up on her tiptoes and give him a kiss hello on that luscious mouth. Which proved that her brain’s muscle memory was stronger than her common sense when it came to him. But of course that wasn’t surprising, was it? They’d known one another since they were kids in elementary school.
Except kissing those lips hadn’t happened until college, so that might not be the best explanation she could have come up with. Besides, all that felt like a lifetime ago.
He didn’t respond, instead handing her a business card, his expression unreadable. “I’ll be going, since you’re here to look after Twinkie. Here’s my number if you need to reach me. She’s supposed to have a follow-up appointment with her surgeon in a few days. I can take over after that.”
That uncomfortable flutter in her chest just wouldn’t go away, and she swallowed at the realization that she’d be seeing him way too much during this visit if she had to do as he suggested.
“Maybe you forgot I’m a doctor too,” she said, trying to somehow infuse some light humor into the words, even as the air felt like a heavy shroud hanging over her. “And a surgeon. Very used to dealing with post-op issues. After she sees her own surgeon I can take care of any problems she might have.”
“Just the same as always.” Annoyance and disapproval were clear in the dark eyes that flicked across her. “You can do everything better than anyone else. You never listen to anyone else.”
“That’s not what I said. I just meant—”
“I know what you meant. But here’s the thing: I have all the equipment to take her vitals and deal with any problems at my office, not to mention pain meds and antibiotic ointment for her incision and replacement bandages. So get over your ultra-independent self and bring her to my office after her appointment so I can take a look.”
“Jake, it’s just not necessary to—”
“Don’t worry,” he interrupted with a mocking smile on his face. “Since you have to be in control of everything, I won’t shut you out of the process.”
“I don’t... I don’t have to be in control of everything!”
She folded her arms across her chest, which was starting to burn a little. She’d made one horribly bad decision—admittedly a life-changing decision, but still... That didn’t make her controlling. It made her foolish. Regretful. Broken.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t bother to answer that, just picked up the bag he’d brought and moved toward the kitchen.
“I have some food. I figured you wouldn’t have had a chance to go to the store. I got it when I was in Fairbanks earlier, since the selection at Green’s Market can be slim pickings sometimes. In case you don’t remember.”
Rory stared after him, trying to figure out how to handle all this as he moved out of sight.
Then her mother spoke. “It’s so sweet of that Jacob to bring us food, isn’t it?” her mother said, with the adoring smile on her face she always had when Jake was around, clearly oblivious to the tension between the two of them. “He always was something special. I remember—”
“I’ll see if he needs help.” Rory didn’t want to be close to Jake in the small kitchen, but she definitely didn’t want to listen to her mother’s glowing diatribe about how perfect and wonderful he was.
But the truth...? He really was nearly perfect.
Yes, he had that impatience thing that sometimes boiled over into irritation. And he’d always left his socks in the middle of the floor, apparently not considering them to be “real” clothes that had to be put in the laundry bag. And somehow, he’d never seen pot lids as counting toward actual dishes that should be washed. But otherwise...
Perfection in human form. He just was.
She was the one who was totally and horribly flawed.
Just before she got to the doorway, a loud curse and then a series of crashing sounds came from the kitchen, and suddenly she remembered.
The sand. Crap!
She sprinted the last few steps, and once she hit the kitchen the toes of her boots slid across the linoleum and nearly jammed into the top of Jake’s head, where he lay flat on his back on the floor. Cans and boxes were strewn everywhere, and a split plastic jug glugged a small river of milk onto the ancient blue linoleum.
“Oh, my God, are you all right?”
She knelt down next to him, her hands on his shoulders, his chest, traveling down his arms to see if they felt intact.
His deep brown eyes, surrounded by thick lashes, looked up and met hers, and for a long, arrested moment time felt suspended. Her heart thumped hard in her chest and it took all her willpower not to lean over and kiss him, just as she’d wanted to do earlier. Just as she’d done for so many years.
Her heart squeezed with familiar pain and longing as she forced herself to lean back instead of forward. “What hurts?”
; “You’re the orthopedic surgeon. Take a guess.”
Something about the expression in his eyes told her that maybe he wasn’t talking about physical injuries. That maybe his mind was going back in time too, the same way hers was. To the pain they’d shared and yet experienced in totally different ways.
She choked back all those wonderful and awful feelings that insisted on flooding back. “I’m guessing your tailbone is bruised, and maybe an elbow or two, but otherwise you feel okay.”
For a split second his hand lifted toward her, before his fingers curled into his palm and he dropped his arm. He sat up, then shoved to his feet.
“Yeah, a few bruises.”
He glanced down at his clothes and brushed off some of the clinging sand, clearly avoiding looking at her, before he began picking up the groceries that had been flung all over the kitchen.
“Don’t worry about the milk,” she said, hurrying to grab a kitchen towel to mop it up, even though it looked like Toby’s happy licking was going to take care of it for her. “Or anything else. I’ll put it all away. Thanks for bringing it.”
His eyes met hers again, grim now. Probably he could tell she was beyond anxious for him to leave—but wouldn’t he want to get away from her just as much?
“No problem. Also, even though neither of us wants to hang around each other, we need to do what’s best for your mother.” He shoved a few things in the fridge, then set the rest on the counter. “Which means you bringing her in to see me in a few days. Just let me know when.”
Unexpected tears clogged her throat as she watched his long legs take him from the kitchen in fast strides, despite the risk of slipping, and she angrily swallowed them down. It shouldn’t make her want to cry that he didn’t want to spend time with her. Why would he? If she were him she’d keep as far away as possible from the woman who’d wrecked their dreams. And hadn’t figuring out ways to avoid him been at the top of her mind the minute she’d bought her plane ticket?
But the quiet tears slid down her cheeks anyway.