Unbroken Vows

by Frances Williams

  Her newly hired partner’s abrasive self was growing on her. She was even starting to like him that way. The David Reids of this world, she decided, weren’t meant to be polite and charming. They were more the doers, the risk-takers. Exactly the kind of man she needed right now.

  She made the sharp turn into the parking area beneath the condominium tower where she lived. The resident key card she slid into the slot lifted the security bar.

  Inside her apartment, David stood backed up against the door, surveying the large living room as if he expected something big and ugly to suddenly leap out at him and he intended to be ready for it. Caution, she decided, should be this fellow’s middle name.

  “Make yourself at home,” she told him, gesturing toward the enormous sectional couch of textured white cotton that curved halfway around the room.

  David’s stilted stroll took him through the foyer into the main room of the apartment. Somehow his dark, vital presence made the all-white decor she’d thought so sophisticated appear flat and sterile.

  “Nice place you’ve got here, Doctor. Elegant.”

  “I don’t own it. No way I could afford it right now. I lucked into a sublet from a colleague who’s spending a year studying infectious diseases in Africa. Everything in here is his, except for some of the books, the plants and those floral throw pillows on the sofa.”

  David didn’t accept her invitation to sit down. Bypassing the couch, he walked toward the floor-to-ceiling wall of glass ten stories above the ground. She kicked off her heels and padded after him, her toes squashing into the thick snowy pile of the carpet.

  Silently he gazed out on the wide arm of the Chesapeake Bay that formed Baltimore harbor. In the gathering dusk the lights of the restaurants and shops of Inner Harbor were beginning to wink on. A huge container ship rode the tide out to the open sea, the wide fan of its wake catching the angled rays of the lowering sun.

  She joined him at the window. “The view is the best thing about this place. I’ve always loved being able to look at water.”

  He didn’t respond. He sure wasn’t one for small talk.

  As he watched the rapid progress of a water taxi making for. a shoreside restaurant, the hard lines of his face settled into more serenity than she’d seen on him so far. A strange melting feeling took over her chest. Not for the first time.

  Now that she’d roped in this great growling intensity of a partner, might that have been such a great idea after all? David Reid provoked feelings in her she definitely was not interested in pursuing.

  She hadn’t been able to make sense of the flood of delight that came over her when she’d stroked her hands over him in her examining room. Nothing similar had ever happened to her before. She’d had to work hard to maintain her professionalism and not slide off into exciting awareness of the lovely feelings that touching him brought with it.

  He rested his hand over one of the black metal bars holding a broad windowpane. Astonishing how difficult it was to keep her hand from connecting with the long, lean fingers lying so temptingly right there in front of her eyes.

  “Thank you again for taking me on, David. I appreciate it even more since I know that coming with me isn’t something you really want to do.”

  “I’ve bowed to the inevitability of you getting your way. And this is as good a time as any to prove to myself that you were wrong yesterday when you called me a quitter.”

  “I never said that, David.”

  “That’s the way I took it. Besides, a request from Roger Elliott is tantamount to an order. I’m liable to have him on my back if I don’t help you out.”

  “I see.” She didn’t really understand David’s relationship to Elliott. But that request, of course, was his main motivation for agreeing to come with her.

  An inexplicable twinge of regret nipped at her heart.

  Staring at him wasn’t polite, but she couldn’t keep her gaze from his face. Her eyes strayed to his mouth and lingered on the firm, sensual lines of his lips. What would it be like to feel those lips on hers? she wondered. Good heavens! That thought was totally out of line. David Reid was practically a stranger.

  A stranger whom she’d invited to share her apartment for the night. The pleasant warmth already lodging at the base of her stomach notched up a degree or two. No doubt about it. She should have given that invitation a lot more thought.

  She cleared her throat. “Now that you’re in on things, I’m much more hopeful about finding Tommy than I used to be.” No harm in laying her hand next to his on the windowpane and lightly connecting with his little finger. She did it simply to lend a little emphasis to her expression of gratitude.

  “If that’s true, I haven’t done you any favor.”

  He seemed completely unaware that he’d turned up his palm and that his fingers were making tiny investigating movements against hers.

  “Yes, you have, David. You do a great job of trying to hide the fact that under that gruff exterior of yours, you’re a good-hearted man, but I’ve uncovered your secret. What’s more, I think that if I could scrape away a layer or two of that surly camouflage you wear, I’d discover that you’re basically nice.”

  He threw her a heavy-duty frown, as if being called nice was no compliment. But he kept her hand trapped in a gentle hold she had no desire to break.

  His gray gaze speared down into her like an intimate touch. A flock of butterflies took flight in her stomach.

  How was it possible to feel so comfortable with a man and at the same time feel so unnerved by him?

  She was suddenly pulsingly aware of her femininity. In her profession, she always tried to push the fact that she was female into the background, especially with men who were uncomfortable dealing with a woman doctor. With David, it was impossible for her to ignore the fact of her womanhood.

  His fingers gave a quick spasm around hers, then abruptly dropped away. That he’d released her should have left her feeling relieved. It only left her noticing the coolness of the room.

  “Let’s get at that chicken you mentioned,” he said.

  “Oh. Right. Chicken.”

  She led the way to the galley kitchen stocked with the finest in cookware, and took the chicken from the freezer.

  He tore the wrapping off, shoved the meat into the microwave and touched the Defrost command. It took no more than three seconds for him to catalog the refrigerator’s meager contents. He settled on a wilted clove of garlic and the single remaining onion. With an accusing glance at her he tossed the plastic bag of prepared salad fixings onto the counter.

  “You don’t need to buy this stuff. You can make a fresh salad from scratch in about five minutes.”

  “Sometimes I don’t have those five minutes.”

  “You have time to fix fresh flowers,” he observed quietly. “Pink roses on the coffee table.” He pointed with the knife. “That little pot of violets on the counter.”

  She hadn’t guessed that he’d even notice such small things. “I like flowers.”

  “I understand. Priorities.”

  Sometime over the past few hours, his eyes had taken on a humor and warmth that gave the hard angles of his face a whole different cast.

  “Think you can handle putting the salad together?” His mouth again crooked in that wry smile that broke out all too seldom. “Sure.” She shrugged. “I’ve lots of experience in tearing open plastic bags.”

  It was a pleasure to watch him work. He moved with an economy of motion. Precise. Controlled. He’d have made a good surgeon, she thought, as he focused on the job of slicing the chicken and vegetables into neat, even pieces. And with the quiet authority of a surgeon confident of an immediate response, he demanded the cooking oil and sauté pan.

  This was a kitchen planned to function around the needs of a single cook. As she eased by him to reach the pan in the bottom cupboard on the other side, her breasts and belly brushed against the solid, heated wall of his back.

  He froze.

  Thank heaven she was
standing behind him so he couldn’t see the flame rushing into her cheeks when she realized that she’d grazed his body on purpose. He mightn’t have liked the delicious contact of their bodies, but there was no denying that she had.

  As if nothing had just happened between them—and come right down to it, nothing had—she pulled out the pan and slid it onto a burner. With brisk efficiency she slapped the plastic bottle of oil into David’s outstretched hand.

  His alchemy at the stove produced a dish with a delicious aroma that made her mouth water. She carried the tray holding their filled plates into the dining area overlooking the living room and placed it on the glass-topped table.

  As he walked around the kitchen’s work island, he bumped his injured thigh against a corner and let out a small gasp of pain.

  She hissed in a breath. The evidence of his hurt made her feel a little sick.

  “Oh, David.” She rushed toward him. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s nothing.” He shrugged off the helping hand she offered. “Let’s have dinner before it gets cold.”

  She filled his wineglass and sat down. “What’s the official prognosis on your leg?” she asked bluntly.

  His frown plainly indicated that he didn’t cotton to much conversation on this subject. “After months of physical therapy, they told me the nerve and tissue damage was so great that I’d never fully regain feeling in that leg and I’d never walk without a cane.”

  Just about what she’d figured after working on him this afternoon. “You seem to be doing pretty well with it.”

  “Hobbling along with a cane is not my idea of doing pretty well.” -

  “You don’t hobble along.”

  “Close to it. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. At first the doctors wanted to take my leg. It was necessary to save my life, they claimed. I refused to let them do it.”

  She wasn’t surprised. The eyes of some of her most badly injured or most seriously ill patients bore looks of frightened helplessness. Not the square-jawed commander’s eyes. In him, she sensed more of a baffled rage.

  “It’s not the pain, is it?” she asked with sudden insight. “It’s not really the pain that drove you to that mountain or, despite what you said, to the bottle.”

  The slit-eyed look he shot her could cut steel. She didn’t flinch.

  “Seems to me I’ve a right to know a little more than what Mr. Elliott told me about the man I’m about to run off to South America with.”

  He pushed his plate away, set his elbows on the table and rested his chin on the hands clasped in front of him.

  “For what it’s worth, you’re right. It was never the pain. I can handle the pain. I’m not complaining that my injury happened. I knew the risks and freely chose the life. But I know damn well that I’m not the man I was. I always wanted to make my life count for something—always wanted to contribute something that made a real difference. I succeeded in doing that. For a while.”

  “You can still do that, David,” she said gently.

  “Spare me the pep talk.”

  She debated with herself about voicing the rest of her thoughts. She hated the idea that he might go on living in isolation and denial when he had so much going for him, if only he’d give himself the chance. He mightn’t like hearing what she had to say, but she decided to risk his ire.

  “You’re to be commended for fighting so hard against your physical impairment. But I hope you realize that no amount of exercise will bring your body back to what it was before the disaster that wrecked your leg. The kind of life you had before that is over.”

  The astonishment on his face gave way to anger.

  “You sure don’t pull your punches, lady.”

  “Most of my patients want to hear the truth, and you don’t strike me as being a man who needs to have punches pulled. I said what I did because the sooner you admit that hard fact, the sooner you can get on with making something good of the rest of your life. As for holding back in what I say, I haven’t noticed much of that from you, either.”

  He looked ready to blow up at her. Instead he shook his head and gave a sharp dry chuckle. He picked up his wineglass and lifted it to her. “Touché. You’ve got guts, Cara Merrill. I like that about you. Here’s to no holding back for either one of us.”

  Not exactly a ringing endorsement of her on his part, but she’d already decided that she liked him. As for not holding back, he didn’t know the half of it. She was doing her best to hold back on the attraction he held for her. How smart would it be to allow her emotions to get tangled up in a new relationship, when she was still battling her way out of the terrible repercussions of the last one?

  “But you’re wrong,” he continued. “I’m very well aware that the days of my being able to do what I want to do are over. However, I’m not the reason we’re here together. Your plan to search for Tommy is. What does your family think about all this?”

  She recognized that he’d firmly shut the door on any more talk of himself.

  “They don’t think any more of it than you do.” Her family’s lack of support for her commitment to Tommy remained a source of deep regret. She couldn’t fault them, though, for being more concerned about her welfare than they were about his.

  “Just a couple of days ago my sister, Kelsey, called and tried again to talk me into giving up on him. She claims I’ve always felt too blasted responsible for the rest of the world. To prove it, she reminded me of the time I spent weeks of summer vacation guarding a bird’s nest on our back porch by shooing the neighborhood cats away.”

  Maybe Kelsey was right. But then, not even she knew the guilty truth about her engagement to Tommy. She’d never confessed that to anyone.

  “A smart woman, your sister. You should listen to her.”

  “I should, huh?” Cara broke into a teasing grin. “I wonder if you’d have said that at the time she ran off with a prison escapee. A convicted murderer.”

  David choked on a mouthful of wine. Cara gave a satisfied smirk. It was fun to be able to shock him. He probably thought himself completely unshockable.

  “Good Lord! What’s with you Merrill women?”

  “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. It turned out that Ben had been wrongly imprisoned. Kelsey helped him prove his innocence. They’re married now. A few months ago they presented me with a darling little nephew.”

  She refilled his wineglass and her own.

  “You have to understand, David. I owe Tommy. He did a lot for me. I’ve always been in awe of his intellectual gifts. He does have those gifts, even though he’s made a complete mess of his personal life. He could read a text through and remember it almost word-for-word. I always had to work my brains out to make good grades. I might never have made it through premed without him. Because of his help I received the scholarship. My family and I never could have managed the tuition entirely on our own. I’m where I am today largely because of Tommy’s help back then.”

  “You are where you are today because of your own hard work.”

  “That, too.”

  She stood up and started to gather the dishes. “You did most of the work on the dinner, David. Go sit in the living room. I’ll clear the table and bring our coffee out there.”

  David picked up his cane and ambled over to take a seat on the sofa. She brought in the coffee tray and poured them each a cup. Settling back against the puffy down cushions, she folded her legs up under her and regarded him levelly.

  “Back in Baker’s office, you didn’t seem too surprised to hear that Tommy had gone to Colombia.”

  “I considered it a possibility, especially with the drug and the Miami connections.”

  “Yet earlier you suggested that I go to Rio.”

  “Just trying to keep you out of trouble.” He looked not the slightest bit contrite for deliberately misdirecting her. “I’m not surprised it didn’t work.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that I would have wasted weeks of my time in Brazil?”

  He shrugged
. “Rio’s a great place. You might have enjoyed yourself there. Or is enjoying yourself against your religion?”

  “I can enjoy myself as well as the next person,” she snapped back. “Don’t you think it was arrogant of you to take that decision on yourself?”

  “Probably. I tend to be protective of women. No doubt that’s considered a personal failing these days. Just one weakness among many in my case. Nevertheless, it’s how I am. You might as well get used to the idea that I’ll try to look after you in Colombia. Not that I’ll be much good at doing that in the shape I’m in.”

  How could a woman stay angry at a man for wanting to protect her? Even though she didn’t believe she needed looking after, she liked the feeling. She couldn’t remember Tommy ever being protective of her. Usually it was she who was solicitous of him, listening to his complaints, taking care of whatever problems she could for him.

  “Tell me about Colombia.”

  David set his cup down on the table. “Most people there are no different from people anywhere. They just want to be left alone to live their lives and bring up their children in peace. But the drug operations, leftist rebels, terrorists and scores of just plain bad guys have made it one of the most dangerous countries in the world, both for its citizens and visitors. The State Department has issued a travel warning for the country. You shouldn’t take that lightly.”

  “I don’t. My brother works at State. How about Bogota itself? We won’t run into any trouble right in the city, will we?”

  “The main business and tourist districts are well patrolled by police and safe enough. But even in the city you’ll have to watch yourself. There are muggers and scam artists everywhere. Come right down to it, Cara, the only really safe place for you will be in your locked hotel room.”

  “If you’re trying to frighten me, David, you’re succeeding.”

  “Good. Maybe that will keep you alert.”

  “What about visas, shots, inoculations?”

  “All we’ll need are our passports and a return ticket. No shots are necessary, except for trips into remote areas. I don’t expect we’ll be going there.” His voice took on a brittle edge. “I strongly hope we won’t be going there.”