by Janice Lynn
“The sorry part,” he clarified, walking into her office. “I had no right to say what I did.” He looked like a contrite little boy, a mischievous one who’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I know nothing about your childhood and shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry, Chelsea.”
What did one say to something like that? He hadn’t had a right to judge her, but she hadn’t expected the apology, or the look of sincerity and concern on his face.
“Perhaps I was overly sensitive.” She’d dealt with similar comments in the past and had maintained a smile, not gotten upset. Jared was the difference.
“Or perhaps I judged your life based on nothing more than knowing Will and who your parents are. Not necessarily enough to make an accurate call.”
“You know how I feel about my brother, and my parents are good people.”
“That doesn’t necessarily make them good parents, though, does it?” His gaze bored into her, refusing to let her look away.
Chelsea had quit fidgeting years ago. Actually, the bulky back braces she’d worn for months on end hadn’t allowed her to fidget. But had she not had years of practice of sitting still she’d no doubt be squirming all over her seat because Jared saw too much.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to answer as doing so might make him ask questions she didn’t want to answer. Because no way did she want to point out her flaws. He already seemed to continuously focus on her most obvious one. Her too-wide mouth.
Self-consciousness swamped her, bringing memories of being the kid who had to watch everyone else play, the kid who sat on the outskirts, the kid who hadn’t had friends until college, because who wanted to play with a freak wearing a brace that looked like something out of a horror movie?
Her parents had had her best interests at heart. She had to believe they had. That’s why they’d put her through one experimental medical procedure after another and so often hidden her away from the world with private tutors.
She glanced at the papers on her desk, the words blurring.
“Look.” Jared ran his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t come in here to put my foot in my mouth again.”
“No problem. Apology accepted,” she said, without glancing at him. Mostly because she didn’t think she could hide the pain in her eyes. Pain that ran deep and flowed freely at the moment, making her question why she’d ever thought she had a chance with a man like Jared. Why she’d ever thought he could look past her scars and see the person inside, the person who deserved love.
These days she rarely let her inner doubts show. At the moment she felt vulnerable, like every scar she had throbbed and was on public display beneath glaring spotlights.
“Why do I feel like I should say something more?” His soft question reached inside and touched the part of her already longing for him.
No matter how hard he tried, Jared couldn’t be completely cold. Did that mean he cared? Perhaps just a little?
She pasted on a smile that quickly turned real when she realized Jared was looking at her without the usual scowl on his face. Not that he returned her smile. He didn’t. But he didn’t glare at her with antipathy either.
Perhaps it was better that he pushed her away because she could never show Jared her back, never risk that pain. So why the goofy smile on her face that something in his gaze was different? Not so cold?
“Go to dinner with me.”
She blinked, not believing he’d asked. Not after how their last meal together had ended. However, she readily believed how quickly his scowl returned.
“I’m sorry,” he backtracked, clearly regretting his spur-of-the-moment invitation almost instantaneously. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Frustration at his immediate withdrawal filled her.
“Have I done something to make you not like me, Jared?”
He didn’t answer, seemed to be trying to figure out how to answer.
“Because if the way you treat me has to do with what happened ten years ago, because I kissed you, don’t you think it’s time to forgive me? I was only seventeen and didn’t have a clue on how to tell a man I wanted him. So I went with what felt right, and I kissed you. I didn’t have all the facts and what I did was wrong. I admit that.” Knowing she was going for broke and likely only going to embarrass herself, Chelsea met his wary gaze. “I’m not an inexperienced teenager any more. I’m a grown woman who knows what she wants. What I want is for this hot-cold treatment to end because your attitude confuses me and seems childish, considering how much time has passed.”
The panicked look he sometimes got came into his eyes. “I didn’t come in here to get into this.”
“Why did you come, Jared? Was it really to say you were sorry?”
“Yes.”
“Or did you want to see me? For some other reason perhaps?”
She expected him to get mad, to angrily leave her office much as she’d done earlier. Instead, he stood in front of her desk, looking confused, torn, thoughtful, like he really wasn’t sure.
“What other reason?” he asked.
Eventually, she sighed, gave him a soft smile. “That you’re as curious about me as I am about you. That you never forgot our kiss, and that’s why you act the way you do around me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
“All I did was ask you to dinner, Chelsea, then realized we shouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“We work together. Our going to dinner is a bad idea.”
She didn’t believe him. At least, she didn’t believe that was the only reason he behaved the way he did.
“OK,” she acknowledged. “Romance between coworkers can be complicated, so let’s forget the past, forget the attraction or whatever it is between us, and let’s just be friends. Can’t we be two people who work together and find a way to coexist without all this tension? It’s time for you to forgive me for my youthful mistakes. I’ve said I’m sorry for what I did.”
She wasn’t. Not really. Sure, she wouldn’t have kissed him had she’d known he had a girlfriend, but she hadn’t known. The way Jared had looked at her that week, well, his eyes hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend either.
But he had had a girlfriend. One he’d asked to marry him not long thereafter. Only Laura had been killed. Was that why Jared protected his heart so thoroughly? Because he’d lost the only woman he’d ever loved and couldn’t bear to give his heart to another?
“Friends?” He looked duly suspicious. “You want to go to dinner with me as my friend?”
Did she? Yes. It’s all they could ever have anyway.
“Friends have dinner. I have to eat. You have to eat. We need the air cleared between us because I’m tired of walking on eggshells around you.” She shrugged. “Why not?”
“I’m not particularly hungry.” Before he got the words completely out his stomach growled. Loudly. The noise had the impact of a pin popping a balloon, releasing the strain between them. Chelsea bit back a laugh, Jared’s shoulders relaxed.
“So…” A smirk twisted his lips. “I worked through lunch and maybe a drop-in at my favorite sushi bar wouldn’t be so bad.”
Jared scrunched wet sand between his toes, wondering if he was a fool to be walking on the beach with Chelsea as the sun set.
Although he’d refused to completely let his guard down, he’d had a great time at dinner. There had been a couple of occasions when she’d had him laughing so hard his eyes had watered. He hadn’t expected her to be so funny, for him to enjoy her company so much when he knew he could never have her as more than a friend.
The desire for more hadn’t gone away. Unfortunately. But after seeing how nice things could be as friends, he realized she was right.
His avoidance routine wasn’t working anyway and the tension between them was problematic. Besides, avoidance was only feasible up to a certain point when they worked together and would be for the next twenty-plus years.
Twenty years. He glance
d over at where she walked next to him. She held her shoes and the Gulf waters lapped at her toes with each wave that crashed on the shore.
He’d followed her back to her place and somehow they’d ended up going for a walk on the beach. He wasn’t sure how exactly it had come about, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Friends shared walks on the beach so no harm done. He’d just make sure they returned to the house prior to the sun sinking below the horizon to avoid any pretense of anything romantic.
One could easily think the view along the coast near Will’s was romantic, though. Jared had always admired Will’s beach house on a semi-private part of the coast. Prior to Chelsea’s arrival, he’d spent quite a few hours there during various cookouts and beach parties. But that had been last year. This summer Will hadn’t done much entertaining. Hadn’t done any now that Jared thought about it.
Chelsea’s question about her brother hit him.
“Not that I’m agreeing with your assumptions about his reasons, but Will didn’t entertain this summer, like he has in previous years.”
Glancing at him, Chelsea asked, “How so?”
“He usually has several weekend cookouts and a party or two. He didn’t this year.”
Chelsea nodded, turning back toward the sea. “He’s made a few comments that make me think he was seeing someone this summer. I think it was Leslie, and they were keeping it quiet.”
“Will knows better than to become involved with someone from the office. Leslie, too, for that matter.”
“Which might explain why they’d keep it quiet.”
She had a point.
“Regardless, I don’t think they’re an item now. I just hope I’m not the cause of why they’re not.” He could hear the real concern in her voice, that she truly thought her arrival might have driven a wedge between Will and Leslie.
“If your theory is right, and I’m not saying it is, Will probably just ended the relationship before things became sticky.”
“Perhaps,” she admitted. The sigh in her voice caused him to glance at her again. She’d paused and was staring at the multicolor-streaked sky. Jared winced. How had the sun dipped so low without him noticing?
He glanced behind them. They’d walked farther than he’d thought. Will’s house was too far down the beach to be reached before daylight failed them.
Which meant he and Chelsea would be sharing the sunset.
Friends could share a sunset, and it not be considered romantic.
Even if they’d shared one in the past that had ended in a kiss that had forever changed his life.
He swallowed the lump clogging his throat.
He glanced at Chelsea. Her face held a dreamy expression that made him want to take her hand in his, made him want to lean over and kiss her lips now, tonight, to see if she tasted as sweet as he remembered.
He shook his head, clearing his unwanted thoughts. “Let’s go back to the house. We’ve both got to be in the office early tomorrow morning.”
She looked at him in confusion, then with resignation. “OK.”
Without another word to him or another glance toward the sinking sun, she turned and headed for the house at a brisk pace.
Jared watched her. He hadn’t meant they had to run to the house, but perhaps she’d realized the danger of them being on the beach alone with the sun going down and that’s why she walked like the devil nipped at her toes.
Actually, the surf did. Right up to her ankles and kept coming, darkening the edges of her rolled-up pants. In her haste she didn’t notice an unexpectedly powerful surge. He saw what was going to happen as it unfolded before him. He jogged through the water to catch her, and caught her arm just as the water careened around them, drenching them both from the waist down. Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten a good footing before trying to rescue her and lost his balance. They both went down.
“Jared.” Her eyes were huge when she sputtered at him from where they sat with the water pulling away from them.
At some point during the fall his hands had grasped her waist, pulled her to him to cushion her. He hadn’t consciously done so, but his mind worked overtime as her wet body pressed against his. He didn’t risk looking down because the sun hadn’t gone low enough for him not to be able to see her wet shirt stuck to her chest. Already he was aware of the effects of the cold water on her body. Acutely aware.
Instinctively, he lowered his head, intent on kissing her, licking the salty water from her skin. He realized his error at the same moment Chelsea gave a little shake of her head.
What was he doing?
He let go of her, and jumped to his feet.
“If you wanted to go for a swim,” she teased, obviously trying to lighten the moment, “I’d have let you borrow a pair of Will’s trunks.”
Appreciating her efforts to ease the strain of the moment, he laughed. “So much for my attempt to rescue you from getting soaked.”
She glanced down at her plastered-to-her-body clothes. “That was a rescue attempt? I thought you were having American football fantasies and had mistaken me for a wide receiver.”
Water dripping from his soaked clothes, Jared held out his hand. “Actually, football fantasies sound better than admitting to my clumsy rescue.”
She placed her hand in his and allowed him to pull her to her feet. “Did you play football, Jared?”
“I played every sport. I actually went to college on a baseball scholarship. Had I not torn my rotator cuff in my sophomore year, who knows where I would have ended up?”
Shock shone on her face. “Medicine isn’t your first love?”
“Medicine is my life.” As he said the words out loud he realized just how true they were. After Laura, he’d shed every aspect of his life with the exception of medicine and a few close friends like Will.
“Is sports how you got this?” She ran her finger over the scar above his left eyebrow. Her finger heated his skin, searing into his flesh.
“Basketball fight my freshman year of high school,” he admitted.
“Fight?”
“Don’t ask,” he warned, grinning. “Just suffice it to say that we won on the court, and off.”
When Chelsea’s hand slid back into his, he didn’t pull away, although somewhere in the deep recesses of his brain a voice warned that friends did not hold hands on twilit beaches.
Still, being friends with Chelsea felt…nice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHELSEA floated through the next week. Their shared sushi and walk on the beach gave her hope that she and Jared really could put the past behind them and be friends. They’d had a nice meal and an enjoyable time. The conversation had been great. They’d laughed and joked. When on the beach he’d gone to kiss her, she’d stopped him because she didn’t want to ruin their tentative friendship. Jared would have beat a hasty retreat had they kissed. Then where would their friendship be? Kaput, that’s where and, despite how she longed for his kisses, she wouldn’t risk him going back to avoiding her. The tension between them was her only source of contention at work, and she’d do whatever was necessary to resolve the problem.
“Why do you look so perky?” Leslie asked as she passed Chelsea in the office hallway. “A certain doctor coming around to your way of thinking?”
“We’re just friends.”
Leslie nodded. “If Jared had looked at me once the way he looks at you, I’d have jumped ship a long time ago.”
Chelsea paused and stared at her pale friend. “You have feelings for Jared?”
Had she been wrong about Leslie and Will? Had Leslie had a thing for Jared? Was that what had been wrong with Leslie lately? Because although her friend hadn’t missed any work, Leslie hadn’t been herself. She’d become quiet, reserved, and had refused to go to lunch with Chelsea several days in a row.
“Not anymore and never like you obviously do,” Leslie quickly assured her. “He’s a gorgeous man, and I’m not blind. That’s all.”
“So you’re not…?” Chelsea couldn’t fin
ish putting her thoughts into words. Leslie was so pretty and smart. She probably didn’t have physical and emotional scars to turn off a man’s interest. Actually, she’d thought Leslie pretty darn near perfect—for her brother. For Jared was another matter entirely.
“No, I’m not.” Leslie shook her head. “I found him an attractive man when he first started at the clinic, but there weren’t any sparks. I…” Her voice trailed off, and she nervously glanced around the hallway. Betty stood at the nurses’ work station, but otherwise they were alone in the hallway between patient exam rooms.
“You what?”
Leslie shrugged. “We were destined to just be friends. Although I’m not buying friendship’s what destiny has planned for the two of you.”
“I wouldn’t count on anything more than that,” Chelsea mused, watching her coworker closely. The truth was plain on her face and Chelsea had a pretty good idea she knew exactly who had stolen Leslie’s heart, and if her brother returned the nurse practitioner’s sentiments, she couldn’t be happier.
At least one of them could be happy in love.
Jared rapped on the exam room door then entered.
“Hello, Connie.” He smiled at his favorite patient. “You look well.”
Surprisingly, she really did.
“Are you flirting with me, Dr Jared?” She winked at him, giving a glimpse of her former feistiness, and his spirits lifted. Connie looked more like herself than she had at the end of their last visit.
“Always, Connie. Always.”
The older woman smiled, her pale blue eyes lighting up with her inner strength.
She looked rested, calm, at peace. Not at all like a woman preparing to start chemotherapy the following Monday.
“I took a little trip out West. The travel was good for me. Cleared my head.”
She’d gone on a trip? That’s why she’d delayed starting her chemotherapy?
“Where out West?”
“The Grand Canyon. Rose and the boys went with me.” Her face glowed with excitement. “Paul and I talked about going for years, but never did. I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.”