by Lexi Blake
He now had two folding chairs and a whiteboard where people could sign up for appointments. More often than not, all that was on his board were snarky notes.
He hated bringing Holly to his office. He avoided it when he could. When he’d needed to be with her twenty-four-seven, he’d taken her on his rural rounds and then back to her place. If she spent too much time here, she would probably wander into his living quarters, and he definitely didn’t want that. The apartment over the clinic was a stark glimpse into his soul. Yeah. ’Cause you’ve fooled her with your charming banter. She’ll be shocked to find out you don’t give a crap about decorating. Because she thought you were fucking Martha Stewart before.
What the hell was he doing? Why was he worried about this? It wasn’t like it mattered. He wasn’t starting a relationship with Holly. He was protecting her. Protection was all he could give her. He’d proven he couldn’t handle a real relationship. He’d put his work in front of his marriage. He’d started out with feelings for Caroline, but he’d cared so little for her in the end that he’d left for months at a time. She’d had to travel halfway around the world to tell him she was leaving, and then he’d gotten her murdered.
He didn’t deserve Holly. He couldn’t give her the life she needed. He was too dark for her. How could he tell her all the things he thought about, dreamed of? He couldn’t.
But then did Alexei really deserve her?
“Knock, knock.” A soft feminine voice floated in from the outer office.
Caleb stopped. He didn’t think he had any appointments. Only Alexei’s extremely thorough checkup and Holly’s intensely awkward one. How was he going to put impersonal hands on her? Even checking her pulse gave him a hard-on.
He certainly hadn’t been expecting Nell Flanders.
“There you are!” Nell didn’t walk. She sort of floated, as though her dainty feet didn’t quite touch the earth she claimed she was so connected to. Nell was a healthy thirty-year-old with shiny brown hair and a penchant for public protests. “I’m glad I caught you before you opened up.”
God, he hoped she wasn’t going to ask to go on rounds with him. Nell had a reputation for attempting to experience what she called life lessons. She’d tried working with almost everyone in Bliss in order to connect with the people around her. Her experiments had ranged from the successful—she was quite good at selling baked goods at The Trading Post—to the utterly disastrous—she’d nearly given Max Harper a heart attack when she had tried to set all of his horses free. Luckily Max was a damn fine horse trainer and on a short leash from his far more patient wife. Otherwise, Nell Flanders might have been in trouble.
Caleb didn’t need trouble today. He had all he could take. He would run these tests for Holly, and then he would leave town for a few days because he wasn’t going to watch her date Alexei. No way. No how.
Except he had to. Callie was having a baby. Fuck. He couldn’t leave. First he had to deliver the baby, and then he had to stay around because newborns required checking. Maybe he could call someone else in? Who was he kidding? There wasn’t anyone else.
“Uhm, am I interrupting something?” Nell stood, staring at him, a basket of green in her hand. Some sort of plant.
“No.”
She looked around the office, her eyes studying the surroundings. “Oh, well, you seemed to be concentrating. I thought you might have been doing some serious meditation.”
More like some serious freaking out. “I don’t meditate. What do you need?”
Yep, his bedside manner was in full swing.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
He stared at her, suspicion tickling at him. No one wanted to talk to him. He’d cultivated a reputation as a taciturn bastard. If it wasn’t about a physical malady, no one attempted to engage him in conversation. He could sit for hours in Trio or Stella’s beside someone and never utter a word until it was time to go. “Hello” and “good-bye” was about what he’d trained people to expect from him. That and “take a deep breath” or “this is going to sting.”
Except Alexei. He’d talked a lot that day. And he’d taught the Farley brothers. He’d felt bad for those kids from the moment he’d heard they were getting bullied, but until Alexei had talked to him about it, he hadn’t done anything. That day by the pond, he’d really talked to Bobby and Will. He’d given them advice his own father had given him. It had been easy because he’d known if he fucked up or said the wrong thing or had a panic attack, Alexei would take care of them.
“Have I lost you again?” Nell asked.
“All right. I’ll hear you out,” he said slowly. This was Holly’s friend. He could listen.
“I want to talk to you about Holly.”
Or not. He turned back to his equipment, dismissing her entirely. How large bore of a needle could he convincingly use on Alexei without breaking his Hippocratic oath?
He could hear her foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the linoleum. “I’m not going to go away because you ignore me.”
“Most people do.” And he liked it that way.
A confident huff came out of her mouth. “Most people haven’t handcuffed themselves to giant trees for days at a time. You know, you learn a lot when you protest. I know how to talk when being screamed at and threatened with bodily harm and various lawsuits. I’ve been called every name in the book. I’ve been shot at and played chicken with a bulldozer. I won. You can ignore me all you like, and I’ll keep talking until you listen to me. That can be now or five days from now. I’ve cleared my calendar.”
Crap. He believed her. He turned back to Nell, who set down the potted plant and smiled. He gave her his best scowl, but she simply brightened her smile. She wasn’t going away no matter how much he tried to intimidate her.
He knew when to retreat. “All right. I’m listening.”
“You know I like you, Caleb.”
He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that. He hadn’t thought about whether Nell liked him or not, but she seemed to require a response. “Thanks.”
Her smile widened. “Oh, thank you. I really do like you. You’re a healer. You have a healer’s aura. It’s beautiful. You’re lucky. Some people get auras that don’t blend well with their natural coloring, but yours is lovely. Unfortunately, you also have a black cloud that follows you around.”
Again, he had no idea what she wanted, but she stood there, her doe eyes wide, forcing Caleb to respond. “Sorry.”
She waved him off. “Oh, you can’t help it. Something happened to you, something traumatic to damage your aura, but it’s fixable. I don’t suppose you have any interest in seeing a shaman? She makes awesome Blizzards, too. I can get you in for half price.”
No way was he going to Crazy Irene unless he needed some steak fingers. “No. I’ll keep my dark cloud.”
She continued on as though that had merely been the opening volley in her attack. “It’s not a literal cloud, of course. Just a dark lining around your naturally sunny aura.”
Now he was sure she was insane. He’d never been sunny. Not one day in his life.
Nell continued, her voice filled with earnest pleading. “But you let that dark cloud affect everything. I can see plainly that you have feelings for Holly.”
Now it was time to lie. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Everyone knows it. You’re not exactly hiding it.”
He thought he had been. “What gave me away?”
She stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language and then replied slowly. “Uhm, you go into the diner three times a day. You turn around and walk out when Holly isn’t working. I happen to know that Stella has taken to giving you Holly’s schedule so you don’t scare her customers by walking into the middle of the diner, staring everyone down, and then walking back out without saying a word. Seriously, Caleb, people think you’re a terrorist or something.”
“I accept that.” As long as no one shot at him, he really didn’t care what they thought. And a shot of
adrenaline never hurt anyone. It was good for the heart to have a shock every now and then.
Nell crossed her arms over her chest, frustration evident in her squared shoulders and down-turned mouth. “You scare the tourists. Strangely though, you don’t scare Holly. She doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that you stare at her like a tiger waiting to pounce. I think what makes her sad is that you haven’t pounced at all, and now Alexei is going to pounce, because let me tell you, that tiger isn’t sitting on his hill waiting for gosh knows what to happen. That tiger knows he’s hungry, and he’s going to eat your pie, Caleb.”
He was having trouble with her line of logic. First he had a cloud following him around, and now he was a starving tiger on a hill and he had an odd diet. “Tigers eat pie?”
“In my version of life, they do. In my perfect world, tigers are vegans, too.”
And in Nell’s perfect world, he would crap rainbows. “Are you asking me to pounce on your best friend?”
Her hands came up, fists pumping in victory. “Yes. I am so glad you understand. I don’t get it, but sometimes people don’t think I communicate well.”
It said something about him that he sort of understood her. “I don’t think pouncing on Holly is a good idea. I don’t think I would be a good boyfriend.”
Nell stepped forward, stopping shy of putting a hand on his shoulder. “I think you’re underestimating yourself. You can do anything you want to. Are you willing to try?”
He wanted to. It was right there on the tip of his tongue to say yes. Maybe he could pretend to be the same man he’d been twenty years before. He could pretend he still believed in things like happiness. “It’s not a good idea.”
She frowned but held her ground. “All right then. You were my front-runner, but since you’re getting out of the game, I have to ask you to step aside. I mean really step aside. No more longing looks. No more charging in when trouble happens. Yes, we all know you’re the one who paid for her roof and her car, and you’re the one who forced the mayor to okay the new stop sign in front of Stella’s because you’re worried she could get hit crossing the street. And the next time there’s a killer in Bliss, let someone else take care of Holly. And there will be a next time. We all know that.”
His entire body tensed at the very idea. He wouldn’t be able to breathe not knowing that she was okay. When she’d been in danger before, he’d needed her right there or he’d have been utterly worthless.
Nell’s finger wagged his way. “You don’t like the idea, do you? Well, I don’t like my best friend crying over you. It’s time to decide if you’re in or you’re out. And if you’re out, you need to leave her alone. What you’ve done isn’t fair.”
“I never even asked her out.” He could hear the sullenness in his voice. He sounded like a fucking five-year-old. Why did that asshole have to come back? Why couldn’t he have stayed in Florida? He was forcing Caleb to make decisions he didn’t want to make. Holly had been crying over him? God, he hated the thought.
“No, but you made her think you liked her,” Nell replied. “And I think she might hold back from Alexei if she hopes there’s a chance for the two of you. Let her go. Let her be happy with Alexei. Unless, of course, you want to join them.”
“Fuck no.” He didn’t share. He wasn’t going to get involved in one of the crazy threesomes this town seemed to thrive on. Even if they did work out and everyone was happy and secure. Nope. Not going there. “Do you think he genuinely cares about her?”
Nell’s eyes softened. “I think he was willing to die for her, and he barely knew her name. He’s been reliable in communicating with her, and that can’t have been easy given what he’s been through. I think she’ll be safe with Alexei.”
Confusion was riding him hard. He didn’t want to think about the long letters Alexei had sent to him. They had been full of confessions and gratitude at first, and then he’d simply started telling Caleb about his life. As if he wanted to know. He’d only read them because he’d had nothing better to do. “Then why the hell would you want me to be with her if you think Alexei is so damn good for her?”
Nell didn’t react at all to his huffiness. She merely smiled, though it struck him as a sad thing. “I thought Holly would be good for you. In some ways, I think you need her more than Alexei does. But you don’t see it, and I can’t make you. You’re going to follow this path. I can see it plainly now.”
He felt his chest tighten. Holly was going to be with Alexei. Holly was going to choose the Russian.
Choose? You never gave her a choice, and now it’s too late to force her into one. She would be miserable and possibly resent the hell out of whoever made her choose. Face it. You fucked up. It’s what you do.
Nell sighed. “No moving you, is there? I suppose the world needs its mountains like it needs the air. Well, since you’ve made your decision, you should know that if you screw up Holly’s new relationship and her happiness, then I will do very terrible things to you.”
It was like Snow White threatening to kill him. “Terrible things?”
She nodded primly. “Yes. I don’t know what those things are yet, but I have an excellent imagination. And I have years of pent-up rage. Oh, I lock it away because I believe anger is useless, but I swear on the god of your choosing and whom I honor because I honor all religions, that I will find a use for all that rage. I will direct it at you, and it won’t be pleasant. You like to be alone, don’t you?”
He was pretty much always alone. Even in a crowd of people. “Yep. So don’t think that turning the town against me will hurt too much.”
Nell’s brown hair shook. “Oh, I would never do that. Bad, bad karma. It does strike me, though, that a man of your persuasion needs a friend. You know, someone who would be around you all the time, talking to you, keeping you company. Yes, someone who talks as little as you do probably wants to listen to someone like me talk a lot. I can talk for hours. I never let up. I can talk about everything. Ask Henry.”
It put a chill through him. She would do it, too. Nell Flanders, twenty-four-seven. “Well played, Nell. I’ll consider it.”
Her chin came up, and she nodded shortly. “See that you do. I’ll make a list of the topics of our conversations so you’ll have a better idea of how terrible this could be. In the meantime, I brought you a plant. Your office needs a softer touch. Even if no one ever sits in this waiting room, it would be better for you if you had something lovely and lively to call your own. I don’t even want to see your apartment, do I?”
His apartment had a leather recliner, a television, and a card table. It had a bed, but only because it came with the building. He’d never slept on it. There was nothing on the walls. No pictures of his family or knickknacks. Nothing at all that celebrated a life. Everything was utilitarian. And a bit messy.
“I’ll find some more plants. You’ll see. The oxygen the plant gives off will make you feel better. You have to water it once a day.” She stopped and stared at him. “I’ll take care of that. And maybe I’ll upgrade the waiting room a bit. You won’t mind. I know you won’t.”
He got the feeling that if he did mind, she would start talking. “Nope. Feel free to decorate to your heart’s content.”
She turned on her Birkenstocks as the door opened again. “Hello, Alexei.”
And, of course, Alexei smiled and reached for her hand. Charm seeped from the asshole’s pores. “Ms. Nell, it is good to see you. You look lovely this morning.”
Nell blushed. “Thank you. That is kind of you to say.”
“I only to speak the truths.” The bastard smiled widely, taking both of Nell’s hands in his. “I am going to be dating Holly. I would love to do the double with you and Henry.”
Nell’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no. Despite his very open mind, Henry isn’t into sharing or swapping or any of that stuff.”
Alexei’s confused face turned toward him. It was blatantly obvious that he had no idea what Nell thought he’d said. He thought briefly about letting the f
ucker hang, but the words came out before he could stop them. “He was talking about a double date, not a foursome. But I find it interesting that your mind goes there.”
He was satisfied by her flushed face and completely silent mouth. Oh, it opened, but nothing came out for a moment. He’d finally found a way to silence Nell Flanders. Maybe this minor war she’d started wasn’t over yet.
Alexei, ever the gentleman, stepped in. “So sorry. Many, many apologies. I am not interested in the swappings of wives, merely in sharing of meal.”
“Of course. Henry and I would love that. Thank you, Alexei.” Nell hurried out.
Unfortunately, Caleb had the feeling she’d be back.
Alexei turned to him, bowing slightly. “Thank you for the translation, my friend. My words are still muddled in brain. I do not always understand English sayings. And they change so quickly. Now that I am back here, I think I will watch more of the MTVs so I can speak more like an American.”
Dear god, he would sound like he was straight off the Jersey shore. “All I know is that if you’re reliant on me as a translator, you’re in serious trouble. I almost let Nell believe you wanted an orgy.”
“No orgies. Just a very happy relationship. One where Holly gets everything she needs. If that comes from me, then good, but I think she is so much womans, she might require more.” He said it with a serious expression on his face.
He wasn’t sure how to take that. Yep. If Alexei needed him to translate, they were all in trouble. He didn’t understand the guy.