by Zoe York
He hauled himself out of bed and grabbed his cane as he closed his eyes and tried to reset his brain. Three, two, one… He blinked his eyes open again and started moving. She was still in the shower, so he went to the kitchen and put on coffee. He’d been reading a bit about vertigo, and some people swore it got better if you cut out caffeine. He wasn’t there yet, but it was on his radar as something to try.
The shower cut off, so he put toast on and walked to the hallway. Tap, step, tap, step.
He leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms, waiting. He pictured her in the bathroom, drying off. They hadn’t taken enough showers together in Spain. He should have washed her hair. Drawn her a bubble bath and scrubbed every last inch of her body.
He groaned and swiped his hand over his face. There was no point torturing himself like that when his body wasn’t reacting. Or at least the useful part wasn’t reacting. His insides were hot and bothered, for sure. The hair dryer turned on, then off again.
He grinned. That was her de-fogging the mirror. She’d done the same thing in Spain.
Now she’d be pulling on her clothes. Panties first.
He glared at his dick. Nothing? Panties. Jenna, naked. Silk tugging up her legs.
It was like his body had forgotten how to redirect blood flow.
And now he was burning up under the collar of his t-shirt, too, which was unhelpful. He needed to think of something else. How to strip a rifle, maybe.
The bathroom door swung open, steam billowing out—because after Turkey, Jenna would probably always like her showers extra hot if she could get it—and Jenna whistled her way into the hallway.
But she wasn’t dressed.
She was wrapped in a towel, and it wasn’t very big.
“Morning,” he choked out, and she jumped.
“Sean!” She stopped in the middle of the hallway, legs wide, eyes wide, hands clutching her towel tight. “You’re up.”
“I put coffee on.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t move.
His pulse thumped hard at the base of his throat. “I was, uh, wondering…”
She waited, her eyebrows raised.
“Are you heading south down the peninsula today? I have rehab. We could go together. If it was convenient for you.”
“Yeah. Yes, I’d love that. I have a couple of errands to run, but the hospital is one of them. I’m getting the runaround on information about admitting privileges. I want to get in front of someone’s face and get the right answer.”
He nodded. “Smart.”
“I’ll just… get dressed.” She stepped towards him. Right. Her room was beside the kitchen. Beside him.
He didn’t move, and then she was right in front of him, wearing nothing but an itty bitty towel, and suddenly he felt faint.
It wasn’t a hard-on, not even close, but there was definitely a blood flow redirect situation going on in his body.
“You should get dressed, too,” she said as she stopped in the doorway to her room. He followed her gaze down his body.
Right. He was just in boxers.
She stood there until they both lifted their eyes. Then she gave him a slow, sweet smile before closing the door behind her.
That’s when he let out the breath he’d been holding.
Fuuuck… yeah.
It wasn’t much, but he would totally take it.
Back in his room, he texted his brother that he didn’t need a ride. Matt immediately called back.
“Hey, what do you mean you don’t need a ride?”
“Jenna’s going to take me.”
Silence was not a great response. “For real?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you didn’t want her to.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before… I don’t know. Just before now. And now it’s fine.”
“Okay. Just checking that you aren’t skipping.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Matt snorted. “Speaking of our father, though, a reminder that Friday night is family dinner night.”
“Shit.”
“Does Jenna know?”
He couldn’t remember if he’d told her or not. “We’ll be there.”
He hung up and scowled at his phone. He didn’t want that hanging over the week. He set a reminder in his phone so he wouldn’t forget to tell her later.
After shoving a change of clothes into his backpack, he pulled on sweats. He could shower after his workout.
In the kitchen, he found Jenna buttering the toast he’d put on and then forgotten about. “Sorry, did I burn it?”
“Nope, it’s perfect.” She took a bite of one piece and handed him the other.
Then she licked a buttery crumb off her finger.
His chest tightened. “Good.”
HIS PHYSIOTHERAPIST PUSHED him hard through a brutal arm workout. “Nothing wrong with your arms, Sean. Do it again. More weight this time. Let’s find your fatigue point.”
Then he did the circuit of brain exercises, and by the end of that, he had a killer headache. He refilled his water bottle and slowly made his way outside, where he downed some extra-strength painkillers and texted Jenna. I’m done.
She replied immediately. Just leaving the grocery store. Five minutes away.
When she pulled up, she had a ready smile for him. He walked around the truck, tap, step, tap, step, and pulled himself up into the passenger seat, his shoulder burning from the effort.
“Ready to go home?” she asked as she steered back toward the main drag.
Home.
That sounded so right it hurt. He exhaled roughly. “Yeah.”
“How was your session today?”
He shrugged. “Hard. How about you? How was your day?”
She made a face. “The hospital is definitely not interested in extending admitting privileges to me as a sole practitioner, so I’ll need to find a position in an existing practice. Which is fine. I’ve had a couple of good meetings with the group in Walkerton. It’s just that’s different from how I’ve previously…”
She kept talking, and he caught most of it, but his headache wasn’t getting any better. He closed his eyes and pressed his hand to his forehead.
“Sean?”
“Headache.” Maybe a migraine. He still wasn’t completely sure he knew the difference until he was in the throes of a migraine and on the wrong side of twelve hours in bed.
She stopped talking. At the next traffic light, she dropped her hand to his knee and squeezed.
When they got home, he muttered an apology and patted her on the shoulder before crawling under his covers.
HE DIDN’T WAKE up until the next morning.
She’d left a note on the coffee maker.
MADE THIS POT AT EIGHT. I’m off to Walkerton today, should be back mid-afternoon. Take it easy. XO Jenna
HE’D ONLY MISSED her by half an hour, and the regret that hit him was solid and intense.
Take it easy.
He’d slept for fourteen hours.
He was so spun over the fact he’d just missed her and the worry that she thought he needed to take it easy after he had just taken it easy, thank you very much, that it took him some time to realize she’d signed it with a kiss and a hug.
He hadn’t given her either in the six weeks she’d been in Pine Harbour.
He rocked back on his heels, and the kitchen spun around him. He gripped his cane tight with his hands, so tight his knuckles started to hurt, and he leaned against the counter.
CHAPTER TWENTY
JENNA RETURNED, as promised, mid-afternoon. He heard the truck pull up then she called out his name as she opened the front door. “Sean?”
He walked through the hall, his cane part of him now, an extra point of balance and stability he’d finally gotten used to, and he strode almost smoothly to where she was pushing through the front door, and he wrapped his arms around her.
“Oh,” she breathed, and it was k
ind of awkward, because she had her bag slung across her body and what felt like a wine bottle in her arms—now pressed between them—but on her next exhale, she relaxed into him.
And that was so, so good.
“Hey,” he said into her hair.
“Hi,” she whispered back, and he had a strong sense of deja vu. Something sliding into place. Something suddenly being crystal clear.
It wasn’t, not this time. But he remembered that it had been, and he tightened his arms around her.
How did he get to such a place that a hug felt foreign?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her hair, and she shook her head.
“Don’t. Not right now. Just hug me.”
He could do that. He wasn’t sure what else he could do, but as his PT kept pointing out, there was nothing wrong with his arms. He was strong enough to give her this.
She looked up at him, but didn’t move any further. She just stood there, being still.
Her eyes held his own gaze, but she wasn’t staring. She was simply being here with him, present and in the moment, like she had been for six long weeks—no matter how hard he tried to push her away.
When the corners of her eyes crinkled up, and a silent laugh bubbled up from inside her, it broke something inside him. A piece of the hard crust around his heart cracked and split away, and with a painful thud, he felt again. So much. He started to laugh with her, and then drew her closer.
“Can you drink?” she asked.
Probably not a lot with his meds, but if she wanted to open a bottle of wine, he wouldn’t make her drink alone. “A glass, sure.”
“Good. Because I’m in the mood but I didn’t want to be a jerk if you couldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t care.”
She wriggled the bottle of wine free from between them. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. I stopped at the wine store on my way home.”
Home. There it was again. He smiled and tapped his chest. “I gathered as much.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He touched her cheek, and she pressed into his touch for the briefest of moments before moving past him, her fingers sliding along his arm.
“I’m going to put this in the fridge to chill for a few. Do you want to sit on the deck?”
He followed her into the kitchen. No, he wanted to hug her again.
He waited while she stashed the wine, then dumped her bag on the table, and pulled out a few pieces of paper. She had a mini filing box on the table where she’d been keeping her work stuff, and she tucked those papers into that. It was when she started rifling through receipts that he knew for sure she was avoiding eye contact—and any conversation about the hug.
“Jenna.”
“Mmm.”
“Jenna.”
“Yes…”
“Look at me.”
“No.” But she smiled, he could see the edge of it, curling in the shadow of her dipped head.
He grinned. “Please?”
She looked up, and her eyes were bright. But then she blinked, and any hint of tears were gone. “I just needed a minute.”
That was fair. He’d needed three months.
He held out his hand. He thought about leading her to his room, or to hers, but he didn’t want to send mixed messages. He wasn’t sure he could perform, and they didn’t need to try to go from zero to sixty here. Zero to ten would be an improvement. Hell, he’d take zero to one. Any movement at all.
Instead, he sat on the couch, in his napping spot. He leaned back against the cushions and tucked his cane away before tugging Jenna into his side.
She look like she wanted to plaster herself to him, and he wanted that too, but she simply sat close. Still too far away, but talking first, cuddling second.
“What’s brought this on?” she finally asked, her words a warm rub against his chest.
“Your note on the coffee maker this morning. The XO. I…hadn’t realized I hadn’t done either of those things.” He swallowed hard. “And it’s not that I don’t want to. But it’s…complicated.”
She tipped her face up, hope radiating off her—and that didn’t freak him out. “You want to?”
He nodded.
She caught his hand and squeezed. “Then it’s okay if it’s complicated. We’ll get there.”
There was we again.
He tugged her closer. We. Yeah, he liked the sound of that.
He cupped her cheek. His heart hammered in his chest as he looked at her lips. Soft, pink, bowed. Sweet, and unkissed for far too long.
Ring.
His chest tightened as the moment was interrupted, and Jenna shifted in his arms.
THAT WAS HER PHONE, in her bag, across the room.
She ignored it.
He was holding her again. He’d been about to kiss her. The world could burn down around them and she wouldn’t care.
The ringing stopped and then started again.
“You should see what that’s about.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and no, that wasn’t the kiss she wanted, damn it.
But Sean was already pulling away, his face flushing with embarrassment. No…
She took a deep breath. Baby steps. “Yeah. I should see who’s calling.”
When she dug out her phone, there were two missed calls, both from the midwifery team in Walkerton. She’d gone to their offices that morning, as she had a couple of times before, to peer review a couple of client cases.
Tapping the number to redial, she took a deep breath and pressed her hand to her belly to calm herself down.
“Jenna, hi! Thanks for calling us back. This is Nadine. Is this a bad time?”
“No, it’s fine. What can I do for you?”
“We’d like to offer you a contract, if you are interested, to cover the rest of the summer.”
She didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes, I’m thrilled to be considered. Thank you so much.”
“Can you come back in tomorrow to shadow Annette in the clinic?”
“I’ll be there first thing.”
Dazed, she hung up the phone and just stared at it. This was great news. But it also meant she was going to be flat out for the next couple of days.
“Good news?” She spun around and found Sean leaning, as he did now, against the doorframe.
She grinned. “The best. I have a job. In Walkerton.”
It was a long drive there, but no longer than getting stuck in Vancouver rush hour.
Sean grinned back at her. “We should celebrate. Do you want to go out for dinner?”
“I…” She exhaled. “You know what I want to do?”
AN HOUR LATER, they pulled into the car dealership where the Fosters had bought all of their trucks. Where just a few weeks earlier, Sean had stood in this same spot and quarrelled with his brother.
“Back to see the truck again?” The same sales guy approached.
Jenna gave Sean a curious look.
“Long story,” he whispered. “For the drive home.”
She smiled when he said home. He knew the feeling.
“Not the truck,” he said. He pointed behind him. “We have one of those already.” He put his hand in the small of Jenna’s back. This was her celebration, and her shopping trip.
“I’m looking for something a bit more fuel efficient,” she added.
“But still good in the winter,” Sean said.
She smiled at that, too.
Yeah, he was thinking ahead. Surprised the shit out of him, too.
Jenna looked at a used SUV, a brand-new sport crossover, and a few others to cover her bases. But the first two cars she looked at were the ones she kept coming back to, and the ones which she took out for a test drive.
“What’s the best you could do on the crossover?” she asked when they were back.
The sales guy named a figure Sean didn’t believe for a second.
Neither did Jenna. “Hmm,” she said. “Well, the top end of my budget is two grand less than that. If you ge
t something in that price range in, give me a call.”
Then she turned and headed for Sean’s truck, not looking back for even a second.
“Smooth,” he said as they headed north again.
“I can drive this for a few weeks,” she said, shrugging.
“I don’t think you will be. I’d bet good money he’ll call you tomorrow with a deal in your price range.”
She gave him a surprised, pleased look. “Yeah?”
“Definitely.”
She beamed. “Oh, you were going to tell me what the deal was with the truck?”
Ah. That. “Dean and I were there earlier. He needed to get a new spare tire. So I walked around a bit and looked at that red pick-up.”
She whistled. “Fancy.”
“I wasn’t seriously interested in it.” He sounded defensive even to his own ears.
She reached across and patted his knee. “If you were, I’d think that was a good sign.”
“Dean didn’t.”
“No?”
“He gave me a lecture on not being wasteful.”
“Huh.” She cleared her throat. “Well, I don’t see how that’s any of his business.”
“He made a crack about us living rent-free in his place.”
Even in the rapidly dimming evening light, he didn’t miss that she rolled her eyes. “Oh, whatever. He practically shoved me in there. And Liana told me he really wanted either you or Matt to move in. So don’t let him get to you. Maybe that was about something else, and you were just a casualty.”
“I may have goaded him into snapping.”
She laughed gently. “For brothers who love each other, you all have a very dysfunctional style of communication.”
“That reminds me. We have a family dinner at my father’s on Friday night.”
She gave him an amused look. “You’re not looking forward to it?”
“Never.”
She held up her hand and tapped her thumb to her middle finger. “Remember this?”
The signal he gave her in Urfa. “Yes.”
“Dinner will be fine. And then we have our out plan.”