by Amy Knupp
Not when his body reacted to seeing her in her nonskimpy, very plain, navy blue swimsuit the way it did.
Plus there was the fact that he was sure she wasn’t having much fun.
She’d eaten only a small amount at lunch and was still nursing her first glass of chardonnay as if her life depended on staying sober. Not that Cale was trying to get her drunk, but if she would just go a little easier on herself, she would fit in better and have a good time.
Cale tried to tune in to the conversation Scott and Derek were having next to him about commercial development on the north end of the island. Scott was the manager of a newly opened horse stable in that area, and Derek was curious about a new bar that had gone in nearby, and whether it would pose any competition for the Shell Shack.
As Cale didn’t have any immediate concerns or knowledge about the subject, his attention drifted. He caught his gaze veering back to Rachel and the smooth, untanned skin of her chest above the modest neckline of her suit. A delicate silver chain with a simple R-shaped charm hung around her neck, catching the sun and sparkling.
She stretched her short, toned legs out in front of her and leaned her head back. He noticed her toenails, unlike the other women’s, were unpainted. Maybe that was to compensate for Noelle’s tendency to go overboard and indulge in serious artistry on her nails—she’d spent loads of money on weekly pedicures and had always come back with multicolored designs. There was something to be said for the natural look, he thought, though Noelle’s desire for foot art had never bothered him.
Shaking his head, he silently swore at himself for his constant comparisons of the sisters. He’d not spent much effort comparing them when Noelle was still alive. Why start now? That line of thought wasn’t relevant to anything. Was it a yet-to-be-identified stage of grieving a twin? He scoffed.
No. It was just stupid and pointless.
He leaned back against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him and noticing Scott and Derek had meandered away from talk about business and development. Again, he tried to get involved in the conversation but found his attention back on Rachel in no time.
She wasn’t talking to anyone, didn’t even seem to be paying attention to the women next to her. As he stared at her, she checked her watch, no doubt more than ready to escape this gathering of his friends.
Cale took a final drink of his beer and got up to help himself to a bottled water. Might as well be sober and ready to drive as soon as they got back to the marina. Then he could end her suffering and take her home. He just hoped she didn’t hate him too much by then.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“THAT WASN’T MUCH FUN for you, was it?” Rachel said as soon as they got into Cale’s Sport Trac.
Confused, he furrowed his brows and looked at her. “What?”
“You were too worried about making sure I was okay to enjoy it yourself.”
“No...” Cale began automatically. Although...maybe? Yeah. She’d pretty much hit it. He shoved the keys in the ignition and started the engine, then exhaled loudly. “I shouldn’t have forced you to go with me, Rachel. I’m sorry.”
“Forced is a little strong, don’t you think?” she asked with a half grin. “If anyone pushed me, it was my mom. And I’m glad she did.”
“I know that was way out of your comfort zone and... What?” He’d just backed out of the parking space but now he braked and whipped his head toward her. “What did you just say?”
“I said I’m glad she did.” Rachel repeated it emphatically. “It was fun.”
“It was...fun.” He’d stopped drinking two long hours ago and had had only two beers before that. And yet he was having trouble making sense of anything Rachel said. “You had fun? Seriously?”
“I’ll admit, I was so nervous when we got there I considered jumping in the bay and disappearing for a couple of minutes. But yeah. It turned out okay. I like your friends, really.”
“If I looked worried, it was because I figured you were miserable.”
“Let me get this straight,” Rachel said, tilting her head. “You didn’t have fun because you were sure that I wasn’t having fun. And yet, I did have fun, so you had no fun for no reason.”
Cale glanced at her as he drove, trying to make sense of both her words and her mood. “If you say so. Look, you can level with me. I can take the truth. I knew going into that that you don’t like big social events, especially when you don’t know anyone. I was thinking it would be good for you to meet some people who weren’t depending on you to save their lives immediately.”
“All true. But like I said, your people were friendly and, once they realized I’m not the same as Noelle and didn’t expect me to be the life of the party, I was able to relax a little.”
He shook his head slowly, not convinced. “You didn’t look like you were having fun.”
“And what would that look like, exactly?”
“You know...laughing. Taking part in the conversations. Loosening up a bit and having a couple of drinks. Not checking your watch every few minutes.”
Rachel leaned back against the headrest, closed her eyes and made a sound that sounded sort of like a hollow laugh. But somehow he didn’t think she was happy with him at the moment. She didn’t explain herself, though.
“What?” he asked yet again.
She looked out her window at who knew what when he stopped at a red light. It took close to a minute for the light to turn green, and yet she still ignored him. He started up again, beginning to think this short, three-mile drive was the longest of his life.
“Whatever you’re thinking, just say it, Rachel.”
She turned her gaze from outside to her lap. Stared at it pensively, as if debating whether to do as he’d suggested.
“That would be Noelle,” she said at long last in a voice he could barely hear over the sound of the engine.
He opened his mouth to question her but paused. Tried to figure out what he wasn’t understanding.
She turned her head in his direction and spoke a little louder, still not looking directly at him. “You described Noelle, Cale. Laughing, being in the middle of the fray, drinking freely...that’s how my sister had a good time.”
A bittersweet smile tugged at his mouth. “Yeah. True.”
“Not me.” Her voice was louder now. More emphatic. “That’s not me. You’re trying to make me into her.”
“I’m not... No way, Rachel. I’m not trying to make you into anything.” His voice rose a touch in volume. “If anyone knows how different you two were, it’s me.”
As he said it, they reached the Culver home. He pulled up alongside the curb and put his SUV into Park.
“You say that, but...” She shook her head sadly. “If you really knew, you’d realize that being in the middle of a group conversation makes me nervous. Listening to it, maybe throwing in a comment or two when I’m so moved, that’s where I’m comfortable.”
“Okay—”
“One-on-one conversations, totally different thing,” she continued. “I had a wonderful talk with Andie. Just the two of us.”
“Great,” he managed to say, sensing that he wasn’t going to win this, nor was he going to slow down her tirade. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“And Scott—”
“Yeah,” Cale said. “The lunch discussion? I caught parts of it. I’m sorry he was being so graphic. Sometimes in the fire department we tend to forget what normal people consider appropriate lunch conversation material.”
“Normal? Hello, I’m an emergency-medicine doctor. Pretty sure I can take a lot more of the gruesome and bizarre than a ‘normal person.’ I loved talking to Scott, actually. One of the highlights of the afternoon.”
“Okay, then...”
“And having a couple of drinks?” she continued. “That doesn’t happen to be fun to me anymore. These days, I can’t afford to lose any brain cells. Don’t enjoy the feeling of losing control. I learned my limits long ago—the hard way.”
“Tha
t’s...smart.” Just like her. Her brains had always awed him and intimidated him a little. Maybe more than a little.
“My single glass of wine had nothing to do with being too bored or miserable or whatever you were thinking. What else?”
“What else?”
“Ah, the watch. I was keeping track of how long until I needed to put sunscreen on. More than sixty minutes and I would burn to a crisp, but I wanted to get some color as well as some vitamin D.”
“Makes perfect sense,” he mumbled, feeling like a chastised kindergartner. He suspected he deserved it.
“I think...” She cut herself off as she narrowed her eyes at him. She clenched her jaw and looked away. Leaned forward as she collected her bag. “We’ve tried this, Cale. This friendship thing. It’s not working. You’re a good person, but I think you’re looking too hard to find my sister in me. I don’t think we should ‘hang out,’ as you put it, anymore.”
She opened the door and lowered her right foot to the running board.
“Thanks for dragging me along today,” she said. With that, she slid down from the high seat, shut the door and walked off without looking back at him.
Cale’s mouth hung open as he watched her go up the stairs at the back of the garage and disappear into the main level of the house.
She didn’t want to see him again?
And the thing that unnerved him the most was the way the bottom seemed to drop out of his gut. It was as if...almost as if she’d broken up with him. But they hadn’t been together. Would never be together.
His disappointment was way out of proportion, verging on ridiculous. As he’d made so readily apparent, he didn’t even know her that well. Not the real Rachel Culver.
Feeling as if his head was spinning, he glanced up at the living-room windows and realized her face was there, peering out at him for a moment before disappearing.
He quickly shoved the Sport Trac into gear and drove away, not wanting her to know she’d left him reeling, sitting there like a dejected hound with his mouth hanging open.
He pointed the truck toward home—his sister’s home, technically—and wondered when he’d become such a pretender. Inexplicably, he recalled the time when he was eight years old and had been called out for having an imaginary friend he’d insisted to his mom was real.
What the hell?
He’d thought he’d been doing so well with his grief, working through it, feeling a little better with every passing month. But he was still camped out at his sister’s house and now... Was Rachel right? Had he been trying to see Noelle in her, as she’d accused?
Cale shook his head. “Hell no.” He said the words out loud and then repeated them, louder still.
He damn well knew the difference between the woman who had been his fun-loving, easygoing fiancée and her serious, uptight sister. He’d been going out of his way to be nice to Rachel, in fact. And this was what he got in return?
He’d known the two women were opposites from the night he’d first met them at a party. Rachel had been cowering outside in the shadows while Noelle was in the middle of a group in the kitchen, egging on one of his buddies in drinking tequila shots. Noisy, laughing, happy. Bubbling over with her joie de vivre. She made the people around her feel good just by being herself.
And today, as Rachel had pointed out, he’d not particularly enjoyed himself, all because he was worried about her having a good time.
Opposites.
Rachel was introverted and scary-smart. So smart, as her overly technical—not to mention gruesome—conversation with Scott Pataki at lunch had emphasized, that sometimes she made people feel as though she could think circles around them.
She wasn’t exactly spontaneous, as her severe hesitation this morning when he’d invited her out had proven, and she wasn’t a wizard in the kitchen. Far from it, judging by her reaction to her mom’s insistence on baking. She was far more concerned about her career. Single-minded in her ambition, as a matter of fact, to the extent that her supervisor had to cut her off from taking too many extra shifts. What room did that leave for relationships?
He whipped into his parking space at the apartment building, turned off the engine and swore crudely.
Where had that last thought come from? Relationships? What did he care what the repercussions of Rachel’s drive and personality were on a relationship?
The last thing he wanted out of life right now—and for the foreseeable future—was a relationship. Of any type, really. A relationship meant you were hooked. Attached. Vulnerable.
Just setting yourself up for the possibility of losing someone.
Yeah, he was so not up for that. With Rachel or anyone else. On a romantic level or otherwise. He had his friends—mainly the guys at the station. Had his mom, dad and sister. Those were the only people he needed to be close to in his life.
If Rachel wanted him to back off, he would do exactly that. No problem whatsoever.
Having come to that conclusion, he got out of the truck and headed inside, pushing away the question of why, exactly, he’d worried so much about trying to make her happy.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A LOT OF THE GUYS on the fire side of the department dreaded the required EMS shifts, but Cale didn’t mind them once a month. They were different, with a different kind of thrill from the usual fire calls. Both guaranteed a dosage of the unexpected, but, maybe because he only did medical once a month, Cale felt as though he had to be on top of his game every second he worked as an EMT. Didn’t matter that it was standard for the two sides to accompany each other on every call. When he was the medical guy, it was suddenly on him—and his partner. Today, like most times, Cale was with Rafe Sandoval, a captain, department veteran and one of the very best paramedics.
Since Cale didn’t do medical calls every day, he still found himself going over possible scenarios, reviewing relevant procedures in his head on the way to every alarm. Now was no exception. His adrenaline had kicked in the second the alarm had sounded throughout the station.
The night was extra dark because of cloud cover. The streets were damp from a recent rain. Moisture could be seen rising from the pavement in the beam of the ambulance headlights in certain spots as Cale and Rafe emerged from the station garage and took off. They raced, sirens screaming, toward the address on the printout for an older, one-star motel that was as landlocked as something could be on the island.
“Twenty-three-year-old female,” Rafe recited as Cale drove. “Acute asthma attack. Lost consciousness. They said they’ve got her outside in the parking lot. Shouldn’t be hard to spot.”
A shock of coldness shot through Cale’s veins at the mention of asthma. He’d only been on one asthma call since Noelle’s death. That one had been a thirteen-year-old boy and had had a happy ending. He said a silent plea that this one would, as well. It was up to him and Rafe, and the first thing that had to happen was that they had to get there, in spite of the heavy summer-night tourist traffic and the weather.
Getting off the main road to the side street the motel was on took about forty-five seconds longer than Cale would have liked, but short of careening down the sidewalk, there was nothing he could do about it but lay on the horn and cuss futilely into the cab.
“There,” Rafe said, pointing at a group of people gathered in a circle to the side of the lot. An older man approached, gesturing frantically at them from the outskirts of the group.
Cale pulled up and he and Rafe hopped out. Rafe took the airway kit and the heart monitor and ran to the crowd while Cale grabbed the medical bag. He heard a woman’s plaintive, desperate cry for them to hurry and then the fire engine drove into the lot behind them with its noisy diesel engine. The guys in the engine would bring the spine board and other necessary equipment to the patient.
When Cale joined his partner, Rafe had already done an initial assessment. “Nonbreather,” he said. “Set up the O2 and get an IV line started.”
“Back up, everyone,” Cale said sternly.
It didn’t take long for sweat to coat Cale’s body beneath his uniform as he and Rafe continued to work on the woman, with less and less optimism.
“We need to get her to the hospital ASAP,” Rafe said, his voice grave when none of their procedures were making a difference in the woman’s condition. “Joe!”
Rafe tersely updated the fire captain, who’d been standing right behind him, on the situation, and Joe assigned Nate, one of his fire crew on scene, to drive the ambulance since Rafe and Cale would have their hands full in the back.
Rafe continued to work on the patient and they got her on the spine board. As soon as the three of them were in the back of the ambulance, they started backing up.
His own pulse hammering, Cale yelled up to Nate to avoid Gulf Boulevard at all costs. If they got caught up in that traffic again, this woman didn’t stand a chance.
They reached the hospital on the mainland without Cale even noticing they’d crossed the bridge over the bay. The hospital personnel had been radioed on the way in and would be waiting for the patient at the door. He focused on none of that, though, only on getting a response, a change, anything positive from the patient. Rafe continued to work on her as they slid the gurney out and rolled her to the entrance. Cale updated the nurses who hurried alongside them, filling them in on what they’d attempted as well as the results—or lack thereof—in the minutes since the radio report.
As soon as the patient was in an exam room, things got even more chaotic—if that were possible. Rafe was the lead on this call, and Cale was only in the way at this point, so he stepped aside, swallowing hard. The mood in the tiny room was panicked and somber at once, and even someone who wasn’t trained in what was happening and hadn’t been involved on the call would grasp that it was going to take a miracle for a happy ending.