by Amy Knupp
She’d missed the past two publicity committee meetings as well as one of the large-group asthma-benefit-planning sessions using work, recovering from work and plain old forgetfulness as her excuses. It was tricky in the first place because of her mom’s involvement—it curtailed any stretching of the truth Rachel might have been tempted to do.
And now, when she wanted—no, needed—to continue to avoid Cale, she hadn’t been able to think of a way out. It’d been over a week since she’d seen him, and she still wasn’t ready.
It didn’t help that her mom had decided this week’s meeting was a special beach picnic in celebration of the overall goal they’d hit in ticket sales a few days ago. Jackie was treating everyone to subs, chips, salad and cookies, and it was all being delivered directly to the beach at the site of the future benefit concert, on the Silver Sands Hotel property.
Rachel sat in her car in the hotel’s parking lot for a few extra minutes gathering her nerve. The building blocked the view from here, so she had no way of knowing whether Cale had arrived yet. Having learned from experience, she’d insisted on driving separately from her mom this time and was undoubtedly doing what her mother called dragging her feet.
The days since she’d spoken to Cale—since the morning when she’d told him the horrible truth about her fight with Noelle—she’d done nothing but work and sleep. Or try to sleep, rather. She’d taken as many extra shifts as she could get, but even then, she’d been on alert in the E.R., expecting to run into Cale bringing a patient in. If he had, she’d missed it. Which was for the best.
Against her will, she’d replayed the embarrassing, gut-wrenching scenes—both seducing him and then leveling with him the next day—in her mind over and over like a movie that was stuck. Every time, the nausea still overwhelmed her as the humiliation and guilt bore down on her. And now it was time to face him again. If she didn’t act right this minute and get it over with, she was either going to wretch right there in the parking lot or do something insane and inadvisable like drive her car right off the island and keep going.
Without a glance in the mirror—she knew damn well she looked awful with her sleep-deprived, haunted eyes and her pale skin—she opened the door, grabbed her bag and climbed out. Retrieving her beach chair from the trunk, she set off toward the sand.
She spotted the gathering as soon as she cleared the corner of the hotel. Heard her mom’s laugh and saw Cale’s light brown, shaggy hair right away. Her eyes zeroed in on him and nothing else, as if she had special radar. She forced her attention away from him, wanting to avoid eye contact at all costs. She slowed her pace and strategized as she took in the scene and the smaller groups that had formed. Cale was sitting on the far side near his sister and Eloise Painter, one of her mom’s friends. Mrs. Lopez, an older woman who volunteered at the hospital, was on the fringes of the group on the near side, focused on her sandwich, looking as though she needed someone to hang out with as badly as Rachel did.
Avoiding another glance at Cale for fear of catching his attention, Rachel made a beeline for the friendly but shy older woman and set her chair up next to her, placing it sideways to him so she could keep tabs on him out of the corner of her eye without making direct eye contact.
* * *
CALE HAD SPOTTED Rachel as she’d walked across the sand toward the group. Not surprisingly, she was ignoring him. He blew off the disappointment when she kept to the opposite side of the group from him, reminding himself he’d fully expected her to keep her distance.
She was dealing with a crap-load of stuff, he knew. He himself was still kind of reeling from what they’d let happen. Rachel needed time and space as she’d said, and, though he missed her and had no intention of ignoring her altogether, he’d give her both until she gave him some kind of sign.
Without being obvious, he went for another roast beef sandwich at the makeshift buffet table, then sat on the other side of his sister for a better vantage point. He assessed Rachel’s appearance from afar as she acted as if she and Mrs. Lopez went way back.
She hadn’t been sleeping—he could tell it from here. Though she’d done her best putting herself together, dressing in denim shorts and a simple sleeveless shirt, her eyes looked hollowed out even from this distance. His mind flashed to waking up beside her last week, as a protective urge rippled through him. Uncomfortable with the direction of his thoughts, he turned to Trina Jankovich and Heather Alamillo, who’d both been close friends of Noelle, and struck up a conversation about nothing important.
The three were joking around when Cale’s senses went on alert and he registered some kind of commotion up the beach a ways. A woman was screaming, but he couldn’t immediately make out whether it was in fun or distress.
“Excuse me,” he said to the two as he stood and walked in the direction of the ruckus as nonchalantly as possible, still unsure if there was cause for concern, but the back of his neck was prickling.
He’d closed half the distance between him and the distraught woman when he ascertained she was yelling for help. She’d gone into the waves up to her waist, then turned back and hollered some more. He realized she was speaking Spanish with an English word thrown in here and there, making it tough to understand her. “Mis bebés! Ayúdame!”
Without waiting to hear more, Cale kicked his beach shoes aside and took off in a run toward her. By the time he reached her, she was pointing, wading out farther and turning terrified eyes on him. She was crying hysterically as she tried to communicate with him.
“Mis nietas! Ayúdame por favor!”
He’d picked up enough Spanish living in southern Texas that he recognized the words for granddaughters and help. Before she could say more, he spied two dark heads way out where the waves seemed to form. He ran several steps as the water deepened then dived under toward them.
* * *
RACHEL HAD KEPT ONE eye on Cale since she’d sat down, and when he walked away from the group and eventually broke into a run, she dropped any pretense of not paying attention to him.
“I’ll be back,” she said to Mrs. Lopez over her shoulder as she took off in his direction, first walking and then, when he dived into the deeper water, she started running. A couple of other people were rushing to the distressed woman, as well, but Rachel kept her eyes on Cale. When she reached the water, another guy was heading out toward him, and a young woman, college age or so, stood next to the overwrought one, holding her arm and speaking to her in rapid Spanish.
“I’m a doctor,” Rachel said. “What’s going on?”
“Her thirteen-year-old granddaughter swam out too far and had some kind of problem. The girl was trying to get back to shore when the grandmother here spotted her,” the bilingual girl explained, referring to the Spanish-speaking woman. “She sent her other granddaughter out to help because she herself can’t swim.”
Rachel saw the two dark heads near Cale then. “And the second one got into trouble, too?”
“Exactly. The first one grabbed on to the second one and they both went under. It looks like that guy out there has both of them.” She spoke again in Spanish to the woman, who was covering most of her face with her hands, peeking around them as if she were scared to death to see what condition they were in.
The second rescuer reached Cale and took one of the girls, who appeared to be conscious. Rachel’s adrenaline had long ago started pumping, and she zeroed in on the limp girl Cale was pulling back to shore. It seemed like an eternity before both men reached them.
“I think she’s lost consciousness,” Cale said as the bilingual woman and Rachel splashed forward to meet him and help get the girl to shore.
“I’ve got her,” he said, breathing heavily.
Rachel was kneeling in front of the victim, assessing her condition practically before Cale had set her down. “She’s not breathing. Weak pulse. Check the other girl,” she told him as she tilted the girl’s head back and began mouth-to-mouth.
She barely noticed the gathering crowd as she kep
t working, gently pleading with the unhearing girl to respond.
“Ambulance is on the way.”
Rachel realized it was her mother who joined her on the sand as she bent forward for another round of rescue breathing. She was now more aware of the crowd, and she thought she heard Cale tell the grandmother the other girl was going to be okay.
“Come on,” Rachel begged her victim.
As if hearing her, the girl sputtered and threw up a bunch of water, gagging and sputtering. Rachel gently turned her to her side. “Yes, that’s it. Get it all out.”
“Give her room, everyone,” Rachel’s mom said to the onlookers.
The girl was ashen and fear was evident in her eyes, but her breaths came easier, more evenly.
“It’s okay,” Rachel told her. “You’re going to be okay.” She hoped. Chances were a heck of a lot better now. “Try to relax.” It appeared the girl understood English because she gave a half nod.
“Evie!” The girl’s grandmother, who’d been hugging her other granddaughter, fell onto her knees on the sand and grasped Evie as Rachel did her best to keep her well to the side.
“Evie, you’re doing great,” Rachel said. “We’re going to get you to the hospital so they can make sure there’s no water in your lungs. Just keep breathing, sweetie. Just like that.”
The grandmother gave Rachel a desperate, questioning look and Rachel nodded. “She’s okay right now. Out of immediate danger. She needs to go to the hospital.”
“Hospital?” the woman repeated in a heavy accent, renewed fear in her eyes.
Rachel looked to the bilingual woman to explain, and then the grandmother nodded.
The older Dr. Culver directed the gathered crowd out of the way to allow the arriving paramedics to get to the patient with the stretcher.
As Rachel updated them on the girl’s condition, Cale came over with Evie’s sister, who seemed okay on the outside, in his arms. “Hey, Paige, Rafe. Lili here needs to be transported, too. Can you guys get both girls and their grandmother in the ambulance?”
“Cale?” The female paramedic looked confused to see him there for a moment. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Just the two of them are patients?”
Cale explained what had happened to Lili as they prepared Evie to be carried to the waiting ambulance. “I can follow behind,” he said.
“No need for that,” the paramedic apparently named Rafe said. “If you can bring her to the ambulance, we can take them from there. Go back to whatever you were doing.”
Jackie again took crowd control into her hands and encouraged everyone to disperse. The paramedics carried Evie toward the lot where they had parked. Cale followed behind with Lili in his arms. Rachel hooked her arm supportively with the grandmother’s as they trailed the others. Rachel had taken Spanish for several years, but the woman rambled on and on so quickly, recounting once again what had happened, as if she were still processing it herself, that it was difficult to pick words out. She hoped her reassuring pats on the woman’s arm were helping to calm her down.
Minutes later, the ambulance set off from the parking lot, leaving Rachel staring after it in the relative quiet and calmness.
Cale leaned down and spoke softly into her ear. “You’d make a damn good paramedic, you know that?”
Rachel smiled and felt some of the tension leave her body at the unexpected remark.
“I’m not sure I could handle the amount of training necessary for the job,” she joked.
Cale chuckled and tugged her backward, and she allowed herself to sag into him, relishing the uncommon moment of comfort after an emergency. He wrapped his arms loosely around her middle.
“I’m glad they’re both okay,” he said.
“Thanks to you.”
“And you.” They stood there coming down off their adrenaline rushes for several minutes as evening turned dusky and the light gradually faded. “Ready to go back?”
“I never wanted to come in the first place,” Rachel confessed.
“Don’t you hate it when a medical emergency forces you to speak to the one person you’re trying to avoid?”
Rachel couldn’t prevent a half grin. Then she scoffed good-naturedly, shaking her head. “Pretty much. You were doing a good job of avoiding me, too.”
“There’s a big difference between avoiding and giving someone space.”
“We still wouldn’t be talking if none of that had happened,” she said, waving toward the part of the beach where the girls had nearly drowned. If she had her way. She straightened and stepped away from him.
He grabbed her forearm, pulled her around and looked into her eyes. “Rachel, I’ve missed you. I want to go back to being friends.”
She cared about him so much that it hurt to stand there with him, knowing she couldn’t have him the way she wanted him. “It sounds good in theory, Cale, but...”
“But what?”
Rachel stared out at the distant waves. From here, they seemed quieter, less vicious than when she’d been standing in them watching two girls fight for their lives. “I don’t know.”
So many thoughts spun through her mind, dizzying her, making it hard to grasp any one thing.
She loved him. She was in love with him. Being friends was so damn hard, especially after what they’d done.
The very best thing for her to do would be to walk away from him forever, to tell him she couldn’t handle just being friends. To remind him why she could never, ever allow herself to be more, even if he changed his mind and wanted some kind of romantic involvement. But she couldn’t make the words come out. Any of them.
“Okay,” Cale said, “how about this. The benefit is a week and a half away. Say you’ll go to that with me and I won’t bother you before then. Afterward, it’s your call. You say what happens between us. I want you in my life, Rachel, but if you can’t handle being friends then, I’ll honor that.”
She stared at him, his kind eyes and perfect lips making her ache with an inner torment she’d never expected. Even when Noelle had planned to marry him, though Rachel had kept her distance, there’d been a comfort knowing he’d always be around, be a part of her family. The lines had been so much clearer then, and the possibilities of anything besides a siblinglike relationship eliminated. That, she realized in this moment, had been simpler.
She became aware that she was nodding to the arrangement he offered. A week and a half. Ten days she had to come to terms with the options: friendship or nothing. “I’ll go to the benefit with you. We should be there together. For Noelle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“YOU LOOK LIKE HELL,” Rachel’s mom said the next day when Rachel came into the kitchen to grab some dinner before heading to her night shift.
“Yellow must not be my color,” Rachel said drily as she yanked at her scrub top. She rummaged through the fridge and emerged with a bag of soft tortillas and some smoked-turkey lunch meat.
“Pasta will be done in twenty minutes,” Jackie said as she buttered slices of French bread and sprinkled garlic over them.
Rachel didn’t respond, knowing her mom would be insulted by her plans to grab a wrap and call it good.
“Didn’t sleep well?” her mom continued as she worked.
“Didn’t sleep well.”
“I would’ve thought you’d sleep like a baby after the unexpected adrenaline rush—and crash—on the beach last night.”
“One would’ve thought.” Instead of sleeping soundly, though, she’d been tormented by her waking thoughts as well as her dreams. All about Cale, naturally.
She wasn’t sure what, exactly, he wanted from her. After she’d made an ass of herself on two different occasions, he still came back for more. More something. Friendship, he said. Rachel wasn’t the kind of woman that men—or anyone, really—looked for in a friend. She wasn’t good at friendship. She’d always spent more time with books than people. So...what did he expect of her?
“You and Cale sure seemed close last night after the ambulan
ce left,” Jackie said, causing Rachel to jolt with guilt at her line of thought.
She racked her brain for how her mother could have seen them during the short time Cale had had his arms around her. They’d been alone. The rest of the benefit-planning group had returned to the picnic site. The layout of the area would have made it tough to see them unless someone had been looking for them specifically.
“Spying on me?” Rachel tried to keep her tone light, but with the lack of rest, she knew she’d probably failed.
“Is there something to spy?” Jackie’s tone was light, too. Almost teasing. As if she suspected Rachel of shacking up with him on the sly. As if she knew.
A knot tightened in Rachel’s gut.
“Someone nearly died, Mom. We were coming down from the stress. Talking.”
Her mom popped the end of the bread loaf into her mouth and chewed. Then she said, “If I didn’t know better, I might think you were overly defensive.”
There it was. There was a distinct accusation in her voice, and that sent Rachel’s blood pounding.
She set down her knife so hard it clattered on the counter and splattered mayonnaise all over. “Cale and I are friends. If you have something to say, an accusation to make, then put it out there. Quit hiding behind little jabs.”
Her mom narrowed her eyes and tilted her head at Rachel, looking more confused and concerned than angry at Rachel’s outburst.
“We’ve never minced words in the past. Just say whatever it is you need to say,” Rachel continued as she manhandled her wrap, rolling it up so roughly that it started to break into pieces. She was too wound up to care, not to mention no longer hungry.
Her mom set her own butter knife down gently, and put her hand on her hip. “I was kidding around about Cale. I’m glad he was there for you last night, because I don’t care what kind of doctor a person is, a life-or-death emergency when you’re not even on duty takes a toll.” She opened the oven, pulled out the pasta to check it and pushed it back in.
“However,” she said heavily, turning back to Rachel, “I do have a few things to say. And since you asked—”