The Sweetheart Secret

by Shirley Jump

  Seventeen

  For fourteen years, Colt Harper had loved his job, loved arriving at the office, and loved interacting with his patients. He’d enjoyed helping people get healthy, and the puzzle solving of health care. There’d been the inevitable heartbreaking endings, but for the most part, Colt prided himself on doing a good job, and being an involved, caring physician.

  Until Daisy Barton arrived in town and upset his perfect world. Now he spent his days glancing at the clock, counting down the hours until his last appointment, and hurrying home to see what might be cooking in the oven. Even Grandpa Earl had started joking and laughing, especially with Daisy, which made Colt’s homecomings far less stressful, and, for days, free of broken dishes.

  So when Harold Twohig came in at eleven that Monday morning, Colt was already itching to be done for the day. Mondays were his early days, with the second half of the day spent at the local hospital, checking on anyone who had been hospitalized over the weekend, and doing follow-ups on any others receiving long-term care. As far as Colt knew, the weekend had been uneventful, which meant he had a good chance of getting home before the sun set.

  “Howdy, Doc.” Harold Twohig sat on the paper-covered exam table, patient and still, while Colt checked his vitals and ran through the standard questions about sleeping, eating, and overall health. Beside them, Suzie took notes, and filled in the chart. “How am I doing?”

  “You’re doing great, Harold. Looks like the blood pressure medicine is doing its job. I think we can reduce your dose. Great job.”

  “It’s the dog.” Harold grinned. “I adopted myself a dog a few months back, and I tell you, there’s nothing like a wagging tail to get me up off my lazy butt and out for a walk. That and the love of a good woman.”

  “I hope having a dog works with my grandpa, too,” Colt said. If Major Pain got Grandpa Earl to live healthier, then Colt would welcome the giant furball with open arms. At this point, Colt was willing to hire Bigfoot to be a walking companion if it motivated his grandpa. “He adopted a dog a few days ago, but I wouldn’t say it’s changed his mind much about taking his meds.”

  Harold chuckled. “Earl can be a pain in the ass, and I’m saying that as one of his oldest friends. But he’ll come around.”

  The exam done, Suzie excused herself and left the room. Colt dropped his attention to the chart, comparing Harold’s last year’s physical to this one. His patient was definitely making good strides in the right direction. “I hope you’re right. He hasn’t been the same in a long time.”

  “I went through the same thing myself, after my wife died. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, get close to anyone, and I didn’t give a crap about whether I ate or walked or took my damned vitamins.” He shrugged. “Took me some time to realize that taking care of myself didn’t take away from what I felt about losing my wife. The grief and guilt of not being there enough for her had gotten to me, made me into a damned zombie. But then I realized that taking care of myself, in a weird way, made all that easier to bear.”

  Colt perched on the edge of the counter and rested his foot on the stool beside him. “You think it was the guilt that kept you from doing the right things?”

  “I know it was guilt.” Harold’s face sobered and he took his time putting his words together. “My wife was a good woman, Doc. One of the best. She took care of dogs and people, as if saving the whole world was her mission. She never said a mean word to anyone, and put up with my bad habits like she was Mother Teresa. But when she died . . . hell”—he shook his head—“I felt like I hadn’t done enough, taken care of her enough. My Lenore, bless her heart, would have said I did plenty, but I knew I could have done more. I guess I didn’t feel I deserved to be healthy and strong after that.”

  Was that what it was? Grandpa Earl didn’t feel like he deserved to be the one who lived? Colt had wrestled with those same demons himself for years. The guilt over not being here, over leaving Henry alone, and the overpowering guilt about not being able to undo what had been done. It had spurred his entry into medicine, as if he could atone with a thousand patients for what he had missed with his brother.

  “What changed your mind, Harold?” Colt asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” Harold slid his arms into the sleeves of his shirt and began buttoning the panels shut. “For me, it was finding what value I had to offer. To know that I mattered, even without my saintly wife by my side.” He slid off the table, and put a hand on Colt’s shoulder. “Let Earl know why you need him. And what it would do to you if you lost him.”

  Colt thought about Harold’s words all the way home. He sat in the driveway for a while, wondering if maybe he was too late to build a bridge with his grandpa. They barely had civilized conversations now. Unless Daisy was around. She seemed to bring out the best in the two of them. Somehow, without Daisy as an intermediary, Colt was going to have to find a way to get from throwing coffee cups to calm chats.

  He stared at the house for a long time. Grandpa Earl came to the window and looked out, a tall frame silhouetted against the glass, thin, solitary. The glass might as well have been a cement wall, Colt thought.

  A hundred times, Colt reached for the door handle, to go inside, to finally confront those demons standing between them. A hundred times, his hand brushed against the metal handle, then slipped away.

  He thought of all those fishing trips, those lazy, serene afternoons floating in the skiff. The hours he had spent helping Grandpa at the garage, the two of them lying underneath a car, staring up at the gray intestines of a Chevy or a Ford. He missed that. A hell of a lot.

  No, not just missed it. Needed it. And if Colt needed his grandpa, there was a chance maybe Grandpa Earl needed his grandson, too.

  Colt got out of the car, took two steps up the walkway. He saw Grandpa turn away, and leave an empty space behind the window. The words Colt needed to say refused to push past the lump in his throat, so instead of going inside, he chickened out.

  Damn. What kind of doctor couldn’t take good advice?

  One who wasn’t so sure he had the strength to deal with the consequences of such a conversation. He was doing the same thing as Harold, as his grandpa. Putting off his own healing because he hadn’t dealt with the guilt of what had scarred him.

  Dealing with it meant talking about Henry’s death. Something Colt had never really done, with anyone. Last night, he’d come so close . . . so very close to telling Daisy what had happened to his little brother, then he’d stopped himself because he knew the truth would forever dim the way Daisy looked at him.

  Frustration and guilt built in Colt’s chest, clawed up his throat. He kicked off his shoes, but it didn’t help. He loosened his tie; it didn’t ease the feeling. He broke into a run, as if he could ever put enough miles between himself and the past. The sand was soft, yielding beneath his feet, requiring more effort. He pushed forward, until the beach curved and the residential area ended, and the two-story Hideaway Inn peeked over the treetops.

  He slowed his pace, then switched to a walk when he saw Daisy lying on a blanket, her legs out straight, arms bent, face upturned to the sun. Another woman sat beside her, talking, while Major Pain napped in the sun on the corner of the blanket.

  Something in Colt’s heart clenched. He envied the easy way Daisy sat in the sun, as if there was nothing to worry about, nothing on her shoulders. He envied that someone else, even a friend, was making her smile and laugh. He even envied the damned dog, so close to Daisy.

  The other woman, a lighter brunette than Daisy, but with similar features, said something, then got to her feet and headed up the sand a moment later. After she had left, Daisy noticed him, and sat up, a smile winging its way across her face. Daisy got to her feet and headed down the sand toward him, with Major Pain bringing up the rear.

  Colt’s heart skipped a beat as she approached. Everything about Daisy seemed
so free and easy, the bare feet in the sand, the dress skimming her ankles, her hair loose along her shoulders. She made him want to skip out on work for the rest of the week and just spend the days dashing in and out of the surf.

  God, he was turning into a walking, talking romance novel.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” She leaned in, and her brows wrinkled. “And why are you so sweaty?”

  “I left work early to grab lunch before I have to go on rounds. And I decided to try to fit in a run.” He shrugged.

  “In your khakis and button-down shirt?” She stepped forward, flicked at the loosened tie. “Didn’t even have time to take off the tie?”

  “I, uh, was a little stressed today.”

  “So you got to it as fast as possible?” She winked, and heat burned deep in his gut. She danced her fingers down the tie, a tease lighting her face. A memory quickened in his mind, of them making love, half-dressed, half-undressed, in too much of a rush to do anything more than have each other, to ease that bone-deep need.

  “Seems you’re in a rush for a lot of things lately,” she said. “For a man who thinks everything through and draws all those little lines and charts, that’s a big one-eighty. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were becoming more like the Colt I remembered.”

  “It was . . . an aberration.”

  “You? An aberration? You are far from that, Colt.” She laughed, then fell into place beside him and started walking down the beach. The dog tagged along, darting in and out of the surf, nipping at the incoming waves. “Although . . . your house is definitely an aberration, which makes it all that much more interesting. Why is your house so different from you?”

  “My house? How’s that?”

  “I would have expected you to be living in one of those ultra-modern, all-white condos or town houses or something. Not a cozy bungalow on the beach filled with eclectic furniture and a view of the water.” She stopped walking and turned toward him, raising her chin to meet his. “So why is a khakis and tie, organizational-freak doctor living on the beach, with the sand and the wind and the water?”

  He shrugged. “I missed the beach.”

  “Missed it? You’ve lived in Rescue Bay all your life.”

  “I missed this because I rarely had it, even living so close to it.” He waved a hand toward the blue-green expanse before them. “When I was a kid, I didn’t go to the beach that much. I can count on one hand the number of times my parents took me there. I always had homework to do, or chores to complete, or something else on the long list of things they wanted me to do. I took that summer job at the paddleboard shop because it gave me an excuse to spend time on the water. Then I met you and”—his gaze softened, his eyes locked with hers, and a heartbeat passed between them—“and that summer, I made a lot of really good memories on this beach.”

  A smile curved up her face. “Really good . . . as in the day we lost our virginity together?”

  That wasn’t just Colt’s best memory of the beach, but the best memory he had, hands down. A moonlit night, a blanket, and a bottle of wine purloined from the Hideaway Inn’s dining room. They’d laid the blanket in a protected cove beside a low dune on the beach, and as the moon kissed the sand and them, he had gone from a nervous high school boy to a man with Daisy Barton. Not in the slow, easy manner they wrote about in novels, but in a fiery rush that left them both spent and sweaty. He’d made love many times since then, and to other women besides Daisy, but few moments even came close to comparing in perfection to that night. “Okay, yeah, that was an incredible night.”

  “Not bad for a first time, huh?” She leaned into him, teasing him with her mouth, her voice.

  “Not bad, period.” His lips brushed against hers when he spoke, and heat roared through his veins. All he could think about, all he could see, was her lithe body beneath his, kissed by moonlight, so eager, so willing, and so happy. He reached up now and captured her jaw with his hand, ran a thumb over her bottom lip. She inhaled, and her lips parted, her gaze intent on his. The steady drumbeat of his pulse urged him closer, nearer, and before he could think twice, he was kissing her, a hard, fast, ravenous kiss, with his fingers tangling in her hair and Daisy surging against him.

  The dog barked, and Colt pulled back, struggling to find his footing, his common sense again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “To kiss me? Yet it keeps happening, and I keep kissing you back.” She kicked at a shell on the sand. “Some psychologist might say we have unresolved feelings for each other.”

  “Unresolved.” He snorted. “I think that’s the second best word to describe us.”

  “Right after complicated.”

  He nodded. “Unresolved and complicated.”

  “Goes together, sort of like chocolate wafers and cream filling.” She grinned.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, it does.” He cleared his throat and then started walking again, with Daisy by his side. “And for the record, I wasn’t just talking about memories from that one night on the beach. I meant all those walks along the water that we took, those late nights when we watched the sun set and stayed here until it rose again. That’s why I moved here, to have a little of that again.”

  Damn, he was sounding like a sentimental fool. Must have been the conversation with Harold today. Or the heat. Or something.

  She cocked her head and studied him. “Are you saying you live on the beach because it reminds you of . . . me?”

  That was Daisy, direct and to the point. There was no dancing around the subject. She came right out and nailed the issue like a dart champion hitting the bull’s-eye.

  “No, of course not. There were other considerations. Like the price of the house, the size. The location.” He said the words too fast, and he saw the disappointment shimmer in her eyes.

  He wanted to take it back, to tell her he was lying, that he was afraid if he told her the truth—that she was right, he lived here because so many of his happy memories centered around this beach and those idyllic summer days with Daisy—then she would see something between them that couldn’t be. Because tangled with those memories of Daisy was the reality that when he thought of her and their time together, he also remembered the most painful days of his life.

  “We’re not good together, Daisy. You know that. I know that. Just because I’m guilty of living here, and once in a while indulging in a little reminiscing, doesn’t mean that this”—he waved a hand between them—“can work. If we keep on pretending it might, then someone’s going to get hurt.”

  The light in her eyes dimmed even more, and he knew, just by the words he had said, that he had hurt her. Maybe it was better this way. End it quickly, before things got out of hand. Well, any more out of hand than they already were, with that hell-fire kiss in her motel room, the one just now, and the thousand other times he’d come within inches of touching her, kissing her, taking her to his bedroom.

  “Bullshit,” she said. The hurt washed away, replaced by anger. The fiery temper that came attached to Daisy roared to life. She stalked forward and poked a finger at his chest. “Do you know what your problem is, Colt? You’re a coward. You told me years ago that you wanted to run away, to get away from this town and from all the expectations on your shoulders. So we did that, and then what did you do? You ran right back here and right back to everything you wanted to leave. And yet, you still won’t admit that you’re terrified as hell of getting close to someone. Of committing to something more lasting than a mortgage.”

  “That was different. I was different then.”

  “And then you run into me fourteen years later, we have one hell of an amazing night, and wham, you’re out the door again as fast as your feet can carry you. I keep being stupid enough to believe that the old Colt is in there somewhere, because you’re living in a house on a beach, and talking about that one crazy summer we had. Then just as quickly, you make sure to remin
d me that you’re a tie and khakis guy. And not getting involved with the likes of me.” She flicked at his tie like it was a roach on his shirt.

  “And what is wrong with being a tie and khakis guy? What is wrong with settling down, being responsible, sticking to one place for longer than five minutes?”

  “Nothing. If you’re doing it for the right reasons.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And not just because you’re too scared to take a risk.”

  “You want to talk about risk? You think just because you’re always jetting off on this adventure, or that trip, quitting your job and landing in Rescue Bay for a week, a month, a year, that it makes you a risk taker? It doesn’t.” He caught her chin, made her hold his gaze. “You do it because you are a bigger coward than I am.”

  She tried to wrest her jaw away, but he held firm. “I’m not scared.”

  “You’re so scared, you’re ready to run right now. Run as far and as fast as you can go.”

  “I’m here for the inn, for my cousin.”

  “And once the inn is done? What then?”

  He saw the answer in the tremble in her jaw, in the way she cut her gaze away. “I don’t know, Colt. I haven’t thought that far ahead. All I know is that right now, my cousin and my aunt need me. They’re all the family I have and I can’t imagine doing anything that would let them down. That, to me, is risk. Putting everything I have on the line for the people I love, even if it scares the hell out of me.” Her brown eyes met his. “Would you do that? Risk everything for the people you love? Even if it scared you to do so?”

  He released her and stepped away. The truth to what really stood between them had come in the way she looked away, and in the words she’d said, driving home the reality about who Colt Harper was.

  A man, who when push came to shove, had let down those he loved. He wanted to tell her what had happened, why he was so terrified of being the shoulders for someone else, but in the end, words failed him.