by Janice Lynn
The way she was looking at Oz as if she was falling for him. Had any woman ever looked at him like that?
He didn’t think so. Fear and disbelief battled for pole position within him.
No matter what, Blair absolutely could not fall for him.
No way did he want to be responsible for another person’s heart. He’d seen the power his father had wielded over his mother’s heart, had seen the devastation that power wrought.
Blair’s heart needed to stay far away from the likes of him.
In the end, he’d hurt her as Addy’s father had. Not by lying to her, but by his inability to commit to one woman. His entire life, he’d never committed to anyone. What did that say about him?
Just what he’d known all along—that he was his father’s son.
“I’m leaving as soon as Dr T is well enough to go back to work,” he reminded her, feeling desperate to crawl out from under the magnifying glass.
“Do you think he’ll be able to go back to work?” She stared at him, the sparkle shimmering, enticing him to look closer. “Really?”
No, he didn’t.
Neither did Dr T. They’d talked earlier in the evening and Oz would be working out a notice to give the hospital time to find a permanent replacement, spending all his time with Dr T until the end came, then he’d return to Rochester.
He’d return to his home with a gaping hole in his chest where his friend’s love and respect had once resided.
Pain gurgled up his chest, burning the lining of his throat.
“Oz?”
He swallowed back the burn, lost himself in Blair’s soft expression, in the way her lips curled around his name. Damn, his name sounded good on her lips. Soft, sexy, raspy.
“You don’t think he’s going to get better, do you?” Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth in a move he’d seen Addy do a dozen times during their sailing trip.
“Miracles happen every day.” He sighed, unwilling to lie. “But no, I don’t think he’ll go into remission. The Xabartan is his only chance and he’s not willing to undergo more chemo.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say that he thought their friend’s days were coming to a swift end.
A strangled sound escaped her lips. “You’re wrong. He will get better.” She trembled. “He has to get better.”
“I hope so, Blair. I really do hope so.” Oz held her tight. The tears she’d been wiping away since she’d started telling him about Chris flooded unchecked down her cheeks. “Regardless, we’ll be here for him and make sure each day is a good one.”
As painful as he found watching his friend slowly die, he would stay until the end, would ensure that Dr T didn’t want for a thing, that each day was as full as possible, that when Dr T’s time came he’d die knowing he was loved.
Oz held Blair while she sobbed against him, held her while she buried her face into his chest, held her when her lips sought his, seeking comfort.
He had no right to give her that comfort. Not really. Not after what she’d revealed, not when he felt her pain and ached inside.
But nor could he deny her what she needed.
What he needed.
Oz kissed her back.
Desperately.
With all the hunger that had built inside him since the first time he’d laid eyes on Blair Pendergrass years ago.
He’d wanted her then, but had known better than to dally with the woman Dr T loved like a daughter, with a woman who had a daughter, and would expect more than dinner dates and hot sex.
Oz needed to stop, to remind Blair that even if they made love, nothing would change. He needed to remind her that for him, making love was just sex, that it wouldn’t mean anything beyond the physical. That after he left Madison, there would be other women because that was who he was, who all the men in his family were, as if the trait was really some genetic flaw.
He needed to do all those things, but in her kisses Oz forgot that sex was just a physical act.
Because kissing Blair felt like so much more than physical.
When her hands slid under his shirt, over his abs, along his back, Oz didn’t stop her. When she tugged on his T-shirt, pulling the hem over his head, he didn’t remind her that he was the womanizing scoundrel she’d once accused him of being.
Instead, he pulled her into his lap, kissed the hell out of her, over and over until every breath he took was hers.
He stood, cradling her in his arms, inadequate in so many ways to be holding such a precious woman.
Her tender kiss against his throat, her sigh of pleasure almost toppled him back onto the sofa, his legs too wobbly to support them both.
He headed up the stairs, down the hallway, striding into his room with one purpose: to claim Blair. He gently laid her on the bed, paused to turn on the bedside lamp to take in the image of her lying on the bed, waiting for him.
For him.
Because Blair was his.
She inexplicably belonged to him.
He saw it in her eyes when she looked at him, felt it in the way she touched him.
He backtracked to the door, shut and locked it in case Addy or Dr T woke.
He turned, saw Blair had taken off her Springsteen T-shirt. Revealing the ample swell of her breasts above her silky blue bra, she bent forward and shucked her shorts down her hips, revealing matching high-cut panties that made her legs look impossibly long.
Damn. Oz instantly transformed into the big bad wolf he remembered once seeing on a cartoon. His eyes bugged, his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth, and wolf whistles blared through his brain.
She was amazing, had his already fully aroused body hardening to painful proportions.
Under his stare, her cheeks brightened. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He had no clue what she could possibly be apologizing for. “You’re beautiful, Blair. Perfect.”
Her lips curved in a slow smile. “Apparently your hormones are running amok and affecting your eyesight. I’m not beautiful, Oz. But when you look at me like that, you make me feel as if I am. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” Oz wasn’t going to argue with her. Not when there were so many other things he wanted to be doing. With her. To her. In her.
Closing the distance between them, he reached for the snap to his uncomfortably restrictive shorts.
Shedding his clothes, Oz joined Blair, kissed her, ran his palms over her curves.
When he thrust inside her, he couldn’t look away, couldn’t help but lose himself in her eyes.
What he saw there scared him, made him think perhaps he should run like hell.
Lying back on the bed, both of them breathless, both of them staring at the ceiling, Oz wondered what he’d done.
He shouldn’t have had sex with her.
No matter how much he’d wanted to.
She deserved better than what he’d given her.
He refused to treat her the way Chris had.
He might be like his father when it came to his lack of ability to commit, but he was a better man.
Yet, what more did he have to offer Blair? He wouldn’t make false promises about the future. Not when they had no future.
But how was he supposed to ignore what he’d just shared with this incredible woman? How was he supposed to forget what being inside her felt like?
He doubted he’d ever forget, that the rest of his life would be measured by the past hour.
“About this…” he began, wishing he could find the right words to let her know how amazing she was, how good he’d felt holding her, kissing her, making love to her.
To let her know that, no matter how much he wanted her, it couldn’t happen again.
Blair cringed. Here it came. The speech reminding her that sex was just sex to Oz. No matter that it had felt like so much more to her.
It had been more than sex to her.
Dear Lord, she’d spilled her guts to him, had revealed how Chris had hurt her. She’d practically thrown herself at Oz,
had practically begged him to make love to her, and had definitely had the most amazing sex of her life with the playboy doctor.
What had she been thinking?
So she wasn’t like the svelte blondes Oz notoriously brought with him on his visits. He had wanted her. He’d been as wrapped up in their lovemaking as she had.
Hadn’t he?
Every insecurity she’d ever known blindsided her.
She pulled the sheet up over her, crossed her arms in front of her breasts.
“I can’t do this, Blair.” He rolled onto his side, looking at her.
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Still staring at the ceiling, Blair battled tears. She would not cry. She wouldn’t. So she clung to her anger at herself for forgetting who he was—who he really was. “We already did do this.”
Now that the urgency had been curtailed, had he realized she wasn’t his usual fare? Was that the problem? Had her generous hips and bosom, the fine stretch marks that marred her lower abdomen from carrying Addy turned him off? Had her enthusiasm for his touch bothered him?
“It’s not that I don’t still want you, Blair. I do.” He reached for her, but she pulled back.
She couldn’t deal with him touching her. Not at the moment. Not when her body still sang from repeated orgasms. Not when she was so aware of every breath he took. Not when he was rejecting her and her pride freely bled.
What if he’d only had sex with her out of pity? If he hadn’t had the heart to reject her after what she’d revealed about her past?
Darn it, she didn’t want his pity.
“I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”
Their friendship? Surely he wasn’t going to play the friendship card? If she’d been honest with herself, she would have admitted from the beginning that they couldn’t be friends. She hadn’t wanted to be honest because she’d wanted an excuse to be near Oz.
Because she’d been attracted to him for years, but it had only been this trip, seeing him take care of Dr Talbot, that she’d realized Oz’s depth, and the depth of her desire.
He raked his fingers through his hair, leaving the golden tufts ruffled. “I value you too much to take you to bed for cheap sex.”
Blair tried to keep from wincing, but failed.
Cheap sex. That was all she’d been to him?
Just like Chris.
“That came out wrong,” Oz recanted, scooting up in the bed. She forced her gaze not to rest on his bare chest, to ignore the scattering of hair that tapered to disappear beneath the sheet.
Even now, so soon after they’d made love—had cheap sex—desire stirred in the pit of her belly.
She hated herself for it.
Cheap sex.
Humiliation washed over her. She wasn’t going to let anyone embarrass her again. Not the way Chris had.
She held up her hand. “Look, you really don’t have to do this. We got caught up in the moment and forgot that we barely tolerate each other under normal circumstances. I was still high from watching Springsteen and just got carried away. I know what we did was nothing more than sex.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say cheap sex. She just couldn’t. Not without bursting into tears.
There hadn’t been anything cheap about the way she’d felt in Oz’s arms. She suspected the price she’d pay would be quite high.
“I’m leaving, Blair.” He stared at her, his eyes a steely-blue. “I don’t know when, but I will leave. To pretend otherwise would be wrong.”
“I didn’t expect you to stay. Not because of this.” She hated the guilty expression on his face. Hated that he felt he had to explain himself. It wasn’t as if she thought he was madly in love with her. She knew he wasn’t. After all, this was Oz. He didn’t do love and commitment. He did “cheap sex.”
So why did her heart protest? Why did her heart argue that Oz could love her? That she was lovable? That what they shared was so much more than cheap sex? Fool, didn’t she ever learn?
“Blair.”
She could hear the strain in his voice. She even knew why he was making sure she understood.
Oz loved Dr Talbot and didn’t want anything to upset their friend, didn’t want anything to mar his last days.
She knew exactly what she had to do. The only thing she could do.
She reached over the edge of the bed and retrieved her Springsteen T-shirt from the floor. She pulled it over her head, grateful for the barrier between them. The sheet just hadn’t been enough. Not when she knew Oz’s well-defined naked body lay beneath it, too.
“Look—” she began, trying to sound as if she did this kind of thing all the time, as if it hadn’t been six years, as if her heart wasn’t gasping like a fish out of water “—I don’t need explanations. Not about this. It’s late. We’re both tired and we acted on physical needs. Let it go. I plan to.” She forced a smile to her face. A this is really no big deal smile. “I’m going to go sleep with Addy.”
Not moving from where he lay, Oz watched her dig under the covers for her underwear. She could feel his gaze boring into her. God, where were her panties?
“I don’t want you to go. Not like this.” He sounded tormented, which in some masochistic way vindicated what she was doing. Yet she knew his turmoil wasn’t really regarding her, but Dr Talbot.
For the same reason—for her love of the older man—she’d follow suit and say what needed to be said.
“Don’t make more of this than it was, Oz. That would unnecessarily complicate our lives.” She clenched her fingers over the silky fabric of her underwear. Thank God. “It’s no big deal.”
She was lying. Lying though her teeth. But she knew it was what she needed to say, what Oz wanted to hear.
His sigh of relief confirmed her suspicions, shattered the remaining tatters of hope in her heart.
She didn’t turn around, didn’t look back.
Instead, she went into the room across the hallway, slipped beneath the covers next to her daughter, and willed sleep to heal her breaking heart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE following morning, Blair slept later than normal and, amazingly, so did Addy.
Despite the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, the same sick feeling that had caused her to lie in bed for hours before finally drifting off to sleep, Blair thanked God for her blessings. Thanked God for the precious little girl peeping at her from the other side of the bed.
Everything would be okay.
Stretching, Blair smiled at her precious daughter. “Morning, sleepyhead.”
Yawning, Addy grinned, her tongue pushing through the gap created by her missing top tooth. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I missed you.”
But oh, if she’d known what the night would bring perhaps she’d have stayed home with Reesee.
Facing Oz this morning wouldn’t be easy. Thank God she hadn’t admitted that her feelings were much more than physical.
How much more she wouldn’t allow herself to contemplate.
She’d slept in her Springsteen T-shirt and underwear. She hadn’t brought extra clothing, so she put her shorts back on and slid into her sandals.
When she finished, Addy had dressed and stood with her brush and elastic bands. Blair brushed out Addy’s golden locks and plaited her hair into a single French braid down the back of her head.
When they went downstairs, Stephanie was sitting at the kitchen table. As usual, she’d brought breakfast. Knowing Addy had stayed the night, she’d brought extra.
“Blair, honey—” the older woman said, giving the little girl a hug “—I didn’t realize you were here or I’d have brought you a cinnamon streusel.”
Blair’s favorite. Just as well, she might throw up if she ate a thing.
She walked over to Dr Talbot and kissed his cheek. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m here.” He shot an annoyed look toward Stephanie. “She’s force-feeding me as usual.”
“If you’d eat, I woul
dn’t have to force-feed you.” Stephanie picked up a spoon and held it out to the older man, sitting in his wheelchair at the table. She nodded toward the box of muffins. “Help yourself, Blair. I brought extra for Addy and Oz, but he didn’t eat.”
Oh, Oz.
“He’s gone?” Oh, no. She shouldn’t have asked that. She busied herself by pouring a glass of orange juice for herself and Addy.
“He had Ted up, dressed and in the kitchen when I got here, but then he took off. He left a little over an hour ago.”
When Blair turned, Dr Talbot and Stephanie were looking at her. Was what had happened written all over her face like a scarlet letter? Knowing she must look guilty, based on the growing concern in her friends’ eyes, Blair searched through the box of muffins, but her mind raced.
Had Oz left to avoid seeing her this morning?
Of course he’d left to avoid seeing her.
Because he was sending the message that what had happened between them really was no big deal.
If he’d cared, wouldn’t he have stuck around? Wanted to see her first thing this morning? Wanted to know how she was? How she felt?
Why did his doing exactly what she’d expected of him hurt so much?
But she knew. Deep in her heart she’d believed Oz cared about her. Cared more than his “cheap sex” comment let on. Cared about her as a person, as a woman, as his lover, and, yes, as his friend.
He didn’t. The sooner she accepted that, the sooner she quit fantasizing about a man who admitted he didn’t want a relationship that consisted of more than casual sex, the better.
“Was Dr Oz going sailing?” Addy pulled the paper wrapper off the chocolate chip bran muffin Stephanie had given her.
“Sailing?” Had Blair’s voice squeaked? Her gaze cut to her daughter. Why would Addy think Oz might be sailing? Had he mentioned plans to go sailing? Why would he go sailing on the day after she’d told him about Chris? That was plain cruel.
“I love sailing.” Addy didn’t glance up from her muffin.
Blair’s stomach plummeted. Her rib cage put a death grip on her lungs. “You do?”
Addy nodded. “Sailing is awesome. Dr Oz took me. He let me drive the boat!”