“And you think you have common ground?” Constance asked.
Erika was coming down the steps when Constance asked the question. She said to her mother, “Mom, what are you doing?”
Constance looked from her daughter to Dillon. “I’m just asking questions both of you should be thinking about.”
“No, you’re prying.”
Just from seeing Erika and Constance together, Dillon already knew they were close. They depended on each other. He didn’t want to come between them. He knew the best thing he could do was to let mother and daughter discuss this.
Rising to his feet, he said, “I’d better get back to the resort. I don’t like to be away too long even when Ruthann is covering.”
“You don’t have to go,” Erika insisted.
“Yes, I do.” Their gazes locked and Erika was the first to look away. “I’ll walk you out,” she murmured.
She followed him to the door and outside onto the small porch. “I’m sorry she gave you the third degree.”
He linked his arms around Erika and said simply, “Don’t be. She’s your mom and she cares what happens to you. That’s a good thing.”
“Don’t tell me her questions didn’t annoy you.”
“They weren’t questions I haven’t already thought about.” He leaned down and gave Erika a sound, if short, kiss. Then he whispered against her hair, “One of these days we’ll be together without interruption.”
But they both knew his time here was growing short. Erika hugged him as if she didn’t want to let him go. That hug made tonight worthwhile. The memory of Emilia’s smile made tonight worthwhile. Maybe he really was ready to move his life forward.
Maybe.
Chapter Ten
After Dillon’s patient left late Wednesday morning, Dillon closed his office door and went to his wall of windows, peering out. The problem was he wasn’t seeing. The little boy, who was four, had reminded him so much of Toby. When would the gut-wrenching pain stop? When would he be able to just remember his son with joy instead of sadness?
When you stop feeling guilty, a little voice in his head whispered.
He doubted he would ever stop feeling guilty. He doubted he would ever stop regretting what might have been.
The knock on his door startled him but he was glad to see Erika when she peeked in. She smiled as she waved a deli bag at him. “You have no appointments this afternoon and I have a lunch for two. How would you like to ride with me to the cabin I’m checking for Zane? You can tell me if there’s anything I should change or bring in.”
The idea of some time in Erika’s company sounded like sweet relief from his troubled thoughts, though Dillon couldn’t say why. Maybe it was her vibrant energy, or the sparkle in her eyes. Maybe it was the chemistry between them that seemed to supersede anything else. “How did you know I could use lunch away from my desk?”
“Because I noticed your last patient leave. He reminded me an awful lot of the picture you showed me of your son.”
“I’m not reminded of Toby every time I treat a four-year-old patient.”
“Maybe not, but it looks to me as if you were this time.”
Erika always gave him the truth and he couldn’t fault her for that. “Do you always have to be so honest?”
“It’s the way I live my life. I don’t let anyone else try to pull the wool over my eyes and I don’t do it to myself, either.”
Giving her the honesty she expected from him, he admitted, “Yes, he reminded me of Toby. But I really don’t want to talk about it, so let’s go check out the cabin and breathe in some healthy Montana air.”
They took a golf cart out to the cabin. The sun was absolutely brilliant in a perfectly blue sky. The mountains angled to the horizon. Wind pulled tendrils of Erika’s hair free from her ponytail as Dillon glanced at her. The golf cart had more power behind it than he expected. It was great to be outdoors again, but it was even better to have Erika beside him, her arm brushing his, her smile as much of a balm to his soul as the sunshine.
When they came to a fork in the road, she directed him up a hill toward a grove of pines. Their scent rode the air and he almost felt as if he were driving into a forest. Soon the paved road gave way to packed gravel and stone. The cart jostled them as he drove at a lower speed. About a mile into the pines he caught his first glimpse of the cabin.
“Nice,” he remarked as they climbed out and stepped onto the flagstone walkway leading to the steps and the porch.
Erika suddenly stopped and turned to study him. “Do you have a house in Texas?”
“I used to.”
“You had the house when you were married?”
This was another subject he didn’t really want to discuss. But he and Erika had reached a level where he had to if he wanted their bond to grow stronger. “It was a nice house, bigger than D.J.’s. I thought we rattled around in it, but Megan liked all the rooms and she said—” He stopped abruptly.
“What did she say?” Erika asked softly, as if she knew she was treading on sacred ground.
“She said Toby needed room to roam. I often wish—”
Erika waited.
“That I had played hide-and-seek in those rooms with him. That I could describe every one of his toys and exactly how he played with them. That I knew his preschool friends and the differences between them and which ones he particularly liked.”
“Dillon, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Beat myself up because I was a lousy father?”
“What would you have done differently?”
That stopped him cold because he had never asked himself that question. “I didn’t have to become a doctor. I had a wife and a child and an oil fortune behind me.”
“But since your dad died your mission in life was to become a doctor. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Maybe I should have changed my mission.”
“And maybe you can’t stop fate. Maybe you can’t change the hand you’re dealt, no matter how much you want to. Do you think if you hadn’t become a doctor, if you hadn’t been involved in your practice, Toby wouldn’t have gotten sick?”
It was hard to hear his son’s name on Erika’s lips, yet he liked the fact she wasn’t afraid to talk about his son with him. Did he believe that if the course of his life had been different the course of his son’s would have been different? He knew that wasn’t true. So why did he want that burden on his shoulders?
Erika must have seen the tumultuous thinking process her questions had stirred up, because she suddenly wrapped her arms around him, hugged him and said, “I didn’t mean to start this here. I’m sorry.”
The hug was meant to be comforting. However, when his arms surrounded her, when she lifted her face to his, comfort took on a different meaning. With their bodies pressed tightly together, he didn’t want her comfort—he wanted her passion. His lips came down hard on hers. He kissed her possessively, deeply, knowing exactly what he wanted and hoping she wanted the same. The kiss that had begun with words, questions, pain and desire shifted and turned, becoming alive…becoming need…becoming hunger that had been pent up too much for too long. He tore his lips from hers, staring down at her, hoping to see what he wanted to see.
Her breathing was as ragged as his and just as shallow. “Let’s go inside,” she said, then took the key to the cabin from her pocket and handed it to him. He gripped it, clasped her hand, then walked up the porch steps with her.
The window in the door was a beautiful, thick, beveled glass that Dillon hardly noticed. After he inserted the key into the lock, his gaze was on Erika’s.
When they stepped into the entryway, Dillon saw they’d really entered a small house, rather than a cabin. Everything was the quality Thunder Canyon Resort boasted of—terra-cotta tiles, handcrafted cabinetry, a native-rock fireplace extending from the floor to the ceiling. They’d entered the foyer between the kitchen and the living room and he could glimpse the doorways to the two bedrooms beyond.
Af
ter closing the door, he tugged Erika into his arms again, kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. She slipped her hands under his suit jacket and held on to him.
“I know what I want,” he said. “How about you?”
“I want you to make love to me.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad you said that.”
She laughed. “Maybe I knew this would happen when I asked you to come here to have lunch with me.”
He swung her into his arms and carried her into one of the bedrooms. The look was meant to be rustic but the lavish wine-colored comforter, the Tiffany lamp, the finely crafted furniture was more luxurious than fit for a cabin. Not caring about anything as mundane as decor when he had Erika in his arms, Dillon carried her to the side of the bed.
As he discarded his suit jacket, the most practical, realistic thought hammered his libido. “Are you on birth control?” he asked her.
She frowned and looked so disappointed. “No, I’m not. I haven’t needed to be. Oh, Dillon. You don’t have a condom in your wallet?” she asked with an attempt at wry humor.
“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “I don’t sleep around. In fact—” He stopped.
“Have you been with anyone since your divorce?” Erika asked gently.
“No.”
The word hung in the room like a pronouncement that was too hard to take in. Then he reached out to her and ran his finger slowly over her lips. “We can pleasure each other without putting you in danger of getting pregnant.”
Her beautiful, huge brown eyes searched his face and he knew she was trying to decide whether she could trust him or not. Could she trust him to keep her safe, not only from pregnancy, but from the hurt and pain of a short affair? He didn’t know what might happen between them. He couldn’t reassure her that everything would be all right. She had to make this decision on what she knew about him, and what they had right now.
She reached up and tugged open his tie. “The bed looks comfortable. Maybe we should try it out.”
His heart pounding against his chest, he pulled back the covers and they lay on the king-size bed. His gaze wandered up and down her body. Her suit jacket was open and his hand came to rest on the silky blouse underneath. She rolled toward him, and began unbuttoning his shirt. They didn’t seem to need any words as Dillon let his fingers stray toward her breasts, and Erika softly moaned as if she were eager to have him touch her.
So he did. He was rewarded by a soft sigh, a smile and the dance of her fingers underneath his shirt. He’d barricaded his heart for so long that he suddenly realized intimate touching between them could connect them emotionally as well as physically. Was he ready for that? Was she?
“Erika?” It was a question.
Her thumb found his nipple, circled it and skidded over it. He was so aroused he couldn’t think. Yet he held on to rationality until she answered his unspoken question.
“I just want to be with you,” she breathed.
As they removed each others’ clothing, he found Erika to be a bit shy. She whispered, “I have a stretch mark.”
He kissed it, looking at it, making her restless. “That’s a memento of Emilia’s birth.”
He insisted on keeping on his briefs. He insisted on touching her everywhere, because that would be safer for both of them. When his fingers slid inside of her, she arched up and cried his name. Making sure her pleasure wasn’t just momentary, his thumb glided over her most sensitive spot and she cried out again, her face flushed, her body awash in sensation and pleasure.
As she floated back to earth, he nibbled her neck and she wrapped her arms around him. “I want to do that for you, too,” she said.
But he shook his head. “No.”
“Just let me touch you,” she whispered.
He felt as if they were doing something forbidden and dangerous and therefore even more exciting. He let her fingers roam over him, stroke him, almost send him to heaven.
Suddenly, he closed his hand over hers and brought it to his chest. “When we can really be together, you can touch me all you want.”
When he kissed her again, he showed her how much he wanted her, imitating with his tongue exactly what he wanted to do with his body. Her hands delved into his hair, and her kisses returned his fervor.
When they stopped to catch their breath, he rolled over on his back. “I could stay here with you like this all day. But I have to get back.”
“I know.” Her voice sounded sad and wistful. Then she propped up on her elbow. “Thank you, Dillon.”
“For what?”
“For not trying to take advantage of me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said simply, glad she was finally learning who he was, pleased she was trusting him.
Erika’s gaze slid over his body and saw that he was still aroused. She blushed. “I think there are spare sheets in the closet. I need to change these.”
She had her back to him now as she dressed, and he wondered if their make-out and petting session had unnerved her as much as it had unnerved him. He knew it raised a question in both their minds. What was next? Neither of them exactly knew the answer to that.
He climbed out on the other side of the bed, found his clothes and was dressed before she’d finished buttoning her blouse. “You wanted me to let you know what Zane might like here. He’d prefer the temperature to be kept down. He likes to light a fireplace. He takes his coffee black and drinks gallons of it, so stock up on that. And stock the refrigerator with bacon and eggs. He’d rather make his own breakfast instead of waiting for it to come from the resort. You also might want to put a chair out on the front porch. He often watches the sunrise.”
She undid her bun which had almost come undone and ran her fingers through her hair. “You do know him well. Does he know you as well?”
“He probably does. We haven’t spent that much time together lately. But we did once.”
“Did you push all of your friends away after Toby died?”
Sometimes she absolutely unsettled him. “I guess after something traumatic happens in our lives we can either reach out for support or push everyone away. I pushed friends away. I needed Megan’s support. But we weren’t there for each other. Too much had happened before, during and after. At that point she wanted someone to blame. I was a doctor so she blamed me.”
“But it wasn’t your fault. You have to know that.”
He didn’t respond. “I guess it’s natural to look for someone to blame when something so important goes wrong.”
“I blamed Scott at first when Emilia was born. But then I realized I made the choices that got me into the mess.”
“I did resent Megan because she didn’t hold on after Toby died.”
“What do you do with the old baggage?” Erika asked.
“I guess we try to learn from it and hope we don’t make the same mistakes again.”
She looked down at her hands rather than at him, and that was unlike her. Finally, her gaze lifted to his. “What happened here today scares me, Dillon.”
“Because of something I did?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. It’s just, except for Emilia, I try not to feel too much about other things. I try not to get too attached in case they slip away. Today with you I felt a lot.”
Crossing to her, he slipped his hands into her hair and tilted her chin up with his thumbs. “If you didn’t feel a lot, I wouldn’t want to make love to you.”
“You still want to do that?” she asked lightly.
“Oh, yeah.”
As if the intensity of the moment was too much, she looked away from him and checked her watch. “Oh, my gosh. I’d better get those sheets.”
“I’ll help you make the bed,” he assured her, and laughed when she looked surprised. “I do great military corners.”
“But you weren’t—”
“In the military? No. But my stepdad was, before he worked on the oil rig.”
“There’s so much about you I still don’t k
now,” she said as if that bothered her a great deal.
“The more we’re together, the more you’ll learn.”
He saw the flicker of hesitation in her eyes, the reluctance to believe they could have a future.
A short time later, Dillon walked beside Erika into the lobby of the lodge. What he wanted was to pull her into his arms and kiss her again. And every time she glanced at him, he thought she wanted to do the same thing.
In the lobby someone called Erika’s name. Dillon saw the woman at the counter beckoning to Erika. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll make sure everything is quiet in the infirmary.”
Erika’s gaze lingered on his face. She probably wondered what he was thinking, just as he wondered what she was thinking. Then she broke away from him and headed for the desk.
As Dillon went down the hall and into the reception area, he noted it was empty. Ruthann was in her office, typing information into the computer.
He stopped at her doorway. “Thanks for covering over lunch.”
“No problem. All was quiet. I understand the need to escape from here every once in a while. The resort can begin to feel like a prison. Especially when you’re on call day and night.”
“Well, we’ll both have free time this weekend when Dr. Babchek covers. Are you going to sample chili and listen to the campaign speeches?”
“Arthur Swinton has been around for a long time. I know what he’s going to say. He spouts off to the town council whenever he gets a chance. But Bo Clifton? That could be interesting.”
Before Dillon had a chance to comment, his cell phone chimed. Taking it from his pocket to check the caller ID, he was surprised to see his stepfather’s name. “Excuse me,” he said to Ruthann. She nodded as he went to his office and closed the door.
“Hello, Peter,” he answered. “What can I do for you?”
“I just thought I’d check in. With a job at a resort I thought you might be having a massage or off hiking on the trails.”
Dillon’s hackles rose and he told himself the best thing was just to stay silent.
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