by Laurel Greer
And the art—a fist of emotion gripped her throat when she realized he’d personalized the walls. An eclectic blend of his photography—the sharp angles of New York City architecture, the twirling spires of Eastern Europe, the towering ice of Antarctica—mixed in with internationally flavored prints. Every single item a piece of Tavish.
Her eye was drawn to the mantel. Oh, sweet Lord. Two framed pictures were nestled with a collection of colored rocks. One of Andrew and him hanging off a rock face, and one of Mackenzie, their mom and him at Mackenzie’s wedding that he’d clearly had printed in the last few days. She said silent thanks for the fact he hadn’t put up a picture of her—that would have reduced her to a helpless puddle of skin and bones and need.
“Lauren?”
She spun. “Hey.”
He stood in the doorway to the little galley kitchen with a tomato-splattered dish towel tucked into the waist of his jeans. One muscle-roped arm braced against the door frame. Good God. The human body was a marvel, and Tavish’s, with all its long lines and hard definition, never disappointed. Desire curled in her belly, stirring against her fascination with every part of him. Her confusion rolled into a great, brewing, uncontainable churn.
His eyes gleamed. “Hungry?”
“Sure.” For more than food. She cleared her throat. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
“Thanks. I’ll need to have a home base for the sake of the baby, and this works. I thought I could put a crib and stuff in the spare room.”
Unsettling reality encroached on the happiness from seeing his personal mark on the apartment. Why hadn’t she considered the separation involved in coparenting—him having his time with the baby, her having her time? Dealing with custody and deciding who got what weekend and arguing over holidays? Her stomach rolled worse than from morning sickness.
His brow wrinkled. “Isn’t this what you wanted, Lauren? Me, showing some consistency?”
“Well, yeah, but—” She bit her lip.
“But...?”
But what she said she wanted and what she really wanted were two different things. Him making changes to support her and to love their baby checked boxes but didn’t actually fill her soul.
“I love you,” she blurted. Holding herself up under his startled, steaming gaze, she balled her fingers into fists and fought the hot moisture pricking the corners of her eyes.
“I love you, too.” Tavish took two long strides and gathered her into his strong arms. Kept her upright as her legs turned to gelatin. She gripped handfuls of the back of his soft T-shirt and lost her grip on her tears.
“Hey, shh.” He stroked a gentle hand through her loose-hanging hair. “We’ll figure something out.”
His shirt muffled her “How?”
“We’d intended to compromise before—we can do it again. Maybe you and the baby can travel with me sometimes. Your family isn’t asking as much of you as they did last year—”
“No.” She leaned back and wiped her eyes before staring into his. The hope glinting there shattered her heart. “It’s not about what they expect from me. It’s about what I expect of myself. And I want to be here for them. Nor will I be able to leave the clinic for long stretches of time.”
Music from the docking station filled the hollow silence of the room. Failed to fill the hollowness of her heart.
Tavish didn’t say anything, just pressed his fingertips into the base of her spine.
“We might be able to manage if you only left for two or three months a year.”
Dropping his hands from her body, he jammed his fingers into his hair, squeezed at the messy strands. “I was thinking more half and half. But I’m trying, Lauren. I even called about taking a part-time position at Montana State—”
“You did?” Losing control over her jaw, she stared at him, hands hanging limply at her sides. Staying resolute was so much easier when it was all his fault. But now—the apartment, the job...
Tavish’s forehead wrinkled. “Yeah, I did. I can’t put our child through what I was put through. I know you’re not willing to come with me when I work—can we come up with a different solution?”
She could barely look at him, so sweet and hot and staring at her with challenge flashing in his eyes. “You left me last time. You will again.”
Was that her voice, that desperate, shrill noise?
Anytime she’d heard that tone come from anyone else, she’d viewed it as a sign of stubborn irrationality. That couldn’t be the truth in her case—her devotion to her family and the clinic wasn’t irrational. Tavish changing his life only affected Tavish. A compromise by her had the potential to hurt the baby, her dad, Cadie... They needed her to be here, to support them. And she had to follow through on her promise to her mom, follow through with the clinic. She pressed both hands over her heart in an attempt to quell the ache in her chest.
Tavish let out a gust of air. With a slight nod of his head, he said, “You’re right. I’ll eventually leave. But this time, I’ll come back.”
“And a part-time relationship between us is no less plausible now than it was last year.”
“Not unless you’re willing to sever the umbilical cord between you and your dad—”
“Enough.” She cut him off before he could hammer any further dents into her reasoning. The professional in her started to nag that she was nearing the definition of phobic, but she ignored it. Wanting her family happy and safe was not a phobia. It wasn’t. She’d seen what happened when she acted selfishly. “Do you remember where I was when my mom’s surgery went sideways? At summer camp, having a grand old time. And when my grandfather was dead on the side of the road, my grandmother in a coma, I was off marrying you. Pretending that it was okay for me to have given up the plans I’d made with my mom before she died.” She rambled on, desperate for him to understand. “I won’t put myself before my family again. My dad and Cadie need me here. And the baby will need that stability, too.”
“And what if I need you?”
His pleading whisper pushed her over the edge. “I have to go.” She crossed her arms, tried to hold in the blood from the verbal knife he’d just shoved between her ribs. He needed to stop looking at her like he was tearing into pieces. She couldn’t handle it. Because he was compromising. He was trying.
Which only made it obvious how much she wasn’t able to do the same.
Backing toward the front door, she said the only thing she knew would make him shut up, make him close off. “Call me if you decide you love me enough to put me ahead of your job.”
Chapter Eleven
“Lauren Dawson? Come in, Lauren Dawson.” Tavish had arrived at work today intending to press her more after she’d bolted from his apartment last night. They’d made eye contact at a morning staff debriefing but she’d run off the second the meeting ended and had ignored his text messages. Much like she was ignoring his end-of-shift radio pages.
Maybe she was avoiding him because she was afraid he’d be angry over her sharp parting shot. Maybe it was a measure of self-preservation. Either way, he wasn’t mad—she had a right to call him out on his flaws, and he got her need to protect herself. It only left him more determined to prove that he loved her and wanted to try for a solution. They both needed to figure out how to have a balanced perspective on their hometown. He wasn’t the only one who had a messed-up tie to the town. Lauren wanting to help her family was one thing. Being petrified to leave home was another. And her eyes had snapped with real fear yesterday.
Pressing the push-to-talk button, he repeated his page. She was scheduled to be doing safety checks at the river-rafting base camp, well within transmission range. He leaned back in his seat, picking up the list Lauren had left taped to Zach’s computer screen. Back when they were married he might have called it a honey-do list, but they hadn’t been married long enough to get into the habit of her making him list
s and him pretending to complain about it.
The domestic picture made him smile, even though they weren’t even close to finding that together. His efforts to chip away at his issues with Sutter Creek hadn’t been enough for her so far—her rejection last night had made that more than clear. Had left him feeling emptier than he knew possible. The desolate look on her face had been enough to make him want to start digging a trench in her front yard. Prove he wasn’t going anywhere, even if he couldn’t believe he had that in him. Of course, she would have made it easier to tell her all of this had she picked up her phone one of the ten times he’d called her since she fled, leaving him with a pot full of spaghetti sauce and a heart full of regret.
About thirty seconds passed by before his radio crackled. “Lauren Dawson here. Is that you, Tavish?”
“Yeah. Uh, this is an open channel, but your cell seems to be off. Would you meet me for dinner at the hotel lounge?” Time to step up further. If she could show him a little patience, he’d be willing to go for a longer trial period.
The radio sat silent for way too long. After she’d given him enough time to knit a sweater, she replied, “I’ll see you at six.”
He heard every second tick by on his watch until it finally read six o’clock. He arrived at the lounge early, having gone home to shower and change into a pair of dark jeans and a checked dress shirt. Settling into one of the wing-backed chairs at a table for two, he studied one of the deer-horn-chic chandeliers.
The minute Lauren walked into the room wearing a casual, swirly, hot-sauce-red dress, his heart stopped.
“Look what you’re missing,” the dress screamed.
Message received, Dr. Dawson.
Heads turned as she traveled through the room. He stood and pulled out her chair.
“Tavish.” She sat and crossed her legs. “Thought we covered everything we needed to last night.”
“We covered it. But we didn’t make any decisions. You ran off after making some awfully hypocritical claims.” He tried to look her in the eye but she kept her gaze on her water glass as he sat. “As if I’m the only one who’s committed to my job at the expense of our relationship.”
Squaring her shoulders, her eyes snapped. “You have five minutes to convince me I want to order something for dinner.”
No guarantee she’d stay even if he managed an argument worthy of one of his mother’s closing statements. Better to make his point in the limited time she was giving him rather than wait and hope she’d let him buy her dinner. Unraveling the thick cloth napkin from his cutlery, he laid it over his lap. “You know, I never really think about it, but I guess you own part of this place, don’t you?”
“Yes. Ten percent. Twenty-five of the new holistic health center that’s opening next month.” She glanced at her thin gold watch. “Four minutes, thirty-two seconds.”
“And you’re sure you enjoy being a doctor more than working for AlpinePeaks?”
Her eyes flashed. Not anger, though. Fear. “Medicine is me. And you’re down to four minutes,” she snapped, a poor attempt to cover up her obvious discomfort. She sank into her chair as if trying to blend with the navy-striped upholstery.
Impossible in that dress. Not that she needed to be wearing anything specific to stand out to him.
“The baby’s the most important priority, and I fully intend to make my work schedule predictable,” he said. “I’m willing to do a test run before the baby arrives, too. See how long I can stay in town before getting the urge to hop on a plane. I’ll stay in town until I head for Phuket in the fall, and will come back when my contract is finished. We’ll see where we stand. But I can’t be the only one who gives, who sacrifices. You have to consider your choices, too.”
Lauren blinked her mossy-gold eyes, the moisture in them almost forcing him to slide off the chair and fall to his knees. Her brow lowered and her lips pressed together. She sat there for a few seconds, staring at him hard enough to etch a laser dent in his forehead.
“And which of my choices would those be?” she bit out.
He pressed his lips together. She hadn’t been willing to listen when he’d tried to argue that her dad and Cadie were grieving less than last year, so a different tack might be best. “I remember your mom being a compassionate woman, Laur. Had she lived, do you really think she’d have expected you to stick to a teenage dream?”
“It was her dream, too.”
“Was it? Or was she just humoring what she likely thought was an in-the-moment passion?”
She covered her mouth, one hand crossed over the other, and let out a muffled, tearless sob.
The noise cut right through him. He was too far away to reach her, didn’t know if she’d want him to anyway. “What do you need, Pixie?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she fisted folds of the red fabric of her skirt. “I need to give those papers to my lawyer.”
Wow. He’d gotten more than five minutes, but the answers he’d hoped she’d give eluded him. He’d hoped some more compromise on his part would prompt her to take even a tiny step toward him. Seemed he was out of luck there. What was it going to take to loosen the grip that Sutter Creek had on her?
* * *
Friday morning, Lauren got to the WiLA office early. She hadn’t been able to sleep more than a sweaty patchwork of dreams and haze. Add in her pregnancy-induced craving for naps, and she was dragging her feet as she entered the office.
Yawning, she settled at her brother’s desk and shifted papers around, staring at a few columns of numbers before recognizing her sleep-deprived uselessness. She’d screw up all her efforts to organize the winter first-aid inventory if she tried to do anything number-related. Instead, she opened a web browser on her brother’s computer. Spending ten minutes getting caught up on royal family gossip was completely justified.
At 8:22 a.m., Tavish strolled in with his camera bag slung over a muscular shoulder. A pair of mirrored aviators managed to keep his hair sticking up only four, instead of six, ways to Sunday. Dark charcoal water splotches marked the gray cotton of his T-shirt and his khaki shorts looked to be completely soaked through. Only his flip-flops looked dry. His smile was so wide it sucked all the administrative boring out of the room. She wished she could keep that level of energy in a jar for the days when life stole the grin from her face.
“Felt like a swim?” she asked.
He met her cocked brow with a sheepish smile. “I slipped on the edge of a bridge and ended up waist high in the creek.”
“On which trail?” Clients taking headers into creeks wouldn’t be the best for business.
“Summit.”
She narrowed her eyes, no longer worried about people slipping and falling. “All the bridges on Summit have rails. And they were all intact yesterday.”
“I might have been sitting on the railing.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “It was the only way to get the right angle of a pair of dragonflies hovering over a rock in the middle of the creek.”
“Did you wreck your camera?”
“I’m like a cat. I always land on my feet with my camera hand in the air.” He demonstrated with an exaggerated pose.
“You are kind of catlike.”
“Graceful?”
“Elusive.”
A faint shadow crossed his face. “Ouch.”
Heat splashed Lauren’s cheeks and the back of her neck. “Sorry. Not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” Caution edged his tone.
“I was referring to your wanderlust, not your personality.”
His earlier demeanor that had shone 120 watts of vibrancy into the room dimmed. “Right. Anyway, I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Of course.” Anything to make up for insulting him, for accusing him of being something he wasn’t.
“I scratched myself. I was hoping you’d clean it up for me.”
> “Okay.” Did her voice shake? Please, no.
Tavish looked at her funny.
Gah, her okay had for sure vibrated.
“You don’t have to, Laur. I can go to the clinic.”
She shook her head. “Of course I can do it.”
“You sounded—”
“I’ll do it,” she insisted.
She led the way to the red-cross-labeled door at the end of the hall. Flicking on the light, she motioned him in. “Lie facedown on the cot.”
The room suffocated her like a mouse hole. A stainless-steel counter and supply cabinets lined one wall; the cot, the other. Tavish settled himself along the length. Lauren glimpsed blood-soaked gauze and her stomach turned. She would love to blame morning sickness, but nope.
On his stomach, Tavish propped himself up on his elbows, straining the shoulders of his T-shirt. She snapped on a pair of gloves, would have preferred reacting to his hard muscles rather than his cut calf.
“I hope this habit of me being attacked by errant branches and you having to patch me up stops after today,” he said.
“Me, too. Wouldn’t want any more scars on you.” Would prefer to never see his blood again, was more like it. She really hated...
No. You’re fine. Swallowing, she slid a thick pad of sterile dressings under Tavish’s calf to absorb the saline she planned to use to clean out whatever lay under his bandage.
She peeled back his makeshift dressing. Objectively, his cut wasn’t bad. Through the lens of her nerves, though, she had to resist the impulse to dart from the room. “God, you’re a bleeder.”
“Yeah. Always makes it look worse than it is.”
Whenever a real emergency hit, adrenaline kicked in, masked her fear. Times like this were what killed her—plenty bloody but lacking the life-or-death chemical surge.