"You wouldn't happen to have any aspirin, would you?"
"Headache?"
"Killer."
"Come here."
Glancing toward him, she saw him prop his crutches against the counter and turn to lean against it himself.
"Come on," he said, reaching over to take the glass from her and set it aside. Grasping her wrist, he tugged her closer. "I don't have any aspirin, but this'll help. Turn around."
Somewhere in the back of her throbbing brain it occurred to her that letting Chase touch her probably wasn't a very good idea. She should just go to bed. Go to sleep. She'd felt worse than this before. She'd even been more exhausted than she felt right now, though she really couldn't remember being so tired since Tyler was an infant. But while she was wrestling with thoughts of what she should and shouldn't do, Chase was taking her by her shoulders and turning her around in front of him.
When he slipped his fingers up the back of her neck and told her to take a deep breath, she promptly gave up the battle.
"Breathe in more," he said, gently increasing the pressure of his thumb and fingers where they pressed low on the base of her skull.
Her shoulders rose as her lungs filled, the pressure inside her head seeming to increase by the second.
"Now out. Slowly," he murmured, working his fingers in tiny circles against the tight bunches of muscle.
She did as he said, her shoulders lowering by degrees as the air left her lungs, taking some of the tension with it.
"Again."
His fingers stilled as she complied, the firm, yet gentle motions continuing when she breathed out once more.
"Your muscles feel like rocks," he muttered.
She felt his other hand settle on her shoulder, but he didn't begin to knead with it as she thought he might. He just rested it there, his touch seeming almost protective as he continued working on her neck.
"It's from bending over a table for so long."
"It's not just from the last couple of days," he countered. "They're always this way."
Puzzled by how he'd know something like that, she started to look back at him.
Nudging her head right back around, he muttered, "Breathe."
There didn't seem to be much of anything he hadn't noticed about her. There didn't seem to be a muscle in her body that didn't respond to him, either. He was only touching a couple of centimeters of skin, but she could feel muscles loosening clear to the base of her spine.
"You're not on call this weekend, are you?"
"No," she said, closing her eyes as his hands slid together and he began to work his thumbs from her neck to a particularly sore spot between her shoulder blades. "I'm only on once a month."
"You can catch up on your sleep."
She would have told him that was highly doubtful. After all, she had a four-year-old. But the comment wasn't worth the effort. She'd rather spend her energy concentrating on what he was doing. And what he was doing felt like pure heaven.
His big hands splayed over her back, their heat seeping through the thin cotton of her shirt. Beneath his thumbs, knots were slowly dissolving and her thoughts were being drained of everything but the strength and sureness of his touch. He knew exactly what to do to make her body let go of the stress. He knew exactly how much pressure to apply, when to go easy because a spot was tender, when to stroke deeper, massage a spot longer.
By the time he'd worked to the small of her back, her head had lolled forward and she should have felt as malleable as modeling clay.
She would have, too, but fatigue was slowly giving way to an entirely different sort of lethargy, and the faint clamor of warning bells drifted through her consciousness.
Chase's hands now curved her waist. They felt good there. Better than good. They fit around her in a way that made her feel very small, very female and very aware of the little licks of heat he was suddenly generating inside her. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how completely she'd given herself over to him. The instant she did, some of the tension he'd relieved shot to the surface.
With that quick jolt back to reality, she swallowed a groan.
"I can't do anything this weekend but look for an apartment." She turned around, picking up their conversation right where they'd left off. "I forgot that I need to look for a place to stay."
He hadn't let her go. She'd simply turned in his hands. Now, trapped between his legs, she watched his glance move quietly over her face.
"You don't have to go anywhere, Alex." Slipping his hands to her hips, he tugged her closer. "I want you to stay."
She opened her mouth, only to have her protest change course before she could utter a word about his offer. His thumbs were moving again, shifting the thin fabric of her shirt over her stomach, rubbing it against her skin.
"I can't do this, Chase." The man didn't play fair. She had no reserves. She was running on empty. And his hands were flexing into her flesh, ten points of fire that threatened to turn her sense of self-protection to ash.
"Do what?" he quietly asked, his eyes steady on hers.
"I can't get involved with you. Not this way." It was fatigue. It was the way he looked at her mouth. It was the way he touched her. They all combined to make her legs feel as stable as Tyler's building blocks.
She touched her hands to his biceps, needing to lean, just a little.
"Why not?"
"Because you don't really want me."
One eyebrow shot up. Running his tongue over his teeth, he glanced down, then complacently met her eyes. "How many years did you study human anatomy?"
Her heart bumped her ribs. "That's not what I meant. I'm talking about why you want me. Or why you think you do. You're my patient," she murmured, feeling hopelessly inept at explaining something she wouldn't have even attempted to tackle had she had all her wits about her. "And I helped you with your brothers. That's how things started out, anyway. Maybe you're just confusing gratitude with attraction. Or maybe it's just convenience," she concluded, because every time she'd thought about how nice he'd been to her that morning, that was the thought that had trailed right behind it.
Even as she felt him go still, she couldn't help thinking that he'd lived his entire life with that same sort of distrust and suspicion. But while part of her finally understood how he felt, another part braced herself for his blunt honesty.
All he did was give her a slow, considered nod.
"There's something I want you to understand right now, Alex." The conviction in his voice was echoed in his expression. "I didn't invite you here to get you into my bed. And I certainly don't expect you to sleep with me in exchange for a room. As for the rest of it," he said, lifting his hand to her face, "I've never confused physical attraction with anything else in my life." With the tip of his finger, he traced the fullness of her lower lip, the heat of memory darkening his eyes. "I want you. If you don't want me, be honest and say so. Don't hide behind that doctor-patient argument." His finger drifted to the point of her chin. "We passed that long before last night."
It wasn't a question of want. It was a question of self-preservation. He hadn't been trying to seduce her into bed with the things he'd done for her. He didn't need to play that kind of game. He wanted her. Plain and simple. No deceit. No promises. Take it or leave it.
It would have been so much easier to leave it if he hadn't been touching her. She could be rational then. When she was away from him, she could think of all the reasons why falling in love with him was a really bad idea.
He must have sensed her struggle. Tipping her chin up, he lowered his mouth to within a breath of hers. "You don't have to answer me tonight."
His lips brushed hers once. Twice. Then his tongue touched hers, gently, slowly seeking entry. His kiss was long and deep, exquisitely tender, devastatingly intimate.
He breathed in her sigh as he curved a hand around her ribs. She drank in his groan when he cupped her unrestrained breast. That low, guttural sound filled her, vibrating deep inside her body as he
taunted long-buried needs and feelings she wanted desperately to deny.
Only when she caught his wrist, did he raise his head. When he did, his breathing was as ragged as hers.
"It's okay," he whispered, smoothing her hair back from her face. "I'm not going to push." He skimmed his thumb over her temple, soothing the pain she'd nearly forgotten was there. "Not when you're this tired."
A wry smile touched his mouth as he nodded toward his leg. "I'm hardly in a position to carry you off to bed, anyway. When it happens," he whispered, brushing one last kiss over her mouth, "you'll have to take the lead."
* * *
Chapter Ten
« ^ »
You'll have to take the lead.
"We just can't thank you enough, Dr. Larson. I just wish there was some way we could repay you."
"You can repay me by making sure he keeps up his exercises," Alex replied, smiling at Glen Chalmers as she mentally shouldered aside the memories of last night. Those memories had tormented her all morning. It was midafternoon, and she still couldn't banish them. They played through her mind in a continuous loop; thoughts of how Chase had so skillfully eased the tension in her neck. Thoughts of how he'd kissed her, how he'd touched her. The husky certainty in his voice.
When it happens, you'll have to take the lead.
Not "if," but "when." And as if she would seduce him.
"Get him back over to see me in a month," she added, giving the thoughts another shove. She'd never taken the lead with a man in her life. She couldn't begin to imagine it happening now.
Glen and Maryann Chalmers sat across from her desk, Glen in freshly laundered coveralls and Maryann in a lace-bibbed floral dress. Two of their towheaded young children sat on the sofa beneath Alex's diplomas. Brent sat on the sofa's arm, holding the baby brother he'd sorely missed.
The Chalmers deserved her full attention. Chase was not going to distract her any more than he already had.
Raising his work-roughened hand, Glen thoughtfully scratched his jaw. "Berries will be coming on next month, Doctor. It's nigh-on to impossible to take half a day driving over here and back. We've only got the one vehicle and I need it in the field. Would it hurt him to wait a little longer?"
"It really would be better if I could see him," she gently stressed. "But if you can't get here then, come in as soon after that as you can. All right?"
"I could drive over, Dad," Brent offered. "I've got my license. I can buy Lawry Anderson's old Mustang. It's an automatic, so it's not like I'd have to shift or anything."
"That'd be a fine idea, son. But you don't have enough saved up to buy that car. He's wanting the moon for it."
"Yeah, but Chase … I mean Mr. Harrington," Brent corrected, since his parents apparently preferred he address adults formally. "He told me how to negotiate. We were talking about cars 'cause Tyler … Dr. Larson's little boy," he explained, "likes cars and I was telling him, Mr. Harrington, I mean, about the Mustang. He said Lawry has no reason to come down on the price because he knows how much I want it. Since there's nobody else bidding against me," he continued, slipping into the lingo he'd picked up from his new friend, "what I have to do is pretend I've found some other car I'm interested in more and when Lawry starts thinking he could lose the sale, he'll start coming down on the price."
A month ago, Alex wouldn't have believed the boy could string so many words together all at once, much less look so confident when he spoke. Even with his mom and dad, she'd noticed his diffidence.
Now, the boy sat with a romper-clad ten-month-old gumming a fistful of his shirt, sounding as if he could captain the debate team.
Maryann, her wispy, dishwater-blond hair scraped back in a ponytail, blinked at her son, then at her husband. Her husband just looked the boy over as if checking to be sure he was really his progeny.
"That would be the way to do it," Glen said, looking thoughtful again.
The Chalmers had known from the day after Alex's washing machine had sprung its little leak that their son was staying with her in the home of another patient. They knew the man's name and whatever Brent told them about him, but it had been apparent that Chase Harrington and his lifestyle were not known in the Chalmers' rural world.
They'd looked incredulous when Brent told them he'd gone through a McDonald's drive-through in the limousine that had dropped him and his suitcase at her office a half an hour ago. Now when the receptionist buzzed Alex and told her there was a man outside who needed to see Brent, they both started fussing with the children's clothes as if they were about to be presented to royalty.
They didn't get to meet Chase, though. The man who'd come to see Brent was a preppy-looking young man named Dave from a local car dealership who just needed to drop off the keys to the car he'd left in the parking lot.
"That car right there," he said, pointing through the slats of Alex's blinds to a brand-new black Mustang parked by a row of flowering hawthorn. "I was told to hand these to Brent Chalmers and to tell him to save his money for college."
"Who would…? Where did…? We can't accept that," Glen stuttered while Brent, dumbstruck, stared at the keys in his hand.
"You have to," Dave said, handing a packet of papers over to Brent. "Cash sale. Don't even know the name of the person who paid for it." He grinned at the kid grinning back at him. "Only name on it's yours."
Glen sputtered a little more as Dave walked out. Alex couldn't tell if the boy's father wanted to worry about why someone would bestow such an expensive gift, believe his son's good fortune or protect his own pride at not being able to produce the thing himself.
She couldn't quite tell what Brent was thinking, either. All he said was, "Man, I gotta call Chase."
But Chase told Brent he had no idea where the car came from.
Alex heard him herself because she put him on the speaker phone in her office so the Chalmers could hear the conversation, too. Chase did tell Brent, however, that it wasn't very often that something came without strings, so he might as well enjoy it. He then suggested that Brent be careful driving and asked him to give him a call when he came into town for his next appointment.
Neither Alex nor Brent bought Chase's denial. And because they didn't, neither did Brent's parents, but there was no way they could have their son decline the gift when the man wouldn't acknowledge that he'd given it—and the car was clearly, completely, Brent's. By the time they were off the phone and the Chalmers were trooping out of her office, Maryann was shaking her head and marveling at how something good had come from her son's awful accident, and Glen was telling Brent that the two of them could take a couple of the kids with them in the Mustang and Mom could follow in their crew-cab truck.
Alex didn't realize how wide her own smile had been until she felt it fade along with the voices in the hall. She couldn't believe what Chase had done. Not just with the car, expensive as it had to be. It was what he'd done to instill some confidence in the shy young teenager that impressed her. He'd obviously spent time talking with the boy, taken him under his wing, drawn him out. The gift of time he'd given could have more far-reaching effects than anything he could possibly have bought him. And that, as he'd told him about the car, had come with no strings, too.
"Dr. Larson. Your next patient is ready."
With an absent nod toward the nurse in the doorway, Alex closed Brent's file and set it in her out box.
Strings. Even faced with a revealing glimpse of Chase's kindness, she was being reminded of his basic opinion of human nature. He didn't like strings. Not in business and not in his personal life. He was only now getting his first taste of family ties and even there, even though he wanted a relationship with his brothers, he resisted getting tangled too much. He'd yet to meet Kelly or Ronni, or his nieces and nephews.
And he'd made it clear last night there were no strings between the two of them. He wanted her. Apparently, in his mind, that was all that mattered.
She left her office, mentally downshifting to focus on her next patient. B
ut even as she lifted the file from the box by the exam-room door, it wasn't her patient on her mind. It was the generosity of a man who kept insisting generosity didn't exist—and the nagging feeling that she was falling in love with him.
Had Chase been at the house that evening, Alex would have told him just how kind she thought he was for doing what he'd done—whether he wanted to admit having done it or not. But she didn't see him until she went to fish the newspaper from under a bush by the front door the next morning and ran into him as she walked back into the house.
She was studying the headlines, looking forward to actually sitting down with the paper and a cup of coffee, as she pushed the door open and stepped in.
Chase was on the other side, three feet from the four-foot-wide section of the double doors. The masterfully carved whitewashed wood collided with his shoulder, but it was putting his weight on his injured leg that had him hissing a breath an instant before he caught his balance with his crutches. Half a second later, he groaned.
"Oh, my … oh, Chase." The paper was at her feet, her hands clutching his stone-hard arms. "I had no idea you were there. Are you all right? Did you feel anything pop?"
Her glance worriedly scanned his face. She'd caught the quick flash of pain, the sudden paleness. Now she saw him tighten his jaw as he took a deep breath and opened his eyes to mutter something she was really glad Tyler couldn't hear from the family room.
"I thought you were leaving. I wanted to ask you something."
"I just went to get the paper," she explained, releasing one arm to look down at his leg. The response was automatic. Short of popping a pin, which would have had him writhing on the floor, just looking wouldn't tell her a blasted thing. "How does it feel?"
"It's fine."
"Come on, Chase. I saw—"
"It's fine," he insisted, sounding more determined now than anything else. "It hurt worse the other day when I bumped it in the shower."
DR. MOM AND THE MILLIONAIRE Page 17