Disappointment spiraled through Violet. “Is that why you’re here?” Because her sibs thought she was making a huge mistake, too?
“Depends,” Rose said cautiously, her sisterly concern evident. “Are you and Gavin an item?”
Were they a couple?
Violet was trying to figure out how to answer that when the front door opened and closed again.
Gavin walked in, looking hunky and handsome in hospital scrubs. He nodded at her sisters politely, then looked at Violet in concern. “Are you okay? Bridgette said you were supposed to come in this morning to feed Ava and you never showed.”
Maybe she didn’t have the mothering gene, after all. “I overslept,” Violet admitted guiltily. The look in his eyes said he knew why. “Is everything okay with her?” she asked, suddenly anxious.
He nodded, his gaze lingering on her in a way that said she had nothing to feel bad about. “I checked on her a couple of times during the night and managed to get in a cuddle or two, and again before I left. Although I have to tell you, I pretty much had to stand in line. Little Ava’s quite the darling of the nursery. All the nurses, including my sister Bridgette, are totally in love with her.”
Violet understood why. The infant had suffered such a tragic loss, it was impossible not to feel for her and her late mother. Impossible not to want to snuggle her endlessly. “How is she doing otherwise?”
“Great. She’s gained another half ounce since yesterday.”
Unable to help but feel as though she was missing out, Violet glanced at the clock. “When’s her next feeding?”
“Nurses said one o’clock or thereabouts. They’re still having to wake her up instead of the other way around, but they said it won’t be long before she starts clamoring for her bottle at feeding time. And then, watch out.” He smiled affectionately.
For someone who had no plans to permanently care for little Ava, he certainly was emotionally involved. As was she.
Violet pushed the pang of worry aside.
Gavin looked at the plethora of baby things and the posse of McCabe females.
“Poppy, Rose, Lily...” He offered belated individual greetings to their guests with a tip of an imaginary hat. “I assume you’re responsible for all the baby paraphernalia?”
Her sisters nodded proudly in unison.
Then Poppy gestured at Violet. “And we assume you are responsible for the new spring in our sister’s step.”
Violet choked. “Poppy!”
Gavin hooked an arm around her waist and tugged her against him. Kissing her temple, he grinned with masculine satisfaction. “You bet I’ll take credit for that.”
* * *
“WHY DID YOU imply we had something going on?” Violet demanded the moment her sisters had all left.
“Because we do.” His eyes darkened as he took her in his arms. “I’m not going to hide how I feel about you, Violet.”
She splayed her hands across his chest to prevent him from really kissing her this time. “And how exactly is that?”
Was he saying he wanted to start a relationship with her that went beyond their co-guardianship of Ava? And if so, how did she feel about that?
To her surprise, she felt none of the guilt she had always expected to experience when she became involved with someone other than her late fiancé.
She did feel fear, however. She didn’t want to open up her heart only to be hurt all over again. And her family was right about one thing: this was definitely the kind of complex, emotional situation that could lead to just that.
The usually cynical Gavin, on the other hand, seemed to feel no trepidation. Hauling her closer, he tipped her head up. “I’m not sure I can find the words that accurately describe how I feel.”
“Try.”
“Okay. I’m interested in you.” He smiled. “Very interested.” Another kiss. “I want to keep on seeing you until we see where this takes us.”
In an effort to inject some levity into the situation, Violet quipped, “Heartbreak City?”
He took both her hands in his. “Now who’s not being honest?” he chided, practical as ever.
Violet tamped down the fantasies their two lovemaking sessions had inspired. She eased away and began stacking the baby things into a neat pile against the wall. “My parents said the joint responsibility for Ava would bring us together in ways that could be very short-lived.”
And when they’d been saying it to her, she hadn’t wanted to believe it. But now? Now she knew if she were smart she would not allow herself to go there. Because this all felt a little too real.
He helped her tidy up. “Then I say enjoy it while it lasts. Although for the record—” he caught her wrist and tugged her temptingly close once again “—I don’t think what I’m feeling for you is a fleeting attraction.” Framing her face with his hands, he lowered his head until they were nose to nose. “I think it’s been simmering for a very long time.” He shifted so they were lip to lip. The closeness turned into a scorching, sensual kiss that rocked her to the core.
“Put on the back burner because of your grief over your loss,” he said, kissing her again, even more ardently this time.
Finally, he lifted his head. “The fact you had some stuff to work through...”
And now that she had...
It was time to think about the future.
What she wanted, needed, had to have.
Violet took a bracing breath. For all their sakes—especially Ava’s—she had to put her usual idealistic notions aside and be realistic here. “You can understand if I think you’re a bad risk, then, for anything long-term or really meaningful, too. Given your own inability to forge a lasting relationship with any woman since your engagement to Penelope ended?”
* * *
GAVIN SHOULD HAVE KNOWN Violet would bring this up again at some point. He knew he had a reputation among the local ladies. “I’m not as much of a love-’em-and-leave-’em guy as the rumors would suggest,” he said drily.
Beginning to drag from the night spent on duty, he went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.
“But you have had several casual dating relationships in the past four years that ultimately crashed and burned.”
“Three. But who’s counting?”
“Any particular reason why?”
He could see she was looking for any excuse not to put her heart on the line again. Yet, for practical reasons, he couldn’t sugarcoat his own deficiencies. “Sheryl—the physical therapist—thought I was too much of an enigma for my own good.”
Her elegant brows knit together. She was wearing the denim dress and boots she’d had on the day before. He wasn’t sure if he preferred her in that—undoing all those buttons had been fun—or in nothing but one of his shirts.
The truth was, he liked her in anything or nothing at all. Just so long as she was here.
Violet gave him a curious look. “Did you want to be a mystery?”
He sat and pulled her onto his lap. “No. I just don’t like sitting around dissecting everything to the nth degree.”
His not-too-subtle hint fell on deaf ears.
“What happened with Helen Shinsky?”
So she had kept up on his love life. Even though that particular part of it had occurred mostly in Kerrville, Texas, where the ER physician had worked. Trying not to feel too flattered, he revealed, “She didn’t see me having what it took to ever settle down. So she ended it. Last I heard, she’d found The One and was happily married.”
“And Norah?” Violet persisted.
The wedding planner. “She wanted a soul mate. I wasn’t it.”
“So the common theme in all the breakups was...?”
“They could get only ‘so close to me’ and no closer.”
Which was, he tho
ught, a shame to find they’d all felt that way. All three of the women had had everything he’d been looking for, at least from a subjective angle. Plus, at least he’d been satisfied with the way things had been. It had sucked to find out they hadn’t been.
“Were you trying to keep them at arm’s length?”
“No.”
“Then how come they all felt excluded or shut out in some way?”
Hell if he knew. He’d tried to be forthcoming. Kind. Responsible. He exhaled, aware this was why he sometimes felt so cynical. “I think the common theme was that I didn’t have a romantic bone in my body. Or in other words, I was practical to a fault.”
Violet did not look surprised. He studied her expression, in tune enough with her emotions to see that an enormous red flag had been thrown up. And that did bother him, a lot. “Why do my past failures worry you so much?”
She eased off his lap and walked over to examine the gifts her sisters had brought in. Her gaze averted, she pulled out a stack of white, yellow and blue onesies, and started to sort and fold them all by color. “I just think I ought to know what to expect before I become just another on the string of broken hearts left in your wake.”
This was usually the place where he became really frustrated and called a halt to the conversation, the woman and the relationship.
But not this time.
He didn’t want to lose whatever this was that he had with Violet the same way. So if that meant opening up, a little bit, so be it. He walked over to where she was standing, took her hand in his and turned it palm up.
“It’s not that I don’t want to have the kind of deep, loving marriage that my parents had. Or my sister Erin has with her second husband, Mac Wheeler. It’s just that I don’t seem to have a talent for becoming really close to people, the way you obviously do.” He sighed. “I mean, I’ve got a lot of casual friends I care about, who also care about me. Family...”
“But no one you could really bare your soul to.”
He traced her lifeline with his index finger, admitting, “Not since...”
“Your parents died in that car accident the year we both started med school,” she finished when he found himself unable to go on.
Her intuitiveness rendered him speechless. She put the baby clothing aside and shifted closer. She laced her slender fingers through his consolingly. “I remember how traumatic that was for your entire family.”
Even though, he recalled, she’d been living in Houston at the time and he’d been in Galveston.
Ignoring the lump in his throat, he nodded, acknowledging that it had been one of the roughest times the Monroe clan had ever had. It was also the first time he’d let those closest to him down. But, sadly, not the last.
“I remember Erin had three little kids of her own. And a geologist husband who was almost never around.”
Gavin exhaled, reflecting, too, on his sister’s grit. “Yet Erin insisted I stay in med school while she remained in Laramie, taking care of our three younger siblings, the ranch and the Western wear store in town.”
“You felt guilty?”
He closed his eyes against the crushing weight of it. “And grief-stricken.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“As if you were still functioning yet strangely detached?”
“Yeah, that, too.”
A commiserating silence fell. “I felt numb after Sterling died, too.”
Strange, that even then they’d been on parallel tracks, he thought. “How long did yours last?”
“Until just recently,” Violet admitted softly.
Again, it had been the same for him.
He’d sort of sleepwalked through his previous relationships, including his engagement to Penelope. Only in the past few weeks had he begun to think that maybe he could have more than work and fun, extended family, friends.
He stared down at her, admiring her grit. “You always seemed so strong.”
“Because I had a mission.”
Given to her by the death of her fiancé. “Becoming an oncologist.”
“The harder I worked, the better I felt,” she admitted with customary idealism.
“Same here. Although when it came to my family, I always wished I could have done more.”
Encouraged to go on by the understanding reflected in her gaze, he explained, “Which is why I elected to come back to Laramie for my residency. So I could be close enough to help out more. Although, once Erin married Mac and my sibs all left for college, I wasn’t nearly as needed.”
“So you moved into your own place and started dating.”
He grimaced. “Badly, according to my reviews.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. That’s more than I did. I’ve yet to actually go out on a date with anyone since Sterling died.”
“But you’re thinking about it.”
“In the abstract maybe.” Violet raked her teeth across her lower lip. “But the real question is...where do you and I go from here?”
Although not normally one to put a label on things, Gavin saw the rationale for spelling things out in this circumstance. Especially if it made Violet feel better. “We’re co-guardians—temporarily,” he said.
“Check.”
“Friends.”
“Also check!” she affirmed with a smile.
He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into the silky-soft center of her palm. “Lovers.”
There was the briefest hesitation in her eyes. A catch in her breath. “As in...exclusive?”
Wanting absolutely no doubt about that, he brought her all the way against him. “You’re damn right we’re exclusive.”
She moved out of the circle of his arms and stood. “That sounds good to me. As long as you understand that the ‘living together’ part is only for as long as we have Ava. As soon as she’s placed with her adoptive family, you and I will go back to our separate spaces.”
“But still remain lovers and friends.” He wanted to go on the record about that, too.
She nodded. “At least until I leave for a new job and the next chapter of my life, anyway.”
Then, he could see she was thinking, they would have to see. Luckily, he had plenty of time to convince her otherwise.
* * *
THE DOORBELL RANG just as Gavin was about to hit the sack and Violet was readying to go to the hospital to see Ava. She turned to him. “Expecting someone?”
He shook his head.
But then, she thought as he opened the door, they hadn’t been expecting her sisters to pay them a visit earlier that day, either.
Gavin stared at his little brother in shock. “What are you doing here?” His brow furrowed. “Why aren’t you at school?”
Nicholas shrugged as he stepped inside. “I dropped out.”
Gavin glared. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
He wasn’t.
Thinking the two men might need a peacekeeper, Violet stayed where she was.
“The accident made me see I’m wasting my time going to college,” Nicholas told his brother. “So I talked to the dean. I told him that for financial reasons related to the wreck I had to withdraw and needed at least a partial refund on my tuition and room and board for this semester. And I got it.”
Gavin’s scowl deepened. “They let you quit, just like that?”
Nicholas flushed. “Well, the dean said I couldn’t come back unless I reapplied and was admitted to the university again, and that because of my doing this, the odds would be stacked against me. But that’s okay, because I don’t really want to go back.”
Gavin looked at Nicholas as though he couldn’t believe how lame his brother was being. He looked at Violet. “Help me out here. Explain to him why you never, ever, make important life decisions in the wake of a traumatic
accident. And why it was even more stupid of him to drop out of school on a whim.”
I am not the person you should be asking this.
Nicholas squinted at Violet, seeming to remember what Gavin clearly did not. “Didn’t you drop out of med school or something at one point?”
Violet kept her expression inscrutable. “When my fiancé was diagnosed with cancer. Yes, I did.”
Nicholas brightened, apparently thinking he’d found a kindred soul. “Do you regret it?”
“No, but...” Violet felt as though she was walking the plank here. “Our situations were different.”
“And maybe they weren’t,” Nicholas said with a “So there!” look aimed at Gavin.
Gavin’s expression looked as if it had been carved in granite. Apparently irritated she’d been no help, he turned back to his brother, demanded impatiently, “So what’s the plan?”
Nicholas straightened. “I’ve already invested all the money I got back in the stock market.”
Gavin groaned.
“Now all I have to do is go back to living at the ranch, with Mac and Erin and the kids, and working at the store, until the profits start rolling in.”
Gavin’s gaze narrowed all the more. “What did Erin say about this?”
Nicholas hesitated. “I thought they’d support my plan, since both Mac and Erin are really savvy business people, but they don’t, so...I was hoping maybe you’d talk to them on my behalf, get them to stop being so disappointed in me.”
Gavin shook his head. “Sorry, bud. I agree with them.”
“I should have figured as much,” Nicholas muttered. “Thanks for nothing.” He spun around and headed out the door.
An uncomfortable silence fell.
Violet released the breath she’d been holding. “You were a little hard on him, don’t you think?”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat the situation. He’s making a huge mistake.”
And so are you. “Yes, but it’s done now,” she said evenly.
Gavin took off his scrub shirt and the T-shirt under it in one fell swoop. “All the more reason my little brother needs to keep thinking about it, until he realizes the enormity of what he’s done.” He stalked toward the bedroom.
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