Summer Reads Box Set, Books 4-6

by Freethy, Barbara

  Every minor annoyance in her life turned into a major problem.

  "What was the matter this time -- not enough caviar in the body wrap?" he asked.

  "The problem is you."

  Cole sighed. He'd heard that one before -- not just once, either. The comment was usually followed by, You don't spend enough time with me or I don't feel like we really know each other. To which he often felt like replying, Do we need to know each other? Can't we just have a good time together, a few laughs, a lot of sex, and leave it at that? Not that he would ever actually say that. He knew better than to wave a red flag in front of a bull or an irritated woman.

  Before Gisela could explain exactly why she was upset, there was a knock at his office door, and Josh Somerville entered the room. Josh had a typical California beachboy look: a wiry, lean physique perfect for riding a surfboard, skateboard or any other kind of board, sandy blond hair that was never combed, freckles that got worse in the summer and a wide grin on his perpetually cheerful face. Thank God for Josh. His radar was still working. Growing up next door to each other, Cole and Josh and Josh's twin brother Dylan had developed a system with girls. If one was in trouble, one of the others always came to the rescue.

  "Josh, you're right on time." Cole sent his friend a pointed glance.

  Josh darted a quick look at Gisela's stormy face. "I see that I am. Hi, Gertie, how are you?"

  Cole inwardly groaned. Gisela, once known as Gertrude Hamilstein, had changed her name to Gisela years ago, but Josh, a sports reporter for the Trib, had come across the info and couldn't resist goading her with her real name.

  "We're having a private conversation, if you don't mind," Gisela said.

  "I don't mind. Go right ahead." Josh sat down in the chair in front of Cole's desk and stretched out his legs. "What are we talking about?"

  "Love," she said.

  "My favorite topic."

  "I said love, not sex. You wouldn't know the difference."

  "Most men don't," Josh said with a laugh. "Don't you agree, Cole?"

  "Dammit," Cole said, distracted once again by the scene on one of the television monitors. "They just hit the embassy in Jordan." He picked up his phone and punched in the extension for the editor of the foreign affairs desk, his younger cousin Randy. Fortunately, Randy was still at his desk. "Is Hal in Jordan?"

  "He's on his way home," Randy answered. "His wife is about to go into labor."

  "Who else do we have over there?"

  "Anita is in Lebanon. I'm already on it."

  "Good." Cole hung up the phone to find Gisela shaking her head in disgust. "What?"

  "You're addicted," Gisela replied. "The news is a drug to you, and you can't get enough."

  "The news is my business, and this is a newspaper. We're supposed to report what's going on in the world."

  "How about what's going on in your own life? Aren't you interested in that?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  Josh cleared his throat. "I don't think you two need me for this. I'll come back later."

  "Oh, you can stay," Gisela said with a frustrated shake of her head. "I'm done. I'm leaving."

  "Okay. I'll see you later tonight," Cole said, as Gisela picked up her designer purse.

  She shook her head, an expression of amazement on her face. "I don't think so. Did you hear nothing of what I just said?"

  "Uh..." he said warily. What on earth had she been talking about?

  "Oh, my God," she said in exasperation. "You really don't listen. I'm breaking up with you. I never want to see you again. Is that clear? Or do you need a ton of bricks to hit you in the head?" To make her point, she picked up the heavy stapler on his desk and threw it at him on her way out the door.

  Cole ducked, but not fast enough. The stapler caught the side of his head and the next thing he saw was a burst of stars that went along with an explosion of pain in his forehead. He put his fingers to his face and they came away bloody. "What the hell?"

  He was barely aware of the flurry of activity that followed. Someone gave him a towel. Josh helped him into the elevator and down to the parking garage, where he put him in his car and drove to the nearest hospital. Apparently, the emergency department of St. Timothy's wasn't as impressed by the gash in his head as his coworkers had been, because they handed him an ice pack and told him to take a seat in a waiting room that was overflowing with a mix of people, many of whom didn't appear to be speaking English.

  "This could take hours," Cole muttered. "We should forget it."

  "We can't forget it. You probably need stitches." Josh sat down in the chair next to him. "You really know how to piss off a woman, I'll say that for you. How's your head?"

  "It hurts like hell." The throbbing pain made it difficult for him to speak.

  "Next time you break up with a woman, make sure there aren't any heavy objects lying around."

  "I didn't know we were breaking up."

  "Apparently that was the problem," Josh said with a grin.

  Cole moved his head, then groaned at the pain that shot through his temple. "Dammit. This is the last thing I needed today. I've got to get out of here. I have things to do."

  "What things? It's Friday night."

  "The news doesn't stop just because it's the weekend. In case you haven't noticed, the world has gone crazy in the last few months."

  Josh leaned forward. "In case you haven't noticed, your world is going crazy."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means you should start paying attention to problems closer to home, like your girlfriend. You can probably get Gisela back if you call her tonight."

  "Why would I want to do that? She almost killed me."

  "If you'd moved faster, she wouldn't have hit you. You've gotten slow, Parish."

  "I have not gotten slow." Even though his job kept him at his desk for long hours at a time, he worked out every day. "Frankly, I think I've had enough of Gisela anyway. What is with that baby-girl voice she uses? It makes me want to rip my hair out."

  "Thank God she finally got to you. She's been driving me crazy for weeks. She was hot, though."

  "Cole Parish?" a nurse asked, interrupting them. "Come with me."

  Cole got to his feet. "You can wait here, if you want," he said to Josh.

  "I'll stick with you. It's a zoo out here," Josh replied as a group of drag queens came into the waiting room.

  They followed the nurse down the hall and into a room with three beds, each separated by a thin curtain. An elderly man lay in one bed. The other was empty. "A doctor will be in shortly," the nurse said. She had barely left the room when they heard a commotion in the hallway.

  A flurry of people in scrubs dashed past the door, shouting out various medical terms as they pushed a gurney down the hall. Cole's reporter instincts kicked in despite the pain in his head. He craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

  "I'll check it out," Josh said.

  Cole frowned as his friend rushed out of the room, irritated that he was sidelined while someone else caught the action. He sat down on the bed, holding the ice pack to his head, and wished for a television set. If they were going to make people wait this long, at least they could offer an all-news channel to take their minds off their pain.

  Josh walked back into the room a few minutes later. "Gunshot victim," he said. "Convenience store robbery in the Mission district. The owner shot the robber, a seventeen-year-old kid."

  "Will he make it?"

  "They took him to surgery."

  "I should call Blake," Cole said, referring to the assistant editor who ran the city desk on Friday nights.

  "I'm sure he's already heard about it."

  "Where's my phone?"

  "Who knows? Relax, dude. You might have a concussion."

  "I don't have a concussion, and I don't want the Trib to miss the story. We have a lot of competition these days with blogs and online news outlets."

  "We can handle the competition." Josh s
at down in the chair next to the bed. "Besides, you have a lot of people working for you. Let them do their jobs." Josh leaned back and toyed with a piece of tubing hanging from some sort of a machine. "What do you think this is?"

  "I have no idea. Where is the damn doctor anyway? I could have bled to death by now."

  "Death by Stapler," Josh said with a laugh. "There's a headline for you. Or how about Psycho Supermodel Snaps?"

  Cole groaned. "Not funny."

  "It is kind of funny."

  Josh was right. His personal life was now officially a joke. Gisela's parting shot had definitely gotten his attention. Maybe he did need to focus on something or someone besides the news. But not Gisela. That was over. He'd known it for a while. He'd just been too busy to end it. Now that she'd done it, he felt more relieved than anything else.

  Cole looked up as a woman entered the room.

  "Good evening, Mr.— " She stopped abruptly, looking up from the chart with wide, shockingly familiar eyes. "Cole?"

  Natalie?

  His heart thudded against his chest. It couldn't be Natalie. Not now, not after all these years. Not here, not in his city.

  She moved farther into the room, slow, small steps, as if she wasn't quite sure she wanted to come closer. Her hair, a beautiful dark red, was pulled back in a clip, showing off the perfect oval of her face. Her eyes were a brilliant blue, her lips as soft and full as he remembered, but it was the tiny freckle at the corner of her mouth that made him suck in his breath. He'd kissed that freckle. He'd kissed that mouth. God! Natalie Bishop. The only woman he'd ever... No, he couldn't think it, much less say it.

  It should have been easy to see her. It had been ten years, but it seemed like ten minutes.

  She was older now, a woman—not a girl. There were tiny lines by her eyes and around her mouth. She'd filled out, grown up, and she'd come back. He wasn't ready to see her again. She didn't look ready to see him, either.

  Cole suddenly became aware of the white coat she was wearing, the stethoscope around her neck, the chart in her hands. She was a doctor. She was his doctor!

  "Well, isn't this quite the reunion?" Josh murmured, breaking the silence between them. "Remember me?"

  Natalie looked at Josh blankly for a second; then recognition kicked in. "Of course. You're Josh, Dylan's twin brother and Cole's next-door neighbor."

  "Good memory."

  Natalie turned her attention back to Cole. "Did you come to see me about the book? Is it really about Emily?" Her gaze moved to his head. "Oh, you're hurt. You have a laceration. That's why you're here. Of course that's why you're here," she added with a shake of her head. "What am I thinking?"

  "What book? What are you talking about?"

  Her mouth opened, then closed. "Nothing. Are you in pain?"

  "I've had better days. Are you really a doctor?"

  "Yes, I am. What happened?" She held his chart in front of her like a protective shield.

  "I got hit by a flying object," he said, preferring not to go into the details.

  "His girlfriend threw a stapler at his head," Josh interjected helpfully. "She was trying to get his attention."

  "Did it work?" Natalie asked briskly, her demeanor changing at the mention of a girlfriend. Or maybe she was just coming to grips with the fact that they were in the same room. Whatever the reason, she now had on her game face.

  "I'm definitely switching to paper clips," Cole replied.

  She stared at him for a long moment. He wondered what she was seeing, what she was thinking. Not that he cared. Why would he care what she thought of him? He knew what he thought of her. And it wasn't good.

  "You may need stitches," she said.

  He wondered how she knew that when she hadn't looked at the wound. In fact, she'd stopped a good three feet away and couldn't seem to make herself come any closer. "How long have you worked here?"

  "A few years."

  "A few years?" he echoed. She'd been in San Francisco a few years, working at a hospital a couple of blocks from the newspaper?

  "St. Timothy's is an excellent hospital. They offered me a terrific opportunity, better than I could find anywhere else. That's why I came to San Francisco," she said in a defensive rush. "It had nothing to do with you. I'm going to get some sutures. I'll be back."

  Josh let out a low whistle as Natalie left the room. "I didn't see that one coming."

  "I didn't either," Cole murmured. It must be his night for getting blindsided by women.

  "She looks good."

  "I didn't notice."

  "Yeah, tell that to someone who doesn't remember how crazy you were about her."

  "I can't believe she's been in San Francisco for years. Why would she come here after everything that happened with Emily and with me?"

  "She always loved the cable cars."

  Cole's chest tightened. Natalie had loved the cable cars and the sailboats down at the marina, the fresh crab on Fisherman's Wharf, the long walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. At one time, he'd thought she'd fallen in love with the city as much as with him. Hell, maybe it had always been the city and never him. Not that he cared anymore. She was old news. Nothing was worse than old news.

  "What was that book she was talking about?" Josh asked.

  "I have no idea." It occurred to him that it was the second time that day someone had mentioned something about a book.

  Silence fell between them as several long minutes passed. It was too quiet. Cole didn't like it. "Do you think she's coming back?"

  Chapter Two

  Natalie could not go back in there. She could not stitch up Cole's head and act like there was nothing between them. Like they'd never been friends, never kissed, never made love...

  She leaned against the wall and tried to breathe. She hadn't felt this unsettled since she'd seen her first dead body. She was a twenty-nine-year-old doctor, not a foolish nineteen-year-old girl with a mad crush on the most attractive man she had ever seen. She wasn't naive anymore. She wasn't reckless. She wasn't stupid. Was she?

  No. She couldn't go back there -- not to his room, not to the past. She had her life together now, and she'd worked damn hard to get it that way. Cole Parish was no longer part of that life. That's the way he'd wanted it then and the way she wanted it now.

  Why was it all happening tonight? First that author on television talking about a story that sounded a lot like Emily's, and now Cole. Was there a full moon? For three years she'd lived and worked in San Francisco, and he had never crossed her path. She'd almost forgotten about him, or pretended to forget about him, which wasn't easy considering he ran the biggest newspaper in town. And today he was here in the flesh, all six feet two inches of him.

  He was bigger than she remembered, a full-grown man with strong shoulders, muscular arms, and long, lean legs. But some things hadn't changed. His hair was still a rich, deep brown, and his eyes were as dark and unreadable as ever. In the past those eyes had accused her of terrible things. And his voice... his low baritone voice had once told her he loved her, then later told her he never wanted to see her again.

  She'd loved Cole more than she'd loved anyone in her life, and he'd hurt her. Even now she could feel the deep ache in her heart that had once been a blistering, unbearable pain. She didn't think she could go through that pain again. Nor did she think she could go back into the examining room.

  "Steve," she said abruptly, as a second-year resident walked by, "there's a head laceration in room two that needs stitches. Can you take it for me? I've got a phone call."

  "Sure. I'll be right there."

  Natalie nodded and walked quickly down the hall. She was a coward. There was no doubt about that. It was better this way. Cole could get treatment for his injury, and she could take care of people she didn't know. People who hadn't broken her heart.

  * * *

  Cole stared at the young man preparing to stitch him up. "Where's Natalie?"

  "Dr. Bishop? She had to take a phone call. I'm Dr. Fisher. I'll take care
of this for you."

  The doctor might believe that Natalie had a phone call, but Cole didn't.

  "Could you hold still, please?" the doctor asked.

  It took all of Cole's willpower to do just that. His mind was running in a dozen different directions, and they all led back to Natalie. She was living and working in San Francisco. They could have run into each other at any time. Maybe they'd even seen each other in a crowd or almost bumped into each other at the grocery store or the movies.

  Why had she come to San Francisco to work? She could have gone anywhere. St. Timothy's was a good hospital, but there were good hospitals across the state—across the country, for that matter. Had she had another reason for wanting to take up residence in his city? Because there was no doubt that San Francisco was his town. His family ran the major newspaper. They were in the middle of things; they always had been. Natalie knew that. She'd spent holidays and weekends with his family. She would have had to know there was a possibility she'd run into him. Maybe that's what she'd wanted... to see him again.

  He shoved the thought away. He didn't care what she wanted. She was no longer in his life. She hadn't been for a long time. In a few minutes he would be on his way, and with any luck they wouldn't meet again for another ten years.

  Dr. Fisher finished his stitching, handed Cole a prescription for a painkiller, and discharged him.

  Cole got to his feet, feeling off balance. He suspected that had more to do with Natalie than with the gash in his head. When they reached the hall, he paused, unable to stop himself from looking around. There were a number of people in scrubs and white coats rushing around, but none of them had red hair. Or blue eyes. Or a mouth he could almost still taste...

  "Do you want to talk to her before we go?" Josh asked.

  "No, I don't want to talk to her. Why would I want to talk to her? She is the last person I want to talk to," he added, finally cutting himself off. Judging by Josh's amused expression, he was making a fool of himself.