Following Doctor's Orders

by Caro Carson

  “I didn’t mean to make you sad.” Zach sounded sad himself, as sad as she’d ever heard him. He went to one knee beside the chair, but he sucked in a little breath and grimaced as he put his hand to his side.

  Ribs. Only ribs caused a patient to do that move. “You need an X-ray.” The words were automatic. The first step on the checklist was obvious.

  “Nah, I’m fine. I’ve had broken ribs before. It’s nothing like that.”

  She stared him down.

  “You’re going to make me get an X-ray before I go, aren’t you?”

  She nodded in silence.

  Her moment of irrational fear was up. She was ready to talk now, ready to be sane.

  “Do you know why I don’t want to have a child?” she asked quietly.

  “Memories of your sister make it too painful for you. I never asked, but were you in the car with her when it happened?”

  “No, it wasn’t that kind of car accident. She’d wandered away from us in a parking lot. A car hit her. I saw it happen. I couldn’t keep her safe.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know, and thank you for that. But all that is in the past now. I’m talking about now. I’m talking about the future.”

  “Good.”

  “Have you ever heard that having a child is like having your heart walk around outside your body? I see the parents in here. They might as well be the ones who are hurt or sick, because they hurt that badly for their children. Love makes you vulnerable, terribly vulnerable, and if there is anything my past has taught me, it’s that I can’t risk being that vulnerable again.”

  The nurse interrupted them, her cheerful voice calling from the other side of the curtain. “Is it okay if I come in?”

  “Nope,” Zach replied, sounding shockingly carefree. “I’m dressing. Give me a few minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  The curtain length was hemmed to be more than a foot off the tile floor. Brooke watched the nurse’s white-clogged feet walk away.

  “Go on.” Zach took her hand as he stayed kneeling.

  “That’s really all there is to it. It’s not that I wouldn’t love a child. It’s that I couldn’t guarantee his or her safety, so I won’t risk it. And Zach—I don’t want to risk loving you, either.”

  “I understand.” So much sadness in that cowboy voice.

  “But I don’t have much choice in the matter. I love you already.”

  He jerked a little at her words. “You realize that?”

  “Yes, I’ve known it for a while now. But—wait, do you mean you’d already decided I loved you?”

  “I was right.”

  “You’re really too confident, you know that?”

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  She broke it off. “But ‘I love you’ isn’t what I’m trying to explain. You brought up some good points last night on the sidewalk. You said you wanted someone who wasn’t afraid to be happy. I have to tell you, I’m scared to death. I’m in love with a man who could be taken from me in the blink of an eye—if not hit by a car, then bashed into a cliff. No matter how hard I try, I can’t keep you safe. You have my heart, and you’re walking around with it in all kinds of dangerous situations.”

  He used his good hand on the arm of her chair to leverage himself to his feet. She stood, too.

  He was more than just alive. He was larger than life as he stood over her, half bare-chested in the remains of a flight suit. He looked at her, almost right through her, and started shaking his head. Being Zach, he started to grin. “You’re forgetting something important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m no child. You aren’t responsible for my safety. I’m all grown up, and I grew up to be a pretty good size. If your heart’s in here, it’s got a lot of protection.” He punched his bare pectoral muscle lightly with his fist.

  That confidence, that cocky attitude, was too appealing. She didn’t want to throw reason to the wind and give in to the seduction of a powerful man.

  “Your career isn’t exactly safe. Didn’t I just stitch up your arm? When you aren’t hanging from a helicopter, you’re a firefighter. You run into burning buildings.”

  “In a fire suit. With tanks of air and a GPS locator and a team of trained firefighters backing me up. I train hard for a reason, and it’s not just to look good for women, darlin’. I’m glad you enjoy this body, but it isn’t just for fun. All those push-ups and pull-ups weren’t to win a tower race. I’m in shape because that keeps me safe when I’m hanging on to a cable to grab a guy off a cliff. I’m strong so that I only cut my arm instead of plunging to my death.”

  Oh, the way her heart plunged when he said my death.

  “Don’t say that.” She took a step away, ready to yank those curtains aside and leave, but Zach stopped her with a firm grip on her arm. She jerked her arm free before she realized he’d used his injured arm to stop her. His grip had felt strong.

  “How deep was that gash?” he asked.

  “Deep enough for stitches.” She tucked her hands in the pockets of her white coat.

  “Be straight with me.”

  “It wasn’t as deep as it looked at first, but it truly needed stitches.”

  He flexed the biceps of his bare arm briefly. “See? It’ll take more than a piece of rock to penetrate these iron pythons.”

  “Don’t joke about it.” She was mad at him for laughing. So very mad. But medically, he had a point. It was harder for an object to penetrate dense musculature.

  He could read her too easily. He got serious again to press his advantage. “When I’m on the job, it’s no different than when you get in your car. You drive a well-built vehicle. You wear a seat belt. You obey the traffic laws. You do everything you can to protect yourself during a potentially dangerous activity. It’s not like you stand on the car’s hood and try to surf the wrong way down a street.”

  “Even if I do everything right, I could still be in a car accident.”

  “You could, but not without a seat belt and airbags and everything that would help your odds. You can’t promise me that nothing bad will ever happen to you. But I love you, anyway. There’s no other option for me, so despite the worry, I’m going to enjoy every minute with you.”

  “It would kill me if something bad happened to you.”

  “But it’s unlikely that it will. I promise you, I will never do anything deliberately to cause you pain, and that includes taking unnecessary risks at work. Take a chance on me, Brooke. See what it’s like to love someone who isn’t so fragile.”

  She was going to cry. Hope was pounding so hard inside her chest, she could feel tears fighting to well up, strong emotions that needed an outlet. She’d spent so many long years suppressing them, though, that she wasn’t sure how tears would feel. She dashed the back of her hand against the corner of her eye. It was dry.

  Zach bent and kissed the corner of her eye, anyway, as if she had a tear there that needed to be taken away.

  “I already love you,” she whispered. “That’s what’s so scary.”

  “Yeah, but Brooklyn Brown doesn’t scare easy. We’re going to grab that happiness, and no one’s going to take it away from us. Stay with me, and be happy.”

  “Oh, Zach.”

  He smiled as if she’d said much more than that, and kissed her until real tears of hope ran down cheeks that had been dry for far too long.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The bathroom at his cabin really was too small. A man couldn’t step out of the shower without being confronted by his own naked image in the mirror. Zach stood there, nude, and had to admit he looked pretty damned bad. No wonder Brooke had grounded him. He was black and blue down his entire left side. It looked worse today than it had in the three days since the wind had decided to remind them
all who was boss.

  He started to towel off in his usual brisk way, but his ribs objected within seconds. And his thigh. His upper arm. He ended up dabbing himself dry as gingerly as a pinup girl with a powder puff. Then he pitched his towel with all the force of his throwing arm into the laundry basket with perfect accuracy.

  Of course, when the basket was only two feet away, it wasn’t much of a win.

  The bathroom renovation idea that he’d started mulling over was rapidly becoming a real project in his mind. He’d rather wait until he and Brooke were married, so they could plan it together, turning his bachelor space into a home for man and wife.

  That could be a while, though. She needed time to get used to the idea that his career included all kinds of safeguards, and he was considerably heartier than a child. Confidence would come with time, reinforced with every shift where he returned home healthy.

  He had the time off now. Even without being married, he could get the project going and ask Brooke’s opinion on everything. They could spend their days off looking at faucets and tile and all that other stuff. Maybe it would even help her see that he wasn’t as much of an adrenaline junkie as she seemed to think he was. He’d enjoy the challenge of laying tile as much as he would bungee-jumping.

  Then, when they married—because he was going to ask her someday, and she was going to say yes—the new bathroom would be a wedding gift.

  Besides, she’d grounded him for four more days, and he was bored as hell.

  He dressed one-handed, gritting his teeth as he pulled on jeans over his bruised hip. A T-shirt was easier to manage than a button-down. Then he struggled into the sling he had to admit was helpful in preventing him from mindlessly grabbing things with his injured arm. It was a lot easier to dress with Brooke’s help, but she was already at the hospital this morning and wouldn’t get home from work until eight at night, if she made it out of there on time.

  Even with a bum arm, he’d be able to get a lot done by then. He’d have no interruptions for the planning phase. With pencil, notepad, and measuring tape in hand, he started to sketch the existing floor plan, but ten minutes into it, someone knocked on his front door.

  So much for no interruptions.

  With his arm in a sling, he had to set his notepad down and stick the pencil in his teeth in order to open the door with his one good hand.

  The woman on his porch was a knockout, petite and platinum blonde, an angel dressed in a white halter dress.

  “Don’t you remember me?” Charisse Johnson clasped her perfect hands together under her perfect breasts. As she gazed up at him as if he were some kind of demigod, a tear dropped from her lashes and rolled down her cheek. “Oh, Zach!”

  The pencil clattered to the floor.

  * * *

  “And so I just had to come and see you. My yoga instructor said the most beautiful thing during savasana. Love cannot be destroyed.”

  Zach leaned against his kitchen counter, watching Charisse as she helped herself to his home, refilling the water glass she’d asked for, part of the long time no see, what did you do to your arm, aren’t you going to ask me in routine. It was bizarrely fascinating, like watching a creature from another world, a unicorn in his kitchen.

  “He explained it like this. Love is like water. It can be deep and stay in one place, all for one person, or it can flow, trickling out to touch lots and lots of people.” Charisse made little rippling motions with her delicate fingers, the ones that had caressed him before sliding a gold band on another man’s hand. “But no matter what shape it takes, it cannot be destroyed.”

  “I take it you’re more into the trickling.”

  She nodded earnestly. “I try to fill my world with love, and leave love everywhere I’ve been.”

  There was no way she’d missed his sarcasm. During their whirlwind romance, he’d always thought she was intelligent, just not academically inclined. This delightfully dim-witted chatter was just an act. He had no patience for it.

  “It’s time to get to the point, Charisse.”

  “The point? It’s all about love. That’s the only thing that matters.” She walked toward him, right up to him, getting in his personal space. She traced the strap of his sling with one finger. “Look at you, getting hurt in the line of duty, all to save someone you didn’t even know. That’s a form of love, too. Agape. Oh, Zach, you have so much love in you. Surely there’s still some for me?”

  “No.” He stopped her finger and pushed her hand away.

  She tossed her platinum hair back and bit her lower lip with her perfect, white teeth. “Not even a little bit?”

  “No.” It was true. So bone-deep true. He’d once loved her, or the idea of her, absolutely. She’d thrown that love away so hard, it had been obliterated. If he put it in the terms of her stupid water analogy, that love had exploded into a spray of water droplets so tiny, they’d evaporated into the atmosphere.

  He’d known this for a long time. It wasn’t a revelation that he had no lingering feelings left for Charisse. If this visit was teaching him anything, it was that maybe he could forgive his younger self for being so taken by her. She was every bit as pretty and vivacious as he remembered. He could cut himself a break for having been so blinded back then, instead of hating himself for having been a sucker.

  Blonde bombshell or not, if he’d met her for the first time today, the man he was now wouldn’t waste more than a smile on Charisse Johnson. She was all surface, no depth.

  He looked for more in women since his brush with Charisse, and he’d found it all in Brooke. Pretty had been upgraded to sensational. A woman who was vivacious when ordering drinks at a bar had been replaced by a woman whose vitality energized an emergency department. Giddiness couldn’t compete with substance, not that Brooke was always serious. He could recall her applauding in the middle of a bunch of whooping firefighters at the races. That had been truly charming. Even when it came to cheerleading, Charisse wasn’t as cute as Brooke.

  But she was trying. “No? I don’t believe you. Mary Beth saw you on my wedding day. You remember Mary Beth? She was on the island that week, too. All my bridesmaids were. It was the bachelorette party.”

  “I figured that out.”

  “They were true friends that week. I almost married you, but they sat me down and gave me a reality check that morning. But the morning of my wedding, my real wedding, Mary Beth said she’d never seen a man look the way you looked. She said you were standing under an old southern oak tree, and you didn’t take your eyes off me. Oh, I wish I’d seen you.”

  They’d now entered the sickening portion of the visit. He found that although the love was long gone, the bitterness remained strong.

  “I’m not reliving this with you, Charisse. It no longer matters.” He brushed past her to head for the front door, which she would be leaving through shortly.

  “Zach, I’m divorced.”

  I’m not surprised.

  “The divorce was final two weeks ago.”

  He opened the door with more calm and cool than he was really feeling. “I’m sorry, Charisse. I’m not interested in picking up where we left off.”

  Finally, she dropped her act. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened, but only for a second. She tossed her hair and became charming once more.

  “I wasn’t asking if you were interested. I’ve found a man who loves me. He really loves me. I know he’s the right one. In fact, we’re leaving for our destination wedding today. Tony is taking me all the way to Fiji to say our vows on a tropical beach. I’ve always wanted to be barefoot in the sand while a man pledged himself to me—oh, sorry. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “But I need a little favor. Destination weddings are so glamorous. They are not a place for children—and Zach, I’m a mother now.” She pressed her fingertips to her chest an
d smiled like a virtuous, platinum Madonna.

  That one was a stretch. Charisse with maternal instincts? Whatever. Some other man’s problem.

  “I need your help. I need someone to care for my child while I’m gone.”

  It was such an outrageous request, Zach had no reply. This was why she had come? If she still lived in Alabama, she’d come a long way.

  “Who could I turn to? I thought of you right away.”

  “No.”

  “For one thing, you’re a fireman, and they always show photos of firemen caring for children on Facebook.”

  “This is insane, Charisse. The answer is no, I will not babysit your kid while you go get married in Fiji.”

  “For another thing,” she said, and despite her smile, he could see that she was irritated with him for interrupting her pretty speech, “you loved me, and for a man to do what Mary Beth said you’d done, to track me down and come after me... Well, a love like that can’t be destroyed completely.”

  “You can take that up with your yoga instructor.”

  What a frigging nightmare this was. Thank God, thank God, thank God Charisse had stood him up four years ago.

  He wanted Brooke. Just the thought of Brooke was like a balm to his soul right now. He was going to get Charisse out of his house, get into his truck, and drive to the hospital. He’d bring Brooke anything in the world she wanted to eat for lunch, and he’d feed her every bite while telling her how priceless she was.

  “And I’ve got the child to prove that our love still exists, something special between you and me, forever. Our child.” She closed the distance between them and shut the front door with a flourish, the exclamation point on the end of her speech.

  Memories started crowding in. Zach didn’t focus on memories of having sex with Charisse, but memories of using birth control with her. Condoms—yes, they’d used condoms. She’d been on the pill, too.

  At least his younger self hadn’t been dumb enough to take her word for the pills. He’d moved into her hotel room on the third day of that vacation, and he’d seen the round prescription compact by the sink, next to her toothbrush. But they’d used condoms as well before that, because pills didn’t protect against...but then, she was an angel, and they were going to elope, and it was silly to worry about catching a disease from his almost-wife. His faithful, innocent one-and-only.