“I wondered why a beautiful woman like you had chosen that department.”
His honest remark helped lighten her burdens for the moment, and she smiled. He thought she was beautiful? “Do you think I’m ghoulish?”
It was his turn to grin, which definitely reached his eyes, and he laughed a little, too. “I can safely say you and that word have never come to mind at the same time.”
“Whew.” She mock-wiped her brow. “Wouldn’t want to make the wrong impression.” Because I really like you.
They entered the cafeteria and, taking the lead, he grabbed a couple of mugs and filled them with coffee, after verifying with caffeine or not for her. Then he picked up a couple of cookies on a plate, and after he’d signed off on the charge, they went to the doctors’ seating in a smaller and quieter room than the regular cafeteria. Leading the way, he chose a table and removed the items from the tray then waited for her to sit before he did. Yeah, a take-charge gentleman all the way.
“You feel like talking more about what tore you up back there?” He got right to the point.
She inhaled, poured some cream into her coffee and thought about whether or not she wanted to revisit those old sad feelings about her parents any more, and decided not to. “I’m good. Just worried about Dr. Gordon.”
He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I understand.”
She hoped her gratitude showed when their gazes met. From his reassuring nod she figured it did. She accepted a peanut-butter cookie and took a bite. “Mmm, this is really good.”
He picked his up and dipped it in his black coffee before taking a man-sized bite. His brows lifted in agreement. “So,” he said after he’d swallowed, “since we’re going to change the subject, I have an observation. I’m thinking you might be dating someone?”
Her chin pulled in. “Why would you think that?” Hadn’t they been making out in her office earlier?
“You put a quick stop to our...” He let her finish the sentence in her mind, rather than spell it out.
She lifted her gaze and nailed his, which was, not surprisingly, looking expectant. He was definitely interested in her, which caused thoughts to flood her mind. She’d gone through a long, tough day already, and it wasn’t even two o’clock. She’d once again seen firsthand how things people took for granted, like their health, could change at any given moment. It made her think how much more out of life she longed for. Shouldn’t she grab some of what it had to offer, especially when it, or rather, he, was sitting right across from her, dunking his cookie like it was the best thing on earth? Instead of day in and day out spending most of her time with the biggest relationship in her life, her microscope?
But would Jackson want her as she was? Admittedly, she’d always been proud of her figure, never flaunting herself too much but not afraid to show some cleavage if the occasion and the dress called for it. Now every day when she showered she saw her flat chest, the scars. There wasn’t anything sexy about that. Yet she was a woman, lived, breathed and felt like a woman, but one who strapped on her chest the symbols of the fairer sex every day before she came to work. Pretending she was still who she’d used to be.
The decision had seemed so clear when she’d made it. Get rid of the tissue, the ticking time bomb on her chest. Never put herself in a position to hear the words that had devastated her mother’s life. You have breast cancer.
Because of lab tests and markers, she’d thought like a scientist, but now she had to deal with the feelings of a woman who was no longer comfortable in her body.
Then there was tall, masculine and sexy-as-hell Jackson sitting directly across from her, smiling like he had a secret.
She bet his secret was nowhere as big as hers. “You took me by surprise earlier.”
“I took myself by surprise.”
She liked knowing that the kiss had been totally spontaneous. “So, since you asked, I’m not seeing anyone. Today’s just been hard. That’s why I—”
“I understand.” His beeper went off. He checked it. “Let me know when you’re leaving later and after we pop in on Jim again I’ll walk you to your car.”
It wasn’t a question. She liked that about him, too. “Okay.”
Except later, when Jackson walked her to her car, after visiting the hospital and finding Dr. Gordon deeply asleep and looking like he floated on air, Jackson reverted to perfect-gentleman mode. No arm around her shoulder or hand-holding as they walked. Whatever magic they’d conjured earlier had worn off. He simply smiled and wished her good night, told her to get some rest, more fatherly than future boyfriend material, and disappointingly kept a buffer zone between them as she got into her car.
As she drove off, checking her rearview mirror and seeing him watch her leave, his suit jacket on a fingertip and hanging over his shoulder, looking really sexy, she wondered if he’d had time to come to his senses, too. Something—was it her?—held him back. Then, since she knew her secret backward and forward, and how it kept her from grabbing at the good stuff in life, she further wondered what his secret was.
JACKSON TOSSED HIS keys onto the entry table in his Westlake condo, thinking a beer would taste great about now, but knowing he’d given up using booze as an escape. It had cost what had been left of his marriage to get the point across.
A long and destructive battle with PTSD had led to him falling apart and quitting his position as lead surgeon at Savannah General Hospital just before they’d planned to fire him three years ago. The ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder had turned him into a stranger and strained his relationship with his teenage sons, frightening them away. It had also ensured his wife of twenty years had finally filed for divorce.
He’d lost his right lower leg in an IED accident in Afghanistan. It had been his second tour as an army reservist. He’d volunteered for it, and for that his wife had been unable to forgive him. She’d deemed it his fault that the improvised explosive device had caused him to lose his leg. He’d returned home physically and emotionally wounded, and, piled onto their already strained marriage from years of him choosing his high-maintenance education and career over nurturing their life together, she couldn’t take it.
His fault.
Their marriage had been unraveling little by little for years anyway. High-school sweethearts, she’d then followed him on to college. His grandfather used to tease him that she was majoring in marriage. Then they’d accidentally got pregnant the summer before he’d entered medical school. With their respective families being good friends, there was no way he could have let her go through the pregnancy alone. So he’d done the honorable thing and they’d got married right before he’d entered medical school.
It hadn’t been long before they’d realized they may have made a mistake, but his studies had kept him too busy to address it, and the new baby, Andrew, had taken all of her time, and, well, they’d learned how to coexist as a small family of three. In his third year of medical school she’d got pregnant again. This time he’d got angry with her for letting it happen when he’d found out she’d stopped taking birth control pills. Evaline had said she wanted kids because he was never around. And so it had gone on.
Then at the age of twenty-seven and in the second year of his surgical residency, he’d signed up for the army reserves. One weekend a month he’d trained in an army field medical unit, setting up mobile triage, learning to care for mass casualties. When he’d finished his surgical residency and had been asked to stay on at Savannah General, his wife had thought maybe things would get better. But he’d started signing on with his reserve unit for two-week humanitarian missions for victims of natural disasters at home in the States. Soon he’d branched out to other countries, and when he’d been deployed to Iraq, Evaline had threatened