Samantha winced at having the tables turned on her. “No marriages,” she conceded. “I guess I never met the right man.”
“So it’s not because some insensitive clod broke your heart?”
She thought about it, not sure how to explain the choices she’d made. “Amazingly, I don’t have any ill will toward any of the men I’ve dated, not even toward the man I was pretty sure I loved.”
“What happened with him?”
“He was an actor, which isn’t always the smartest match for an actress, even though you both understand the demands of the business. That’s the upside.”
“And the downside?”
“My career took off for a time. His tanked. He couldn’t handle it.” It sounded so simple, but it had been the most painful period of her life. No matter how she’d fought to keep silent about her own successes to keep him from feeling like a failure, it hadn’t been enough.
Ethan gave her a sympathetic look. “Pride can be a pain, can’t it?”
“Masculine pride surely can,” she responded agreeably. “I’m surprised you can admit that. After all, wasn’t it your pride your fiancée hurt, as much as your heart?” She studied him with a worried gaze. “Or did she really break your heart?”
For a minute the look on Ethan’s face suggested she’d gone too far. His jaw tensed, his eyes sparked and then, in an instant, a smile tugged at his lips.
“You don’t mince words, do you?”
“I don’t see a lot of point in it, no.”
“That’s a refreshing change,” he told her. “I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years with people who are way too careful about speaking their minds around me. Even if what they want to say has nothing at all to do with my injury, they seem to think I’m too fragile to be challenged.”
“So they think you can’t take the truth?”
“Probably. And, to be honest, when I first got back and was going through rehab, I probably couldn’t. If anyone even looked at me the wrong way, I’d explode. Believe me, I was impossible to get along with.”
“I imagine that’s just as much part of the healing process as learning to deal with the prosthetic.”
He looked surprised once more by her insight. “It was. A few people, like Boone and Greg, figured that out and never gave up on me. I’d kick ’em out, but they kept right on coming back.”
“Unlike your fiancée?” she said, disliking the woman intensely.
Surprisingly, he shook his head. “It wasn’t my temper that pushed her away. I don’t think I could have blamed her for that. No, she stuck it out until I was on my feet, so to speak. Then she bailed. She said she couldn’t cope with me not being the man she’d fallen in love with, as if my leg were the most important part of my anatomy and losing it made me less of a man.”
Samantha shook her head. “The woman was an idiot.”
Ethan laughed. “Thanks for the ardent defense, but maybe we should get back to our immediate problem. What do we do about the meddlers?”
“Stay alert. Let them do their thing, I guess,” she suggested, though she was unconvinced that the strategy would work.
“Seriously?”
“It’ll make them happy to try,” she said, “and there’s nothing that says we have to get with the program, right?”
He held her gaze for a minute, just long enough for a spark of sexual tension to sizzle between them. “Nothing,” he agreed, though he too sounded a little unsure of himself when he said it.
Samantha held out her hand. “Friends, right? We have a deal.”
Ethan took her hand in his. She couldn’t help noticing that his grip was strong, his fingers long and slender. It was the sure and steady hand of a surgeon.
“We have a deal,” he said.
He was awfully slow to release her hand. When he did, his eyes were troubled.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Ethan, I thought being straight with each other was an implied part of our bargain,” she scolded.
He gave her a rueful look. “I have this odd premonition that we’ve just made a fool’s bargain.”
“Oh?”
“I’m thinking that unless we’re very, very careful, we’re going to blow this whole friendship thing to smithereens,” he said direly.
Samantha had to fight to hide the laugh that bubbled up at his unmistakable frustration, because the truth was, on some level, that was the best news she’d heard in a very long time.
4
“So, when are you seeing her again?” Greg asked Ethan as they drove back to the clinic. There was no mistaking the spark of mischief in his eyes as he spoke.
Ethan frowned at him. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he insisted.
“You and Samantha. Don’t even try to deny that something happened when the two of you were out on the deck. You came back looking like two cats that had managed to dine on some very tasty canaries.”
“What a lovely analogy,” Ethan commented. “You obviously have a poet’s way with words.”
“Not exactly the point,” Greg said. “Let’s stick to the accuracy of my assessment. When are the two of you getting together again?”
“Whenever circumstances dictate,” Ethan said irritably.
Suddenly Greg’s eyes lit up as if he’d just discovered the secrets of the universe. “And you’re not happy about waiting for those circumstances to roll around, are you? Oh boy, I knew it! You’ve got the hots for her.”
“Once more you’re demonstrating your way with words,” Ethan grumbled. “I do not have the hots for anybody. Turns out she’s a nice woman, not at all what I expected.”
“Beautiful, too. Do not try to tell me you didn’t notice. Otherwise I’m going to have to check your vital signs the second we get back to the clinic.”
“I noticed,” Ethan said tightly. “Will you please drop this?”
“I’m thinking I probably shouldn’t,” Greg said cheerfully. “I’m thinking you need me to be a thorn in your side, a burr under your butt, as it were, until you finally get back in the dating game.”
“Dating is not a game I want to play,” Ethan claimed, though he was clearly not convincing his friend. He’d been happily protecting his heart for a good long time now. He saw no reason for that to change. The last time he’d taken a risk on love, it hadn’t worked out so well.
“Ah, but sometimes life just comes along and gives you an unexpected chance to reach for your heart’s desire, ready or not,” Greg said. “A smart man seizes those moments.”
Ethan scowled at him. “Heart’s desire? Game? Which is it? How exactly do you see this going?”
“What I see isn’t important,” Greg insisted. “What do you see? And do not try to tell me you’re oblivious to the possibilities.”
“I see disaster waiting to happen,” Ethan said with a level of frustration he hadn’t felt in months, maybe not even years. Shouldn’t he have a better grip on his own blasted destiny?