She was dressed in casual work attire: short-sleeved sweater in a misty shade of blue, tailored pants a few shades darker, white running shoes. It wasn’t a seductive outfit by any stretch of the imagination, but he felt the familiar tug of desire, anyway. Just like the first time he’d seen her.
He’d fought it at first, refused to believe it. The coolly reserved, completely professional physiotherapist wasn’t anything at all like the women he was usually attracted to. But something inside him had recognized her as his mate.
He’d pursued her relentlessly, and when he’d finally broken through her barriers, he’d found an incredibly passionate woman—a woman who’d touched him on levels he hadn’t known existed before he met her. Whatever else might have gone wrong between them, the sex had always been phenomenal.
He shifted in his seat, cursing his body for choosing to remember that now.
“Thirty minutes,” she reminded him, sliding into the chair across from him.
He pushed one of the mugs toward her. “A little bit of cream, a half a teaspoon of sugar.” He’d remembered her preference, as he’d remembered everything about her.
She wrapped her hands around the mug, a wry smile curving her lips. “It’s been five years. A lot of things have changed in that time.”
“Some things never do,” he countered.
“Are you going to tell me the real reason you came back to Fairweather now?”
“You always did cut right to the chase.” It was one of the things he’d admired about her from the start. She’d been the first therapist assigned to work with him after the injury that had prematurely ended his career, and he’d always appreciated her straightforward approach—even when she was telling him things he didn’t want to hear.
“So why are you here?”
“I was ready for a vacation?” he suggested.
“And you chose Fairweather?” Her eyes narrowed speculatively. “Or is your sudden reappearance somehow linked to the explosion in your apartment?”
Talk about cutting to the chase. “How did you know about that?”
“It was on the news.”
Colin had caught mention of it himself during the previous evening’s sports highlights. The commentary was brief, mentioning only that police were investigating a suspected bombing at the residence of Tornadoes’ head coach Colin McIver. There was no mention of Maria Vasquez, the forty-seven-year-old mother of five, who’d been cleaning his apartment at the time and who was still fighting for her life in ICU.
“Was it a gas leak?” Nikki asked.
He only wished the explanation was something so innocuous. “The cause is still being investigated.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“My apartment needs a little work,” he said, deliberately downplaying the situation. “But that’s only part of the reason that I decided to come back now.”
“And the other part?”
“To see you.”
She stared intently into her cup for a long moment before lifting her gaze. “Why?”
“Because I’ve spent some time in the past few weeks reevaluating my life, facing my mistakes, acknowledging my regrets.”
Her smile was sad. “Where do I fit in? A mistake? Or a regret?”
He reached across the table and covered her hand with his own. “The mistake was in letting you go.”
“You say that as if I wanted out of our marriage, but you were the one who left. You were the one who wanted the divorce.”
“I was too screwed up to know what I wanted. After my father died…” He shrugged.
“I know his death was hard on you,” she said gently. “I know you wished you’d had a chance to bridge the distance between the two of you.”
“I tried. I guess I just didn’t try hard enough.” The sense of regret, of guilt, still gnawed at him. “Did I ever tell you about the last conversation I had with him?”
She shook her head. “What happened?”
“We argued.” He smiled wryly. “It seemed like we were always arguing about something. This time it was about you.”
“Me?”
“He wanted—no, he demanded—that I give up coaching. He said it was past time for me to quit chasing a dream, to get a real job, to be the kind of husband you deserved.”
Richard McIver had berated Colin for even considering the coaching job, insisting that a woman like Nikki needed security and stability, not the kind of nomad existence his career would entail.
But without his career, Colin had nothing to offer his wife. So he’d taken the job, she’d stayed in Fairweather, and their marriage had become a casualty of geographical distance.
And his father had died as he’d lived: angry with and disappointed in his youngest son.
“I’m sorry, Colin.”
“So am I,” he said. “About so many things.”
He rubbed his thumb over her third finger, where his ring had once sat. “I thought you would have married again.”
She tugged her hand, but he didn’t release his hold.
“And I thought ‘till death do us part’ meant something longer than ten months.”
He winced at the direct hit. “I guess I deserved that.”
“What do you want me to say, Colin? Do you want me to tell you that there’s no one else in my life because I haven’t been able to forget about you? Well, I haven’t. I haven’t forgotten how devastated I was when you walked out on me, and I won’t ever risk going through that again.”
“I am sorry.”
She shrugged off his apology, glanced at her watch. “Your half hour’s almost up.”
Colin pushed back his chair and rose to his feet with her. He knew he should be grateful she’d even been willing to sit down and have a conversation with him. After five years, it was more than he’d had a right to expect. But it wasn’t nearly enough.
He walked with her across the street back to the clinic parking lot. She stopped beside her car, turned to face him. “Thanks for the coffee.”
So this was it then—the brush-off. He’d expected it, but he wasn’t prepared for it. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe that there was nothing left for them.
Testing her, maybe testing himself, he lifted his hand to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear and allowed his fingers to graze her cheek as he pulled back. He heard her sharp intake of breath, knew the casual contact had sparked something inside her. It had sure as hell stoked the fire that burned inside him.
“Is it really so easy to walk away?” he asked.
The warmth in her eyes cooled considerably. “You tell me.”
“No.” He dropped his hands to her slender waist, struggled against the impulse to pull her tight against his body. Events of the past few days had shown Colin how short life could be, and he didn’t want to waste any more time. He also knew if he moved too fast, he’d scare her off. “Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“But you did it.”
“I thought it was the best thing for both of us.” He stroked his hands down over her hips slowly, then back to her waist, his thumbs skimming her ribs. “Now I know I was wrong. Because even after five years, I can’t forget the way it was between us.”