Fourteen years ago Chloe Carmichael, together with her parents, had taught him a harsh lesson in frustration and helplessness.
But fourteen years was a long time. And in the early hours of the morning, once his unreasonable anger had subsided somewhat, he’d decided he wasn’t proud of the way he’d acted the previous evening. And he definitely wasn’t proud of the way he’d treated Chloe professionally.
In fact, while behaving like a scorned adolescent was dumb, not doing what he should have as a doctor was inexcusable.
Okay, so he didn’t think that he’d missed anything during the exam or that Chloe actually had been more hurt than she’d seemed to be. He’d seen enough accident victims to recognize the difference between severe injuries and minor ones like the scrapes on her arms and the bruise on her leg.
But still, he’d gone about the examination at the same inept level he’d gone about his very first patient exam in medical school—he’d been as reluctant to actually put his hands on her as some rookie.
It was just that touching Chloe even slightly had shot him back to a time when touching her, kissing her, holding her, had been almost the only things he’d ever thought about. It hadn’t been something he could do professionally—medically—without remembering that. Without reliving it.
Without wanting even now to do more of it. In a private setting. And in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with his job.
Inexcusable, unacceptable, unwarranted and inappropriate.
And it sure as hell wasn’t the kind of physician he was. Any more than being a surly SOB was the kind of man he was.
Which led him to the conclusion that this had to be fixed.
Not that he was looking to be overly friendly toward Chloe Carmichael at this juncture. Or to rekindle anything. He’d done his damnedest to do the right thing fourteen years ago and it had blown up in his face; he didn’t want to get into anything with her again now.
But as long as she was in Northbridge, as long as he was in the situation he’d discovered when he’d arrived home last night, he’d rather have a temporary coexistence with Chloe that was amicable. And in order for it to be amicable, he knew he had to rise above his old wounds and make the best of things as they were right now.
“Hey. What’re you doing up so early?”
Reid’s brother surprised him from behind and Reid turned to find Luke obviously just out of bed, padding in on bare feet from the bedrooms down the hall.
“You won’t believe it when I tell you,” Reid responded, leaning one shoulder against the cold glass.
“The snow? It was falling before I went to sleep,” Luke said with a nod towards the big plate glass window that was bracing Reid’s weight.
“Not the snow. What the snow brought in with it.”
“Yeah? What did the snow bring in with it?” Luke asked.
“Chloe Carmichael,” Reid said as if he were dropping a bomb.
Bomb enough to wake up Luke. His eyes opened wide beneath arched brows and for a moment he was gape-jawed before he said, “Chloe Carmichael? She’s here? In Northbridge?”
Reid inclined his head at the window, too. “Not only in Northbridge. She’s across the street. Apparently staying at the house.”
Luke grimaced and let out an expletive as he joined Reid to look out at their soon-to-be rental property.
If Luke had been expecting to see signs of Chloe he was disappointed. There weren’t any to see. Which prompted him to say, “How do you know?”
“She ended up in my emergency room at midnight after hitting a telephone pole.”
“Was she hurt?”
“No,” Reid said. “Scrapes and bruises, but that’s it. At least I hope that’s it. I didn’t do as thorough an exam as I probably should have.”
“I need coffee,” Luke said as if he were suddenly desperate for the stuff and headed for the kitchen that was through an archway to the rear of the living room.
Reid finally gave up the spot he’d maintained at the window for nearly an hour and followed his brother, refilling his own mug once Luke had poured his. Then they both sat on vinyl chairs at the chrome and Formica kitchen table that had been in their mother’s basement for decades before they’d confiscated it for use in their own place.
“You’re not going to get sued for malpractice, are you?” Luke asked then.
“I’m reasonably sure she was okay.”
“And she’s at the house?”
“Surprise!”
“I guess. Did you tell her we were working on it?”
Betty, the Realtor, had given them the okay and the key. Betty had explained to them that Chloe had made it clear she didn’t want to be bothered with anything to do with the house or the sale. She’d given Betty written permission to hire any workmen of Betty’s choosing to do the necessary repairs and replacements to facilitate the process.
Betty had given Reid and Luke the option of doing the work themselves so that it was done to their specifications. She’d said that she was killing two birds with one stone—Chloe would have less expense because Reid and Luke would not charge for labor, and Reid and Luke would have things done the way they wanted, and in time for their renters to move right in after the closing.
Betty had warned them that they could be taking a risk, that if the sale didn’t go through for some reason their time could be wasted. But since no one doubted that the deal would close, Reid and Luke had decided to take that risk.
“I didn’t say anything about the house,” Reid told his brother. “I wasn’t really…nice.”
Luke frowned. “How not-nice were you? Like not-nice enough that Chloe might pull out of the deal?”
“She wants to sell. I doubt she’ll nix it just because I was unfriendly.” Unfriendly in the extreme—but Reid didn’t see any reason to worry his brother by elaborating. “Besides, we have a contract and the downpayment is in escrow—she can’t back out just because I was a little…disagreeable.”
“Not nice, unfriendly and disagreeable,” Luke said as if Reid was alarming him anyway.
“Let’s just say that I wasn’t particularly neighborly,” Reid amended. “For instance, I probably should have asked where she was staying and offered to drive her since her car was out of commission from the accident, but—”
“You didn’t.”
“No. Instead, Molly stepped in and offered her a lift, and then it was like some kind of caravan because there we were, the only two cars on the road, me driving right behind them until we got here. Where I pulled into our driveway and Molly let Chloe off across the street—”
“So that’s how you know she’s over there.”
“Right. We ended up in some kind of synchronized arrival, walked up to the front doors at the same time, opened them, looked over at each other and then went in and closed the doors as if we didn’t even know each other. Molly must have thought I was crazy and it’s a good thing she didn’t have to go out of her way to get here or I would have felt bad about her driving in the snow when it ended up that I could easily have brought Chloe with me.”
“But Molly’s been in town only a few months. She doesn’t know anything about you and Chloe Carmichael.”
“She knew something was up. She couldn’t have missed it at the hospital.”
Luke nodded. “Why is Chloe here? Betty said she was