When they finally broke apart she felt breathless and dizzy, both in a very good way. “Thank you,” she murmured against him.
“Thank you?” he said, puzzled.
“I needed to be kissed like that.”
“I’d be happy to do it again.”
She laughed and she enjoyed the sound echoing through the night.
“Really, Erin. I have full intentions of kissing you again,” he stated outright, and she had no doubt of his plans.
“Can you meet me tomorrow?” she asked with a little hesitancy, hoping for the response she realized she desperately wanted.
“Yes.”
“Then I have no doubt you will make good on your promise. Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.” This time she initiated the kiss as she closed the gap between them once again and softly pressed her lips to his, before breaking away and moving through the hotel courtyard to the entrance. He didn’t follow her, which was good as she wasn’t sure she would be able to resist any further advances.
Ryan walked onto the balcony of his suite, which in the daytime gave him both a clear view of old Edinburgh and the sea. He sipped from a short glass of Scotch and tried to organize his thoughts and motivations.
He could no longer pretend that he was spending time with Erin to protect her from herself. Did she have a hint of sadness to her—yes. But after tonight he couldn’t make the argument that she was depressed and needed saving from herself. Maybe he had misinterpreted what had happened on Arthur’s Seat. What he hadn’t misinterpreted was his attraction to her. Tonight in the restaurant with every word that had come from her perfectly formed lips and every small move of her body toward him he’d felt a pull toward her. He had meant what he’d said to her—she was beautiful and she said what she meant, and he valued both qualities equally. So much so that he had kissed her and now wanted more.
He looked out into the night and had to blink before he believed what his eyes were showing him. On the balcony a few rooms away he saw Erin. She had changed into a dark-colored nightshirt that seemed to come just to the tops of her bare legs. It was loose on her but between the V-shaped cut of the neckline, its short length and the way a mild wind was pressing it against her he thought it was the sexiest bedtime apparel he had ever seen on a woman. He watched her, half mesmerized by her appearance and half concerned about her choice of location. What was she doing on the balcony? He exhaled a sigh of relief as she reached for a large blanket and wrapped her body in it before taking a seat in one of the balcony chairs, where she stayed staring out into the night.
Ryan, Erin thought, was she ready for Ryan? She had only said goodbye to him a few minutes ago and she already missed him, a man she just met. It was hard to reconcile all the feelings she was experiencing. One of the emotions she had felt during her divorce had been fear. Fear that outside her relationship with Kevin she had no experience with other men. Would another man find her attractive one day? And would she ever trust another man enough? And even if he did and she did, would she ever want the man she loved to suffer the same cruel fate she had been dealt? No.
But Ryan. Did she trust Ryan—yes. But were they ever going to be in a relationship—no. This was a brief and fleeting opportunity and one she didn’t feel she could turn away. Because she liked Ryan and the way he made her feel and because she was not going to let Kevin take one more thing from her.
Kevin had been a mistake from the beginning. She had just been too young and naive to see it. She had been a medical student on her first clinical rotation in Orthopedics when she’d met him. She had been nervous and excited, wearing her white clinical jacket for the first time and being called student intern. Everyone had seemed more important than her—the nurses, the residents, the staff physicians—and all she had wanted to do was to impress.
Then she’d met Kevin, or Dr. Dufour, her supervising resident, and he had seemed godlike in comparison to her lowly medical student ranking. He would single her out from her colleagues, giving her more opportunities and one-on-one time than any of the other students on the rotation. At first she had been flattered and had done her best to impress him, going that extra mile to stay late and check bloodwork or making food runs to bring to him in the operating room in between cases. Looking back on it, she had been more his slave than his student, but she had been so in awe of everything he’d represented.
Then his attention had become more personal than professional. Subtle touches, comments on her appearance, and she’d continued to be flattered. She had never been involved with anyone older than her and the attention of an older accomplished man had been absorbing. And he’d been a charmer, a snake charmer, really. It hadn’t been long before she’d fallen for him and he’d been making late-night appearances at her apartment. She had been in love with the man she’d thought he was and he had been willing to take advantage.
Until—until she’d become pregnant. And until he’d realized that while her last name was the same as her birth father’s, Madden, her stepfather was Dr. Williamson, the hospital’s chief of staff. That had been when she’d started getting glimpses of the man he really was, but she had been so overwhelmed with concern over her own life and how the pregnancy was going to affect her career that she’d pushed them to the back of her mind.
The same was done with her hesitancy over getting married. Her parents had made it clear that she had already disappointed them and it had been crushing knowledge, so she’d gone along with their demands, thinking that once Kevin got used to the idea of their upcoming family he would settle into their life together.
She had been so wrong. Once they’d married he’d become resentful and disinterested and she’d become trapped and alone. He hadn’t even been there when she’d almost died from complications from her miscarriage. To him it had been the final nail in the coffin that was his marriage. He’d felt unable to leave her now, not if he wanted his career. So he’d stayed. She had tried to make him happy. Tried to regain what they had lost, spending months—years—trying to conceive again, but she couldn’t.
Then had come the women. She’d met his first girlfriend shortly after they’d married, learning that he had been involved with the other woman at the same time as her up until their wedding. When she’d confronted him he’d told her what she’d wanted to hear and had promised his fidelity. Soon she had been too caught up in her own pain from her pregnancy loss to care whether he was telling the truth.
But as she had risen from her grief and begun to face her reality, she couldn’t hide the signs. By then she had graduated medical school and was now the resident at Boston General and Kevin was a staff orthopedic surgeon. When she walked the halls she would notice people taking more notice of her than was normal. When she entered the emergency department she would see nurses turn and speak quietly to one another. Then finally after three years of marriage she received a written note in her locker from “a friend” who wanted her to know that her husband was sleeping with one of the hospital pharmacists.
He didn’t even deny it. Instead he blamed his infidelity on her inadequacies as a wife. In some ways Kevin still won in their divorce. She filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences, too embarrassed to have her husband’s cheating and her deficiencies aired publically. His professional reputation remained intact and he was able to carry on at Boston General as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, she was struggling to gain her own reputation outside her infamous failed marriage and position as the chief of staff’s stepdaughter.
Kevin wanted her gone, completely, and communicated more with her postdivorce with his badgering than he had in the year prior to their ultimate divorce. And it would be easier for her just to leave and start over somewhere new with all her baggage left behind, but there was something about Boston General that felt like home and she wasn’t ready to give up anything else in her life.
The wind picked up again and she felt the corners