He opened the door. “Need a ride?”
“What I need is a mechanic—one who knows a piston from a tailpipe!” she grumbled, but reached for her purse and slid to the ground. “Failing that, I suppose a ride would be the next best thing.” She locked the SUV, abstained from kicking it and turned. He took her hand in his, linking cold, wet fingers through hers as they dashed to his pickup. She told herself not to make any more of this than what it was, just an old friend offering help. But she knew better.
Once inside the cab, she swiped water from her face and directed him through town as the defroster chased away the condensation on the windows. He drove carefully, negotiating streets that were slick with puddles of ice as the radio played softly.
“So tell me about yourself.” Headlights from slowly passing cars illuminated the bladed angles of his face and she reminded herself that he really wasn’t all that handsome, that he was a corporate lawyer, for God’s sake, the kind of man she wanted to avoid.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“How you got to be a doctor.”
“Medical school.”
He arched a brow and she laughed. “Okay, okay, I know what you mean,” she admitted, glad to have broken some of the ice that seemed to exist between them. “Guess I wanted to prove myself. My mother always told me to aim high, that I could achieve whatever I wanted and I believed her. She insisted I have a career where I didn’t have to rely on a man.” And Nicole knew why. Her own father had taken off when she was barely two and no one had seen or heard from him since. No child support. No birthday cards. Not even a phone call at Christmas. If her mother knew where he was, she’d never said and her answer to all of Nicole’s questions had never wavered. “He’s gone. Took off when we needed him most. Well, we don’t need him now and never will. Trust me, Nicole, we don’t want to know what happened to him. It really doesn’t matter one way or another if he’s dead or alive.” At that point in the speech she’d usually bend on a knee to look her young daughter straight in the eye. Strong maternal fingers had held firm to Nicole’s small shoulders. “You can do anything you want, honey. You don’t need a deadbeat of a father to prove that. You don’t need a husband. No—you’ll do it all on your own, I know you will and you can do and be anything, anyone you want. The sky’s the limit.”
In the last few years Nicole had wondered secretly if her need to succeed, her driving ambition, her quest to make her mark was some inner need to prove to herself that she could make it on her own and that the reason her father left had nothing to do with her.
Of course at seventeen, after meeting Thorne McCafferty, she’d fallen head over heels in love and been ready to chuck all her plans—her dreams and her mother’s hopes—for one man…a man who hadn’t cared enough for her to explain what had gone wrong.
Until now.
She sensed it coming. Like the clouds gathering before a storm, the warning signs that Thorne hadn’t given up his need to explain himself were evident in the set of his jaw and thin line of his mouth.
He waited until the second light, then slowed the truck and turned down the radio. “I said I wanted to explain what happened.”
“And I said I thought it could wait.”
“It’s been nearly twenty years, Nikki.”
She closed her eyes and her heart fluttered stupidly at the nickname she’d carried with her through high school, the only name he’d called her. “So why rush things?” Don’t be taken in, Nicole. He used you once and obviously he thinks he can do it again.
He let her sarcasm slide by. “I was wrong.”
“About?” she said in a voice so low, she thought he might not have heard her.
“Everything. You. Me. What’s important in life. I thought I had to go out and prove myself. I thought I couldn’t get entangled with anyone or anything—I had to be free. I thought I had to finish law school and make a million dollars. After that I thought I’d better keep at it.”
“And now you don’t?” She didn’t believe him.
“And now I’m not sure,” he admitted, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel as the interior of the cab started to fog.
“Sounds like midlife crisis to me.”
He shifted down and took a corner a little too fast. “Easy answer.”
“Usually right on.”
“You really believe that?”
She leaned back in the seat and stared out the window to the neon lights of the old theater, and wondered why she was in this discussion. “Let’s just say I’ve experienced it firsthand.”
“Oh.”
“And I swore to myself that the next midlife crisis I was going to suffer through was going to be my own.”
He parked at the curb in front of her little bungalow and she reached for the door handle. “I suppose I could ask you in for some coffee, or cocoa or tea or something.”
“You could.”
She hesitated, one hand on the door handle. “Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea.”
“And why’s that?”
She tilted up her chin a bit. “Because this is getting a little too personal, I think.”
“And you’d rather keep it professional.”
“It would be best for everyone. Randi—the baby—”
To her surprise one side of his mouth lifted in a sexy, damnably arrogant slash of white. “Is that the reason, Doctor, or is it that you’re scared of me?”
No, Thorne, I’m not scared of you. I’m scared of me. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Why should I stop now?” He reached for her, dragged her close and started to kiss her, only to stop short, his mouth the barest of whispers from hers. His breath fanned her face. “Good night, Nikki.” Then he released her. She opened the door and nearly fell out of the truck. Embarrassment washed up her cheeks as she strode to the door and felt him watching her, waiting until she made it inside. Then he threw his truck into gear and took off, disappearing through the veil of silvery sleet.
Chapter 6
“Damn!” Thorne slammed down the receiver and stared out the window to a winter-crisp day where evidence of last night’s storm still glistened on the grass and hung from the eaves in shimmering icicles. A headache pounded behind his eyes. He’d been on the phone all morning, guzzling cups of coffee as bitter as a spinster’s heart.
He’d bedded down in his old room, the one that had abutted his folks’ suite and his brothers had, by instinct, claimed the bedrooms where they’d been raised. But when he’d awoken this morning he’d been alone in the house.
During the intervening hours, he’d called the hospital, hoping for a report of improvement in Randi and the baby’s condition. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed. His sister was still comatose and the baby, though stable, was still in danger. He’d hooked up his laptop computer to the antiquated phone lines and looked up everything he could on little J.R.’s condition. From what he could determine, everything that could be done to counteract the meningitis was being done at St. James. He’d even managed to call the office, check in with Eloise and tell her that he hoped a portable office would be set up here, in his father’s den, by the end of the day. He wondered what John Randall would’ve done in