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The young girl leaned over the desk to appraise the cut, then settled back down into her chair.
“I’ll put you on the list and he’ll see you as soon as...” She shrugged. “When he’s ready.”
It was a plain office. Not much to look at. No outdated magazines to read. But it was freshly painted. She could still smell the remnants of new paint.
“How long have you been here?” she asked the girl.
She looked up from her phone and said, “We’re new. Just opened.”
“Is the doctor Matt McClain?” she asked, hoping it was not.
“Nope. He takes care of the cowboys. We’re strictly here for the tourists, who get injured doing things like whatever it was you were doing that got you cut up.”
“Do you need my name for your records?” Sloane asked.
“Doc will take care of that.”
“Will he take care of my insurance papers as well?” This was an oddly run practice and she wondered what kind of doctor allowed it.
“Well, he won’t let me do them, so I guess it’s up to him.”
Definitely odd. And if she’d needed something more than stitches she’d probably have gone looking for Matt. But she was here now and, since there’d been no other cars in the parking lot, it shouldn’t be too long before she got called in.
She was right. Within another couple of minutes the receptionist gave her a wave to go on back, without so much as looking up from her phone.
So she took it upon herself to wander down the hall, find the exam room, then sit up on the exam table and wait. Another minute passed before she heard footsteps heading down the hall and her blood froze in her veins.
No, it couldn’t be. She knew those footsteps. Knew them by heart.
Consequently, when the doctor pushed open the door, Sloane’s head started to spin. “What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to hold back on her wobbly voice.
“Sloane? What are you doing here?” He closed the exam room door behind him but made no attempt to walk over to her.
“I asked you first,” she said.
“I’m trying to start over. Matt gave me a job here. He needed help, I needed help...so it worked out. Now you.”
“Vacation. I came here because—Well, I didn’t know you were here. Last I heard you were in Vegas.”
“Actually, Tennessee,” he said. “Vegas before that.”
“Now you’re here? Seriously?”
“As serious as it gets. So, I’m assuming you want me to stitch up that cut on your leg?”
She’d almost forgotten about that, she was so flustered. “It happened last night. I was out stargazing and met up with the sharp end of a rock.”
“Since when do you stargaze?” he asked, finally walking over to the exam table.
“Since last night.”
“And what did you learn?”
“That Venus shines the brightest and it’s best to stargaze on your own, or with a sure-footed friend.”
“Meaning...?”
“Meaning I did the tourist thing and now I’m paying for it. So, why here, Carter? I’m assuming Matt gave you an opportunity, but you’re clearly not working as a surgeon. More like what? A GP?”
“Exactly,” he said, as he bent to assess the cut.
“But you’ve never done that kind of work.”
“And you’ve never gone stargazing. So, I suppose we file it all under ‘first time’.” He looked up at her. “Everything has to start somewhere, doesn’t it?” Then he ran his hand down the calf of her leg.
Sloane shivered to his touch the way she always had. “Why are you touching me that way?” she asked. “We’re over. You quit touching me that way months ago.”
He took his hand off her leg, stood up and smiled.
“Actually, that was a perfectly good GP’s assessment. I wanted to make sure your leg wasn’t too warm, which might indicate an infection setting in.”
“I’m a doctor. I know to disinfect it.”
“And I’m a doctor, too. A doctor who’s trying his hardest to be a good doctor.”
“You always were good, Carter. Nobody ever questioned that. It was everything else that went with you...”
“My attitude?”
Sloane let out a deep sigh. She hadn’t come on vacation to start this whole thing over again. She was trying to get away from it. Sort it out and put it behind her. But how could she do that when Carter was here?
“I’ve said all there is to say about your attitude. So how about the stitches?”
“I’d prefer to butterfly it. Less chance of scarring.”
Butterfly stitches were not exactly stitches, but thin strips with an adhesive backing used to close small wounds.
“Oh, and when was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
“Good on the butterfly stitches. Much better than needle and thread. And as for the tetanus shot...”
She shrugged her shoulders. She should know, but she didn’t. Like most people, she didn’t keep track of those sorts of things. Although she could have told him the exact date and time of the last gamma globulin shot he had taken.
It had happened because of a needle stick. One of his patients—a child—had got belligerent and whacked Carter a good one as he’d been trying to give the boy a shot to calm him down before an appendectomy. Carter had already administered a mild sedative when the boy had started flailing and caught Carter’s hand. The one with the used hypodermic needle still in it.
The puncture hadn’t been bad, or deep, but hospital policy had demanded a visit from the old gamma globulin needle to help give Carter a temporary boost in his immune system. Which had turned out to be a good thing since, as it had happened, the kid had been in the very early stages of chickenpox.
That had been one month and thirteen days before he’d shipped out to Afghanistan. So why did she remember that when she couldn’t remember her own last tetanus?
“No clue,” she told him, recalling the sexy way he’d dropped his pants so she could stick him in the butt with the needle. It had been slow, seductive, and it had definitely raised her libido a notch or two. In fact, had they not been in one of the hospital exam rooms, the way his pants had slid over his hips would have definitely led to something very unprofessional. And very good.
Even thinking about it caused heat to rush to her cheeks—and for a redhead that was a disaster, because it made her look like a beet.
“You OK?” he asked as he pulled the necessary supplies from a cabinet next to the exam table.
“Just tired. Which is why I came here.”
“Well, that color you’re wearing right now isn’t your I’m tired color. Normally that’s more pasty and white. In fact, as I recall, that color is your—”
“Just stop it, Carter! I didn’t come here to rehash old times. I need some stitches and a tetanus shot. If you can’t do that, I’ll go find Matt and ask him to.”
“He didn’t tell you I was here? Because what are the chances that you’d simply bump into me in the middle of nowhere?”
He picked up a bottle of disinfectant and squirted some on her leg.
“When I saw you sitting on my table I assumed you were here to find me.”
“Trust me, Carter. You’re the last person I wanted or expected to find here. And, no, Matt didn’t say a word.”
Which made her wonder if Matt was trying to get them back together. Surprise meeting in a desert in the middle of nowhere? Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe not. Right now, she didn’t care. She just wanted Carter to fix her leg so she could get out of there.
* * *
Carter hadn’t expected to see Sloane in Forgeburn, of all places, and now that she was here he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Stay away from her altogether? Allow a small amount of cordiality in? Just what was the etiquette here? What etiquette was involved in meeting up with the woman you’d loved for so long, then dumped?
He knew Sloane in every way one person could know another, so it wasn’t as if they were strangers caught up in a chance meeting. Something like that would have been easier to deal with. They could have shared general chit chat, a string of pleasantries, talked about the weather—except, Sloane deserved more than the weather forecast.
The problem was, he didn’t have more. Not for her, anyway. It was too difficult, too painful, and he didn’t want to go on hurting her over and over.
“The wound is clean and, as cuts go, the edges are good. So I’m going to use about ten butterflies, then wrap it in gauze. If you’re still here in a couple of days come back for a check. Or go to your own doctor when you get back home.”
Which he hoped she would do—go home. Today. Right now.
“I’m here for two weeks,” she said. “It’s the first vacation I’ve had since... Well—that week you were on leave from the Army. You came home and we took a cruise down to Mexico. What was that? Four years ago?”
He knew exactly when it had been, but he didn’t want memories of that week popping into his mind. It had been too nice, and they’d gotten so close. Closer than they’d been even after two years together. It was when he’d proposed to her. Well, it had been a pre-proposal—one of those If I were to ask you, would you marry me? sort of things.
It hadn’t been until almost two years later that he’d done the real asking. And then it had been by satellite hook-up. It had been her birthday, and her friends and family had been having a party. He’d been left out, of course, being overseas. So when they’d talked later that night the question had simply popped right out of him, surprising him almost as much as it had her.
Marriage had always been his intention, though. Women like Sloane didn’t come along every day, and he had been so head-over-heels crazy in love with her, almost at first sight, he hadn’t been about to lose her. But he’d wanted to wait until he got home and do the proposal the right way, on a romantic weekend on the beach, or maybe up in wine country.
Somehow he’d seen it happening at dawn, not dusk. They’d be strolling hand in hand, wherever they were, and when they stopped for a break he would pull an engagement ring box from his pocket. Or they would be having brunch, sipping mimosas, and he would discreetly slide the ring box across the table.
That had been the other Carter Holmes, though. The one who’d replaced him didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. Even reminding himself of the things he’d thought before made his hands shake.
“I’m going to give you a prescription for an antibiotic. There’s a pharmacy about ten miles down the road. You can fill it there. If I remember correctly, you were allergic to—”
Damn, why did he have to remember so many things about her? He’d been trying not to since he’d left, and on good days he sometimes succeeded. Now, though, everything was coming back. More than he wanted. More than he could deal with.
“Penicillin,” Sloane said, sliding off the exam table then bending down to straighten out her pants. “So, how much do I owe you for today?” she asked as she straightened up and looked him directly in the eye.
“Really, Sloane? Do you think I’d charge you for this?”
“To be honest, I don’t know what you’d do. I didn’t expect you to leave me without an explanation, but you did. I didn’t expect you not to return my calls and texts for three months, but you did. I didn’t even expect you to join the Army, but you did. So, tell me... How am I supposed to anticipate your next move, Carter? How am I supposed to know what you will and will not do?”
“I know I didn’t do things the way I should have, but...”
But what? What was his excuse? He’d been doing it for her? She wouldn’t believe that, even though it was the truth.
“But what’s done is done, and I can’t go back and change things.”
“No, you can’t. Neither of us can.” She headed for the exam room door, then stopped and turned back to face him. “Look, us being here at the same time is a coincidence. But could we find some time when we could get together and talk? I have questions, Carter. And I deserve answers.”
“Let me figure out my schedule, then I’ll get back to you. Do you still have the same cell number?”
“I’m not the one who changed, Carter. You are. Yes, it’s still the same. I didn’t want to change it in case you actually did try to call or text me.”
During his few hazy weeks in Vegas the last thing he had wanted to do was return her calls and have her figure out that he was even deeper into the pit than he’d been before he’d left. His drinking had been worse. He’d been taking those pills. And gambling... All the things that had distracted him from what was real.
Then in Tennessee cell phones had been confiscated and handed back only for emergencies and once-a-week contact with family or a loved one. Since he’d had no family then, or even a loved one, there’d never been any reason to ask for his cell phone back for that one allotted hour.
“I wasn’t exactly in a position to reach out to anybody. It was rude, and I’m sorry, but that’s who I was then.”
“And not now?” she asked him before she left his office.
“It’s complicated, Sloane.”
And he couldn’t make promises, or even lead her in the direction of thinking that he might be getting better because he didn’t know if he was. Time would tell, he supposed. Time and new surroundings. But how could he tell her that? How could he tell her that she was part of the past he was running from?
* * *
“Life is complicated, Carter,” she said. “For everybody in some way.”
He sounded so—not bitter, more like apathetic. As if he’d given up or given himself over to his battle.
“So you’ve given up?”
“It’s called hitting rock bottom.” He took a couple steps toward her, then stopped, as if a barrier had been lobbed into his path. “And my choice is to not drag anybody else down with me.”
“You owe me an explanation, Carter.”
“For what? For losing one kidney and a spleen to shrapnel? Damaging my other kidney? For PTSD after too much gunfire, too much death, too many people to save that I couldn’t? Is that what you want to hear? Because if it is I’ve said it all before and look where it’s gotten me.”
She wanted to see some emotion—some of the old Carter trying to fight back. But what she saw in his face was—nothing. His eyes were blank. His expression resigned.
This wasn’t the Carter she’d used to know. Used to love. Not at all. This was a different man. One she didn’t understand. Couldn’t explain. One who seemed to be calculating every facial expression and every word. She’d been through so much with him, but this—it broke off another piece of her heart.
“You still drinking?” she asked him, not sure why she was even bothering.
He shook his head. “Gave up the pills, too. Momentary interruptions in my process are only that—momentary. Then it all comes back. So, what are you really doing here? Come to save me from myself?”
“I’m on vacation, like I told you.”
But she wondered if subconsciously she’d chosen Forgeburn not so much expecting to find him here but to be closer to a part of his life when his life had been good. He and Matt had made so many plans about biking, hiking and climbing over the years, and it was something Carter had talked about so often. Getting back to his roots, he’d say, even though he wasn’t from the area. Maybe the sentiment had appealed to him, or maybe it had simply been the need to step out of his problems for a while.
Whatever it was, could she have actually come here expecting to find answers? Or even expecting to find Carter himself?
“You’d talked about the area so often—maybe I thought I could find some kind of closure here. You took that from me, you know.”
“I know I did,” he said.
His voice was soft now. The animosity was gone, replaced by a sadness he couldn’t conceal. At least not from the woman who’d loved him for so long.
“It was never my intention to hurt people—most of all you. But that’s how it turned out, and in the end who cares? Who really gives a good damn?”
“I do—did,” she said, fighting back tears.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. That no matter what Carter said or did she wouldn’t let him reduce her to that again. But here she was, fighting it because her heart was breaking yet one more time. For her—and for Carter.
“I cared.”
“You should have never waited for me, Sloane. You could have had better. We both knew that.”
For an instant his expression changed. Did she see regret? Or a sadness deeper than anything she’d ever seen from him before? It was there and gone so quickly she didn’t know, but in that instant she’d seen Carter. The real Carter. He was still there, which did give her hope. Not for their relationship. That was over, and she had to reconcile herself to that. But she did hold out some hope for Carter—something she hadn’t done in a long, long time.
“Maybe that’s what you thought,” she said, “but it’s not what I thought.”
Standing on tiptoes, she brushed a light kiss to his cheek, then backed away.
“What I knew was that I still loved you, but you didn’t still love me. That’s a difficult adjustment to make after so many years. I wish I could have done better at it. But I suppose that’s a moot point, isn’t it? Since you made the final decision about us without me.”
* * *
Sloane didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sitting in her rental car in the parking lot, she was too unsteady to go anywhere yet. Maybe the kiss had been a mistake—maybe it had been the last thing he wanted from her—but it had told her something she wasn’t prepared to know. She still loved him. Maybe not in the breathless way she’d loved him at first, but in a more deep-down sense. It was something more profound—something she didn’t understand and wasn’t ready to think about.
Carter was a handsome man and, while she’d rarely let a man turn her head, she’d always reacted to him. He’d taken off some weight since she’d last seen him, and it looked good. Was he working out again? Because for the first time since he’d been injured he looked toned.
But he’d always been a head-turner, hadn’t he? Sometimes he’d shown up for work in tight leather pants, which had given all the ladies quite a show before he gave himself over to his day and changed into scrubs.
She’d loved that side of him because he’d known what he was doing—had had fun with it. He’d loved having people looking at him, speculating about who he really was—a bad boy or simply a narcissist. In truth, he had been neither. Carter Holmes had simply been a man who’d enjoyed life. He’d liked to play around with it to see what turned up. And he’d taught her to enjoy it along with him. To be spontaneous. To let go occasionally and live in the moment.
That hadn’t been her when they’d first met. After her mother died she’d been raised by a loving but very serious father who’d overwhelmed her with his serious world. Yet Carter had made her life so—good. So much fun to anticipate.
Those days were so far in the past, though, she almost wondered if they’d happened at all. Nothing seemed real anymore. It hadn’t for such a long time. Even now—being here and discovering Carter was here as well—was an altered reality, and the pieces of it hadn’t come together in her mind yet.
“I didn’t want to stir the pot,” Matt said to her an hour later, when she went to his surgery and challenged him about not telling her that Carter was in Forgeburn.
“So you just let me bump into him accidentally?” She shook her head, angry because of so many things.
“There was no guarantee you would bump into him.”
“Yeah, right. This is Forgeburn
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