“Of course. I take bus. Not much securities on bus.” Just very smelly people. But when a person wanted to be anonymous, there was no better transportation than a bus.
“He’ll be fine, babe,” Jessie assured him. “And we’ll have a little mountain vacay. We’re in the room next to you. We can be here in two seconds flat. Well, unless Mr. Horny here has his way, and then it’s more like fifteen, twenty seconds.”
“Bitch.” But Michael said it with deep affection.
It hadn’t taken Alexei long to discover that the partners were more than mere friends. He’d spoken with Michael about it. They had only been lovers for a few months, but Michael loved her deeply, and Jessie seemed to feel the same way. They had acted very professionally while working, but Alexei could see that they were going to take advantage of their little vacation.
And he would take advantage of his.
Caleb cleared off his desk. He checked and rechecked his exam room. It was small and really the only neat room in his office beside the teeny tiny waiting room that almost no one used. No one waited in Bliss. In Chicago, he’d had a huge waiting room with perfectly designed furnishings. Every inch of that space had been modeled to give the patient a calm, peaceful place to wait while the doctor took his time. He’d paid a decorator a fortune to ensure that his office was the best. Well, his wife had paid a fortune. He’d never given a crap about any of it. He’d just wanted to work, but his wife and family had insisted that Dr. Caleb Sommerville have the most prestigious-looking office they could afford. Two years later, he was in a mobile hospital in Africa. Yeah. Caroline had loved that.
He now had two folding chairs and a whiteboard where people could sign up for appointments. More often than not, all that was on his board now was snarky little notes.
And now he was freaked out because Holly had never actually been in his office. He’d kind of avoided it. When he’d needed to be with her twenty-four-seven, he’d taken her on his rural rounds and then back to her place. He didn’t want her to see his office or the place he lived. It seemed like a stark glimpse into his soul. Yeah. ’Cause you’ve fooled her with your charming banter. She’ll be shocked to find out you don’t give a crap about decorating. Because she thought you were fucking Martha Stewart before.
What the hell was he doing? Why was he worried about this? It wasn’t like it mattered. He wasn’t starting a relationship with Holly. He was protecting her. It was all he could really give her. He’d proven he couldn’t handle a real relationship. He’d put his work in front of his marriage. He’d started out caring for Caroline, but he’d cared so little for her in the end that he’d left for months at a time. She’d had to travel halfway around the world to tell him she was leaving, and then he’d gotten her murdered.
He didn’t deserve Holly. He couldn’t give her the life she deserved. He was too dark for her. How could he tell her all the things he thought about, dreamed of? He couldn’t.
But then did Alexei really deserve her?
“Knock, knock.” A soft feminine voice floated in from the outer office.
Caleb stopped. He didn’t think he had any appointments. Just Alexei’s very thorough checkup and Holly’s intensely awkward one. How was he going to put impersonal hands on her? Even checking her pulse gave him a hard-on.
He certainly wasn’t expecting Nell Flanders.
“There you are!” Nell didn’t walk. She sort of floated, as though her dainty feet didn’t quite touch the earth she claimed she was so connected to. Nell was a healthy thirty-year-old with shiny brown hair and a penchant for public protests. “I’m glad I caught you before you opened up.”
God, he hoped she wasn’t going to ask to go on rounds with him. Nell had a reputation for attempting to experience everything. She’d tried working with just about everyone in Bliss in order to connect with the people around her. Her experiments had ranged from the successful—she was quite good at selling baked goods at The Trading Post—to the utterly disastrous—she’d nearly given Max Harper a heart attack when she had tried to set all of his horses free. Luckily Max was a damn fine horse trainer and on a short leash from his far more patient wife. Otherwise, Nell Flanders might have been in trouble.
Caleb didn’t need trouble today. He had all he could take. He would run these tests for Holly, and then he would leave town for a few days because he wasn’t going to watch her date Alexei. No way. No how.
Except he had to. Callie was having a baby. Fuck. He couldn’t leave. First he had to deliver the baby, and then he had to stay around because newborns required checking. Maybe he could call someone else in? Who was he kidding? There wasn’t anyone else.
“Uhm, am I interrupting something?” Nell stood, staring at him, a basket of green in her hand. Some sort of plant.
“No.”
She looked around the office, her eyes studying the surroundings. “Oh, well, you were really concentrating. I thought you might have been doing some serious meditation.”
More like some serious freaking out. “I don’t meditate. What do you need?”
Yep, his bedside manner was in full swing.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
He stared at her, suspicion tickling at him. No one wanted to talk to him. He’d cultivated a reputation as a taciturn bastard. If it wasn’t about a physical malady, no one attempted to engage him in conversation. He could sit for hours in Trio or Stella’s beside someone and never utter a word until it was time to go. “Hello” and “good-bye” was about what he’d trained people to expect from him. That and “take a deep breath” or “this is going to sting.”
Except Alexei. He’d talked a lot that day. And he’d taught the Farley brothers. He’d felt bad for those kids from the moment he’d heard they were getting bullied, but until Alexei had talked to him about it, he hadn’t done anything. That day by the pond, he’d really talked to Bobby and Will. He’d given them advice his own father had given him. It had been easy because he’d known if he fucked up or said the wrong thing or had a panic attack, Alexei would take care of them.
“Have I lost you again?” Nell asked.
“All right. I’ll hear you out,” he said slowly. This was Holly’s friend. He could listen.
“I want to talk to you about Holly.”
Or not. He turned back to his equipment, dismissing her entirely. How large bore of a needle could he convincingly use on Alexei without really breaking his Hippocratic oath?
He could hear her foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the linoleum. “I’m not going to go away because you ignore me.”
“Most people do.” And he liked it that way.
A confident little huff came out of her mouth. “Most people haven’t handcuffed themselves to giant trees for days at a time. You know, you learn a lot when you protest. I know how to talk when being screamed at and threatened with bodily harm and various lawsuits. I’ve been called every name in the book. I’ve been shot at and played chicken with a bulldozer. I won. You can ignore me all you like, and I’ll just keep talking until you listen to me. That can be now or five days from now. I’ve cleared my calendar.”
Crap. He believed her. He turned back to Nell, who set down the potted plant and smiled. He gave her his best scowl, but she simply brightened her smile. She wasn’t going away no matter how much he tried to intimidate her. He knew when to retreat. “All right. I’m listening.”
“You know I like you, Caleb.”
He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that. He hadn’t really thought about whether Nell liked him or not, but she seemed to require a response. “Thanks.”