Luke(40)

"Carmen…" He scrubbed his hands over his face. "You're loco."

"I'm crazy? You're the one sitting here instead of being with your woman. You break up or something?"

"We're not together, and after next week when I'm done with the clinic, we're not seeing each other anymore."

"Well, who made up that brilliant rule?"

He sighed. "Don't you have a toilet to clean or something?"

"I'd rather bother you." She leaned back, made herself comfortable. "So let me get this straight … here's the first woman in forever to grab you by the heart strings and hold on tight, and you're going to walk away from her? And all this time I thought you were so smart."

"We both agreed this was just a temporary—" He broke off, stared at the pounding surf. Temporary. He was beginning to hate that word.

"A temporary sex thing?" She cackled. "Well, I'm all for that. Only it turned out to be more, you big, fancy idiot, and now what … you're too proud to say so?"

"More never works out for me. Not with my lifestyle."

"So a doctor isn't allowed to have a life now? You know what I think?"

"If I say yes, will you be quiet?"

"I think it's more than that. I think you're afraid."

He managed a laugh. "Don't be ridiculous."

"You're afraid to get married and have kids because you think you'll be no better of a daddy than yours was."

Startled, he looked up at her. She nodded. "Your brother called me yesterday. Wanted to check up on you. I told him everything, so get over it. Matt said he thought maybe you didn't want to get involved since your parents didn't like the responsibility of having kids and never even looked at the two of you. He said that'd been his problem until he was knocked off his feet by some fancy, beautiful scientist he's going to marry."

He was going to kill his brother. "Carmen—"

"Right." She rose. "Mind my own business. Sure." She started to walk away, only to turn back. "I guess the thing I'm really surprised at is that Faith is being as stubborn and proud as you. I mean, we all know what's holding you back. Stupid, male pride. But what's holding her back? I would have thought at least one of you would have had the guts to fight for this." With that, she walked away.

The waves hit the shore with a relentless rhythm that now matched his new headache. He did know what held him back, and yes, maybe part of it was fear, part of it resignation that he could never have a normal family life, so he figured why try.

Sitting there on the sand watching Mother Nature do her thing, he could admit, it'd always been easier to date casually, letting women in and out of his mental revolving door rather than try to solve the problem.

But what the hell held Faith back?





* * *





Chapter 12


? ^ ?

And then it was their last weekend. Faith was going to open the clinic both days, as they were doing a special Women's Awareness Day on Sunday.

Luke had agreed to work the entire weekend, so readily that Faith actually let herself believe he didn't want it to end any more than she did.

Faith woke up feeling blue. She told herself she was worried about money, worried about a few patients, worried about a class she wanted to work into her schedule, worried about her blood sugar since late the night before. Driven by stress, she'd broken into Guy's personal stash of candy and had wolfed down two candy bars.

But what was really bothering her had nothing to do with any of those things and everything to do with the fact that tomorrow, after Women's Awareness Day, Luke would be gone.

Guy had bought some goodbye decorations at a party shop, and was dressing up their staff room. Shelby had made cookies, oatmeal with raisin, of course, and was proud of the fact that they contained no sugar or wheat.

They tasted like bricks, but that wasn't what caused the unswallowable lump in Faith's throat and she knew it.

Only two more days.

Forty-eight hours.

Two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes.

She was mentally calculating the seconds when Luke walked into the room wearing his usual neat trousers and button-down shirt already shoved up to the elbows. He smiled at the decorations, grabbed a cookie and turned to Faith.

He took her breath.

Leaning back against the counter, he studied her while he took a bite. His eyes seemed to see everything, the way she'd pulled her wild hair back in an ineffective attempt to tame it. The crystals she'd put in her ears, guaranteed to make wishes come true … she'd be putting those to the test today. The high spots of color she could feel on her cheeks. The snug, unusually flattering knit dress she'd chosen hoping he'd notice that it actually made her look good—

His eyes flared with appreciation as they roamed over her, assuring her he'd noticed. He popped the rest of the cookie into his mouth and pushed away from the counter. "Those are awful," he said, and cupped her face. Tilting it up, he ran a thumb over her lower lip and destroyed a whole host of brain cells.

"That's because there's no sugar in them."

"Ah." Bending, he brushed his lips over hers. "Tonight, Faith?"