Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(7)

“Apology accepted. And I had a bad breakup, too, but it was a while ago. Water under the bridge, as they say.”

“You got dumped?”

He gave a nod. “And I understand how you feel. So let’s start over. What do you say? I’m Drew Foley,” he said.

She took another step toward the porch, looking up at him. “Sunny Archer. But when? I mean, how long ago did you get dumped?”

“About nine months, I guess.”

“About?” she asked. It must not have impacted him in quite the same way if he couldn’t remember the date. “I mean—was it traumatic?”

“Sort of,” he said. “We were engaged, lived together, but we were arguing all the time. She finally told me she wasn’t willing to have a life like that and we had to go our separate ways. It wasn’t my idea to break up.” He shrugged. “I thought we could fix it and wanted to try, but she didn’t.”

“Did you know?” she asked. “Were you expecting it?”

He shook his head. “I should have expected it, but it broadsided me.”

“How can that be? If you should have expected it, how could it possibly have taken you by surprise?”

He took a deep breath, looked skyward into the softly falling flakes, then back at her. “We were pretty miserable, but before we lived together we did great. I’m a medical resident and my hours were…still are hideous. Sometimes I’m on for thirty-six hours and just get enough time off to sleep. She needed more from me than that. She…” He looked down. “I don’t like calling her she or her. Penny had a hard time changing her life in order to move in with me. She had to get a new job, make new friends, and I was never there for her. I should have seen it coming but I didn’t. It was all my fault but I couldn’t have done anything to change it.”

“Where are you from?” she asked him.

“Chico. About four hours south of here.”

“Wow,” she said. “We actually do have some things in common.”

“Do we?” he asked.

“But you’re over it. How’d you get over it?”

He put his hands in his front pants pockets. “She invited me to her engagement party three months ago. To another surgical resident. Last time I looked, he was on the same treadmill I was on. Guess he manages better with no sleep.”

“No way,” she said, backing away from the bar’s porch a little bit.

“Way.”

“You don’t suppose…?”

“That she was doing him when she was supposed to be doing me?” he asked for her. “It crossed my mind. But I’m not going there. I don’t even want to know. All that aside, she obviously wasn’t the one. I know that now. Which means it really was my fault. I was hooking up with someone out of inertia, not because I was insanely in love with her. Bottom line, Sunny, me and Penny? We both dodged a bullet. We were not meant to be.”

She was speechless. Her mouth formed a perfect O. Her eyes were round. She wished she’d been able to take her own situation in such stride. “Holy crap,” she finally said. Then she shook her head. “I guess you have to be confident to be in medicine and all.”

“Aw, come on, don’t give the study all the credit. I might actually have some common sense.” He took a step down from the bar porch to approach her, his heel slid on the step and he went airborne. While he was in the air, there were rapid flashes from her camera. Then he landed, flat on his back, and there were more flashes.

Sunny stood over him, camera in hand. She looked down at him. “Are you all right?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. It took him a moment to catch his breath. “I could be paralyzed, you know. I hope I was hallucinating, but were you actually taking my picture as I fell?”

“Well, I couldn’t catch you,” she said. Then she smiled.

“You are sick and twisted.”

“Maybe you should lie still. I could go in the bar and get the pediatrician and the midwife to have a look at you. I met them earlier, before you got here.”

He looked up at her; she was still smiling. Apparently it didn’t take much to cheer her up—the near death of a man seemed to put her in a better mood. “Maybe you could just show them the pictures….”

She fell onto her knees beside him and laughed, her camera still in hand. It was a bright and happy sound and those beautiful blue eyes glittered. “Seriously, you’re the doctor—do you think you’re all right?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t moved yet. One wrong move and I could be paralyzed from the neck down.”

“Are you playing me?”

“Might be,” he admitted with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Hah! You moved! You’re fine. Get up.”

“Are you going to have a drink with me?” he asked.

“Why should I? Seriously, we’re a couple of wounded birds—we probably shouldn’t drink, and we certainly shouldn’t drink together!”

“Get over it,” he said, rising a bit, holding himself up on his elbows. “We have nothing to lose. It’s a New Year’s Eve party. We’ll have a couple of drinks, toast the New Year, move on. But give it a try not so pissed off. See if you can have some fun.” He smiled. “Just for the heck of it?”