Her heart felt enlarged, like it was pressing too tight against her breastbone. Unwanted tears blurred her vision. What was wrong with her? She’d just kissed Eric Reyes like her life depended on it. Now his deep, low voice coaxed her in the twilight.
“Just…just leave me alone,” she said haltingly—stupidly—before she yanked her T-shirt over her head.
He picked up her tote bag, holding it out to her like a peace offering. “I didn’t come out here to ask you to leave. I’ve watched you swim here the last few summers. I came out here tonight to tell you to continue.”
Her head swung around, and their gazes locked. She wished like hell she didn’t believe him. His kindness was too much to bear after that sudden upsurge of grief and anger followed by that inexplicable blaze of pure desire. A wild need to escape overwhelmed her.
Tears blurred her vision as she grabbed her tote bag and jogged across the sand, leaving the source of her turmoil behind.
Chapter One
The first thing Colleen Kavanaugh Sinclair saw when she walked into Dr. Fielding’s familiar examination room was her son, Brendan, slouching in a chair. The second thing was her arch-nemesis standing nonchalantly next to him. Once she took in Eric Reyes’s unexpected presence, pretty much everything faded from her awareness for two stunned seconds.
Of course, he wasn’t really her arch-nemesis. That was just stupid. An enemy would have to mean something to her, and Eric Reyes did not mean anything.
“Colleen, Dr. Reyes mentioned that you two know one another.” Dr. Fielding’s voice interrupted her dazed disbelief.
She blinked and forced her attention to Dr. Fielding. He looked especially short, round and amiable while standing next to the brooding, dark tower of maleness that was Eric Reyes. Dr. Fielding had moved to Harbor Town around twelve years ago, soon after Colleen herself had returned. He’d delivered Brendan and her daughter, Jenny. Because he hadn’t lived in Harbor Town at the time of the crash, he clearly didn’t get the history and thick emotion that ran like a humming electrical wire beneath his seemingly innocuous statement about her and Eric knowing one another.
“Did he?” Colleen returned, eyebrows arched.
“Yes, he’s told me you two work together at The Family Center. Wonderful place. I’ve heard Colleen speak twice now about the facility,” he said, turning to Eric. “Once for the Rotary Club and once for the Pediatric Society in Detroit. She’s a talented public educator and speaker, in addition to being a gifted clinician. But I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Eric,” Dr. Fielding said.
His warm, friendly glance between Eric and Colleen melted when he noticed Eric’s wooden expression and Colleen’s averted gaze. She inhaled deeply for courage. If Eric could seem so calm, so could she.
“I work at The Family Center,” Colleen corrected. “Dr. Reyes is a volunteer. He comes in a few hours a week.” Blessing us with his supreme presence, Colleen finished silently. Eric’s mouth twitched, as if she’d spoken the words out loud. If she hadn’t been thrown so off balance by Eric’s unexpected presence at her son’s doctor’s appointment, she probably would have had to hide a grin at the knowledge that her arrow had hit its target.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him quietly instead.
Eric held up a chart. “Dr. Fielding consulted with me about Brendan’s case today. I examined Brendan. Even though your son hasn’t quite finished his course of penicillin, I recommended an X-ray and bone scan. We’ve received the results.”
“You recommended them?” Colleen repeated. She hadn’t realized he’d examined her son, although she now recalled Brendan mentioning a funny, cool young doctor dude who had looked at his foot last week before Colleen had taken him for X-rays in a different part of the hospital. Dr. Fielding had said he’d have a specialist take a look at the foot, but neither that comment or her son’s description had brought to mind Eric Reyes, who, in Colleen’s opinion, was an interfering, arrogant block of ice. Sure, he might have that glossy, dark, movie-star-quality hair and angular jaw that kept the secretaries at The Family Center wide-eyed and breathless. And she conceded he possessed an authoritative yet trustworthy bedside manner.
But Colleen’s days of being overwhelmed by those surface charms were long over.
“Dr. Reyes is Harbor Town Memorial’s finest orthopedic surgeon, Colleen. I immediately went to him when I had questions about Brendan’s foot problem.”
Her brow crinkled. She glanced anxiously at Brendan. Her son gave a small, sheepish shrug and rolled his eyes. Her heart squeezed in her chest in compassion for him. She knew how much he longed to be back playing football, how much he despised all these doctor appointments. The “foot problem” had become the bane of his twelve-year-old existence.
Over the past month, Brendan had acquired a limp. Initially, it’d hardly been noticeable, but it became more pronounced every day. Brendan denied any serious pain, insisting there was only a dull ache in his right foot. Colleen had assumed he’d pulled a muscle or gotten run over by an unusually big kid at Little League football practice, although Brendan and his coach insisted nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. She’d made an appointment with Dr. Fielding, not really expecting anything more than the normal bruises and sprains Brendan had acquired over his active boyhood years. Dr. Fielding had discovered internal swelling and recommended a course of antibiotic treatment. Much to Brendan’s distress, Dr. Fielding had also put the kibosh on any more football for the rest of the season.
Eric Reyes was an orthopedic surgeon, though. His presence at this day-long hospital visit implied the foot problem was a good deal more significant than a bruise or infection.
“He needs a specialist? It’s that serious?” Colleen asked Eric.
“Brendan hasn’t responded to the course of oral antibiotics. The swelling of the soft tissue has increased, as has his pain. Considerably,” Eric replied.
She knew patients at The Family Center responded to Eric to an uncommon degree, seeming to instinctively trust his intelligent, incisive, perpetually unruffled manner. What he was saying in that even, authoritative tone didn’t soothe Colleen at the moment, however. It frightened her.
This did sound serious.
“Your pain is worse?” Colleen said, turning to Brendan. Her son shrugged again.
“It doesn’t hurt that bad,” Brendan mumbled.
“On a pediatric scale of pain, Brendan is scoring in the high category,” Eric said.
“Brendan, why didn’t you tell me you were hurting so much?” Colleen asked worriedly. Brendan hunched down, revealing little to her but the crown of his dark gold, wavy hair. She forced down a maternal desire to go over and hug him. She swore her son had skipped preadolescence and moved right into teenage rebellion. It bewildered her at times, how independent he wanted to be, how withdrawn he could get. One second he’d been an adorable, chubby two-year-old, the next he’d become an impenetrable puzzle.