New York Doc to Blushing Bride

CHAPTER TWO

“THAT’S WONDERFUL,” CARA said to her friend, instead of expressing her immediate thought. Just a few days then she’d never have to think of Super Sloan Trenton or this town again. She’d make her mother proud.

“Yes, he is.” Julie elbowed her, causing Cara to scoot a little on the pew. “Some lucky, smart woman is going to have herself a treasure when she lands that man.”

Cara’s eyes widened. Surely her friend wasn’t hinting… not at her father’s funeral visitation… not when she knew Cara would never get serious with a mini-me of her father? But when she met her friend’s gaze, Julie nodded and grinned from ear to ear.

“He’s a good man, Cara.” Julie eyed him as if he were Mr. Perfection. “A woman could do a lot worse than coming home to Sloan every night. Just look at him. I love my Rex, but men don’t come any hotter than that one.”

Any moment Cara expected Julie to fan her face. Then she did.

Cara resisted an eye roll. Barely.

“As hard as it is to believe, his insides are even better than that yummy exterior. The man has a heart of gold.”

“I have a boyfriend, you know.” Not to mention that Julie had a husband and child and shouldn’t be calling another man yummy and looking at him as if he were chocolate-dipped, right?

“That fancy trauma surgeon you’ve been dating since your residency? I’ve seen the pictures of you two and your travels online.” Julie gave a low whistle. “He’s a looker all right, but something is missing there. He’s a little plastic, don’t you think?”

Plastic? Not hardly.

“John is a wonderful man.” Nothing was missing between her and John. She planned to marry him. Their relationship was wonderful. Wasn’t that what she’d told her father repeatedly? What she told herself repeatedly?

“Wonderful is okay.” Julie wasn’t going to be swayed. “But Sloan is the total package. I’m pretty sure your father handpicked him for you to come home to.”

Julie thought… Was that why her father…? No, she’d been with John years before her father had recruited Sloan. He’d liked John. He’d told her he did.

Had the words come from someone other than her father, she might have thought they’d been said only for her benefit. Preston hadn’t been known for holding back his true thoughts. He’d have told her if he hadn’t approved of the brilliant trauma surgeon she’d taken a liking to when she’d been in residency.

Her father hadn’t picked Sloan for her because she’d already picked the man she’d be sharing her future with. She’d told Preston as much, that when John asked her to marry him, she planned to say yes.

That had been last month when her father had flown to New York for a medical conference and spent a few days with her. Of course, John hadn’t asked her yet and had been acting a little weird lately, but that was probably only due to how busy his hospital schedule had been the past few months.

“Besides, where is this boyfriend? He should be here with you,” Julie pointed out in a tone unflattering to John. Her lips pursed with disapproval. “A man should be with his woman at her father’s funeral. No excuses.”

“He’s a trauma surgeon. He can’t just walk away from his job at the drop of a hat. Not unless it was an emergency. There was nothing John could do to help.” Or so he’d bluntly told her when she’d mentioned him coming with her. Logically, even if his crassness had hurt, he’d been right. She hadn’t pushed for him to drop everything to come with her. But she’d wanted him to do just that, even though, goodness knew, the emergency room would be crazy enough with her unexpectedly gone, much less her and one of the trauma surgeons.

But they would have gotten by… No, she wasn’t going to let those thoughts in. John would be here if there had been anything he could do. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to spend time in Bloomberg when he didn’t absolutely have to. He loved city life even more than she did.

“Yeah,” Julie tsked. “Nothing he could do, except hold your hand, comfort you and keep you from being alone during your father’s funeral.”

Well, there was that.

Cara didn’t want to be having this conversation. Not right now. Not ever. Because as much as she told herself she understood, she also acknowledged that she would have gone with John had their roles been reversed. That he hadn’t even considered it hurt more than a smidge.

Ready to end their conversation, Cara managed a tight smile toward her friend and was grateful to see another familiar face waiting to give her sympathy. “Um, okay, I’ll keep that in mind, Julie. Thanks for your condolences. Good to see you.”

“You do that, and, yes, Cara, it’s so good to see you home, but I hate that it’s under these circumstances.” Her friend squeezed her tightly, filling Cara’s nostrils yet again with honeysuckle and another wave of memories. “Your dad will be missed by everyone in Bloomberg. For that matter, so are you.”

She chose to ignore Julie’s mention of her being missed. Yes, her father would be missed by Bloomberg, but even more so by his daughter. She may not live in Bloomberg, but she did talk to her father several times a week. Usually their conversations had consisted of what new restaurant or show she had gone to that week or she’d recount some odd case that had come into the emergency room. On her father’s end, he’d talked about Bloomberg and Sloan.

She’d gotten to where she’d dreaded their next Sloan the Wonder Boy session. Now, she’d listen to her father read the phone book just to hear his voice.

A fresh wave of moisture stung Cara’s eyes and she squeezed them shut. She would make it through the next couple of days and then truly leave Bloomberg, better known to her as Gloomberg, the name she’d given the town during high school.

Eventually, the funeral-home crowd began to thin.

Thank God. Sloan felt exhausted. As if being at Preston’s visitation wasn’t trying enough, Mrs. Goines’s fall and Cara’s words had zapped what little adrenaline he’d still been operating on.

As the last visitor, who’d just finished talking with Cara, gave their condolences to Sloan, the funeral director came to him to clarify the next day’s arrangements.

“I’ll check with Cara to see what she prefers,” he told Irving Greenwood, the pudgy, balding third-generation funeral-home director. The Greenwood’s Funeral Parlor had been serving Bloomberg for more than a hundred years. Lots of Bloomberg’s businesses could boast such a rich heritage. That deep sense of family and belonging was what had drawn Sloan to Bloomberg.

That and Dr. Preston Conner.

Bracing himself for whatever Cara threw at him, Sloan’s heart picked up pace. Every breath he took sounded loud, forced as he crossed the room to where she sat, hands in her lap, eyes cast downward. She looked lost, alone, elegantly fragile.

Her emotions were everywhere. Understandably so. After all, she’d lost her father unexpectedly. No wonder she was upset. Although he seemed to be the only target of her negative emotions.

“Hey.” Sloan gently called her attention to where he stood in front of her. He wasn’t sure if she’d been lost in her own thoughts or if she’d purposely been ignoring him. “Mr. Greenwood asked how you wanted the flowers and such handled. I told him I would discuss the matter with you and let him know.”

Complexion pale, she blinked up at him as if she’d forgotten he existed, as if their encounter with Mrs. Goines had never happened. “I don’t understand. What about the flowers?”

He motioned to the room that could currently have doubled as a florist shop. “They’re all yours. Do you want everything not left at the graveside delivered to Preston’s house tomorrow afternoon?”

She glanced around at the room that overflowed with flowers, ceramic statues, blankets, bibles and other sympathy mementos. Her expression became confused. “Please, no. What would I do with them?”

Good question. What did a person do with flower arrangements and such following a funeral? Sloan had no idea. He’d never known his parents, had grown up in foster-homes and had certainly never experienced a funeral from this perspective. “I could help you go through everything. There might be a few items you want to keep. We could take the live flowers to the nursing home or hospital, distribute them amongst the patients and staff there, and hopefully add a smile to their day.” He smiled, hoping Cara would do the same, even if only a small curving of her lips.

She didn’t.

Obviously considering what he’d suggested, she toyed with her bottom lip. “There’s nothing I want to keep. It could just all be delivered there to begin with and we wouldn’t have to go through anything. Give them to Dad’s nursing-home patients, the nurses or whomever you think best. All I ask is that a running list of items and who gave them be kept so I can send appropriate thank-you notes.”

Her expression pinched and she rubbed her temple. “Or does the funeral home do that? I’ve no idea.” Fatigue etched on her lovely face, she ran her gaze over the abundance of tokens sent in Preston’s memory. “I’d asked that everyone make a donation to the local heart association rather than send flowers. That would have been much easier to deal with, really.”

Sloan would have liked to have sat down next to her in the pew. He felt ridiculous towering above her. Despite her momentary politeness, she wouldn’t welcome him sitting next to her. He didn’t need a genius IQ to figure that one out. Still, he attempted an empathetic smile.

“I’m sure lots of donations have been made, too. The town’s people want to show their love and appreciation for all that your father has done for them over the years. No one has given so much of himself for the benefit of others as your father did for Bloomberg.”

She nodded absently, glanced around the room, now empty except for them and the coffin. Her face paled to a pasty white and her knuckles threatened to burst through the thin layer of skin covering them. A sob almost broke free from her pale lips. She managed to stop it, but not before Sloan realized what she’d done. His heart squeezed in a painful vise-like grip.

“Are you okay?” That was a stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay. She’d bury her father in less than twenty-four hours.

But rather than blast him for his ridiculous question, as he’d expected and braced himself for, she just shook her head. “No. I need to get out of here. Please. Just get me out of here.”

He wasn’t sure what she intended him to do, and there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to ease the strain on her face. When she didn’t move, he reached for her hand. “Let me help you.”

Still looking drained and a bit panicky, she put her hand in his.

Several things registered all at once. Her hand sent chills through his entire body, probably from their sheer frigidness, although he couldn’t be sure because there was something electric in the feel of her skin against his, too. Second, she shook. Again, this could be from how cold her hands were but he suspected it had more to do with the situation. Another was how fragile she felt in his grasp. Preston’s daughter was a strong, independent woman, a bit of a daredevil and a phenomenal athlete. At the moment, she wasn’t any of those things. She was a little girl who’d just lost her father and she looked overwhelmed.

Without a word, Sloan led her to his Jeep, helped her into the passenger seat. She had a rental car at the funeral home, but she didn’t need to be driving. Not with the way she was shaking, with how utterly exhausted she appeared. He hadn’t slept much the past few days either, between covering his and Preston’s patients and his own grief. But at the moment he was the stronger of Cara and himself.

“Sorry I don’t have the top on.” He rarely kept the top on the Jeep because he liked the freedom of the air whipping about him. “It’ll be a bit windy.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, barely loud enough for him to make out her words. “My mind just wanted to get out of there, but my body didn’t seem to know how to leave. Or maybe it was my heart that didn’t want to go.”

“A normal stress reaction.”

“I’m not stressed,” she automatically argued, her shoulders stiff.

“Okay, you’re not stressed,” he agreed, not willing to debate with her since they both knew the truth. He started the Jeep and pulled out of the funeral parlor parking lot, heading down the highway toward the quiet neighborhood where Preston’s house was located.

About halfway to Maple Street he glanced toward where she sat, staring blankly out the open doorway. The wind tugged at her hair, pulling strands free from where she had it pinned back. Utter fatigue was etched on her face. He reached across the seat, put his hand over hers. That skin-to-skin electricity zapped him again.

Her head jerked toward him. Had she felt it, too?

Regardless, she looked ready to demand he take her back to Greenwood’s, that she’d only temporarily lost her mind in asking for his help. But whatever had sparked to life within her deflated just as quickly. Without a word, she went back to staring out the open doorway. Within seconds her body relaxed and her head slumped against the headrest.

Hand still tucked beneath his, she’d gone to sleep.

He parked the car in front of Preston’s gray-and-white Victorian-style home, jumped out and went to Cara’s side of the car.

Should he wake her or just carry her inside?

No doubt she’d not slept much, if at all, the night before. If he woke her, would she be able to go back to sleep or would she lie grieving through the long night hours?

Memories of her tearstained face from the day before decided it for him.

Digging his key ring out of his pocket, he unlocked the front door, went back to the Jeep and carefully scooped Cara into his arms.

She was as light as a feather.

And smelled of heaven.

Or as close to heaven as Sloan had ever smelled. Like the soft, sweet fragrance of cherry candy mixed with an amazing, almost addictive freshness that made him want to inhale deeply. Then there were those electric zings. His entire body sparked with excitement.

He held a woman who had fascinated him for months, long before he’d met her. As he’d dated and tried to make a life for himself in Bloomberg, he’d found himself comparing every woman to the woman Preston often spoke of, never satisfied, always feeling as if he was waiting for something more.

Waiting for her to come home perhaps?

Which made no sense.

He blamed Preston. Preston compared every woman Sloan dated to Cara so, of course, Sloan had done the same. The man’s dying words had been a request for Sloan to promise to take care of Cara.

A promise Sloan had given and meant.

But, much as he didn’t understand his interest in Cara, he couldn’t blame everything on Preston. Cara herself had captured his imagination with the various photos of her hanging on Preston’s office wall.

Sloan did his best to tamp down the awareness of her that his body couldn’t seem to prevent because he was positive that his all-too-male response wasn’t what his friend had meant regarding taking care of his daughter. Besides, she was exhausted, grieving for her father. He had no right to be thinking of her as a desirable woman, to be aware of her feminine attributes. He should only be seeing her as the grieving daughter of a man he’d loved.

He kept telling himself that as he carried her into her room, managed to get the covers pulled back, and gently placed her in her bed.

The glow from the hallway light illuminated her lovely face, free from anguish for the first time since he’d met her, with the exception of when she’d been caring for Mrs. Goines. Then her natural nurturing instinct had taken over. He ached to see the twinkle in her eyes that shone in Preston’s photos, to hear laughter spill from her full lips, to have her look at him with something other than disdain.

Unable to resist, he brushed a strand of hair away from her face, stroking his finger over the silky smoothness of her skin.

Based upon her reaction to meeting him, he doubted he’d ever experience any of the things he’d like to experience about Cara, which was a real shame because she fascinated him. Probably because of his love of Preston. Probably.

If only he could convince himself of that.

He turned to leave but her hand grabbed his.

“Don’t go.”

Sloan stood perfectly still. Was she even awake or just reaching out in her sleep? He turned, met her sleepy gaze. “Cara?”

“I don’t want to be alone in this lonely house. Not tonight.” Her voice was small, almost childlike in its plea. “Please, don’t go.”

Sloan knew staying shouldn’t be an option. Not in Bloomberg. His Jeep was parked outside. Everyone knew his Jeep. Bloomberg was a small town. Nothing would happen. Not when she was so distraught, but, still, the right thing for him to do would be to leave, to not give gossips anything to gnaw upon.

But walking away from her might take a much stronger man than he’d ever claimed to be.

CHAPTER THREE

CARA CLUNG TO Sloan’s hand as if letting go would mean falling into an abyss she might never climb back out of.

She just might.

Goose bumps covered her skin. Her insides trembled. Her teeth fought chattering.

Which was crazy. The house wasn’t cold. Not really.

But she felt chilled all the way to her bones, had from the moment she’d lost contact with Sloan’s body heat when he’d laid her into her childhood bed. She’d suddenly felt more alone than she could recall ever feeling.

In his arms, and in the cocoon of her exhaustion, she’d felt warm, safe, not alone.

She’d not slept the night before, had tried, but the house haunted her, filling her mind with noises and memories of days gone past.

By the time she’d left for the funeral she’d been grateful for a reason to leave the ghostly haven.

She shivered again and grasped Sloan’s hand tighter as she felt his inner struggle on whether to go or stay. No wonder. She didn’t like him, hadn’t been receptive to any of his friendly overtures. Yet now she was begging him to stay as if he was the only thing protecting her from nighttime monsters.

He was.

“Don’t go,” she pleaded, grateful for the dim lights. She hated begging. She hated the thought of being alone in this house even more. “I need you.”

Still he wavered. “Are you sure, Cara? I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

Please. She rolled her eyes. Typical man. She just wanted him to ward off the ensuing nightmares and he thought she was offering sex.

Perhaps she couldn’t fault him for that because maybe her pleas had sounded as if she wanted more than what she’d meant.

“So long as you keep your clothes on, Casanova, and I keep on my clothes, you aren’t taking advantage. I just don’t want to be alone. Please, don’t make me.”

The dark shadows of the room didn’t hide him digesting her words. His expression confused, he looked down at where she held his hand. “Just so we’re clear, what is it you want from me, Cara?”

Her brain felt fuzzy and she almost said, “Everything.” But that was all wrong. All she wanted from him was the comfort of knowing another person was near, that she wasn’t really alone in this house, in the world. She needed human contact. Not him really. Just another human near to offer companionship, to ground her to reality.

“Just hold me and don’t let me go.”

He still looked torn. She wished she could read his mind to know his thoughts. But then his lips pursed and he gave one slight nod.

“I can do that.”

His answer seemed odd, but perhaps that was her fuzzy, fatigue and grief-laden brain talking. “I never thought you couldn’t.”

A small smile tugged at one corner of his lips. “I suspect you have a sharp tongue, Cara.”

If Cara weren’t so cold, feeling so emotionally bereft, if her eyelids weren’t so heavy, she might have smiled at his comment. Wasn’t that what her father had often said of her mother? That she’d had a tongue so sharp she could cut diamonds with a few well-chosen words? Odd. She hadn’t thought of that in years. Instead of acknowledging the memories flooding her, she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered again. “I’m so cold.”

Sloan sucked in a deep breath and crawled into the bed beside her, pulling her into his arms and cradling her next to his long, lean, warm body. “You won’t be for long, Cara. I promise.”

She wasn’t.

Instead, she closed her eyes and, although being in bed with him should have kept her wide-awake, she slept, peaceful in the knowledge that he was there.

Not only there but stroking her hair, telling her how sorry he was at her loss, at how her father had been a good man and would be sorely missed. His low, gentle voice soothed aches deep inside her. She snuggled closer into him, knowing that if she wakened and needed him, he would still be there for the simple reason that he’d said he would be.

Funny how much that thought comforted her when he was essentially a stranger and she didn’t like him.

Still, her father had liked him, trusted him, which was partially the problem. But in a moment of crisis that had to count for something.

In his arms was the only place she’d found any comfort since her entire world had turned upside down with a phone call he’d been the one to make.

Sloan lay very still, listening to the even sounds of Cara breathing. She’d gone right back to sleep. That was probably a good thing because no matter how many times he reminded his mind that this was a good deed, his body responded to her closeness in an all-male way.

He inhaled a slow whiff of the scent of her hair. Clean with a soft cherry flavor. That’s what she smelled like. Cherry blossoms.

Unable to resist, he ran his fingers into her hair, stroking the sweet softness of her tresses between his fingers.

What was he doing?

Sighing, he let go of her hair and wrapped his arm back around her body, holding her close.

She wriggled against him, causing torturous awareness to zing to life.

“I don’t like you,” she mumbled under her breath, so low he barely could make out what she said.

“I noticed,” he whispered back in resigned acknowledgement of her feelings toward him.

“Even if you are scorching hot and wear sex appeal like a second skin.”

Sloan’s entire body went stiff. Her breathing was still even and her body hadn’t moved away from where she spooned with his. Was she awake?

“You think I’m sexy?” he asked, curious as to whether she’d respond and, if so, what she’d say.

“You are so hot you melt my insides just looking at you—but don’t think I’ll ever tell you that,” she answered, her body still relaxed against his. “I won’t, because I don’t like you.”

Asleep. She was talking to him in her sleep. No way would she have just said that and not gone all tense if she were awake.

Despite his current uncomfortable predicament, Sloan grinned. It no longer mattered that Cara didn’t like him, because apparently she was as physically aware of him as he was her. Somehow, at the moment, that seemed a lot more important in the grand scheme of life than merely being liked.