The Hollywood Hills Clinic

Nothing to do but get it over with. He gestured for Mila to go ahead of him. She hesitated for several long seconds, then her shoulders dropped in resignation and she trudged over to the mural. James moved in as well, standing a good five feet away from her.

“Can you move closer?” Morgan waved her hand. “You’re blocking part of the tree.”

Was it his imagination, or did the photographer have a slightly “gotcha” smirk to her expression? Maybe he should have been a little less standoffish when she’d been flirting with him in the car because right now it looked like she was enjoying having him at her mercy.

He took a couple of steps to the left, trying to talk his way through his discomfort. “Who did your paint job? It might not be a bad idea to match this look in the new clinic.”

She didn’t get a chance to answer, because Freya grinned. “Mila did it. She painted the clinic signs as well. Aren’t they great?”

His sister’s pride was evident. As was the warning gleam in her eyes that told him not to say anything that would hurt Mila’s feelings. As if he would.

The photographer snapped a couple of pictures right as that news was relayed. Even he could feel the shock on his face. He hated to think what it would come across as on film.

He glanced back to get a closer look at the tree. It was good. Very good. Right down to the smooth green of the coconuts hanging from it. He could have sworn she’d had it done by a professional. But then again she had lived in the tropics of Brazil so it made sense that she would have had learned to improvise and do more than practice medicine. And she had always loved children.

A trait that seemed to be missing from his family tree.

Another area of incompatibility. If only he’d been looking at their relationship with a clinical eye six years ago, he would have seen it. It had taken a shock from an ex-girlfriend and an offer of payment from his dad to make him see the reality of what Mila would be subjected to if he married her.

Another flash of Morgan’s camera, but he was too busy with his thoughts to take much notice.

Mila had survived. Improvised.

Had she improvised with some Brazilian man after he’d broken things off with her?

A thought he had no business dwelling on.

“Can you both turn toward the front? I’d like a couple more in this room before we move on.”

They both swiveled on their heels and faced the photographer.

“So do you think you can replicate this over at my clinic?” he asked.

She threw him a glance, the brow from earlier edging back up. “Beaches and palm trees won’t exactly match the theme you have going on over there, would it? What do you call it, by the way? Moneyed Green? Or are you just hoping artwork like this will highlight the differences between your clinic and mine—your patients and mine?”

The camera went off again.

Damn the woman. A muscle in his jaw clenched. “I was trying to pay Bright Hope a compliment. Forget I asked.”

Fingers landed on his forearm, and her eyes closed for a second before reopening. “I’m sorry, James, that was inexcusable of me. Can we start over?”

It was far too late for that. But if cold indifference was the way she wanted to play this game, then she would find he could match her, ice chip for ice chip. Except she’d never been an ice queen. Far from it. In fact, he’d always liked Mila’s hot temperament. It had matched the places she’d been. Stoked his own internal fires.

But he’d better figure out how to extinguish that particular flamethrower. And soon. First, though, he had to get rid of that damned camera, which seemed to be recording their every expression.

* * *

She’d almost blown things. As Mila gave James and his photographer the grand tour, and it wasn’t much, with the tiny size of her clinic and the money crunch they’d been under for the last few months, she tried her best not to let her animosity toward him show any more than it already had. Six years after the fact, she should be over their breakup. But his comment about her decorating choices had made it fizz up like the head on a beer. And he hadn’t even meant it as a cut.

She drew in a deep breath. It was up to her to calm the waters.

Only how was she supposed to do that when the waters churning inside her were gray and choppy? And with that photographer giving him the eye for most of the visit?

She pushed open the door at the far end of the hall. “And this is our business office.”

The head of her young assistant, Avery Phelps, popped up from behind her rickety desk, her brown eyes widening. She backed out of the narrow space on her hands and knees and climbed to her feet, tugging the hem of her blouse down over her tanned midriff. “Hey, Mi. Sorry. I was just trying to get this stupid cord to stay in place for once.”

“The computer again?”

“Yes. And I lost an hour’s worth of work this time.”

Mila groaned as she glanced at the empty screen of the computer monitor. “I’m so sorry. I keep meaning to have someone come out and take a look.” It was still weird to her to have to rely on technology to keep up with things when she was used to taking patient notes on actual paper, with an actual writing instrument. She preferred jotting things down, it seemed more personal.

But she couldn’t ask Avery to do that when things in the US were all done via computer. The young woman had been with Mila from the very beginning, when she’d rushed into Bright Hope as the frantic single mom of a very ill three-year-old girl. It had turned out Sarah had type one diabetes. Once they’d gotten her blood-sugar level under control, Avery had wanted to give something back and had insisted on donating several hours a week to the clinic—after working her own full-time job. She’d been at Bright Hope ever since, eventually becoming an employee rather than just a volunteer, and Mila had no idea what she’d do without the woman.

“Do you want me to take a look at it?” James’s voice rumbled over their heads.

Yeah, it would have been pretty tempting to ask him to crawl around underneath that desk, but she was afraid her body would go haywire and send out pheromonal signals that could be detected for miles. “It’s just a loose power cord but every time the desk jiggles, the power blinks in and out, and Avery loses data.”

He gave the old machine a dubious look. “Not good for your system. Do you have any tape?”

“Tried that a couple of times.” She was proud of herself for being one step ahead of him. Although it was really Avery who had thought of that. And how embarrassing was it to have this exchange in front of a camera?

“How about surgical tape? Or even phlebotomy tubing?”

How was that supposed to work any better than what they’d already tried?

Before she could ask, Avery said, “I’ll get you some. Anything to keep the darned thing going.”

Mila made a mental note to get someone techy out to look at the machine. The last thing she wanted was for James to have to come out to fix things.

Like her practice itself? If Freya hadn’t gotten him to agree to pump some funds into Bright Hope and allow her to open a branch inside The Hollywood Hills Clinic, people like Avery would have very few options. Mila had gone through most of her inheritance in the years since her aunt had passed away. Not that she missed the money. She didn’t. But she missed what it could do.

Within a minute her assistant had come back with a roll of latex tube tourniquet and wide surgical tape. “Pick your poison.” Avery said it with a smile, but a shiver went over Mila. Maybe because her poison had been James once upon a time. And like a slow-acting toxin, he’d killed the part of her heart that she’d handed over to his care.

“Let’s try the tubing first.”

Freya, who’d been silently watching the exchange, smiled. “My brother the handyman. Always trying to fix what’s broken.”

Was her friend talking about the eating disorder she’d overcome years ago? Mila remembered James’s sometimes heavy-handed tactics when it came to his sister, but Freya said that things had mellowed between them over the last year or so. Especially now that she and Zack had fallen in love and gotten married. Their twins were weeks away from being born, and the pair was ecstatic. Mila had done her best to be happy for her friend, but it struck too close to home. That could have been her and James had he not decided that a wife whose passion was working with various relief organizations would cramp his Hollywood style.

That might not be exactly true, but something had given him cold feet. He knew she wasn’t interested in being a big earner, so she’d always assumed that had had something to do with it. Only James had never seen fit to tell her why he hadn’t wanted to marry her. Just that she was better off without him.

And she was.

Definitely.

And he could keep his reasons for breaking their engagement to himself. After all, she was used to being kept in the dark. Her aunt had loved her, but in trying to protect her she’d left Mila unprepared for the shocking reality of her parents’ deaths. They hadn’t died in a car accident, like her aunt had told her. In fact, her mother had lingered for days in a hospital after being shot. Ten-year-old Mila had never even had the chance say goodbye. It had taken her a long time to forgive her aunt for that once she’d discovered the truth.

The Mila of today did not believe in holding back information no matter how unpalatable or difficult it might be. To do so was to destroy her trust. So James’s refusal to level with her had made it easy for her to walk away and never look back.

His voice came from nowhere, jerking her back to the present.

“I’ll need some scissors.” He tested the flexibility of the tubing he’d been handed.

What was he going to do with it?

Avery grabbed a pair of sharp scissors from the desk and handed them over.

Somehow wedging his large body between the leg of the desk and the wall, he grunted a quick oath at something and then remained silent for several minutes.

And the view from where she was standing was exquisite.

A length of tubing appeared on one side of the computer. “Can you grab that, Mila?”

Conscious of the pencil skirt she’d donned for the photo shoot, and praying the photographer didn’t catch a wardrobe malfunction, she knelt down and took hold of the tubing that he’d pushed beside the computer. Only it now had a dark stain on it. Red. Wet.

“Are you bleeding?”

She glanced up at Avery, who read her wordless request. Within a second or two she handed Mila a bottle of hand sanitizer and some gauze. She quickly wiped down the tubing and lobbed another question toward James. “What’s going on back there?”

“Tie it at the front of the computer.”

She frowned. How was this supposed to fix anything? “How tight do you want it?”

“Pull it taut and then start the computer up.”

Mila tied the two ends together and made a quick knot in the rubber. “Okay, let’s see if that did it.”

Pushing the start button, the screen leapt to life, along with a warning that the computer hadn’t shut down correctly.

“No kidding,” her assistant muttered, staring at the monitor.

“It’s going, James. Thank you.”

A few seconds later the man edged backward and climbed to his feet. The fingers of his right hand were pressed tightly against the sleeve of his dress shirt, where another stain had formed. “Oh, my God, what did you do?”

A series of clicks went off behind them. Mila ignored the sound.

“It’s nothing. Just found some old tack strip along the wall.”

Oh, no. The building had been carpeted when they’d first moved in. Mila had immediately gone to work removing it and then prying up the tack strip. By the end of the process she’d been dog tired, and since the office desk had always been there, she’d left the lone strip where it was. She’d forgotten all about it until now. It was a wonder Avery hadn’t cut herself on it. She threw the woman a look. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot about it.”

Her assistant gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “It’s fine. I’ve never had any problems avoiding it.”

Avery was a lot smaller than James, so that was probably true. Still, it didn’t make her feel any better.

“Let me see.” She held her hand toward him. He eyed her for a second and then shook his head.

“It’s nothing. Just a scratch.”

“Then you won’t mind if I look at it.”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue with her again. He let her take his hand. The second his skin touched hers, a frisson of awareness trickled up her arm and circled her chest. She did her best to beat it back, turning his hand over to get a better look at it.

The flash of a camera went off in the background, making her suddenly aware that Morgan had been snapping away as nobody had told her not to. The last thing Mila wanted was a shot with her and James holding hands. But if she said something, he would know, so instead she found the spot where he’d cut himself. Long jagged lines ran parallel to his little finger, going up the side of his hand. Nasty looking but not deep enough to need stitches. “Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”

James’s brows went up. “Yes.”

Of course he had. He was a doctor. Her face burned, but she forced her voice to remain steady. “Avery, would you mind getting me some more gauze, please? And some alcohol from the cabinet in the exam room?”

The photographer slid sideways, her camera still up to her eye as she snapped shot after shot.

Evidently James had had enough. “I think you’ve taken enough pictures, Morgan, don’t you?”

Whether he didn’t want their picture to pop up in the society pages with speculation about them rekindling their past romance or something else, his low words had their desired effect. The woman murmured something that might have been either thanks or an apology and put her camera back around her neck. She then glanced at her watch. “Oops. I’m late for my next appointment. I’ll just grab a taxi, if you don’t mind. Thank you, though, for letting me hitch a ride to the clinic.”

James nodded, but said nothing. Freya offered to see her out.

The pair left, leaving Mila alone with her ex.

“Nice touch,” he said, indicating the hand she still held.

“Excuse me?”

“The clinic has been trying to improve my image. Evidently my bedside manner isn’t always as soft and cuddly as the board would like it to be.”

A thought came to her. “Did you cut yourself on purpose?”

“No.” He nodded at their joined hands. “Did you do that on purpose?”

She released him. “Of course not. I was just trying to help.”

His gaze came up to spear hers. “And so was I.”

There was something about the way he said that that made her... No. It had nothing to do with their past.

She squared her shoulders. “And you are. Thank you.” She gestured toward the computer. “For that, and for convincing The Hollywood Hills Clinic to take on Bright Hope.”

“It’ll be good for our image.”

All of the warm feelings that had bubbled up a few moments earlier popped, leaving her feeling oddly flat. “I’m sure it will.”

“Hey.” He slid the fingers of his uninjured hand beneath her chin. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant it would be good for my clinic’s image...and for yours. Your patients will know they’re going to get quality care.”

He cut off the words before she could say them. “Not that they wouldn’t be getting that at this location, but we will lend you instant credibility. You might not like what that brings with it, though. Prepare to be inundated.”

If he was trying to scare her, it wasn’t working. She’d been swamped with patients plenty of times. In fact, the more she worked, the less she thought of her sad lack of a personal life, and how poor Tyler had pressed and pressed for a decision about taking their relationship to the next level, to the point she’d finally had to break things off with him. She couldn’t do to him what had been done to her. And she’d at least had the guts to hand him the truth rather than dish up a halfhearted fabrication.

Like her aunt had about her parents’ deaths? Or was she thinking of James and the way he’d ended things?

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I can handle just about anything.”

Avery came back into the room with the items she’d asked for, and Mila hurriedly cleaned up James’s hand with the alcohol, although he waved aside the need for any kind of bandage. “It would just get in my way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He glanced at her face. “I’ll let you know when the photos come back so you can look through them.”

Good. That way she could weed out the ones that made her and James look a little too friendly toward each other.

Because things between them were anything but friendly.

And if she was smart, she would keep it that way. Despite the fact that they were going to be seeing a lot more of each other in the future, she would have to protect her heart. Because James had already hurt her once. She had to make sure he never got the chance to do so again.

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