Me Without You

“Then tell her I’ll call her later.” Like in a decade. Or five.

“You could do that yourself.” There was a long pause. “She’s hurting, just like you are. She needs some support.”

“Not from me, she doesn’t.”

The last thing that widow needed was sympathy from someone who’d lusted after her for years; who’d watched her from the shadows with greed, seeing her as both a miracle and a curse; who’d lain awake wondering what her skin would feel like, what her mouth would taste like.

Hell, she deserved comfort from a man who had more honor than he did, someone who hadn’t fallen in love with his best friend’s wife.

And who just might have…God, he couldn’t even bear the thought of what he’d done.

Alex shut his eyes. Nausea, his constant companion of late, made his empty stomach swell like a trash bag left in the heat.

“Alex—”

“I’ve got nothing to offer her,” he spat. “So tell her to stay away from me.”

Joy recoiled. “How can you be so cruel?”

“Because I’m a bastard, that’s how.”

When the door shut, Alex slowly sat up again. His head spun and his eyes pounded. Using his good arm, he picked up his leg by its cast and moved it off the bed. Then he carefully braced his weight on one of his crutches and cantilevered himself into a standing position. He hobbled over to a mirror.

He looked scary. Bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes with bags under them. Sallow pallor. Sunken cheeks. Whiskers.

He was fading away, he thought.

But then unrelenting guilt, and enough time in an OR so he was almost a surgical resident, would do that to a guy.

He looked down at his leg. In a couple days, he’d know whether he was keeping it or having it amputated below the knee. That shiny new titanium rod they’d used to replace his tibia hadn’t taken after the first implantation, and when the orthopedic surgeon operated again six weeks ago, the woman had made it clear. They’d take one more shot at it and then it was saw time.

Okay, so she hadn’t been that blunt.

Not that the outcome really mattered to him. Either way, with an artificial limb or a reconstructed lower leg, his future wasn’t clear. As a professional America’s Cup sailor, and captain of the best crew in the sport, he needed both his body and his mind in top shape. Neither were there. Not by a long shot. And even if they fixed his leg, it wasn’t as if they were doing cranial transplants.

The knocking started up again.

“I told you I wasn’t going to see her,” he growled.

“So I heard.” Through the door, Cassandra’s voice was low.

Alex shut his eyes. Dear Lord.

Cassandra Cutler put her forehead on the doorjamb.

He sounded exactly the same. Impatient. Commanding. And not at all interested in having anything to do with her.

Alex Moorehouse had never liked her—something that had been horribly awkward considering he’d been her husband’s sailing partner. Best friend. Confidant.

Reese had tried to reassure her that Alex was just a gruff kind of guy, but she knew it was personal. The man had always gone out of his way to avoid her, and whenever that was impossible, he glowered. At first she’d thought he was being territorial over Reese, but as time passed she’d realized that was too petty for someone like Alex. He simply couldn’t stand the sight of her, though what she’d done to offend him she couldn’t guess.

So she shouldn’t be surprised he wouldn’t see her now. And she really wasn’t.

It just hurt. Although exactly why, she wasn’t sure. On so many levels, it didn’t matter that Alex Moorehouse thought she was beneath him. She was never going to run into him again, not anymore. He was nothing in the larger scheme of her life.

Except she’d always hoped the man would come around and see her as more than just an irritating hanger-on. Alex had this way about him that suggested if he liked you, you’d passed some kind of stringent test.

With his discipline and his rigor, his rugged body and his fierce intellect, he was all about high standards, for himself and others. It was obvious why his crew both worshipped and feared him, why even Reese had had stars in his eyes when he’d talked about the great Alex Moorehouse.

Suddenly the door jerked open.

She looked up. And had to cover her mouth with her hand at what she saw. “Oh…my God.”

Alex had always been larger than life. A big, muscular man, with eyes like a dangerous animal and an aura like the sun. She’d been totally intimidated when she’d first met him, this sailing phenomenon her husband had revered, this hard man the international America’s Cup community called The Warrior.

The person standing in front of her in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms was half-dead. Alex’s skin hung off his bones, as if he’d eaten little in the three months since the accident, and he was leaning on a crutch, one leg in a cast. His sunken cheeks were brushed with beard. His thick, sun-streaked hair, always clipped tight like a military man’s, was now shaggy.

But his eyes. His dark blue eyes were what affected her most. They were dull in his harsh face. Flat as stone. Even the color seemed to have dimmed.

“Alex…” she whispered. “My God…Alex.”

“Yeah, I’m gorgeous, aren’t I?”

He hobbled back to the bed, as if he couldn’t hold himself up any longer, and he moved as an old person would, with deliberate thought and anticipation. It seemed as though his body was a house of cards, capable of falling to pieces if he wasn’t careful.

“May I help you?” she asked.

His response was a glare over his shoulder as he put the crutch aside and slowly sank onto the mattress. She watched as he maneuvered his leg up using his arms. When he settled back against the pillow, he was breathing heavily and he closed his eyes.

She had a feeling he’d be cursing from the pain if she hadn’t been in the room.

Good heavens, this was not at all what she’d imagined seeing him would be like.

“I’ve been…worried about you,” she said.

His eyelids flipped open. But he stared at the ceiling, not at her.

The silence that followed was thick and cold as snow.

She came into the room a little. Shut the door quietly. “I have a reason for needing to see you.”

Nothing. No response.

“Ah, did Reese ever tell you about his will?”

“No.”

“He left you—”