A Family For Christmas

“The fact that you’re asking the question is your answer. You can’t help loving her, needing to be with her. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be good for her. Joy needs to know that there is someone who adores her, who will be there for her, no matter what. Someone who belongs to her. If you were forcing your presence on her when she showed signs of distress, that might be different.”

His smile was larger this time. Filled with the warmth that he didn’t often show—at least, not in the time she’d known him. She smiled back. It just came naturally.

And was something she did with others, too. So why did her heart suddenly feel such an acute stab of guilt? She was crossing a line that could not be crossed. Ever. With anyone. Anywhere.

“Have dinner with me.” His question intensified her guilt.

“I can’t.” She blurted the words. Completely unlike herself. Stared at him, afraid of what he might see within her.

“But I’ve got some wine and cheese in my suite here,” she said, effecting as much of her usual calm as she could muster. “I’m...staying here tonight...” she said—the truth, but she wasn’t staying because she had to. Only because she’d been planning to use the evening to catch up on the paperwork she’d just shoved aside on her desk.

“The wine—it can be tea, if you’d prefer—and I’ve got what’s left of a platter of meats and cheeses from a function earlier today. I’d been planning to indulge myself with it in lieu of dinner.”

She’d just invited a man to visit with her in her suite. What in the hell was happening to her?

Her suite at the Stand. Where she was always on call when she was in residence. And was often called. As opposed to alone with him, like a date, out...in the world. Where it was possible they could end up either at his hotel or her condo. Wasn’t going to happen, but the possibility made her more uncomfortable than wine and cheese at the Stand.

Okay...she had things more under control than she’d first thought.

“I’d like that very much.” Edward’s warm glance—not quite a smile, but bordering on personal—sent her into a tizzy all over again. As much as Lila ever got in a tizzy.

“Please, don’t misunderstand. I am not issuing an invi...”

His hand on hers cut her off. “I understand, Lila.” He looked her directly in the eye as he said the words. “I’d like to tell you about court this morning, if I may, and we both need sustenance. I would greatly enjoy a glass of wine to take the edge off a dreadful day, and will in no way compromise the friendship you’ve shown me by making more of it than it is.”

Her heart dropped. Jumped up and...just that, up and down, over and over, pounding in her chest. His words took her air, and brought it back in a whoosh. Ridiculous.

Unprovoked.

He considered her a friend.

And she wasn’t in danger of breaking her promise to herself.

The promise to never, ever, let anyone get close enough that he or she could be hurt.

Lila would rather be dead than be a danger to another living soul again.

CHAPTER SIX (#uc61905c8-f0b6-58b4-b7cb-4fe4103705c8)

Prospector, Nevada

HIS PATIENT ASKED if he minded if she went to bed to read as soon as the dinner dishes were done on Friday. Boxed macaroni and cheese with hotdogs and peas were his offering that night. He’d prepared it all. She’d eaten everything on her plate. And cleared and wiped the table while he’d washed up.

If he were planning to keep the cabin—to ever visit it again once his eye was better—he’d put in a dishwasher. Telling her he thought it was a good idea that she lie down, though it was still early in the evening, he watched her walk away. The woman bothered him.

He knew she was hurting. The way she held her book...turned pages...when she’d wiped off the table...her left wrist was bothering her. And her neck or shoulder was, too.

She was tired, but had been sleeping well, so he let it go for the night. He’d have a look at her in the morning. And in the meantime, he was past due for his drops. Six and six, every day, a.m. and p.m. Two drops each time.

In the bathroom, he tried not to notice the towel his patient had used that morning as he grabbed the drops from the zipped leather duffel under the sink that contained antibiotics, cold medicine, pain relievers and anything else he might need.

The drops were prescription. To relieve pressure on the eye. Pressure caused by swelling. Pressure that could prevent him from regaining his eyesight. Or could cause the process to happen more slowly.

Positioning himself in front of the mirror above the sink, he focused on his nose. Reached up over his head with his left hand, careful to keep his arm visible in the mirror to the only eye that could guide him and held open the lid of his right eye. The right hand had the easy part: lift until his hand was exactly half an inch from his nose and squeeze gently.

A drop fell to his cheek. Just under his eye.

Cursing his vision, he leaned his head back a second time, kept his nose in view in the mirror, measured the distance from the dropper and squeezed again. The drop hit his lower lid. He lifted his hand only slightly and tried one more time. He got the corner of his eye. He’d failed to measure from his nose that time.

If his damned nose wasn’t so big he could see the right eye from the corner of his left, could aim better. You’d think, after weeks of daily drops, he’d be a pro.

Especially for a surgeon with hands as steady as his were.

It was a mental block. He’d thought, when he’d first diagnosed the problem a while back, that the acknowledgment would take care of it. It hadn’t.

And so, after letting his arms rest for a moment, he once again got a fix on his nose in the mirror, raised his left arm over his head, slid his hand past his forehead to open his right lid and lifted the dropper to squeeze gently. Missed for a fourth time. His best was two attempts. His worst was nine. But he’d had a beer that night...

“What on earth are you doing?”

Two drops fell in quick succession, trailing down his right cheekbone. Arms coming down, Simon held the dropper and turned to face his patient. Still in her jeans and T-shirt, but minus the zipped sweater she’d had on all day, she was watching him.

He might have noticed her approach if he’d had peripheral vision in his right eye.

“Putting drops in my eye,” he said when he’d determined that doing so could be for something as simple as dry or itchy eyes.

“I’d have thought a surgeon would have a steadier hand.” She looked slightly down as she said the words. Such a funny combination of sassy and demure. Not that he was interested in her personality.

Or in anything other than her health. And then her departure.

“My hand’s plenty steady.” Childish of him to rise to her taunt, but her remark about not liking doctors was still ringing in his ears.

“Then you’re just a bad aim.”

“I blink.”

“No, you don’t.”

He didn’t think so. But he was damned well not going to tell her that he was temporarily blind in one eye. He’d come to the cabin to get away from the naysayers. Those who didn’t believe he’d ever see from that eye again. Those who thought that his recovery meant accepting the blindness and moving on. He didn’t want to hear another person tell him there were many things he could do besides be a surgeon. He couldn’t afford to listen. To let doubts creep in. He was going to see again. It was a matter of will, now.

So many times, the difference between a patient surviving or not depended not on medical skills or science, but on the patient’s will to live. Lucky for him that his patients were so young—they almost all had that will. In spades.

“You want help?”

As opposed to having her stand there watching him play his nightly game of drop ball?

“Yes.” He handed her the dropper. Told her he needed two drops, directly into the middle of the eye. Then bent down and leaned his head back so she could deliver them.

“Wow, you didn’t blink either time. How do you do that? I always blink when something’s coming at my eye.”