Winning Back His Doctor Bride

“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.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_86051075-6575-5514-b04c-1fa1d8b22be7)

DINNER PROBABLY WASN’T the best place to do this.

But it wasn’t like he wanted these photos flashed around the corridors of The Hollywood Hills Clinic. At least, not all of them. Which begged the question of why he hadn’t just tossed the more questionable pictures.

Why? Because he didn’t trust his own judgment, that’s why. He could be seeing things that weren’t there. Things that were remnants of days gone by. Maybe Mila would glance through them and not bat an eye. It wasn’t like there was anything suggestive about them.

They just looked...cozy. Not a word he would use to describe their current relationship.

Strained. Awkward. Difficult. Those were much more accurate terms. And if Mila didn’t desperately need the funding that his medical center could provide, he had no doubt she would have refused to work with him in the first place.

All of this was because of Freya.

He eyed the entry plaque of the Très Magnifique with its gold-plated edging for the fifth time. Still no sign of his dinner date. He had always been punctual to the point of an obsession, while Mila had taken on the characteristics of the Brazilian people she’d worked with over the years. With them it was about relationships and not about the hands on a clock.

And exactly which relationship was she cultivating this time? The one with that firefighter she used to date? Was she seeing him again? If so, what did the man think of his girlfriend going out to dinner with a former lover?

It wasn’t dinner. It was a business date.

And yet it made his skin chill to think of Mila as anyone’s girlfriend. But he’d given up the right to that title—or the title of fiancé—a long time ago. One stupid lie had changed everything. And it hadn’t even been his lie. But that, combined with his father’s dark suggestion, had made him rethink the direction his life had been taking.

Everything with Mila had happened so fast, a flare-up of emotions he’d never realized he’d had.

But Mila was all about family and helping those in need. Maybe because her parents had died, and she’d been left alone.

Family, unfortunately, was the exact thing James hoped to avoid. His own family had been a disaster. Between the tabloids, the violent arguments and his father’s very real infidelities James had always been leery of steady relationships. Then Mila had come along, and he hadn’t been able to resist anything about her. For the first time he’d started thinking about forever.

Until Cindy and his father had destroyed the fairy tale. And that’s all it had been. Mila had never tried to contact him once he’d ended things. Never really tried to ask why he’d backed out of their wedding at the last minute.

If she’d truly loved him, wouldn’t she have wanted to probe a little deeper? Instead, she’d accepted his “it just won’t work between us...we want different things out of life” explanation at face value.