Healing His Heart (16 page)

Caleb swiftly squelched it. He'd done enough damage.

Hearing her actually speak the words left him shaken. He'd known, of course, that she was headed in this direction. Why else would he have tried to warn her off? But she'd stepped into the fire, heedlessly offering him her body, her closeness.

He'd taken it, too lonely to care about morals. He'd slept with her, woken with her, taken everything she'd
offered for the last two weeks...
and had fully planned on taking from her as long as she'd let him.

Until he left.

"I love you and I think you're an idiot and a fool," she said deliberately. "
You are a stubborn, selfish, un
happy man."

He didn't have a right to the surge of frustration that rose in him, the simmer of anger, but the feelings were there anyway.

"How many times did I try to tell you that?" Caleb asked.

"Oh, that's a good defense," she retorted sarcastically. "Just tell everyone that you're a worthless SOB and that lets you off the hook for all subsequent jerk behavior?"

Caleb clenched his teeth against the retort that rose in his throat. She didn't understand.

Julia paced the small area. "I realize you made me no promises. But I'm not walking away without saying a few things."

She was walking away
. Of course, she would have to. That was what he'd wanted, known she needed to do, long ago.

"For whatever reason, you're determined to destroy yourself," Julia said. She drew a deep breath, seeming to fight for composure. "You're all mixed up and somehow my being with you is only making it worse. I thought you'd begun to see it, these last few weeks, but you haven't."

"See what?" he asked, his voice husky.

"See what you're doing to yourself," she said, frustration coating her words. "That whole nightmare in your past, Erin's death. You turned your life upside down, gave up a career you had put your whole life into, all because of a fluke."

"She died, Julia," he said between gritted teeth.

"Yes, she did. Because she had
a congenital heart problem!
What were the chances of that? The odds were greater that you were right about her. Panic does cause all those symptoms. People do have panic att
acks when a relationship ends."

"If I'd been less interested in getting rid of her, I'd have realized she had a real
complaint."

Julia shook her head. "Erin died because of an unusual cardiac condition that no one knew about, and so you've decided you can't love anyone, can't let anyone love you."

Caleb closed his eyes briefly. "Erin's death just showed me how inadequ
ate I am in that area. This...with you...
proves it."

"No," Julia said sharply, her voice rising. "This is a result of me being overly hopeful. You're only inadequate in the courage department. You had a crummy relationship; she died through no fault of yours and now you're running scared because you don't want to feel anything for a woman ever again."

Bitterness surged up in him. "It's easy for you to dismiss her death. You weren't the one who let her down."

Julia looked at him, her face both sad and angry. Caleb felt his own wrath deflating, shifting into a dark recognition. “Just like I'm letting you down now."

"Wait a minute, Caleb." Julia's finger stabbed the air. "I am not in line to climb on your back and be carried around with all your other regrets. I don't know if you ever loved Erin, but I happen to know that life is what we make it. No one is inherently flawed or unable to change. You were dishonest with Erin and now you're being dishonest again."

"I agree," he said, suddenly bone tired.

"No," Julia said, shaking her head. "You didn't lie to me. Just to yourself. You're cheating yourself out of a career you loved, and cheating yourself out of being loved."

He looked at her, struggling with an anger he knew he didn't deserve to feel.

She was wrong, all wrong.

"Don't add me to your list of martyred girlfriends." She lifted her chin, the movement rippling her silver-blond hair. "I will survive this. I'll get beyond it somehow. You, though, you'll carry it with you alway
s because we could have been
happy."

He started to speak, stopping when she raised her hand.

"You aren't responsible for me because I love you," Julia declared fiercely. "Make sure you understand. If you feel bad, if you suffer because of us, it's because of your love. Because of what you feel."

Caleb stared at her, not knowing how to help her see.

He'd never been able to love a woman, not really. It was his desperate struggle to get away from Erin that had clouded his judgment and cost Erin her life. How could he risk that again?

"You have to make your own choices," Julia said. "I love you, but I'm not going to watch you running away from yourself."

He couldn't stand to see her go.
If he kissed her now
, Caleb wondered,
would she melt in his arms? Probably not.
Julia stood looking at him, steel in her eyes. He'd known she was a strong woman, but he'd never seen her this ... determined.

"Drop the house keys by my office when you're finished," she said, her hand on the door. "I want you to leave me alone. Whatever this thing is between us, it's over."

Caleb watched her leave, struggling against the urge to go after her. There was nothing to say, no way to make it right.

But he wanted her, wanted to erase the pain in her eyes.

He couldn't believe she was walking away from him. Just like that.
Leave the keys at her office
?

Rage surged up in him. How could she think he didn't want things to be different? Accuse him of running? His leaving was more to protect her than himself.

If he stayed, kept taking her love, Julia would only suffer more in the long run. Somewhere down the line, she'd need something from him and he wouldn't be able to give it.

She'd lived in a sheltered world. First the tender adolescent yearnings of her romance with what's-his-name, and then the hallowed halls of medicine.

No way Julia could understand everything he grappled with. She hadn't lived through his hell. He'd have done a lot to deserve a permanent home. Julia's love. It just couldn't be.

A scene flashed in his head. Erin lying pale and weak on the hospital bed, tubes running into her, monitors beeping. Dying because of him. If his mind had been so clouded by his mild affection for her, how much more so would his judgment be with Julia for whom he felt ... everything?

How much of her angry denunciation stemmed from the discovery that he wouldn't be going back to medicine?

The thought streaked through Caleb's mind. She'd mentioned his being a doctor. Had she somehow convinced herself that he could go back? Had Sam Goldstein's offer, as well-meant as it was foolish, made Julia think he'd even consider going back? Maybe her sudden disillusionment had as much to do with that as with his inability to love.

Suddenly, Caleb was angrier than he'd ever been. She'd said she loved him, but she just wanted him to fit into her own plans.

*

Shadows deepened under the pecan and hackberry trees. The sound of cicadas rose, swelling around Caleb like a rusty chorus. He'd been sitting so still in the gloom on the veranda that the night animals had started stirring around him.

The nocturnal activity ceased as a car engine idled up the driveway, the glare of headlights splashed within inches of Caleb's boots. He watched motionless in the dark as the car and its headlights were turned off.

Julia got out and walked across the dusty yard, her head bent. Moonlight glimmered on her light hair. The heels of her shoes on the veranda sounded loud in the darkness.

Fumbling in her purse, she drew out a key, the key he'd dropped by her office earlier that day as she'd instructed.

Silently, he watched as she moved to fit it into the door that led to the living room. Finding the keyhole in the blackness of a country night would be difficult, Caleb knew. He was sitting six feet from her and she didn't even know it.

The anger that formed in Caleb's chest when she'd left his trailer two weeks ago was still there in him, iron-heavy. He was damned if her opinion of him mattered. He was furious with her.

All along he'd given himself hell for using her. All along she'd been using him, trying to maneuver him back into medicine.

In the past days, the August heat had built toward a scorching level that had nothing on the fire smoldering in him. And all week he'd remembered Julia curled up next to him, bare as the day she was born. Every morning he'd woken so close to her that he'd only had to lean down and stroke his tongue along the delectable curve of her shoulder to taste her sweetness. She had looked loved. Thoroughly and completely.

But she'd been conniving to seduce him back into hell. There wasn't any future for him. She was the path to self-destruction. But, at this moment, he couldn't care less.

Something drove him. On the last night that they'd made love, the crumpled sheet had lain across the smooth swell of her hip, dark against the moonlight of her skin. Peaked with pale, pink tips, her breasts looked irresistible.

He could still feel their fullness, tight with arousal, in his hands, and the enclosing heat of her body welcoming his.

All along he'd thought her an innocent, a woman caught in the whirlpool that was his life. But in the days since her denunciation, he'd begun to think her more deliberate.

Since the afternoon when he first touched her, that sun-gilded day in May, he'd been consumed by twin desires: a passionate hunger for her and the horrible certainty that in following his lust, he'd hurt her.

He'd thought he was the only seducer, but he'd been wrong.

Julia knew better than to let him into her life.

He'd warned her, told her the kind of man he was. Made her no promises, as she herself admitted. Still, she'd opened her door and her body to him.

Given him her virginity. That much was true, but he couldn't understand it.

She'd given herself to him. Only she'd had expectations. She'd thought to mold him into the man she wanted. Thought to twist him into someone he could no longer be.

He was leaving, shaking the dust of this hillside off his feet. But first he had to say goodbye to the woman who'd managed to resurrect his soul, just enough to leave him aching for what he couldn't have.

*

Julia slid the key into the lock with relief. Every part of her body ached with confusion. She was exhausted but she knew sleep was far away.

Caleb had dropped off the keys and gone, she had to assume. The spot previously occupied by his trailer was empty.

The wood of the polished door was smooth beneath her hand as she pushed it open. The raw smells of a new home tickled her nose. Carpet stretched out under her feet. In the dark, she couldn't make out color, but its softness blanketed a room that had previously echoed from the hard, bare floor.

Strong emotion welled up in her as she walked into the living areas. Years of dreams had come to fruition and now mocked her. Dark beams soared above her, strong and sure, a sharp contrast to the self-doubts that hounded her.

Had she been right to thrust him away from her? Maybe Caleb had needed tenderness and tolerance, more than confrontation.

She hadn't slept well. Thoughts of him filled her days.

Julia stood in the living area, unmoving, loss and grief her only companions. His hands had built this, created this place and now it was all she had of him.

The air around her moved with a puff of breeze, and Julia realized that the windows were open. She peered through the dimness, making out the lifted sashes.

Anxiety gripped her. This wasn't right. The workers wouldn't have gone off and left the house
so vulnerable. Caleb wouldn't.
...

The soft brush of a footstep on wood carne from the open door. Julia whirled, her nerves jumping.

He stood in the doorway, darker still than the night beyond. Not moving toward her, Caleb leaned against the door frame. "Well, well. Checking everything out?"

His voice sounded deep and mocking across the space between them. Even in the dimness, Julia could see the width of his shoulders and the taut, muscled line of his body.

This was impossible. Surrounded by the smells of paint, carpet and tile adhesive, she inhaled Caleb. A piercing longing swept through her. She wanted the scent of him to encircle her, wanted to lose herself in his comforting warmth.

She wanted him. Now. Immediately. No words, just touch.

A fine sheen of dampness sprang up on her body. His taunting words were swallowed in the darkness, but she felt his anger like the heat from a forest fire. And didn't care.

Caleb straightened and walked forward. "I just can't figure you, lady. You act like such an innocent. Proclaim your love like an angel. But you had an ulterior motive for sleeping with the help. Just stringing me all along all these weeks."