Her Texas Rescue Doctor (16 page)

He handed her a fork. “Deezee didn't take away your options. If anything on your list is more appealing to you than continuing on that same path, then it doesn't matter what Deezee does. You get to choose your own path.”

“I hadn't thought of it like that.” She bit her lower lip, as she had yesterday.

He only had to bend his head, and her lips would be soft beneath his. He so badly wanted to kiss her. He held himself still.

Customers had begun spilling out of the indoor area, taking up more picnic tables as the lunch hour reached its peak. Grace slid a quick glance at each new table, calculating how freely she could speak. It was one of those sacrifices that went with the American obsession with fame, one he'd never taken seriously before. He did now.

“I can take you somewhere quiet,” he began, but the rest of his thought about his volunteer project was completely swamped by the image of taking Grace somewhere quiet, just the two of them. If they had privacy, they wouldn't use it to think.

He was surely reading too much into her expression, a little surprised, a little...hopeful? She lowered her gaze, waiting for the rest of his invitation, and damn it, he wanted to kiss her again.

The last kiss had left her weeping.

He grabbed his fork and returned to the other side of the table, taking himself firmly into the friend zone, where she needed him to be. “I'm redoing a meditation garden at a nursing home. That's my project. I've got some repairs to make on a wall.”

Two men sat heavily at the other end of their picnic table. He exchanged a courtesy nod with them. Strangers shared the long tables at places like this. Paper towels, utensils and condiments were all in the middle for anyone to grab.

Grace sat up a little straighter. “You make gardens for nursing homes?”

She might have been turning the conversation to something less personal for her, but it stayed personal for him. The gardens were his private outlet. “Nursing homes, rehab facilities. Wherever I happen to hear someone has the space for me to build something.”

“Is this garden going to be like your backyard? I think that look is really beautiful.”

Ah, the pleasure of a sincere compliment. “I'm glad you like it. This project has a long way to go, but it would give you some uninterrupted time to think about what you want. Anything you want.”

One of the men at their table reached for a squeeze bottle of barbecue sauce, and Grace pushed it his way without waiting for him to ask. That was Grace. Always on high alert, always looking to make things easier for everyone else.

“That sounds nice,” she said, “but we're supposed to be working together.”

“I'm just going to pick up a load of gravel and deliver it to the site. Letting you have a chance to unwind after the stress you've been through is the least I can do.”

She seemed to be back in control of herself, and he didn't want to upset her equilibrium again. He chose his words with care. “I'm sorry I added to that stress. I won't make the same mistake twice. Anything you don't want to happen, won't happen.”

He raised his cup of banana pudding to her as if he were proposing a toast. “Eat up. We need to go buy some rocks.”

* * *

I won't make the same mistake twice.

Grace had the peaceful surroundings of a rock garden under construction in which to stew over that particular statement. She was the one who'd said that incredible kiss was a mistake, and now Alex was sorry for it. She'd never had a man apologize for kissing her.

It sucked.

She wanted to make that same mistake again. She was supposed to be contemplating her future, but all she could contemplate was Alex's body. Under that faded red T-shirt, there were serious muscles at work as he hauled wheelbarrows full of gravel to bare spots in the garden. With a shovel first, and then a rake, he smoothed everything into place around the pillars of cypress trees. From her little perch on top of a limestone wall, she watched.

She was terrible at meditation. The only thing she seemed to be able to contemplate was how much warmer it would have to get before Alex would remove his shirt. The sun was plenty warm on her shoulders, and she wasn't doing anything physical like he was. More than once, he'd grabbed the bottom edge of his shirt as if he were going to pull it off over his head.

Yes, please.

But he'd glanced her way, and left the shirt on.

She gave up on meditation and opened her notebook, ready to brainstorm her options and then make a list of pros and cons for each possible choice. Instead, she drew little squiggly shapes in the margins, and turned his words over in her mind.
Anything you don't want to happen, won't happen.
What about the things she did want to happen? If she wanted another kiss that drove every thought out of her mind, was he up for that?

Apparently not. She couldn't be too shocked if a boy wasn't turned on by a girl who cried hard enough to soak a paper towel after being kissed. No wonder he was giving her space.

Alex tossed the shovel and rake into the empty wheelbarrow, then lifted the edge of his shirt high, using the bottom hem to wipe his forehead. His bare torso was tan all over, as if he usually worked without a shirt, and every muscle in his chest and abs was defined. The man had to be zero-percent body fat.

Let's make another mistake. Heck, let's screw up everything completely.

He dropped his shirt back in place, picked up the handles of his empty wheelbarrow, and headed for the truck that was parked off to her left. She heard the scrape of the shovel and the tumbling of rocks into the wheelbarrow. In an effort to look busy herself, she flipped from her
Options
page to the list Sophia had dictated earlier.
Spray tan
got a black line through it. So did
personal trainer.

She closed her notebook and went back to contemplating the beauty of nature—if a man's sculpted body counted as a natural wonder.

If the man was Alex Gregory, it did.

Chapter Sixteen

A
lex had to work at the ER the next few days. The routine allowed them to settle into a sort of domestic tranquility.

He'd come home from the hospital, endure some sweet torture in the close proximity of the kitchen as he helped Grace finish cooking whatever she'd decided to experiment with that day for dinner, and then the three of them would crash in the living room. Grace would stay busy on her laptop, assuring him she wasn't working. Her sister was usually on her phone, but when she put a movie on, as she did every evening, Alex noticed she gave it her full attention. Her occasional commentary was usually snarky, and usually directed at something he hadn't even noticed, like a change in a scene's lighting. He sat in the armchair, flipping through medical journals, and tried not to be too obvious as he admired Grace's bare legs as she curled up in a corner of his couch wearing khaki shorts. Between those bare legs and the memory of the taste of her mouth...

He stretched out on that couch every night and waited, eyes well-adjusted to the dark, for the sight of Grace slipping into the kitchen for a midnight glass of milk. Every night, he was disappointed.

But every day, he saw signs that made him glad he'd opened his house to Grace Jackson. Despite the fact that Deezee was no longer in the picture, there were no indications that Sophia was becoming the paragon of a sister that Grace claimed she'd once been, but he could definitely see that Grace was done waiting for that miracle transformation.

His own surface transformation was nearly complete. Grace had arranged for an optical technician to bring designer frames and a large mirror into the ER's kitchen, and new frames for his existing prescription had been ordered with astounding ease. The hair stylist had arrived at his home one evening, all scissors and sass with a Malibu tan. She'd flown in from California for other South-by celebrities and would be returning the day of the ball to make up Sophia. She'd left his hair on the long side, cutting and trimming infinitesimal amounts of hair until every time she asked him to shake his head, his hair would fall into place to her satisfaction.

The end result had drawn an alarming amount of attention to him at work today. As far as he could tell, his brown frames had been replaced by black ones that were, granted, a little more sleek and touched with silver on the edges, and his hair had gone from being unintentionally shaggy to deliberately tousled, but neither change had been very significant. An absurd quantity of women at West Central Texas Hospital seemed to disagree. His eyes were suddenly a noticeable shade of blue. His hair had to be admired from every angle. It had been a relief to come home to the quiet of Grace and her sister.

He flipped the pages of his medical journal to a new study on blood thinners. Sophia turned off the movie she'd started twenty minutes earlier, but stayed languidly draped over the couch. “I can't believe that excuse for a film made it onto a single screen. Get me my tablet, Grace.”

Grace stopped typing on her laptop instantly, but she didn't jump to do her sister's bidding as she had over pancakes on that first morning. “You know, you could ask that a little more nicely.”

Alex looked up from his magazine.

“Get my tablet,
please
.” The way Sophia drew out the word
please
was plainly obnoxious.

“No, thank you,” Grace said with equally insincere politeness.

“What?”

Alex turned the page, although he hadn't read a word.

“If you want your tablet, it's charging in the bedroom, in the same place I've been putting it all week.”

“You have to get it for me.” Sophia jerked herself a little more upright. “I'm in a
cast
.”

“It's a walking boot. You're supposed to be walking in it.”

“I can't.”

Alex turned another page, and tried to sound more bored than amused. “And yet, you must have made it to the kitchen today to get yourself a sandwich while we were scouting out the venue for the ball. You left the mayonnaise on the counter.”

He hid a smile at Princess Picasso's go-to-hell look.

“Which reminds me,” Sophia said to Grace, not deigning to respond to Alex, “have the grocery service send in that ancient-grain bread. I had to use mayonnaise today because there isn't any gochujang here.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh—we need ube chips.”

Grace shut the lid on her laptop and left, heading for the guest bedroom. Sophia shot him a look of triumph when Grace returned with the tablet, but as she held up one hand regally to receive it, Grace started tapping its screen.

“Stop that.” Sophia lifted her head. Frowned. Pushed herself up to a sitting position. “Are you getting into my stuff? How are you getting into my stuff?”

“Deezee's birthday. Why is that still your password?”

“Give it here. What are you doing?”

“I'm giving you something to think about besides purple yam chips. I'm side-loading a script you were supposed to have read two weeks ago. They expected to hear from you yesterday. It's a very hot property, and your time is running out before they offer it to someone else.”

“Whatever.”

“It's Quentin. That Quentin.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. The director's movies were critical successes, box office smashes—and famously violent.

“Great.” Sophia made it sound like it was anything but. “They probably want me to go down in a blaze of gunfire.”

“If they do, you can bank on it being very well choreographed, very big box office, very
Quentin
gunfire,” Grace said.

Sophia pouted. “It's like my specialty now. I die in all these movies. Kill off the Jackson character, so we can watch her die in close-up. It's so stupid.”

Grace stopped in mid-swipe. “You used to say it was storytelling. Do you want to read this?”

Sophia yawned. Alex knew her well enough now to suspect that she might have faked that perfectly timed yawn. It was hard to tell with an actress.

“I don't feel like it right now,” Sophia said. “Maybe next week.”

“Not giving them an answer is an answer.”

Sophia didn't answer.

Alex watched, waiting, ready to help Grace in any way.

Grace held up the tablet, deadly serious. “This is it, then. You've come to a point in your life where you want to turn down a script from one of the directors you've dreamed of working with, without reading it or explaining why. You have that option, but be certain it's what you want. You can't rebound from this by posting a few clever quips on social media or finding a handsome man with blue eyes to help you save your pride. Make sure you're ready for your life to go in a different direction.”

Silence stretched. Alex had been ready to rescue Grace for nearly a week, ever since the moment he'd seen her anxiety in the emergency room. He should have realized Grace could save herself.

“Give me my tablet.” Sophia held up her hand, every bit as firm in her expression as Grace.

Grace gave it to her. At the tap of Sophia's finger, the recognizable color scheme of a social media site appeared. She settled back into her languid, lazy position, rocking her booted foot slowly from side to side.

Grace bowed her head, but Alex didn't think it was in defeat. She was only acknowledging the decision made. He felt the gravity of the moment, the end of a career, the wasting of a talent.

“I'm going to get some ice water,” Grace said. She hadn't gone three steps toward the kitchen when Sophia stopped her with a tone of voice that Alex hadn't heard her use before.

“Gracie?” She sounded a little panicky. “Did you delete that script? I can't find it.”

Grace froze, her back to her sister. “It's under the e-reader function.”

“I don't know what
side-loading
means. I only know the social media apps.” The sound of Sophia swallowing her pride was practically audible. “Would you please show me?”

Alex understood Grace's look of relief. She'd finally forced Sophia to make a choice, and Sophia had made the smart choice. Their lives would keep going as they were. Alex had to agree that was a better option than self-destructing for the love of the unfaithful boyfriend, but their lives would take them right back to LA.

He stared at the medical journal, open now to the wrong page.

I knew Grace would disappear. I knew which day she'd go. I kissed her only once. Once cannot change my life.

Sophia planted her boot on the ground and stood up. “I'll bring it to you. I'm thirsty, too.” She thumped across his polished concrete floor, put her arm around Grace and disappeared into his kitchen, taking away the woman who no longer needed him to save her.

Alex got up, too, and went outside. In the dark, the inanimate rocks that made up his garden were precisely as he'd arranged them. Next week, when Grace and her sister were back in LA, he would take some satisfaction in imagining the women living well, just as he imagined for the patients he helped for a brief time in his emergency room.

I'd go crazy wondering how everyone is. How do you handle the not knowing?

He'd have more than his imagination in this case, actually. He'd be able to see Sophia's success, and he'd know for certain that Grace was doing well then, too. It would be more than he ever had with his patients, closer to what he had with his mother. He didn't have to imagine that his mother was doing well. He knew for certain she was chairing the university's engineering department and traveling on her personal quest for better education around the world.

His mother, his emergency patients and Grace Jackson. He helped them, then they left. He wished them well.

He put his foot on a low limestone wall, so like the one he and Grace had worked on at the nursing home this week. When Grace left, he'd carry on exactly as he had before he'd ever seen her brown-gold eyes looking at him like she hoped he could save her. His well-balanced life would be unchanged. This week had not derailed his life.

Perhaps nothing could.

He shoved at the wall with his foot, a sudden burst of frustration that accomplished nothing. The wall did not budge. What had he expected? The pattern was set.

I could change it.

To what? He had no other pattern to follow. He helped people in need, and then he moved on. Next patient. Next garden.

But there'd never be another Grace.

It was only one kiss.

He kicked the wall once more, and headed back into the house.

* * *

Alex knew Grace needed his help with one last thing: the Black and White Ball.

More accurately, her sister needed his help, but Grace and her sister were inextricably linked. What helped Sophia, helped Grace. And so, on one of the last days Alex would have Grace in his life, his house was invaded by a team of stylists and seamstresses.

They rearranged his furniture and brought in entire clothing racks of evening gowns and tuxedos, all carefully wrapped in plain cloth bags in case there were paparazzi hiding in his bushes, trying to get a scoop on what Sophia Jackson might wear to this gala. The secrecy wasn't necessary. No one had thought to look for a movie star in the home of an ER doctor, and surely no one would care whether that doctor wore Armani or Tom Ford or Calvin Klein.

These people cared, though. It could not possibly matter in the grand scheme of life whether his pockets were slit or had flaps, whether his coat had one button or two, whether the satin of the lapel would reflect well in photographs. It could not matter, but the stylists were deadly serious about every detail, Sophia almost as committed. Grace, ever supportive of her sister, offered thoughtful opinions.

She'd done the same for him, this week in the garden. Did it really matter if he trimmed back an overgrown peach tree by two feet or three? And yet, Grace had stood patiently on the ground, pointing out each branch that needed to be evened up, so that he didn't have to keep climbing down to judge for himself.

His sense of fairness demanded that he treat this project with the same respect. When they asked for his opinion, he gave it: he'd wear the Armani.

Once that was decided, he was expected to stay and give an opinion on the gowns. On colors and hems and accessories—good God. It was beyond frivolous.

Sophia was spending her first day out of the boot, adjusting to the ankle wrap. She didn't want to put her ankle through the standing and sitting and stepping in and out of multiple gowns. Grace was acting as her double. To him, the sisters were so different, with Grace's warm gold so much more appealing than her sister's platinum, that he hadn't realized they were nearly the same build and exactly the same height.

With Grace as the model, the succession of gowns became an excuse to openly admire the woman he should have kissed a thousand times this week.

Too late.

The only purpose he served was to stand by in his tuxedo. He wasn't treating illness and injury. He wasn't clearing a garden path so a wheelchair could fit easily. He wasn't even reading clinical studies on trauma methodology. Instead, when a gown received general approval from the team, he stood next to Grace so everyone could evaluate how their clothing would photograph together.

“Now put your arm around her. Hmm... I see the problem, the skirt gets pushed off center if she gets close to him.” The stylist walked to the other side of the room. “Especially noticeable from this angle. Grace, move a little bit to your left.”

Sophia scrutinized them. “But I'm going to need to stand very close to him. Put your arm around his waist, Grace. Let me see what that does to the silhouette of the gown.”

The feast for his eyes became a feast for his senses every time he touched Grace. The scent of her each time she cuddled into his side was like rain in the desert that had been his week in the friend zone. Every gown left her shoulders and arms bare, and the feel of her skin whetted his appetite for more.