Somewhere Along the Way (7 page)

Her words twisted through his gut painfully. He didn’t believe in things like love at first sight or happily ever afters. He was a man of science, and in his experience, statistically, very few interpersonal relationships had the potential of working out long term. He knew all of that, but what he couldn’t explain to himself was why the idea of leaving her made him feel physically sick.

Four days later, Cassie and Luke were driving back from running some errands. Luke was driving with one hand and holding hers with his other. They were laughing and sharing funny anecdotes from their childhoods. They’d swapped injury stories and were working their way through their most embarrassing teenage moments.

They’d spent every night making love, every day working together on renovation projects at her bed and breakfast, and each evening baking. A couple of the orders had taken longer than normal to finish, but the quality of the interruptions had placed a perma-smile on Cassie’s face.

According to Bonnie and Tilly, Luke was smitten. Both of them told Cassie they’d be shocked if he left at the end of the week.

Cassie couldn’t allow herself to imagine anything more than a week with him. He wasn’t staying, so there was no need to tell him about her possible condition. She’d double-checked with the clinic to make sure sex was safe and, because of the natural method she’d chosen for insemination, it was. There was nothing to feel guilty about.

Just because it wasn’t forever didn’t mean it couldn’t be wonderful.

A car ran through a stop sign. Luke slammed on the brakes and put an arm out in front of Cassie to stop her from lunging forward.

A loud crash brought an instant halt to their conversation. A car had slid across the icy street into oncoming traffic and hit another head-on. Luke looked down at her quickly and said, “Call 911.” He took off in a run toward the vehicles.

Cassie did, quickly stating their location and what had happened to the operator who answered as she rushed to Luke’s side. “Okay, I’m at the car.”

“Are you alone?” the operator asked.

“No, I’m with Dr. Andrade.”

Luke had opened the driver’s door of one of the cars and was checking the pulse of the woman who was slumped behind the wheel. Her airbag hadn’t deployed, and she was bleeding profusely from her nose and mouth.

“She’s barely breathing,” Luke said urgently, as he unbuckled the woman and pulled her out of the car. A small crowd was gathering. One man threw his coat on the ground and Luke laid the woman down on it. He placed his ear to her chest.

The driver from the other car kept saying loudly, “Is she okay? I hit a patch of ice. I tried to avoid her.”

Luke waved the man away, but he kept circling and asking about the woman.

Cassie told the 911 operator they needed an ambulance and that one of the drivers wasn’t seriously injured. She put the call on speakerphone and said, “Luke, she wants to know how seriously.”

In what Cassie could only assume was his authoritative physician voice, Luke said, “There is significant swelling around the woman’s mouth and nose. Respirations are difficult and getting worse. Something is compromising her airway. I can’t tell if she has any other injuries yet, but her nails are beginning to turn blue. How long until an ambulance gets here?”

“Seven minutes,” the operator said. “Maybe ten. They’re pulling out now.”

“We don’t have that kind of time,” Luke barked. “She’s non-responsive. We’re losing her.” He looked around the crowd. “Does anyone have a click pen?”

The man who had been hovering handed Luke one with shaking hands. “Is she going to be okay?”

Luke continued to address the 911 operator. “Tell the EMTs I’m performing a cricothyroidotomy. I have to get that airway open.” He felt around the base of the woman’s neck then pressed the pen down firmly on it until it broke through the skin.

Cassie looked away for a moment, then forced herself to look back. As soon as he’d broken through the skin, he removed the pen, unscrewed it, and replaced part of it to allow air into the woman’s trachea.

Luke brought his face down next to the pen. “Respiration has resumed. How far out is the ambulance?”

“Three minutes, sir.”

Luke opened the woman’s jacket and checked for bleeding, then sat back on his heels. The crowd around them was growing and an ambulance siren could faintly be heard down the street.

“She’s going to be fine,” Cassie said to the circling man.

“How do you know?” he asked in desperation.

“Because she has one amazing doctor on her side. He won’t let her die.” Luke had taken off his coat to cover the woman. When the ambulance arrived, he spoke to the EMTs while they rolled the woman onto a board and lifted her onto a stretcher. As they stabilized the woman, Luke took a cleansing cloth from them and began to clean himself up.

Just before they closed the door, one said, “She’s lucky you were here, Dr. Andrade, or she wouldn’t still be with us.”

The police took statements from everyone then took the driver who had crossed the median in for further questioning.

Cassie and Luke walked back to her car. Cassie reached for Luke’s hand. “That was amazing.”

Luke shocked her by pulling away. “It wasn’t.”

He was angry, and Cassie needed to understand why. “You saved that woman’s life.”

Her words only seemed to upset him more. “Yes. I saved a complete stranger. But when it comes to people I care about? I fail. Every time.” He started to walk away from her.

Cassie grabbed Luke by the arm and swung him around. “What are you talking about?”

He rubbed his forehead roughly. “It doesn’t matter.”

Something told Cassie it did. It mattered just as much as anything else they had shared that week, maybe more. “Is this about Emma? Do you blame yourself for that?”

Luke grabbed Cassie’s upper arms tightly. “I could have made her look into other treatments, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have trusted her specialists when they said she was improving.”

“You weren’t her doctor anymore.”

“But I was her friend.”

Cassie winced. “You’re hurting me.”

His hands loosened, but he didn’t release her. His eyes burned with a fury he’d turned inward. “The way you looked at me back there when I was working on that woman? Like I could save the world? That’s not me. Emma would still be here if—”

“Or she wouldn’t be. No matter what you did,” Cassie answered angrily. She’d driven herself nearly mad wallowing in “if” questions when she’d first walked away from her mother.
If I’d begged her one more time to get help . . . if I’d let her stay with me one more time . . . maybe I could have cleaned her up.
For a long time, Cassie had blamed herself for everything just like Luke was doing, and she didn’t like remembering that feeling. “You’re not God, Luke. What I saw back there was a doctor doing his best to save a woman’s life. If she had died, would that make you less a hero? Sometimes shit happens, Luke. Awful shit that we have no control over. You can beat yourself up over everything that might have been, or you can pick yourself up and go on. That woman is alive because of you. I’d say her family is pretty damn happy you were there. Don’t tell me how I should or shouldn’t think about anything.”

The fight went out of Luke. He pulled Cassie to him and wrapped his arms around her. She hugged him and they stood there, simply holding each other for several minutes. “You scare me, Cassie. How do you look right through everything else and see me?”

Cassie tightened her hand on his and smiled up at him sadly. “Maybe we’re not that different after all.”

***

Luke knew something was wrong that evening when the kitchen filled with smoke billowing from one of the ovens, even though Cassie was standing right beside it. After helping her fan the room out, Luke put his arms around Cassie’s waist and hugged her from behind. “What are you thinking about?”

Cassie leaned back into his embrace. “Bonnie called earlier.”

“And?” Luke asked, unable to resist a brief nuzzle of her neck.

Cassie reached back and buried her hand in his hair, a sure sign their proximity was giving her equally heated thoughts. She let out a shallow, half-excited breath. “She reminded me her restaurant was having a fundraiser dinner for the Scott family, and I’d promised to go.”

Luke ran a hand up Cassie’s leg, raising the skirt of her dress as he went. He traced the lace at the top of her panties before sliding his hand beneath them. Her hand fisted in his hair, and she rubbed her ass back and forth over his already raging hard-on. He tickled her ear with a hot breath and asked, “Is that a problem?”

With one finger he began to circle her clit slowly, loving how quickly she got wet as he did it. With his free hand he reached around to the front of her blouse and, with one strong move, tore it open. She closed her eyes and arched backward. He caressed her breasts through her thin silk bra. Cassie loved a gentle first touch that got rougher as they both became more excited. He enjoyed the same.

“Not a problem,” she said, as if she could barely remember what they were talking about. “She just wanted to know if I was bringing you.”

He didn’t stop his caresses even as he asked, “Are you?”

With her eyes closed and her breath ragged with desire, Cassie said in a whisper, “Do you want to come with me?”

He slid a finger deep inside her, pumping it in and out while continuing to tease her clit with his thumb. “Always.”

She writhed and moaned with pleasure. “I mean to the dinner.”

He tightened his hold on one of her breasts as he continued to plunge his finger in and out of her wet sex. “Do you want me to?” he asked huskily.

“Oh, God, yes.”

He chuckled and nipped her earlobe. “Then just ask me. Tell me what you want.” He paused and waited.

Cassie spun in his arms, and pulled his mouth down to hers. She was deliciously forward as she drove her tongue into his mouth and ground her body against his. Their kiss was wild and hot. Like a storm that raged through both of them, sweeping away each other’s desire to speak. She undid his belt and took his cock into her hands. Luke leaned back against the kitchen table and groaned as she fell to her knees in front of him and took him deeply into her mouth.

Her lips were heaven. Her tongue circled and teased. She cupped his balls with one hand and pumped her mouth up and down on him until all coherent thought left him. He watched her until pleasure made it impossible, and he was wildly near release.

She rolled a condom onto him. Beyond caring about anything except having her, Luke forcibly swept the table behind him clear of bowls and utensils. He leaned back, pulling her forward to straddle him.

She knelt above him, then lowered herself onto him, throwing back her head with a cry as she moved up and down, taking him deeper each time. They rolled on the table, laughing as they almost fell to the floor. He withdrew, adjusted his position so he could stand beside the table, and held her hips as he drove into her. He leaned forward, slid an arm beneath her, raised her so she was clinging to his shoulders, and then lifted her off the table.

Her hands were everywhere on him. He was mindless with his need to take her further, drive himself deeper within her. She met his thrust with an animalistic eagerness.

When they came, it was loud, sweaty, and left them both shaking, intimately connected as they both came back to earth. After several days of sex with Cassie, Luke would have thought things would be cooling between them, but it was even more intense because they were learning what brought each other the most pleasure.

Slowly, reluctantly, they disentangled from each other. They arranged their clothing the best they could and laughed as they picked up the bowls Luke had knocked from the table.

Still flushed from her orgasm, Cassie stacked the bowls in the sink. “I’m going to be baking late tonight.”

Luke joined her at the sink, kissing her slightly swollen lips softly. “I’ll help you.”

Cassie chuckled. “You’re not as much help as you think.”

He pushed her hair off her neck and trailed hot kisses from her ear to her shoulder. “Are you complaining?”

She blushed and shook her head. “Not at all.”

Her question from earlier came back to him and he said, “The fundraiser dinner sounds like fun. Count me in.”

Cassie tensed beside him. “It’s next Thursday. Won’t you be gone by then?”

Luke froze. They hadn’t spoken about his departure date. Honestly, he’d put it out of his head and for once had just enjoyed being in the moment. His vacation had originally been for one week, but he had cleared his schedule. He didn’t have to return to New York yet. “I don’t have to be,” he answered simply. “I could stay longer.”

Cassie turned to pin him down with those beautiful brown eyes of hers. “You mean for another week?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. “I didn’t expect to meet someone when I came here, Cassie.”

Cassie’s forehead furrowed with irritation. “Well, I certainly didn’t expect you, either.”

He pulled her tense body into his arms. “Tell Bonnie I’ll attend the dinner with you.”

She pushed against his chest. “Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe we should keep to our original plan.”

He kissed her forehead gently and continued to hold her. “None of this was part of my plan, but I can’t walk away from you.”

“Yet,” she said angrily.

Another man might have lied to her and spouted promises he didn’t intend to keep. That had never been Luke. “Whatever happens, I would never intentionally hurt you. If you want me to leave now, say so, and I’ll go.”