Winning Back His Doctor Bride (3 page)

“It's going, James. Thank you.”

A few seconds later the man edged backward and climbed to his feet. The fingers of his right hand were pressed tightly against the sleeve of his dress shirt, where another stain had formed. “Oh, my God, what did you do?”

A series of clicks went off behind them. Mila ignored the sound.

“It's nothing. Just found some old tack strip along the wall.”

Oh, no. The building had been carpeted when they'd first moved in. Mila had immediately gone to work removing it and then prying up the tack strip. By the end of the process she'd been dog tired, and since the office desk had always been there, she'd left the lone strip where it was. She'd forgotten all about it until now. It was a wonder Avery hadn't cut herself on it. She threw the woman a look. “I'm sorry, I totally forgot about it.”

Her assistant gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “It's fine. I've never had any problems avoiding it.”

Avery was a lot smaller than James, so that was probably true. Still, it didn't make her feel any better.

“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

D
INNER
 
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.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” The breathless voice rushing toward him brought the gavel down on his thoughts.

Tightening his hold on the attaché case he carried, he turned to look at her. The fact that the first place his gaze parked was her lips, looking for any signs that she'd been kissed recently, irritated him. He focused on what time it was instead. “I see some things never change.”

That soft mouth he'd been staring at tightened in warning. “I had a patient.”

Damn. She was a doctor. Why had the possibility she'd gotten delayed due to a case never crossed his mind?

Maybe for the same reason that he saw coy glances passing between them in those pictures.

And she was only six minutes late. It only felt like he'd been waiting for her forever.

Hell, he remembered thinking almost those exact same words at their first meeting. The one where she'd called him a toad.

Unfortunately for Mila, he'd never really perfected the transformation into a prince. And she'd discovered far too late that she should have bypassed kissing him altogether.

Except he hadn't given her much of a choice, insisting that she dance with him.

Forcing himself to come back to the present, he motioned toward the door. “They're holding our table for us. Shall we?”

Mila glanced at the sign, and then the hand-carved door, her teeth catching her lower lip.

Had she been here before?

Not likely. This wasn't the kind of place the Mila he'd known would have frequented. So why had he brought her here?

The hostess guided them through the front part of the fancy establishment, and James tensed as his glance trailed over Mila's formfitting dress and the staccato twitch of her hips as she followed the woman. She didn't generally like dressing up, and when she'd heard the name of the restaurant there'd been a long pause over the phone before she'd finally accepted the invitation.

Now that they were here, he realized he should have made sure the restaurant knew this was a business dinner and nothing more—because the employee was taking them back to the table he was normally seated at when he dined here: a secluded spot in the very corner, away from prying eyes...and cameras.

He probably should have chosen a different place to eat. But they knew him here and it was generally easier to get a last-minute reservation than at the places where celebrities normally hung out. There were some of those at Très Magnifique as well, but the dim lighting, specially coated glass and tight security made it hard for the paparazzi to gain access to its patrons. Another reason why this was one of his go-to restaurants.

The distaste of having his face splashed across the tabloids was a holdover from his childhood, when his parents' every move had made the front pages. James had seen his own mistakes—including his broken engagement—paraded for all the world to see. Because of that, he'd become adept at avoiding the places those kinds of photographers frequented.

Mila slid into her seat, setting her small clutch purse on a corner of the table. “I assume you have them with you.”

He had to smile at the way she lowered her voice, since it mirrored some of his own thoughts. Leaning forward, he mimicked her hushed tones.

“Yes. I have them. They're in my briefcase. But I think you went into the wrong line of work, Mi.”

“Come again?”

“You should have been a spy.”

Her lips went up as well. “Am I being too paranoid about this whole thing?”

A possible reason for her behavior slid up from somewhere inside him. He didn't know if she'd started seeing someone else since breaking up with Tyler, but it was a possibility. Or maybe they'd even gotten back together. “Will this be a problem for your boyfriend? I'd be happy to call him and explain, if you'd like.” Although the last thing he wanted to do was call Mila's boyfriend and tell him this meeting was purely platonic.

Not when the last thing he wanted it to be was platonic.

Not with her sitting across from him in a dark green dress that hugged her form and showed just a touch of creamy curves at the neckline. Curves he'd once explored at his leisure. He forced his eyes back to her face, noting she was biting her lip again.

What the hell? Had she gone and gotten engaged or something? His stomach sank like a rock.

“No. You don't need to explain anything.”

Because this guy, unlike him, would need no explanation as to why Mila was dining with her ex-fiancé? If she were still
his
, he sure as hell would have wanted to know why she was having dinner with another man. Especially since she was a physician and not a CEO, which meant there was no need to dine with clients.

“He must trust you.” He forced the words to sound impartial.

“It's not that.” She toyed with the clasp of her purse for a second or two. “I'm not seeing anyone. I told you I'd broken up with Tyler.”

She had told him. But people changed their minds.

James stared at her for some clue as to what might have gone wrong between them.

“It was me,” she continued. “This time.”

Said as if she needed him to know that James wasn't the only one capable of backing out of an unwanted relationship.

“I'm sorry.”

Sorry for the way he'd treated her? Or that his past actions might be affecting the way she navigated current-day relationships?

“Don't be. I don't believe in stringing someone along when I know how the story is going to end.”

The barb sank deep. Because that's exactly what he had done to Mila. Strung her along, even when he'd known that he was eventually going to break things off. Both because of Cindy and the bombshell she'd dropped, and because of his own father's response to it. He couldn't follow in the award-winning actor and egotistical bastard's footsteps. He would not father a child that he would be no good at nurturing. Or throw money at the mother of that child to make the whole thing go away. So James had done neither, deciding to break it off with Mila and do the right thing by Cindy. Only it had all been a lie.

Mila's dreamy words the last time they'd slept together about starting a family had hit him at the worst possible moment. Their courtship had been such a whirlwind affair that children had never been discussed. And then Cindy had dropped her bombshell and almost immediately afterward Mila had wistfully expressed her own desire for children.

His reaction had confirmed what he'd believed about himself all along: that he truly was like his celebrity parents, who had left him and Freya to the mercy of a string of nannies. He was no nurturer.

Even his attempts at standing in for his parents when it came to his sister had ended in disaster. He'd been overbearing and overprotective. In some ways he blamed himself for the eating disorder Freya had developed, wondering if it was because he'd been too controlling about what she did...who she went out with. He sure hadn't practiced what he'd preached back then, because he'd gone out with scads of women who'd meant nothing to him. Including Cindy.

Hell, he'd been the worst possible role model for her.

His regrets over his mistakes with Freya and the scare of that unplanned pregnancy with Cindy had given him a fear of having children of his own. It had gotten so bad that he had stopped treating children in his medical practice, referring them instead to colleagues. Which had left him treating insipid socialites and celebrities. People very much like his parents—a peck on each cheek, a little nip, a little tuck, and they were good to go.

Only he'd grown tired of it all. Weary in a way that he didn't understand.

“Drinks, sir?”

He blinked back to the present as the server handed them each a menu.

Maybe Mila had been lost in her own thoughts as well because she wasn't staring at him like he had two heads. He waited as she asked for a glass of wine, and then he did the same, adding an order of stuffed mushrooms—something he remembered her loving. Although why he felt the need to do anything other than toss the pictures across the table and eat a quick bite was beyond him. Except he probably wasn't going to get to sit across a table from Mila Brightman ever again. And maybe a part of him wanted to relive the days he'd left behind. Now that he knew she didn't have someone waiting at home for her, that urge had grown stronger.

The server left to get their drinks, and Mila propped her elbows on the table, staring at him. “So how does this work, exactly?”

He frowned. Had she read his thoughts? The idea of taking up where they'd left off flashed through his head. Somehow he doubted that's what she meant.

“How does what work?”

“The pictures. Do you want me to look through them before we eat? Or after we're done? Just how bad are they that we're even sitting here?”

Ah...so she had realized something was up when he'd asked her out to dinner. “They're not bad. I just...”

He hadn't expected to have to explain his reasoning. He tried again. “I just thought we should go through them without an audience. That might be hard at the clinic or even at Bright Hope.”

Especially with a few of the more intimate shots. And Morgan had seemed to be quite adept at catching them at just the wrong moment. A woman scorned who was doing her best to embarrass him? Or was it inevitable that he would see the pictures through a different filter than other people?

Mila's lips curved. “Did she catch you crawling under that desk or something? I can see how you might want to hide that particular shot.”

He laughed. “I take it the view wasn't all that flattering from where you were standing.”

“Let's just say it was interesting.”

Interesting.

He couldn't be sure with the low lighting in the restaurant, but he thought maybe a bit of color had seeped into her cheeks, and he couldn't help but follow this trail just a little further. Especially since he could picture several office desk scenarios he wouldn't have minded exploring once upon a time. “Interesting good? Or interesting bad?”

“I think the photographer thought it was good, that's for sure.”

Had Mila noticed the other woman's interest? He thought he'd made it pretty clear that she was there on a professional basis only. He hadn't been interested.

“And you. What did you think?” Okay, so this was pursuing it a little too far.

“I think maybe we should stick to the subject at hand.”

Not exactly a denial. More like an evasion. Which meant maybe he wasn't the only one who was struggling to keep their old relationship where it belonged: firmly in the past. But he'd better make more of an effort, or he was going to find himself in a very uncomfortable place.

“Fair enough. Why don't we sort through them now, then?”

* * *

Mila swallowed as she shuffled through the sheaf of glossy photos that James had brought out of his leather attaché case. Now she saw why he'd wanted to bring her to a place where the tables were private and the lights were low.