She looked surprised. “You’re not interested in the whole licking the chocolate off our bodies thing?”
“A dinner offer isn’t a rejection. It’s like the opposite of a rejection. You know that, right? It’s my way of offering you respect and companionship.”
She just looked at him. “You’re unusual. You look like a hot guy, but on the inside you’re sort of…”
“A nerd.”
“Yes.”
“True. But trust me. Nerds? They always get their way and win the girl in the end.”
“You’re going to win the girl, Spencer.”
“Good.” He took her hand. “So how about I cook dinner?”
“You cook?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He grinned. “Listen, we started with your most excellent dessert, but let’s finish with my main course.”
“And you don’t mean sex?”
“First things first.”
She stared at him for the longest moment. “I can’t figure you out.”
“Being figured out never works out for me.”
She stared at him some more, then smiled. “Well, then. To a night of surprises. For both of us.”
Emma and her father looked at each other over his chart. He was still sitting on the examination table, looking deceptively healthy. His hair was crazy wild but he had a nice tan and an easy smile. Spence says you’re doing good,” she said.
“I told you.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“That’s the doctor in you.” He patted her knee. “I love that you’re a doctor. I’m so proud of you, Emma. Have I ever told you that?”
The words slid down like warm milk and honey. “No.”
“I am. Very proud, and very happy that we ended up doing the same thing with our lives.”
If he’d said that even a month ago, she’d have denied that they were doing the same thing with their lives. After all, she’d been in an ER saving multiple lives every single day, and he’d been here in a small town of several thousand, treating rashes and sprained ankles.
She’d have been wrong.
So wrong.
What her father did was just as important as what she did. More so. Because in New York, she was a dime a dozen. If she couldn’t show up for work, there was an entire staff to pick from of others exactly like her.
Just that easily, she’d be replaced.
But here in Wishful, her father was the only one. Irreplaceable.
“You feel good about the sale?” he said.
“It’s not about me.”
“I’m asking what you think.”
He’d never asked her what she thought before she’d come here to Wishful, but he was asking now.
As she knew all too well, now was all that mattered. “I think it’s a good offer,” she said carefully. “And the easiest route to take.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “Easier because you won’t feel responsible for me or this place, if something else happens?”
He meant if he had another heart attack. The thought made her gut clench and put a lump in her throat. That they’d had a tough time in the past finding a relationship didn’t matter. Not when he was all she had left. “It’s not about that. It’s not about me at all. It’s about you and your health and being happy.”
“I’ve always been happy here, always.”
The lump in her throat expanded. He’d paid for her college. He’d tried to see her. Wanted her. She couldn’t keep quiet. “Dad.” She shook her head. “You paid for my college education. You gave up your savings, your retirement fund. You were there for me, and I never knew it. I feel so selfish, so regretful that I—” To her surprise and horror, her voice cracked. “That we—”
“Hey. Hey…” Reaching out, he put his hand over hers. “Listen to me. A dad visits his kid. A dad gives his kid a leg up when they want to go to college. Both of those things were my job, and it’s the least of what I should have done. In any case, it’s all in the past.”
“Yes, but Mom—”
“Did the best she could.”
She stared at him, grateful beyond words that he wasn’t asking her to make a choice between him and her mom’s memory. More than that, he didn’t want her to. She’d grossly underestimated him, and that was her own shame, but like him, she wouldn’t look back.
But she could fix the now.
And the future. “I’m actually going to miss this place.”
He looked up, startled. Hopeful. “You are?”
“Dad,” she started regretfully, and he squeezed her hand.
“It’s okay, Emma. It’s all going to be okay.”
But it wasn’t. She was leaving, and she didn’t know what that would mean for them. Would they go back to being polite strangers?
Would he really be okay without his clinic?
Suddenly she didn’t think so, and she started to say something but he rose to his feet, a little slow to straighten. He creaked and groaned, then shot her another little smile. “Getting old isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. I don’t recommend it.”
He was giving her a moment, letting her skip over the big elephant in the room. But if she’d learned one thing from being here, from Stone actually, it was that sweeping emotions under the carpet never worked. We both know I wasn’t exactly in my element here, that I never planned to stay.”
“Yes.” A wry smile twisted his lips. “You’ve mentioned a time or two.”
“Or a thousand.” She sighed at herself. “I planned to hate every single day and be resentful while I was at it.”
“Which seemed to work for you for a while.”
She had to smile. “I know. I really did pull that off for a good long time, didn’t I?”
He cocked his head. “Is that a past tense I hear?”
She paused. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t fit…”
“You look like you fit to me.” He looked her over. “You’re not nearly as pale as when you first got here, which means you’re not all work and no play anymore. You sure as hell aren’t as edgy and in such a hurry as you were, which means you’ve learned to let your hair down.” He smiled. “I’d say you fit in just fine.”
“Let’s just say that this place and I have come to an agreement. Of sorts.”
“Which is?”
“I stopped taking myself so seriously, and it stopped mocking me. People don’t care where I got my degree, or that I run an ER, or even what my specialty is. They care that I open the Urgent Care at eight sharp, that I’m flexible when it comes to payment…” She shot him a long look that had him choking out a laugh and scratching his head with a wry/guilty expression. “But mostly, they care about you, Dad. And they care about each other.” She shook her head. “It’s truly the oddest place I’ve ever been, and honestly?”
He grinned. “You will. You’ll miss it.”
“Yeah. And you. I’ll miss you.”
“Same goes, Emma. Same goes.” He cleared his rough throat. “I have something for you.” He pulled a small gift bag from a pocket of his jacket.
“What’s that for?”
“A good-bye present.”
Her gaze flew to his. “I don’t need a going away present.”
“It’s not a going-away present. It’s a good-bye present. There’s a difference.”
There sure as hell was. “I’m not pulling a mom here, Dad. I’ll come back. I already figured out the weekends over the next six months where I could grab three days in a row. There’s at least one every other month.”
“Look at you, with all your careful plans.” He smiled. “I’ve made my own careful plans.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” she teased joking around the ball of emotion in her throat.
“I didn’t, no. But you’re not the only one who could block out dates.” He reached into a different pocket and pulled out a small calendar, flipping through it, revealing several highlighted weeks. “I’m going to try to work two to three
days a week. Here’s the weekends I can get to you. We won’t be strangers again. Now open the bag.”
He’d sent gifts over the years. Sometimes a medical book, sometimes a piece of jewelry. She’d liked everything while secretly wishing for his presence instead. She opened the gift bag and pulled out a T-shirt, which read: I SURVIVED THE SIERRAS.
She stared at it for a moment, and then looked at him. There was a sparkle in his eyes as his mouth slowly curved, and she laughed.
Laughed with her father.
And in that moment, she felt a new inner peace. She could leave, it was going to be okay. He was going to be okay.
The question was, was she?
That night, Stone knocked on Emma’s door, feeling both anticipatory and a little off his game knowing this was, in all likelihood, their last night.
She opened the door looking a little unsettled herself.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey. I didn’t know what to wear for our…training session.”
Ah, yes. Not a date. A training session. Interesting that she felt the need to play word games with herself to keep from jumping in with both feet.
As for the attire, she’d settled on a simple white t-shirt, denim shorts and sandals. She looked good enough to eat, and his evening, spent on paperwork, was most definitely beginning to look up. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Emma.”
“I didn’t know I’d feel this way, but right back at ya.”
Doc had stopped off to see Stone earlier, so he knew father and daughter had spent some time together. There’d only been one thing Doc hadn’t wanted to do—sell—and yet in spite of doing it anyway, he’d seemed in relatively good spirits, which meant the visit had gone well.
It meant something else, too, something he’d already figured out—that though Emma was adept at hiding her soft side, it was there.
Too bad they didn’t have more time to explore it, and not for the first time he wished he’d found a way to help Doc convince Emma not to sell. “Were you busy today?”
“A case of chicken pox and a well-baby check,” she said. “Oh, and Missy Thorton letting me know that my dad paid for my entire education. Yeah, that’s all.”
He lifted a brow. “I take it that was news to you.”
“Uh, yeah. Big news.” She blew out a breath. “Listen, I really need to get out of here for a while.”
“I have just the thing. I asked you once before and you said hell no, but let me ask again.” He held out his hand. “Trust me?”
Chapter 24
Did she trust him? Emma stared up at Stone.
Hell, no, came her mom’s voice. Don’t trust any man that good looking with those wicked badboy eyes and the smile that promised all sorts of naughtiness. Say no and get the hell out of Dodge, darling.
Emma had always listened to her mom, always.
But she’d also always followed her gut, and her gut happened to have the louder voice. It was saying that her mom had always acted out of love but that she hadn’t always been right. It was saying that Emma had to decide for herself what was right.
But mostly, it was saying you aren’t done with this man.
“Emma?”
“Yes. I don’t trust me, but oddly enough, I trust you.”
With a smile, he took her hand and pulled her outside. “You should know, I’m grumpy,” she said.
“Shock,” he said.
“And irritated.”
“More shock.”
That tugged a laugh out of her. “And I don’t think anything about us being alone together is a good idea, much less being naked.”
He slid her a speculative look. “No one said anything about being naked except you. And you keep saying it.” He flashed one of his slow, killer smiles. “You’re going to miss me.”
“You think so?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Oh yeah was right. She was going to miss him. So damn much it hurt to think about, so she’d managed not to think at all for the most part. “Did you bring me the instructions you promised?”
“Worked all afternoon on it,” he said, and gestured for her to get into the Jeep.
“Isn’t this TJ’s vehicle?”
“Yep. He has my truck.” The top was off, but the evening was warm enough. She got in and let the light wind roll over her as he took off. “Where’s my instructions on relaxing?”
“Coming.”
But he just kept driving.
Just outside of town, on the narrow two-lane highway cutting up through two majestic mountain peaks, he finally handed her a folded up piece of paper.
She unfolded it. He’d written only one line:
Close your eyes.
“Sort of self explanatory,” he said when she just stared at him.
Fine. She closed her eyes.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Silly.”
“That’s because you don’t like to follow directions, you like to make them.”
True enough.
“What else do you feel?”
“Dizzy. The road is curvy.”
“You can get car sick if you need to, it’s TJ’s Jeep.”
She laughed, and heard the smile in his voice when he said, “What else, Emma?”
“Well…” Sometimes after a day off from her ER, she’d come back and stand in the middle of the place and close her eyes, just breathing it all in. The rush of rubber soled shoes, the sounds of the equipment beeping, the scent of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol…It’d always been nirvana to her.
It couldn’t be more different here. She could feel the warmth from the remnants of the setting sun on her face. She could hear the whistle of the wind, the screech of a bird, the hum of the Jeep’s engine. She could smell the fresh dirt, the pine trees. “The air up here always makes me think of Christmas.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing I miss the most when I leave here, and the first thing I notice when I come back,” he said, and turned down a dirt road, shifting into four-wheel drive, taking her up a trail she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to hike.
She opened her eyes again. The Jeep rocked from side to side, and on the next turn, she’d have sworn two of the wheels left the ground. It wasn’t what she’d expected, the whole four-wheeling thing, but in truth, she’d never been, never even thought about it, had only seen pictures in a magazine, or the occasional story on TV, but the reality was…
Bigger.