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“I’d say the picture in your trash can suggests otherwise.”
“You’re right,” she decided. “This has everything to do with Trevor. Because if he hadn’t chosen to send that picture to me, I wouldn’t have sliced my hand and you wouldn’t have needed to stitch it up, and you definitely wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Then maybe I should thank Trevor,” he said.
She glared at him. “In any event, I have no intention of picking up our relationship where we left off just because it’s convenient for you now.”
He felt his own anger stir. “My feelings for you were a lot of things,” he told her. “But convenient was never one of them.”
As soon as her prescription was delivered, Ashley took the requisite pills and sent Cam on his way.
From the moment she’d returned from her shopping trip earlier in the day, nothing had gone according to plan. Coming face-to-face with Cam had been unexpected, but it had also been unavoidable. Especially since he would be moving in down the street.
So while their meeting was inevitable, she’d been confident that when they did meet, they would simply exchange a few coolly polite words and go their separate ways. She certainly hadn’t expected anything like the kiss they’d shared in her kitchen.
Because while Cam might have made the first move, there was no denying that she’d been an equal—and willing—participant.
Yeah, that kiss had definitely been a mistake, because now she was dealing with the aftermath—a jumble of feelings that she hadn’t been prepared for and didn’t know what to do with.
It had only been one kiss. Nothing that should have the power to turn her world upside down. But it felt as if that was exactly what had happened.
He’d been absent from her life for twelve years but somehow, after only a few hours, he’d managed to churn up all kinds of feelings and desires that she’d buried a long time ago. Or so she’d thought.
She sorted through the mail, opened the cupboard under the sink to drop the flyers into the recycle box and saw that a new bag had been put in the garbage can. Cam must have taken out the other bag for her—the one with the broken picture frame and her engagement photo in it.
Because he thought seeing the photo again might upset her? Or because he thought she was clumsy enough to injure herself again when she took the bag out?
She closed the cupboard and sighed. She had no idea what Cam’s reasons were. She didn’t know anything at all about him anymore. And yet, there was something still there between them. Something that both thrilled and terrified her.
It had been easy for her to toss the picture of her fiancé into the garbage, because she had closed the door on that part of her life with no regrets. She had been happy with Trevor, at least for a while, and she’d wanted the life they had planned to build together. But the truth was, she’d never loved him as completely and wholeheartedly as she’d loved Cam.
It was an unsettling realization, and one she wasn’t ready to examine too closely. Determined to push the sexy doctor out of her mind, she went upstairs to get ready for bed.
The sun hadn’t yet set, but she was exhausted—physically and emotionally—and she wanted nothing more than to crawl between the sheets and sink into oblivion where thoughts and memories of Cam Turcotte didn’t exist.
Cam was surprised to find his parents’ car in the driveway when he got back to their house after his detour to Ashley’s. He walked through the back door and followed the trail of an enticingly spicy scent into the kitchen where his mother was stirring something on the stove.
“I thought tonight was your bowling night,” he said in lieu of a greeting.
“Your dad spent the afternoon at Harry Reiner’s, helping him lay patio stones,” Gayle told her son.
“He screwed up his back again, didn’t he?”
“He’s in bed with an ice pack now,” she confirmed.
“Why does he do things like that?”
“Because Harry helped stain our deck, and your dad insisted that this was his way of returning the favor.”
“A paintbrush doesn’t weigh forty pounds,” Cam noted.
His mother smiled. “Which is exactly what I said to him. But then I made the mistake of noting that he’s also several years older than Harry, which he interpreted as a challenge.”
“Because it drives him crazy the way Harry flirts with you.”
“Harry’s been widowed for nearly ten years, he’s lonely, and he flirts with every woman who crosses his path.” She finished scooping chili into a bowl. “Do you want some?”
“Oh. No, thanks. I had a couple of slices of pizza earlier.”
She carried her bowl to the table and sat down. “Is everything okay?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Because you’re a lot later than usual getting home and you seem a little distracted.”
“Busy day at the office.” He helped himself to a bottle of beer from the fridge and sat down with her.
He’d moved in with them when he’d returned to Pinehurst because it was convenient and gave him the opportunity to look for a place of his own. What had surprised him was how much he’d enjoyed spending time with them. After living so far away for so many years, it was nice to reconnect again, and to realize that he actually liked his parents.
“That’s why Elijah needed to hire you,” she said. “So what was different about today?”
He took a long swallow from the bottle. “I saw Ashley.”
She paused, her spoon halfway to her lips. “Ashley Roarke?”
He nodded.
“How did that go?”
He thought about their kiss—the soft responsiveness of her lips, the yielding warmth of her body—and her abrupt and complete withdrawal from him. “Better—and worse—than I expected.”
“I’m … sorry?”
He smiled. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected that she’d be happy about my decision to come back to Pinehurst now.”
“I would think, if her feelings for you are well and truly gone, she wouldn’t have much of an opinion one way or the other.”
He mulled that over for a minute. “The implication being that if she cares, she must still have feelings for me?”
“Twelve years is a long time, and you were both so young when you went away. And yet—” she smiled “—a woman never forgets her first love.”
“Spoken like a woman with fond memories,” he noted.
“I fell in love when I was fifteen—much to the chagrin of both my parents and his. He was nearly twenty, already in college, and our families were united only in their desire to keep us apart.”
“What happened?”
Her eyes sparkled. “I married him.”
“Grandma and Grandpa disapproved of Dad?” He couldn’t believe it. His father was the epitome of responsibility and respectability—certainly not the usual type that parents warned their daughters about.
“I was fifteen,” she said again. “I don’t think they would have approved of anyone I brought home at that age. And he was so … sexy. He worked in construction in the summer to earn money for college and he had all these rippling muscles and—”
“Please.” Cam held up a hand, urging her to spare him the details.
“If I hadn’t been attracted to your father, you wouldn’t be here,” she pointed out.
“Still, there are some things a kid doesn’t need to know.”
“Well, my point,” she said, “is that parents always want what they think is best for their kids, even when it conflicts with what their kids want. That’s why your dad encouraged you to go away to school, to put some distance between you and Ashley before you got too deeply involved.”
“He knew how I felt about her.”
She nodded. “And he was afraid that you’d give up your dreams to stay in Pinehurst with her.”
“Why did he think that?” he asked curiously. “Was there something he felt he’d missed out on by getting married so young?”
His mother was silent for a long minute before she said, “He wasn’t thinking about his own dreams, but mine.”
It had never occurred to him that his mom might have sacrificed her own plans to be a wife and a mother, because she’d always seemed so settled and content in those roles. “What was your dream?” he asked her now.
“After I met your dad, I only wanted to be with him.”
But he recognized the evasion, and his curiosity was piqued. “Before you met Dad?” he prompted.
“I was going to be a doctor,” she finally admitted.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He couldn’t believe that he’d never known his mother had once envisioned having the same career that he’d chosen for himself.
“A doctor,” he echoed.
She nodded. “In fact, I’d just been accepted to medical school when I found out I was pregnant.”
He set his now empty bottle down. “You gave up your dream because of me?”
But she shook her head vehemently. “No. By the time I got pregnant, my dream had changed. Finding out that I was going to have a baby was the most incredible moment of my life. I had no qualms about giving up medical school for motherhood.
“But when you first expressed an interest in becoming a doctor, your father was adamant that nothing would cause you to make the sacrifice he believed I’d made. But what he didn’t think about—what neither of us really considered—was what would make you happy.”
“You shouldn’t worry about that anymore,” he assured her. “I am happy.”
“A parent always worries. Especially when her kids grow up and move away.”
He knew she wasn’t just thinking of him, but of his younger sister, Sherry, who was now married and living in Florida.
“Well, I have no doubt that you would have been a great doctor,” he said. “But you made the right career choice, because you are definitely the world’s greatest mom.”
She smiled through the sheen of tears in her eyes. “And when a mother’s grown son says something like that, she knows she’s done her job well.”
When Ashley returned to the doctor’s office for her follow-up appointment, she was prepared to see Cam. Not just to see him, but to prove that she was completely unaffected by him, that the scorching kiss they’d shared in her kitchen meant nothing to her. Less than nothing, in fact.
When the door opened, however, it wasn’t Cam who came in—it was Eli. She felt a slight pang but assured herself it wasn’t disappointment. After all, it wasn’t that she wanted to see Cam except to prove that he didn’t mean anything to her. Not anymore.
But Eli meant the world to her, and her smile came easily for him.
“How’s Ruby?” she asked, having learned about his wife’s heart attack from Megan, who worked with one of the doctor’s neighbors.
“She’s doing well. Thanks for the beautiful flowers. She was so tickled that you remembered gerberas are her favorite.”
“I was hoping they would brighten up her room and her spirits.”
“The did both,” Eli confirmed. “And remarkably well, I’d say, since she’s scheduled to come home tomorrow.”
“You must be so relieved.”
He nodded. “We’ve been married forty-two years. After that much time, you start to take certain things for granted. But I’m not taking anything for granted anymore.”
Ashley wondered if she would ever know that kind of deep and abiding love, and realized that she still hoped she would. She hadn’t completely given up on the idea of finding someone to share her life, she’d just decided not to worry about doing so. And, in the meantime, she would happily lavish all of her love and attention on the baby she was going to have.
“But I know you didn’t really come here to talk abut me,” the doctor continued. “So tell me how you’re doing.”
“I’m anxious to get these stitches out,” she admitted.
He scanned the notes in her file, closed the folder and reached for her hand. “Let’s take a look then.”
While he was bent over her hand, she stared at the calendar on the wall on the opposite side of the room, breathing slowly and carefully as she silently calculated the days and then the hours and minutes until it was time to go back to school. She felt a few little tugs, but no pain, and as long as she didn’t think about the fact that he was pulling threads out of her hand, she didn’t feel dizzy.
She hadn’t felt anything when Cam put the stitches in, either. Of course, she’d been given an injection to freeze the site, but even without the artificial numbing, she knew her awareness of Cam would have eclipsed everything else.
“How does it feel?”
She glanced down, saw that he’d finished removing the stitches. She carefully curled her fingers into a fist, nodded. “It feels good.”
“Cam did a nice job,” Eli said. “In a few more weeks, the scar will barely be visible.”
Ashley uncurled her fist and was pleased to note that there was no residual pain in her hand.
If only the same could be said about the scars Cam had left on her heart twelve years earlier.
Chapter Five
As a child, Ashley had always looked forward to the first day of school. As a teacher, she still did.
Maybe it would be different if she taught high school, where the students were more sullen and jaded. But for a group of five-and six-year-olds, entering first grade was as thrilling an event as Columbus’s discovery of a whole new world. They were all so young and eager to learn, and Ashley found their excitement and enthusiasm never failed to recharge her own.
She didn’t usually have supervision duty on Wednesday mornings, but like most other teachers on staff at Parkdale Elementary School, it was a tradition to meet on the playground behind the school so the students could catch a glimpse of their teachers before they entered the classroom, and vice versa. She knew most of the kids who would be in her class, of course, because the majority had attended kindergarten at the same school the previous year. But there were always a few new faces, children who had moved into the neighborhood over the summer and who were even more anxious about the first day because everything was strange and unfamiliar.
It was easy to spot the new ones, and Ashley liked to introduce herself before the first bell and to meet with the mother who was usually present and in whose hand a much smaller one would be tightly clasped.
