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“That’s quite the defeatist attitude.”
He shrugged and headed to the door. “If I’m old and grumpy then there is nothing more I can do.”
A sense of dread niggled at her. “What do you know about them you’re not sharing?”
Now it was his turn to grin with pleasure. “Nothing. Just good luck with the twins, but I will tell you that if you take any more of my patients it’ll be war.”
Esme couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you declaring war on me, Dr. Ralston?”
“I believe I am, Dr. Petersen.” He winked, chuckling to himself as he shut the door behind him and Esme couldn’t help but wonder what she’d gotten herself into. She would have to keep her distance from Carson, though in a small town that was going to be hard to do, but she was going to try.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_1bcc08ef-1909-5451-827a-01ad441cce59)
CARSON WAS GLAD that summer was coming, the days were longer, but then he really couldn’t enjoy the extra daylight when he stayed late and he usually stayed late because he didn’t have anything to go home to.
He had a big empty house that he used for sleeping. That was it. He’d built it for Danielle and him. Of course Danielle hadn’t stayed long enough to live in it.
The sun was just beginning to set behind the mountains, giving a pink tinge to the glacier on Mount Jackson. He never got tired of it. He loved Montana and if he did have regrets about his past, staying in Montana wasn’t one of them.
Still, the mountains, the scenery weren’t any kind of companion, but at least the mountains would never betray him and wouldn’t break his heart the way Danielle had done.
As he locked up the clinic he couldn’t help but glance across the street at Dr. Petersen’s clinic. The lights were still blazing. She’d opened at the end of last week, but Carson hadn’t lost any more patients. Most of her patients seemed to be coming down from the resort community and with that new high-end hotel and spa going in there would be even more people coming.
There were a few timeshares that were in operation, but he knew the main lodge was still under construction, as his brother was still taking surveyors and construction workers out on the trails.
Once the main spa hotel lodge opened and the community got its own full-time doctor, a job he’d turned down, then Dr. Petersen might feel a bit of pain financially.
A twinge of guilt ate at him and he felt bad for declaring war on her.
“You declared war on her? How does that even happen?” Luke had had a good laugh over that.
Of course, the last time Carson had declared war on someone was when Luke and he had been kids. Carson had declared war on Luke when he was ten and Luke had been fifteen. Carson had gone about booby-trapping parts of the house. The ceasefire had come when Luke had set a snare and Carson had ended up dangling upside down in a tree with a sign that said bear food.
Their father had put a stop to all present and future wars.
Carson sighed. He hadn’t been thinking that day in her surgery. She got on his nerves a bit and he had been put out that the Johnstone twins had thought he was grumpy and old. He honestly was glad to be rid of the little hellions.
It was the principle of the matter.
In all the years his father had practiced he’d never been called grumpy or old. He’d never lost a patient to another doctor.
There never was another doctor in Crater Lake.
A lot of new families had come into town over the past couple of years. Dr. Petersen was advertising. He’d heard her ad on the local radio station. Perhaps he needed to advertise. Maybe he was a bit too comfortable in his position and he was in a rut.
Carson rubbed the back of his neck.
He should go make amends with her.
He crossed the street and peered inside the clinic window to see if he could catch sight of her, get her attention, then maybe he could talk to her.
Before he knew what was happening there was a shout, his wrist was grabbed and he was on the ground staring at the pavement.
“What in the heck?” Carson shouted as a pain shot up his arm. He craned his neck to see Esme Petersen, sitting on his back, holding his left wrist, which was wrenched in an awkward position behind him. “Um, you can let go of me. I kind of need my arm.”
“Oh, my gosh. Dr. Ralston, I’m so sorry.” She let go of his wrist and got off his back. “I thought you were a burglar.”
Carson groaned and heaved himself up off the pavement. “There aren’t many burglars around Crater Lake. It’s a pretty safe town.”
“I’m really sorry for attacking you like that, but you scared me. Why the heck were you skulking around the outside of my office?”
“How the heck did you do that?” Carson asked, smoothing out his shirt.
“Do what?” Esme asked.
“Take me down?”
Esme grinned. “Krav Maga.”
Carson frowned. “Never heard of it. What is it?”
Esme shook her head. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why were you peering through the windows and generally acting suspicious? This doesn’t have to do with the war, does it?”
“Kind of.” Carson touched his forehead and winced. “I think I’m bleeding.”
“Oh, my God. You are.” Esme took his hand and led him to the open door. “Come inside and I’ll clean that up. It’s the least I can do.”
“No, thank you,” Carson murmured, trying to take his hand back. “I think you’ve done enough damage.”
“No way. You owe me this.” She dragged him into her very bright and yellow clinic waiting room. It was cheery and it made him wince. “You can head into the exam room and I’ll take a look at the damage.”
Carson snorted. “Are you going to charge me a fee?”
Esme rolled her eyes. “So petulant. I just may, since you were creeping around in the shadows trying to scare me.”
Carson sat on the exam table as she came bustling into the room and then washed her hands in the sink, her small delicate hands. They looked soft, warm, and he wondered how they would feel in his. He couldn’t think that way.
“I wasn’t trying to scare you,” he said.
“You said it was about the war you declared on me. Doesn’t that usually involve trickery and scaring tactics?” Esme stood on her tiptoes and tried to get a box from a high shelf. She started cursing and mumbling under her breath as she couldn’t quite reach it.
Carson stood and reached up, getting the box of gauze for her, his fingers brushing hers as she still tried to reach for it.
So soft.
His heart raced, he was standing so close to her, and he looked down at her and she stared up at him in shock that he’d done that for her. He hadn’t realized how blue her eyes were or how red her lips were and the color was accentuated by the white-blond of her hair. She kind of reminded him of a short, feisty Marilyn Monroe.
Focus.
Carson moved his hand away and tossed her the box of gauze. “If you can’t reach it, you shouldn’t put it up so high.”
“I didn’t. My nurse did. He is a bit taller than me.”
“He?” Carson asked, teasing her.
“Sexist, too, are we?”
“Please.”
“Sit down. You’re such a whiner, Dr. Ralston.”
Carson sat back on the table; his head was throbbing now. “Dang, you did a number on me. What did you call that again?”
“Krav Maga.” Esme pulled on gloves. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. You’re right. I shouldn’t have been … what did you call it?”
“Skulking.” She smiled, her eyes twinkling as she parted his hair to look at his injury.
Carson winced again, ignoring the sting. It wasn’t the sting that bothered him, it was her touch. Just the sudden contact sent a zing through him. It surprised him. It was unwelcome. He wanted to move away from her, so he wasn’t so close, but that was hard to do when she was cleaning up his wound. “Right. Skulking. I shouldn’t have been doing that outside your office.”
She nodded and began to clean the wound. “So why were you?”
“I came to apologize.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I shouldn’t have come barging over here and accusing you of stealing my patients.”
“So are you calling a truce?”
“I am. Ow.”
Esme tsked under her breath. “It’s just a scrape. Don’t be such a baby.”
“Do you talk to all your patients this way?”
“Only ones who whine so much.” She smiled and continued to dab at his scrape. “There. I’ll just put some ointment on it. Do you want a bandage?”
“No, thanks.”
Esme shrugged and then rubbed some antiseptic ointment on the scrape.
“Ow.”
“Doctors are the worst patients,” she muttered.
“For a reason.” Carson chuckled.
“I’ve never really understood that reason.” She pulled off her gloves and tossed them in the medical-waste receptacle. “There. All done.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a bandage? Maybe a pressure dressing.” She was chuckling to herself and he rolled his eyes.
“Pretty sure.” Carson sighed. He had to get out of the clinic before something else happened. Such as him doing something irrational. Only he couldn’t move. “I better be going. Again, I’m really sorry for being such an idiot before.”
She grinned. “Apology accepted.”
Esme didn’t really know what else to say. She felt very uncomfortable around Carson, but not in a bad way. In a very good way and that was dangerous. When their hands had barely touched a few moments ago, it had sent a zing through her. One that wasn’t all that unpleasant. Actually, it had been some time since she’d felt that spark with someone. Of course, relationships never worked out for her. Men couldn’t handle her drive and focus to commit to surgery and she had liked her independence and career too much. No one messed with her career.
Well, not anymore. She couldn’t forget why she was a surgeon.
Hold on, Avery. Please.
Let me go, little sister. It hurts so much … let me go.
She’d dedicated her life to surgery. To save lives.
And until Shane, surgery had been her life. Her father had been so proud and she’d been training under Dr. Eli Draven, the best cardio-thoracic surgeon on the West Coast.
She’d thrown herself into her work. So much so, that she hadn’t had time to date, until Eli had introduced her to his son.
She’d met Shane and surgery had become second, because he had always been taking her somewhere. Esme had been swept off her feet and, being the protégée of Dr. Eli Draven, she’d become too cocky. Too sure of herself. She’d thought she’d had it all.
Then in a routine procedure, she’d frozen. A resident had jumped in, knocking sense back into her and they’d worked hard to save the patient’s life. But in the end they’d lost the fight.
Esme hadn’t been able to go on, because in that moment—in that failure—she’d realized that she didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t know who she’d become, but it wasn’t her.
Pulled back from her memories, Esme stared down at her hands, watching how they shook.
You’re not a surgeon anymore, she reminded herself.
She’d come here to rebuild her life and right now she should be focusing on building her practice up, because every last dime of her savings had been sunk into this building. She’d bought the clinic, the license and the apartment upstairs.
This was her life now. She didn’t have a retired parent to hand off a practice to her. Her stepmother had been a teacher and her father a cop.
They’d scrimped and saved to send her to the best medical school. Scholarships only went so far and she owed it to them to pay them back, since she could no longer be the surgeon they expected her to be.
She’d lost herself.
And she’d lost Shane. If only she’d come to the realization that he wasn’t the man for her before she was in her wedding dress and halfway down the aisle on Valentine’s Day. It was something she had to live with for the rest of her life.
Her father had made that clear to her. He’d been so disappointed. She’d let him down.
I don’t know who you are anymore, Esme.
She didn’t deserve any kind of happiness, or friendship. All she deserved was living with herself. Living with the stranger she’d become.
