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“It just wouldn’t be the same as having you here, under my roof.” Her eyes brimmed. “And besides, I have Citria and Karl here.”
Mia hated making Nana choose between her grandson and her daughter and brother. Nana’s roots were here. Still…
“You’d love California. It’s warm and sunny all the time. Your arthritis—”
“I couldn’t. I—I’ve lived all my life in Eternal.”
“Then we’ll come visit you, in the summer when Todd is out of school.”
Nana turned back to the sink and attacked the dishes with a vengeance that might leave the household short a few china plates if she didn’t ease up. “You don’t have to decide today. We’ve still got three weeks before Christmas.”
Mia’s heart hurt, but she lifted her chin. “Yes, we’ve got time.” Time, she hoped, for Nana to accept the inevitable, and for Mia to accept that she had no choice but to break her mother-in-law’s heart.
She needed to take her life back—for all their sakes. She’d worked hard to get healthy again. She needed her independence.
“I thought you were going for a run,” Nana said, her jaw stiff. “You’re all dressed for it.”
Understanding Nana’s veiled request for some time alone, Mia downed the last of her tea and stood. At the back door, she doubled over to stretch her calves, then lifted each foot behind her in turn and pulled, loosening her hamstrings. “I’ll see you in an hour.”
Before she could leave, Nana snugged up the crimson scarf around Mia’s neck, tucking the ends beneath her collar just as she had for Todd. The wool would be scratchy, Mia thought, especially when she started to sweat, but she accepted the coddling without comment. Nana was just looking out for her. Lord knew there’d been a time when she’d needed it.
She set off across the yard, toward the bike trail to Shilling’s Bluff, at an easy pace, giving her muscles time to warm. Her thoughts drifted at random. Running put her in an almost meditative state, and soon she found herself pondering Todd’s Christmas gift again.
She had a feeling he wanted something special, but hadn’t worked up the gumption to tell her yet. She would have to talk to Nana later and see if she knew what it was. Otherwise, she might make a critical holiday faux pas, and she so wanted Todd to be happy this year. He deserved it.
Heart pumping harder now, she turned off the bike path onto the hiking trail up the bluff. Her breath clouded in front of her face. The snow was deeper here. It drifted in piles against rocks and clung to the boughs of the evergreens crowded on the side of the trail opposite the cliff.
As she climbed higher, the town emerged in the valley below, white tufts of snow scalloping the eaves of the buildings along Main Street and dusting the sidewalks.
Todd said that after a snowfall, Eternal looked like the village in one of those snow globes kids played with, just waiting to be shaken. On mornings like this, she agreed with him.
He was such a smart kid, and thoughtful, too. She wished his father could have seen how he’d grown up. He would be so proud.
Mia’s ankle turned on the steep slope. She slipped and stumbled, but caught her balance before losing her footing altogether. Her heart stuttered as she tried to recapture her rhythm. Her arms swung jerkily and her feet landed unevenly.
It annoyed her that a simple stray thought of her husband, Todd’s father, Sam Serrat, was enough to make the dark cloud that was never far behind her seem to loom directly overhead. She quickened her pace to escape it.
Depression couldn’t be outrun, she knew, no matter how long or how hard she tried. But she could stay one step ahead of it. As long as the darkness was behind her, and not inside, she would be okay.
Three hundred and ten days, she reminded herself. She’d worked hard to get her life back, and she’d succeeded. She wouldn’t lose herself again. She wouldn’t lose Todd.
Cautiously, she let herself think about her husband again. The way his sandy hair fell over his eyes when he laughed. The sense of humor and compassion he’d passed to his son, even though he was gone before Todd ever really knew him. The way he made love to her so slowly, so gently, she thought it might last forever.
Only, nothing lasted forever. She’d learned that the hard way.
Tears filled her eyes, but they didn’t spill over. Time diminished the pain his memory caused. Each day she hurt a little less when she thought of Sam.
Todd was what kept her going now. He was the reason she’d worked so hard these last two years to take her life back from depression.
Muscles quivering with exertion, she plunged up the last few feet to the top of the bluff and stood with her hands on her hips, blowing hard. Forty feet below her, a winding road cut through the granite rise that made Shillings Bluff. Right on time, the yellow school bus lumbered around the turn.
Mia started jogging again, slowly, letting the bus catch her. She sped up as it pulled even, feigned a hard run as it overtook her.
Todd sat in the backseat, as he always did, face plastered against the rear window as he watched her. He waved and encouraged her on. She ran faster, pretending to race the bus, pretending to go all out. It was their game. Their ritual.
With Todd bouncing in his seat, she lowered her head. Kicked harder. Stole a glance at her son, and his sweet face took her breath away as the bus pulled ahead and around a bend. She—
Something solid—a hand—thunked between Mia’s shoulder blades. She tried to turn to see who had hit her from behind, but the blow had thrown her off balance. Her sneaker skidded on a patch of ice. Her other toe caught on a rock. She flailed.
Mia tried to throw herself back onto the path. Away from the granite slope. She failed. She fell.
And she screamed, but no one heard. Or if they did, they didn’t care.
Chapter 2
Crap, crap, crap.
Ty Hansen cursed all the way to his car, but the sound was lost in the swoosh of the north wind that sailed right through his leather bomber jacket and chilled him to the bone. Snow-laden clouds hung low overhead, ready to dump their payload. Already the first tiny flakes stung his face like icy needles. He shoved his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders against the miserable weather.
Talk about tap dancing in minefields.
Why the hell did he have to be the one to draw the Kaiser’s niece as a patient?
“The Kaiser,” as Karl Serrat was called by the staff when he was out of hearing range, oversaw all the residents in the psychiatric specialty program at the Massachusetts Hospital of Mental Health. They all considered him a taskmaster, but he seemed to ride Ty particularly hard. He also held Ty’s entire future—his completion of the residency program required before taking the exams from the American Board of Medical Specialties to become a licensed psychiatrist—in his twisted grasp.
The man was just looking for an excuse to kick him out. Karl Serrat had been on Ty’s back since their first meeting.
With the snow, the drive to Eternal took an hour and a half. Stomping his boots and shrugging out of his jacket at the ER nurses’ station, he asked the large-boned African-American woman behind the desk for the psych consult file and plowed down the hallway, reading the patient history as he walked.
He tapped twice with his knuckle on the door to evaluation room 5, counted to three to give her a few seconds to pull herself together, then took a deep breath and poked his head in. “Ms. Serrat, may I come in?”
The hell with Karl Serrat. He had a job to do and it didn’t matter if the woman waiting for him was Serrat’s niece or Mona Lisa. She was a patient, and he would do his best by her, consequences be damned.
Fixing that thought firmly in his mind, he pasted on a smile and said “Hi, I’m Dr.—”
The woman who turned to look at him from her place by the window nearly made him forget his own name. It wasn’t her beauty so much that stymied him, though she had that, as her intensity.
She stood as far away from the door as she could get. If she hadn’t been holding a disposable cup, he was sure her arms would have been folded tightly over her chest, fingers fisted. Her tousled mahogany hair was thrown back over her shoulders and her full mouth pursed slightly. Her eyes, as lush, green and mysterious as a tropical rain forest, glinted with tightly controlled anger.
Obviously she’d figured out he wasn’t here to give a second opinion on her bumps and bruises. Yet, instead of pouting about a psychological evaluation, or retreating inside herself, there was a challenge in her eyes.
The woman wasn’t just all good looks. She had moxie.
“Dr.—?” she asked, hooking one eyebrow.
“Hansen. Ms. uh—” He cleared his throat. “Serrat.”
She studied him critically. “My uncle sent you, I assume.”
“Uh, yeah.” Brilliant. Very eloquent.
Sighing in resignation, she hopped up on the edge of the examination table. “Well, let’s get this over with. I have a son to get home to.” Her feet dangled off the floor, exposing the delicate bare ankles at the ends of two very long legs.
“Sure. Uh, yeah.”
Heaven help him.
Mia had prepared herself to do battle with some pasty-skinned, condescending head-shrinker who had his name sewn over the breast pocket of his lab coat and who spoke through his nasal passages. She was ready, or she thought she was.
Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined they’d send someone like young Dr. Handsome, here, to check up on her. One look at him, and her game plan fell apart with an audible crash.
He was tall and tanned and lean, but with enough bulk under his blue denim button-down dress shirt to hint at a fit body. His hair was conservatively cut, but just enough overdue for a trim that the light brown ends curled over his collar. A few flakes of snow still clung in the cowlick over his left temple.
The cold had left ruddy spots on his cheeks, and the beginnings of a slight shadow darkened his jaw, but not grimly. The stubble, combined with brilliant hazel eyes, a lazy smile that only reached one side of his mouth and the battered leather jacket slung over his shoulder gave him a slightly harried, sleepy, sexy look.
She wasn’t ready for him at all.
She wondered if he knew exactly how disarming that lopsided grin of his could be. She wondered whether it was genuine or part of his psychotherapy-babble bag of tricks.
“Ms. Serrat?” He lifted his eyebrows in question.
Polite, too, still waiting for her to invite him in. Not a common trait in doctors, in her experience.
Despite his charm and his manners, she jutted her chin when she nodded, reminding herself he was the man standing between her and Todd. She needed to get home to her son, preferably before school let out for the day. She didn’t want him to know anything about this little incident.
He shouldered his way through the door and eased across the room, stopping about three feet away and extending his hand. Tricky, he was. Making her go to him. A subtle but effective shifting of power in the room.
On another day, she would have refused to play his mind games. But today, she decided an antisocial display would not further her cause.
Hopping off the exam table and stepping forward, she accepted his hand. His knuckles were scraped and swollen as though he’d been in a fight, she noticed. Young Dr. Handsome was one surprise after another.
Before she thought better of herself, she swept her thumb over the abrasions. “Rough day at the office, Doc?”
He looked puzzled for a second, then glanced down and extricated his hand from hers. “Just a little difference of opinion.”
It was her turn to look puzzled, but she didn’t ask for an explanation, nor did he offer one. It was best they get down to business, anyway.
“I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” he said, throwing his jacket across the foot of the bed. “I’d have been here an hour ago, but the weather’s taking a turn for the worse and the roads are getting nasty.”
An hour. What was one hour? she wondered.
An eternity to an eight-year-old boy. A boy waiting for his mother.
“Why don’t we get this over with so you can get back on the road to wherever home is, then?”
“Sounds like a plan.” He rubbed his hands together to warm them, looking her up and down.
Her spine tingled as if he’d run his fingers up her back. The look hadn’t been sexual at all—it was definitely a doctor’s appraising gaze.
Still, she had felt it.
As if he’d felt it, too, he took a step back.
Even fully clothed and with four feet of distance between them, she felt naked. Bare to the soul. Unable to resist any longer, she set her tea down and crossed her arms over the buttercup-yellow flannel pajama top Nana had brought for her.
She wished Nana had brought clothes, instead.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine,” she lied. Her hip hurt like hell. “The doctor gave me a clean bill of health.”
“Good. Do you know why I’m here?”
Her lips pressed together in a bleak smile. “You’re a psychologist.”
“Psychiatrist, actually. You know what happens next?”
She nodded and sat on the edge of the bed, her legs hanging over the side. She’d been through this before. At least he wasn’t patronizing her.
He asked a battery of questions. Her name. The date. The name of the current president. The immediate former president. Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?
She looked up at him quizzically. “Grant?”
He grinned. “Just seeing if you were paying attention. Thought I had you there.”
“My son loves riddles. I hear that one, or some variation on it, at least once a week.”
“What happened this morning?” Dr. Handsome asked. His gaze followed her as she hopped off the bed and paced, limping. She didn’t want to do this, but he wasn’t going to let her go home to Todd until she did.
“Why don’t you just come right out and ask me?” she said, hating the impatience in her voice.
“Ask you what?”
“If I tried to kill myself again.”
“Did you try to kill yourself again?” he said without missing a beat.
“No.”
“But you have tried before.”
Statement, not question. No sense denying it, she thought. The facts would be in her medical record.
“A long time ago,” she said flatly.
“After you lost your husband?”
“And my sister six months before that, and my parents a year before that.” Her heart constricted painfully at the memory. Memories.
