you knew she’d be worried about you?” he asked, wondering why her sister’s concern should be a problem for Ashley.
“Because she’s spent too much time worrying about me, and even more over the past four months.”
“Since the broken engagement,” he guessed.
She nodded, making him suspect that she might be more distressed over the end of that relationship than he wanted to believe. And though he was undeniably curious about the ex-fiancé, he forced himself to focus on more immediate concerns.
“What did Megan say about the medication?”
“She said it’s fine. I just have to make sure that I inform the admin clerk of the dosage when I go in for my blood work.”
“Except you didn’t get the scrip filled, did you?”
“No, because I didn’t plan on taking it.”
He glanced at his watch. “I’ll call it in to Brody’s.”
“I’m capable of taking my own prescription in.”
“I know you are,” he agreed. “I’m just not convinced that you’ll actually do it.”
“Fine.” She thrust the phone at him. “Call it in and then leave me alone.”
He dialed the familiar number, spoke to the pharmacist and made arrangements for the medication to be delivered, throughout which Ashley continued to glare at him.
“It should be here within twenty minutes,” he told her.
“Do you plan on hanging around until it gets here?” she challenged.
“I don’t have anywhere else that I need to be, and I have no intention of letting you push me out the door until we’ve had a chance to talk about what happened in the kitchen.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she denied, but the flush in her cheeks told him otherwise. “It was a moment of insanity, that’s all.”
“The only insanity is in trying to pretend it didn’t mean anything, trying to pretend that we aren’t still as attracted to one another as we were twelve years ago.”
She folded her arms over her chest as she lifted her gaze to his. “I’m not going to deny that there’s an attraction, but I’m not looking to get involved with anyone right now.”
A personal relationship was the absolute last thing he’d been looking for when he’d decided to move back to Pinehurst, but then he’d kissed Ashley, and he’d realized that getting involved with her wasn’t a choice. But he understood why she was wary.
“You can’t close your heart because of what your ex-fiancé did,” he said gently.
“This had nothing to do with Trevor,” she denied.
“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
