on tiptoe and reached for him, circling her hands around his broad shoulders, then shifting them to his muscular neck. She took in a deep breath and drew him to her.
His kiss was tender, light as the morning dew, but suddenly Macy wanted more, and she didn’t know why. She pressed against him, trying to get closer, to feel his hard chest against her. Macy wasn’t sure who had taken the lead, but did it matter? She had what she’d dreamed of for five, long years: Alex in her arms again.
Without realizing it, Macy let out a low moan. Was it of pleasure or pain? She wanted this to go on forever, but she knew it had to stop. What if a patient came in? Still, she would let it go on as long as Alex wanted.
Suddenly Alex pulled away with a wrenching groan of his own. “We can’t do this,” he said thickly. “This isn’t the right place.”
Macy stepped farther away, her face burning with embarrassment.
Alex turned his back to her as he struggled to tug on wet jeans with the drape still wrapped around his middle. He zipped his pants, then sat on the metal stool to put on his boots. The drape slid to the floor. As he struggled with his wet laces, he finally said, “I have issues to deal with. The job, you, my knee…everything. It’s late. We’re both exhausted. It isn’t the right…
“Hell, I don’t know what it is.” He shrugged, raised his hands in a helpless gesture, then turned slowly to face her.
“Thank you for seeing to my knee. If you need some help with repairs to the clinic, let me know. I’ll be at my grandmother’s.” Then he turned quickly and made his way out into the night.
Macy listened until she heard his car start, and she peeked through the window as the red taillights disappeared around the corner. She wished that would be the last of it. That he’d go away for another five years or five hundred, but she knew he wouldn’t. As long as Alex was around, neither her emotions nor her secret were safe.
He might not know it yet, but he would probably know by tomorrow. He’d be seeing a lot of her. After all, she lived next door to his grandmother. And that was going to be an enormous problem.
ALL BLOCK wanted to do was to go to bed and sleep the rest of the night away, but as he drove through the darkened streets of Lyndonville, all he could think about was Macy. Of what could have been. What should have been. And he wondered why it wasn’t.
He remembered the way she used to follow him and her brother C.J. around like a lost puppy. She’d had a crush on him then. When he was sixteen and Macy was eleven, her puppy love or hero worship had been a pain in the butt.
But now he was thirty-six, and she was thirty-one. They were way beyond the age of puppy love, and the sexual energy that seemed to sizzle between them was a sure indication that Macy felt the same attraction, whether she wanted to or not. And after that night five years ago following C.J.’s funeral, there could be no doubt that they could have something good.
He’d never understood women, and maybe he never would, but he wished he could figure Macy out. If there was one woman he could find worth getting to know, Macy was the one. Why was she being so uptight with him? There was something odd about that…considering what they’d done five years ago.
Without realizing it, Block had made his way back to his grandmother’s house. The power around town was still off, but a hurricane lamp shone with warm welcome in Gramma’s front window. He shut off the engine, locked the car, and accepted the welcome light’s invitation to come inside.
“You be quiet, now, y’ hear,” his grandmother said in a hushed whisper as Block stepped through the door.
He looked around through the dim light and spotted her sitting in an old rocker in the darkened living room. “What are you still doing up?” he said in a stage whisper.
She held a finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she said and pointed to a small bundle wrapped in a quilt and sleeping on the couch. “You’ll wake him.”
“Who’s that?”
“Hush now. You just go on to bed. I’m waiting up for his momma, then I’ll be on to bed, too.”
“All right. I’ll have to confess I’m too tired to argue.”
Gramma made a shooing motion with her hands. “Now go on to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Block wondered about that last remark, but figured that Gramma had noticed him limping. Those old eyes were still sharp, and she didn’t miss much. Still, he was curious about the kid sleeping on the couch.
Why was the kid’s mother out this late at night? Especially considering the storm and the power outage.
He pulled out of his damp clothes, hung them over a chair and crawled into the too-soft bed.
Block would have thought that he’d drop right off, but sleep eluded him. As he lay there, he heard a car drive up and a door slam, then he heard the murmur of voices out in the living room. Block glanced at the clock. After four. The mother must have come to collect her child. He supposed she hadn’t been able to get back sooner because of the storm.
He heard the front door close, and he listened as his grandmother padded to bed. Whoever the woman was, she was gone, and she wasn’t his problem, anyway. The kid wasn’t his problem, either. He had to learn that he couldn’t solve every problem that crossed his path, even if he was used to being a take-charge man.
He rolled over and punched the pillow and tried again to sleep. But every time he closed his eyes he thought of Macy Jackson. And every time he saw her, his body reacted. All his adult life, he’d tried to move forward, to improve himself. And to him, coming back to Lyndonville was a step back.
But then, Macy Jackson was just another one of those things he’d always wanted and couldn’t have. That’s why he’d left her office tonight. Wasn’t any sense in prolonging the agony.
There had been so many things in Lyndonville that he’d wanted and couldn’t have. A future. A job. Respect. The town had held him back. It had killed his father because he hadn’t been able to pay for the antibiotic that could have cured him, and he hadn’t had a car to get him to one of the free clinics in Florence or Darlington.
It had nearly worn his mother down, physically and mentally as she struggled to clean other people’s houses and had so little in her own. Life in Lyndonville when he was a boy had been a constant struggle for food, for shoes, for anything that was worth anything. In his mind, the only way to move up in the world was to get out of Lyndonville, but Macy had chosen to stay.
She’d chosen to make her life here. She’d chosen to make Lyndonville better, and by doing so, she’d earned the respect of everyone. He’d seen it in the way the sheriff had treated her, and her patients, and…even he was a little bit in awe.
With that thought in mind, as the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, he drifted off to sleep.
MACY YAWNED and let herself into her own little house, a mirror twin to Willadean Blocker’s. She’d inherited it from her Aunt Earnestine, who’d raised her and her two brothers after her mother had died in childbirth and her father had gone up north to look for work and had never returned. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place you’d expect a young doctor to be living in, but she had student loans to pay off, and the house was free. Macy let out an exhausted sigh and started for her bed.
No,
