welcome.” An awkward moment passed where they stared at each other, not speaking, just locking gazes. He looked away, swiped his palms over his pants, then closed the computer program. “Got to get back to my patients.”
“Right.”
They both stepped out into the hallway.
“Oh, there you are!” Leslie, a bubbly nurse practitioner who worked in the clinic, saw Chelsea and bounded up to give her a quick hug. “Sorry I missed you this morning.” Her gaze swerved for a second. “I got a late start, but no matter. I’ve been hoping to catch sight of you all morning.” She flashed a smile at Jared. “You, too, actually.”
Jared’s brow rose, but he didn’t comment.
“Will, Jennifer and I want the entire office to go out tonight for dinner to celebrate Chelsea’s first day.”
Chelsea opened her mouth to say she’d love to, but was frozen in place by Jared’s arctic attitude. She inwardly sighed.
“I’m busy,” he said.
Fighting frostbite, Chelsea tried not to let his words hurt her. It wasn’t as if she’d really expected him to want to have a relationship with her. Sure, she’d dreamed, but in reality even her dreams had only been private fantasies. Even to have a fling with Jared meant baring her soul, her back. Letting someone as beautiful as Jared see her marred flesh was not going to happen.
“Busy?” Leslie’s gaze narrowed as she eyed him curiously. “Jennifer is on call for the hospital, but amazingly the rest of us have the evening off. We won’t get a better opportunity than this evening for us all to get together, and you know it.”
Chelsea could almost see Jared’s brain whirling, trying to get out of the dinner. Did he plan to avoid her as much as possible?
He’d managed quite well over the past ten years and hadn’t been there on any of the occasions when she’d visited her brother. He’d even gone out of the country for six weeks during the time she had been officially hired.
“Come on, Jared,” Leslie coaxed. “No flavor of the month is more important than business.”
Flavor of the month? Heat rushed into Chelsea’s cheeks and her fingers gripped the printout she held so tightly the edges crinkled.
The coolness of his gaze covered her skin in goose bumps.
She didn’t understand his strange reaction, but refused to slump into negativity or pity. She didn’t do either. Hadn’t for a long, long time.
He crossed his arms and glared. “Go without me. I’ll swing by when I can. Just let me know what restaurant you decide on.”
Chelsea didn’t believe him. And not just because he talked through gritted teeth. What was his problem?
“Hey, Jare,” Will said, rounding the corner with a chart in hand and his nurse closely on his tail. “Leslie fill you in on tonight’s plans? We’ve got to officially celebrate my little sis’s induction to the paying workforce.”
Leslie’s gaze cut to Will and a pretty pink tinted her cheeks, making Chelsea wonder which of the men caused her blush. “I was just telling him, but Jared says he has other plans.”
“Cancel.” Will shrugged nonchalantly at his friend. “You’re going with us tonight.”
Chelsea had had enough of feeling like the scraggy puppy in the pet-shop window.
“I’m fine with whatever you decide, but I need to get back to my patient.” She waved the printout as if that explained everything and walked away before she went into total embarrassed meltdown. Later, when alone with her thoughts, she’d try to figure out why Jared had acted so oddly. If it was because he thought she was going to make his work environment unpleasant by mooning over him, she’d set him straight.
She’d gotten quite good at keeping her emotions hidden.
Chelsea gave the printout to Hannah for her to look over while she saw another patient. When she’d finished, she returned to Hannah’s exam room, but the girl was gone.
“Betty?” She went in search of the nurse. Spotting the pretty, slightly overweight forty-year-old, she asked, “Is Hannah in the restroom?”
Blowing a stray short, dyed-platinum strand of hair out of her eye, Betty gave Chelsea a confused look. “She left.”
“Left?”
Betty nodded. “Right after you came out of the exam room, she took off. I thought you’d finished.”
Glancing into the room, Chelsea saw the counter and trash bin were both empty. Well, at least Hannah had taken the brochures.
CHAPTER THREE
WHAT had he agreed to?
Nothing. He hadn’t agreed, and no way was he going to dinner with Chelsea. Not even with his partners there as buffers. He’d been right to avoid her and should stick with that plan as much as current circumstances allowed.
But for the rest of the day Jared’s mind kept drifting back to how his skin had tingled when they’d touched, how her smile gave glimpses of lightheartedness, how his body perked up at her nearness.
But he shouldn’t do anything to encourage thoughts that there could ever be anything between them. There couldn’t. Attraction between him and Chelsea was the last thing he needed. His life in Madison was good, exactly what he wanted. It had taken him a long time to find happiness after Laura’s death and he wouldn’t risk losing that hard-won inner peace.
Not peace, really, he had too much guilt for that, would always have too much guilt over what had happened to Laura, but he’d come to terms of a sort with what had happened.
He’d done the right thing, focused on his relationship with Laura when she’d told him she was pregnant the week after she’d returned from Greece. The week after he’d met Chelsea.
Laura had known something had changed, that he hadn’t been the same after spring break. She’d pushed, she’d prodded, she’d begged him to tell her if he wanted her to have an abortion. He hadn’t, but neither had he been able to admit that he’d fallen for a seventeen-year-old girl. He’d pushed thoughts of Chelsea aside, had asked Laura to marry him, and had committed himself to being a good husband and father.
She’d been ecstatic, until she’d overheard a conversation not meant for her ears. A conversation when his buddies Larry and Tom had ragged him about Chelsea and the way she hero-worshipped him. Jared had snapped, telling them to shut up, but it had been too late. Laura had seen the truth on his face, and they’d argued.
Although not in the way she’d wanted, he had loved Laura and would have done everything in his power to make her happy, would have been a good husband and father.
He’d never gotten the opportunity.
That night, she’d swerved off the rode, hit a tree, and lost their baby and her life.
Guilt had held him captive ever since.
Guilt
