Page 54 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
His problem wasn’t championing the radical females in his family but, rather, working through the sizable infatuation he had with the lady doctor currently stitching him up.
“A position somewhere will come around, I’m sure,” he said when she’d completed the procedure and stood there, seemingly lost about what to do next. He’d seen her work a shipwreck a few months back, about the most ghastly business there was. She’d bandaged and soothed and buried, doing what needed to be done without complaint. Never a hint she was somewhere she shouldn’t be, standing among the debris and the bodies.
It wasn’t only intelligence she had going for her.
She was beautiful in…he wasn’t sure how to describe it, in a mostunusualway. Not the standard package: pretty face, agreeable figure. No, something in the way she looked at a person, or at least the way she looked athim, set her apart from every woman he’d ever known. Her eyes a rolling sea of knowledge, as vast as the one he sailed his skiffs over. Made a man want to explore, dive in and not look back. He was fine to jump in without thinking about it too awful much. Not like Noah and Zach, who’d dragged their heels until their women had up and left them.
Only…Macy Dallas. He ducked his head.Not going to happen.
She was leagues above anyone he’d evenconsideredbeing attracted to. Too good for him by far. Anyway, she was leaving as soon as she found a hospital to employ her. His heart wouldn’t be able to take abandonment of such magnitude, even if negotiated and intentional.
A punch he knew was coming.
As he sat there pondering how lovely she smelled and how he could do nothing about it, she took a step back. Smoothed her hand over her skirt. Fingered the tin of ointment, the bottle of alcohol, rearranged her cotton strips. While he was beginning to suspect she was going to—
“About that night. At the social. I should apologize.”
Oh, Lord, he thought and let his head drop back to the chair with a thunk. There was a crack in her ceiling wide enough to put his pinky in. He wished he could crawl into it. “You did. Twice that I recall.”
“I followed a perilous impulse after imbibing at least three glasses of—”
“Big words are wasted on me, Doc. Save them for the quilting circle.”
“I had no idea she was there. That you were connected to someone. I can only be thankful Miss Connery didn’t say a word after finding us. When I’m the depraved one, which I’ve never,everbeen.” She huffed a breath, squeezed the life from a cotton ball. “And I attend that frivolous quilting circle so I can practice my stitches!”
“If I made a solemn vow”—he looked up, waited until her gaze met his, wanting this information to sink in and hold like an anchor on the ocean floor—“you had nothing, and I meannothing, to do with what happened between me and Christabel, can we agree to never discuss this again?”
Those wondrous eyes of hers sparked, flooding the room blue.
So, she did have a temper. Well, good, because so did he.
“Is this foul mood because I kissed you, Mr. Garrett? Or because you took a sharp dig to a vital body part?”
He was on his feet fast enough to send pain slicing down his arm. “It’s because…” He looked away, clenched his jaw to keep from saying more. This time, thankfully, it was Noah’s voice circling his mind and not his father’s.Think first, Cale. With a sigh, he met Macy’s gaze even though he didn’t want to. Because he was an honest man if nothing else.
But then,dammit, he couldn’t quite admit:It’s because you get to me, Miss Dallas, apart from that impassioned but brief kiss.Because the sentiment needed polishing, like that dink in the hull of Fred Sanderlin’s skiff. He’d smoothed that thing over until he and Fred forgot it was even there to begin with. And starting a conversation withbecause you get to mewas all about jagged edges.
“It wasn’t an impressive kiss,” she murmured, circling a length of material around her hand and jerking until her skin shone white. “Not in the grand scheme of things. Not enough to cause irreparable damage.”
As she fidgeted with the rag, her gaze drifting around the room, he studied her. The kiss had been fleeting, yes, butblinding. A kiss to kill. With all the power of whatcould behidden behind a just-out-of-the-gate effort. Amusing, maybe, because wasn’t life funny even when you didn’t want it to be? But you couldn’t hide that much heat even under layers of naïveté. Unimpressive, huh? Her fingers had been tangled in his hair and his rising to do the same by the end of it. He’d had her backed against the wall in the assembly hall’s cloakroom, heading to doing God knows what before they’d been discovered. Imagine if he’d had time to get his bearings, be a touch creative about the thing.
Anyway, the problem wasn’t the kiss. It was hiscompulsion. Watching her worry on her gorgeous bottom lip while wanting to comfort, soothe, step in and make it better. Improve the situation.Goddamnit. The Garretts were known for protecting their own and, oh, did it look like he was staying true to course.
He murmured his thanks and was across the room and down the hallway before he followed the irrational impulses zipping through his mind, his body.
“Mr. Garrett,” she called, right on his heels. “Caleb.”
Sighing loud and long, he paused on her porch, the tattered ends of his shirt fluttering around his waist. Tapping her sign with his knuckle, he sent it swinging with a squeak. “Thanks for sewing me up, Doc. Send me the bill, will you?” he asked, his breath frosting the air. “Go back in. It’s freezing out here, and you’re not dressed for it. And, truthfully, neither am I.”
“I’m sorry for the kiss, is what I wanted to convey.”
His gaze jumped to hers as frustration raced through him. “Well, I’m not. How about that?”
Her mouth opened, closed. She shook her head, clearly stunned. Damn, those eyes of hers illuminated the night like a flare over the ocean. “I don’t understand.”
“Lucky for me,” he threw over his shoulder as he stalked down the shell-paved path leading away from her doorstep, “you don’t have to.”
CHAPTER TWO