CHAPTER FOUR
Okay, she wasn’t ready to go there yet. Dillon realized he should have expected that. One thing Kit Derby would never do was give in to him easily. Fine. He was nothing if not patient . . .
He almost snorted at that. Patience was not one of his foremost virtues. Kit could definitely outwait him. The woman was stubborn, he’d give her that.
But that would make her giving in all the sweeter.
The timer buzzed on the oven, signaling the cinnamon rolls were done. Kit moved to retrieve them, and Dillon stirred his chili.
He didn’t want to talk about the clinic. They argued over that fucking project every other week at the meetings and occasionally in the hallways and even twice in her office. He loved the clinic idea. He loved the idea of bringing those services to town. He loved the idea of doing it with Kit. And he loved arguing with her about the things about it that they disagreed on. It gave him a high he couldn’t get anywhere else. But he knew she was throwing the project out there right now because she felt the tension and desire, and she was trying to defuse it.
They didn’t need to talk about the clinic right now, and he didn’t want the sexual tension defused.
He wasn’t worried about the clinic. It was going to be amazing, no matter where they ended up with the staffing or even the funding. He and Kit didn’t agree on every detail, or even on every service, but the clinic was going to be great because everything was always better when he and Kit did them together.
High school and medical school had both proved it over and over. But then . . . things happened. He’d left the state—hell, he’d left the continent for a while—and Kit had come home, and it had all become just a part of their past.
Then the tornado had hit.
That tornado. It had changed so much. There were still scars around town. A couple of buildings still bore signs of the storm. A couple of people did, too. But in at least a few ways, the tornado had been a good thing. The town had pulled together and rebuilt. And a bunch of people had fallen in love.
He’d at least gotten to kiss Kit. And then work beside her. He wasn’t sure which of those things he’d enjoyed the most.
Now he was back, and the last six months had showed him that he and Kit were every bit the amazing team they’d always been. And today . . . this was a snowstorm, not a twister, but Dillon felt like things inside him were swirling around and piling up just like the snow was outside. His emotions, his realizations, the things he hadn’t said or done. He was going to have to find a way through all of that. Because, unlike the snow, he didn’t think any of it was going to go away on its own over time.
“I was thinking—” he started, but just then his phone vibrated on the Formica countertop. He wiped his hands on Grace’s bathrobe and reached for it. The number on the display was the hospital.
“Alexander,” he answered.
“Dillon, it’s Janice.”
“Hey, Jan. You still at work?”
“Lydia can’t make it in, so I’m here for the night shift,” she confirmed.
“Well, have a coffee or two on me,” he told her. There was free coffee for the entire staff 24-7, but Dillon made a mental note to take her some of her favorite from the diner and to include a muffin or two the next time she worked.
“You bet,” she said with a laugh. “But I’m calling about Sarah.”
Dillon frowned. If there was a medical issue, Tom or Dan would be handling it. Unless Janice was calling to give him bad news about something they had handled. “What’s going on?”
“She’s . . . freaking out.”
Dillon processed that. “What do you mean? How are her vitals?”
Janice sighed and rattled off the numbers. “Medically she’s fine, at least until she starts getting worked up and her BP goes up. But when her BP goes up, she starts not feeling well. She’s just dealing with a lot, and I think part of it is that she’s lonely—too much time to think.”
Dillon’s mind turned. Okay, his patient was doing pretty well but wasn’t happy. Typically new moms had their support system around. Their partners or families. Sarah was far from home, with no one she knew or cared about.
Kit moved into his line of sight, giving him a concerned look. “Everything okay?” she asked.
He shook his head. And realized he had exactly what Sarah needed right here. “Sarah’s having a hard time. Anxious, and I believe the technical term Jan used was ‘freaking out.’ Is that right, Jan?” he asked into the phone, feeling downright smug. Because Sarah was going to be fine. Kit was here.
“You’re hilarious, Dr. A,” Janice said drily.
“Yes, that’s Jan’s official diagnosis,” Dillon informed Kit with a grin.
Kit didn’t smile back. She was frowning. But it wasn’t at him; it was about the situation. Dillon definitely knew the difference between a Kit frown directed at him and one that wasn’t.
“Has she talked to her husband?” Kit asked.
Dillon asked Jan.
“Yep. But that’s part of the trouble. He’s not going to be able to make it tonight.” Dillon glanced toward the window. It was dark now, but the yard light at the side of Grace’s house showed snow continuing to swirl.
Kit nodded. “Baby is okay?”
Again, Dillon asked Jan. “Yep. Nursing, sleeping well, vitals are good.”
“So her anxiety isn’t really about him or her own condition,” Kit said.
“Just that she’s alone in a strange place,” Dillon said.
“Well, there’s nothing ‘just’ about that,” Kit told him. “That’s huge. This is one of the most important days of her life, and she’s spending it alone.”
“Jan’s there,” Dillon said. But he, of course, knew what Kit meant and knew she was right. He wasn’t a touchy-feely doctor. But that didn’t mean he didn’t understand that there was a time and place for that. Just not from him. He didn’t process emotions the way a typical person did. He didn’t know why. It was just how he was wired. He knew about emotions. But he didn’t relate to most. He felt the main things like happy and sad and frustrated and pissed off. But he didn’t do doubt. He didn’t have time to doubt himself, and once he’d made a decision, he just had to make it work. He didn’t do regret. Regret didn’t do anyone any good. He had to do what he could do, the best he could do it, every time, and then deal with the result, whatever it was. He didn’t do guilt. Everything he did, he did with the best information he had and the best intentions, so he couldn’t feel bad about how things turned out. And he especially didn’t do grief.
“You need to call her,” Kit said.
Now Dillon was the one frowning. “What?”
“You need to call her.”
“Call Sarah?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Why did he have to call her? He wasn’t that good at this stuff in person, but the phone was downright terrible. Besides, he’d done the how-are-you-feeling, is-there-anything-I-can-do-for-you bit with Sarah earlier. Evidently it hadn’t been very effective.
“Because you’re her doctor,” Kit said impatiently, moving around the counter.
For a moment, as unprofessional as it probably was to completely forget that he was on a call about a patient, lust hit him low and hard. Those fucking pink stretch pants. They were a horrendous color and didn’t fit her at all. Except that they actually fit her very well. They were like a second skin, and Dillon’s palms itched to run over the material to see if it was as soft as it looked.
Sure, it was the material that had him itching.
And that T-shirt. If Kit had reached up overhead into a cupboard one more time, pulling the purple cotton up on her smooth, tight belly, he would have been scratching an itch or two. So to speak.
Seeing her this way—dressed ridiculously and cooking in her grandmother’s old-fashioned farm kitchen—did something to him. Something that hit him deep and hard and made everything between them even more complicated.
Unless she went along with it.
If she agreed that there was something here that was worth pursuing, something that had been a part of them both for a very long time and now was, finally, possible, well, then, everything would suddenly be very simple.
“Dillon.”
He realized that she was standing in front of him, arms crossed, looking at him with a mixture of wariness and annoyance.
“Yeah.”
“You need to talk to Sarah. Ask Jan if she can call you back from Sarah’s room.”
Sarah. Jan. Work. Right.
“I can’t talk to her,” he said. “What do I say? I already stopped in and asked how she was feeling and if she’s worried about anything, and she said no.”
“And that was a couple hours ago,” Kit said. “Emotions change. Especially when the excitement and adrenaline calm down, and you’re on the other side of the crazy situation and have time to think.”
Dillon didn’t know if she was specifically referring to their time stuck together in the hospital storage room during the tornado, but that was exactly where his thoughts went with her words.
Yeah, his feelings had changed after the excitement had died down. They’d been less chaotic and confusing and a lot more concrete. But he wasn’t sure about Kit’s.
He didn’t know how she felt about something more between them. He sometimes wished that his first instinct wasn’t always to rile her up. But he also looked forward to seeing her, making her cheeks flush and her eyes spark and just hearing the funny, snarky, bitchy, and intelligent things that came out of her mouth when he got her going.
Was that something they could make a real relationship out of?
He didn’t know. But he also couldn’t imagine either of them in a relationship with someone else. He wasn’t convinced any other woman could measure up to Kit in his mind. And he’d have to kill any man he knew was sleeping with Kit.
He would never forget seeing Matthew Fleming flirt with Kit in English class. It wasn’t Matthew’s flirting that made him want to punch the other guy in the face. It was the way Kit had watched Matthew leave afterward. The soft, dreamy smile on her face when Matthew wasn’t looking. That was what had made Dillon ask Mrs. Shawnessy to put Dillon and Kit together for their final project. And why he’d kissed her that night.
Their relationship had never been soft and dreamy. He knew that kind. That’s what he’d had with Abigail. Soft and dreamy was nice. Very nice. And sweet. Nothing about him and Kit together had ever been sweet or nice. It was spicy and exciting and difficult.
And he loved it. That was his kind of thing. He liked a challenge, he liked working hard for something, he liked having competition and coming out on top.
He and Kit together worked for him, dammit.
“You know I suck at this stuff,” he said to Kit, referring to the emotional side of his care for Sarah.
“I do know,” Kit agreed matter-of-factly. “But you have to stop sucking at it.”
“I do?”
“You’re a physician in a small town now, Dillon. You’re not out in the jungle, and you’re not knee-deep in mud, putting people back together with duct tape and chewing gum. You have to get better at this.”
He couldn’t help his grin. Duct tape and chewing gum? That wasn’t that far from the truth, as a matter of fact. “Why don’t you talk to her?” he asked. “This is your thing.”
“I delivered her baby,” Kit said, meeting his gaze directly. “Do I really have to do everything?”
God, he loved her sass. “I’m going to fuck it up if I talk to her.”
“No, you won’t, because I’ll tell you what to say,” Kit told him.
He lifted a brow. “You’re going to coach me?”
“Yes.”
He thought about that. It would work. It would be like making Alfredo sauce. And they’d rocked that. “Okay.”
She looked mildly surprised for a moment, but then she nodded. “Have Janice call us back from Sarah’s room.”
Us. He liked that. And he wanted to tell her that. He wanted to tell her that he loved having her have his back and that he didn’t want to do anything without her there ever. He wanted to brush his teeth with her, for fuck’s sake. And he was at risk of becoming a sap. Because of Kit Derby. Who would have thought?
“Jan, call us back from Sarah’s room. Kit and I have this.”
“Will do.”
He watched Kit as they waited for the phone to ring. She didn’t watch him back. She turned the heat down low under both chili pots and took the ingredients for the cinnamon-roll icing out of the fridge and cupboards—and he was grateful that the powdered sugar was on a high shelf that required her to stretch and her shirt to pull up, exposing the smooth skin of her lower back. Where he wanted to lick her.
He felt like he should say something but was afraid it would be something like, Let’s do this forever. And then she would probably ask, What do you mean by this? and he wouldn’t know how to answer.
Make chili. Walk around the kitchen with almost nothing on. Or with nothing on. Help our patients together. Save the world. All of the above.
The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. Maybe it was the scent of cinnamon and cumin getting to him.
“Hey,” he answered.
“I have Sarah here,” Jan said.
“Great, put her on.”
A soft voice said, “Hello?” a second later.
“Hey, Sarah, it’s Dillon Alexander.”
“Hi, Dr. Alexander.”
“So, how are you feeling now that some of the excitement has died down?” he asked, shooting Kit a look. She certainly hadn’t hesitated to tell him how she felt after the adrenaline had worn off after the tornado. And the kissing.
Kit had moved closer again and was watching him now.
“The pain is a little better,” Sarah told him.
Dillon nodded. “Glad to hear it.”
“More,” Kit mouthed to him.
Right. This call wasn’t really about Sarah’s physical pain. “I’m getting there,” he mouthed back.
Kit rolled her eyes.
“How far did your husband get before he had to stop for the night?” Dillon asked, easing into the conversation about Sarah’s loneliness. At least, that’s what he meant to do. But he heard a sniff on the other end of the line and knew he was not too far from the floodgates opening.
“He’s in Des Moines.”
Okay, yeah, that was still pretty far away. “Tomorrow will be better. The winds are supposed to die down, and they’ll be able to get the roads open,” Dillon said. That was what his weather app had said, anyway.
He watched as Kit bent and rummaged in a lower cupboard. And stupidly, he wished that he had a better angle to check out her stretchy pink pants in that position.
“I know,” Sarah said in his ear, pulling him back to the conversation. Jesus, he was typically a pro at focus and concentration. Even with Kit around. Sure, it was easier when she wasn’t around, but he’d learned early on that letting her distract him was a surefire way to lose. Usually to her.
Kit had pulled notebook and marker from that bottom cupboard and was writing furiously.
“What’s your husband’s name?” Dillon asked, hoping that wasn’t a mistake somehow.
“Tim,” she said, sniffing again.
“What’s Tim do?”
“He’s a high school principal in one of the suburbs outside of Chicago,” Sarah told him.
“You’re a long way from home. What are you doing in the middle of Nebraska?” Dillon asked as Kit held up the notebook.
But he’d barely read the words She’s going to feel guilty when he heard an even louder sniff and then the distinct sound of a sob.
Shit.
“She’s crying,” he mouthed to Kit.
She shrugged as if she’d expected that. He widened his eyes and put out his hand, silently asking for more.
“It’s okay for her to cry,” Kit whispered.
He’d actually wanted Kit to come up with a way to stop the crying, but okay.
But he wasn’t going to do this on his own. He hit the speakerphone button and set the phone on the counter between them.
Sarah spoke again. “I was in North Platt for my parents’ wedding anniversary party. Tim asked me not to come home tonight. Actually, he asked me not to even go to the party. But I was supposed to have three weeks left.”
She was crying harder now, and Dillon opened his mouth, but he felt a pinch on his arm. Kit was scowling at him and shook her head.
“What?” he mouthed.
Kit whispered, “Do not agree that she shouldn’t have gone to the party.”
Dillon rolled his eyes. How had she known he was about to say, “You can never count on babies doing what they’re supposed to at this stage”?
Kit tore off the top page on the notepad and wrote, Tell her no one blames her for what happened today.
But Dillon kind of did. Sarah never should have gone on that trip by herself this far into her pregnancy. He knew he shouldn’t say that and was glad that the phone kept Sarah from reading it on his face, but he frowned and shook his head at Kit.
Kit sighed and wrote again, Then tell her that she can’t focus on the things she should have done differently, only what she can do now.
Dillon read the words off to Sarah. “Right now you just need to think about getting a lot of rest and relaxing and bonding with Caleb,” he told her.
“Okay,” Sarah said. “I just feel like I ruined it all.”
He frowned. “You didn’t ruin anything. Caleb is fine; you’re fine.”
“But my husband didn’t get to be there for Caleb’s birth,” Sarah said. “I can never give that back to him.”
“There are so many moments ahead, though. Lots of important times that he will be there for. This is just one,” Dillon said.
Kit quickly scribbled something else and held it up. Dillon squinted at the page. She needs to mourn what she lost. She set the notebook down and wrote something else. But you’re right. That’s good to focus on, too.
Well, great, he’d gotten something right. But what had Sarah lost? He pointed to the words and shook his head to show he didn’t understand.
Kit wrote again. The birth experience that she’d been planning on. Ask her what it was supposed to be like.
Dillon sighed. “Sarah, I know that today didn’t turn out the way you expected,” he said, keeping his eyes on Kit. She was watching the phone. “But things still turned out well, right? You’re a new mom. Your son is here. Just think of all the wonderful things you get to look forward to.”
Kit motioned with her hand to say, Get on with it.
Sarah sniffed. “Yeah, I guess they did.”
“Tell me what you thought today would be like, how you pictured it,” Dillon said.
Kit gave him a nod.
“I guess I pictured Tim and me driving to the hospital together and checking into a room and going through all the breathing and focusing exercises we’d learned. I had a book where I journaled about my pregnancy, and in there it had us do a birth plan.”
Dillon could hear the thickness in her voice that said the tears weren’t over. “What did you have on your birth plan?” He knew what a birth plan was, but he’d never used one with a patient. That was the ob-gyn’s territory. If Dillon were delivering a baby, it was guaranteed that nothing was going according to anyone’s plan.
“We were going to use our breathing techniques, but I was open to an epidural,” she said. She went on to describe the clothes she’d planned to bring for the baby to go home in, the music CD they’d had packed in the bag, her favorite pillow, and the other things that would have helped her relax and feel more comfortable.
And all of that was sitting in a bag by the door in a house hundreds of miles from where she was now.
Dillon got it. Yes, she and the baby were fine, and that was good—of course she felt that way, too—but the fact that all of this was foreign and that she had nothing with her that would work to comfort her made a difference. Especially when she had fully expected to have those things. And her husband.
“I’m really sorry that it worked out this way,” Dillon said.
He glanced at Kit and found her looking surprised but pleased. She gave him an encouraging smile. He felt a warmth in his chest and realized a second later that he was feeling satisfaction. For God’s sake. He had medals and commendations and titles behind his name, but Kit Derby could smile at him and make him feel proud.
“Now what?” he mouthed to Kit.
“Keep talking,” she said softly, moving around him to the phone on the wall.
“So tell me about deciding on Caleb’s name,” Dillon said to Sarah. But he was fully tuned in to Kit.
She dialed the phone, and a moment later he realized she was talking to someone at the hospital. “Rebecca, it’s Dr. Derby. Can you go to my office and get my iPad out of my desk? I need you to hook it up to Skype and see if you can get Sarah’s husband on it wherever he is. If we can get that all pulled up, then you can give Caleb a bath and weigh him and do a feeding all with Tim there. Also, pull up the songs on the latest Keith Urban album and then find them on YouTube. Oh, and see if Margie can find some of that vanilla-lavender lotion they had in the gift shop for a while.”
Sarah was talking about her great-grandfather. That’s all Dillon knew. He was far too distracted by Kit to hear anything more than that from the woman on the phone. Kit was . . . amazing.
The Keith Urban album was the CD Sarah had planned to bring to the hospital because Tim had proposed at a Keith concert. Skyping with Tim wasn’t perfect, but it would include the new father in some of the firsts that were happening for Sarah and Caleb and was better than his missing it entirely. And the vanilla-lavender lotion would be soothing and might help Sarah sleep better once she wound down. Dillon would have given her a sleeping pill. Which, of course, he might still do. It would help, too. But still, Kit was trying to make Sarah’s experience as close to what she’d imagined as they could. They couldn’t do everything, but even the effort would touch Sarah.
At least, it was touching him.
“He’s so upset.”
Dillon realized that Sarah had moved on to talking about her husband.
“He’s on the phone with the hospital every ten minutes; he’s calling my mother every hour to give her an update. He’s just so . . . upset,” she said again.
“Sarah,” Dillon said sincerely, “I’m going to tell you something about your husband. I don’t know him, but guys like to take care of things. Until he’s there and able to actually do stuff for you, he’s going to try to do other things. Calling people and asking questions and giving reports makes him feel like he’s making stuff happen.”
Dillon noticed that Kit had stopped talking, and her eyes were now focused on him.
Sarah sniffed. “You think so?”
“I do,” Dillon told her. “He wants to be your hero, the guy taking care of things, and being so far away and stuck has to be making him crazy. So when he gets there, he might really go over the top. Be patient with him. And don’t worry about the staff—they’ll be okay.”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “And you’re right. He is that guy—the one who wants to take care of me. Us.”
Dillon couldn’t take his eyes off Kit. “I can relate,” he told Sarah, feeling something strange in his chest. It felt like . . . rightness. It was the weirdest thing.
“Hey, Rebecca?” Kit said into the phone. “On second thought, would you call Sarah’s husband and ask him what he wants to do? Make sure he knows Skype and everything else are options, but I’m sure he has some ideas about how to make this better for his wife. And for him. Just let him know that we’re willing to do whatever we can to help.”
“Next time you talk to him,” Dillon said to Sarah, “tell him that he needs to talk to a girl named Rebecca. She can get anything done that Tim needs.”
“Anything like what?”
“Whatever will make him feel like he’s taking care of things for you and being involved.”
“Oh, okay,” Sarah said, her voice brighter now. “That will be nice. Maybe I’ll mention to him that I’m craving ice cream. And then he can ask Rebecca to get me some?”
“That’s perfect,” Dillon agreed. “And hey, when he does get there, let him do some things for you, okay? Just for a little bit. Even if it’s something you can do yourself or someone else has already done, let him do it. Let him bring you coffee or get you another pillow or grill the nurses or buy you balloons.”
“Okay.”
Dillon could swear he could hear Sarah smiling. “I’ll be in to see you sometime tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Dr. Alexander.”
They disconnected at the same time Kit hung up with Rebecca.
They just stood looking at each other for several long seconds. Dillon crossed his arms and leaned against the counter behind him, waiting for her to speak.
But she was completely silent. Almost . . . speechless.
Dillon felt the corner of his mouth curl. Apparently, there was a first time for everything.
Finally, he asked, “What?”
“I just . . .”
He tipped his head. “What?”
“That was . . . great.”
Yeah, it had been. There’d been something about that whole thing that had felt really . . . great.
“Was it?” he asked nonchalantly. But really wanting her to say it again.
“It really was.”
“I just said what you told me to say.”
“Not the whole time. That stuff about men needing to do things—that was really insightful.”
Dillon chuckled softly. “I’m a man, Kit. I know a few things about how we think, at least.”
“Is that how you feel? You want to take care of everyone and everything? You need things to do?”
“Of course.”
She nodded. “And she’s feeling helpless, too. But you gave her something to do for him, a way to feel like she was meeting his needs, something else to focus on than what she needs . . .”
Dillon wasn’t sure he was totally following that, but he realized she was complimenting him.
Kit took a breath. “That was all really . . .”
“Great?” he offered with a grin.
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Really great.”
Dillon wasn’t used to Kit being anything less than eloquent, and long-winded, when she was talking about his virtues—or the lack thereof. But frankly, he’d take a great from her.
“You know that without you I would have just told her that she was doing great,” he said, loving that Kit smiled at that, too. “And that would have been the end of that.”
“Maybe. But sometimes it’s not the words, it’s the tone and who is saying it.”
“And I did okay.”
“You really did. You have a great voice. On the phone, you’re very soothing and calming and—”
She stopped, and Dillon had to know what she’d been about to say. “Kit.” He said her name low and slow, and he watched her take a deep, maybe a little shaky, breath.
“Sexy.”
He felt his eyes widen. “Sexy?”
“Your voice is very sexy.”
“And you think that mattered to Sarah?”
“I don’t know. But it’s deep and husky when you’re being sweet, and that was probably very reassuring to her.”
“It’s deep and husky when I’m being sweet?” He smiled widely. Yeah, he really liked this conversation.
She sighed, the note of exasperation clear. “Yes. And other times.”
With that, he reached for her. He couldn’t have stopped himself for anything. He took the hem of her shirt between his thumb and forefinger and tugged. She took a step forward. “Come here and tell me all about the other times.”
She didn’t fight him. She took another step closer. “We were a really good team just now.”
“We were.”
“That was . . . nice.”
Ah, great and nice. Kit was clearly out of her element at the moment. He liked that idea more than he should.
“It always is.” He said it with complete sincerity.
“And you doing that—talking her through that even though you didn’t really want to, that was . . .”
“Say it, Kit,” he urged, purposefully making his voice even lower.
She sighed, clearly annoyed with what she was about to admit. “Great. And sexy.”
“I’m suddenly even more motivated to work on my bedside manner.”
She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t try to move back. “You don’t care what I think.”
Dillon knew his expression was completely serious when he said, “Oh, honey, that’s not true at all.”
She swallowed hard. “You shouldn’t care what I think.”
“I’ve been caring for far too long to stop now.”
Again, Kit just stood looking at him without saying anything. And Dillon became acutely aware of the lack of clothing between them. In fact, he was about five seconds away from her being very aware of that as well. He didn’t mind her knowing that she affected him. She knew. Very well. It was partly that damned body spray and lotion she wore. It was like catnip to a cat. He wanted to inhale it and roll around in it and just go crazy when he got a whiff.
“Kit—”
But he didn’t have a chance to finish that thought—whatever it was—because Kit rose on tiptoe and put her lips to his.