Alex

I was around twelve when I first realized that the people of White Pines called our family’s winter home ‘Dracula's castle,’ and heading up the long drive in Mother's Lamborghini reminded me of why. The place belonged to some several-times great grandfather who made all his money in lumber during the good times and whiskey during the bad, and it had more gables than any one residence should have. Three stories, eight bedrooms, more bathrooms, mullioned glass and a replica Victorian garden in the back; it was one of the most gorgeous houses around.

Of course I hated it.

Hate was a strong word, I supposed, but as we got closer, I started to feel the walls closing around me, even in the crisp and bright winter air. I had spent every winter in White Pines at this house until I turned eighteen and could finally beg off. This was my first year back, and it sounded like my mother was going to make the most of it

"And of course there's dinner with the Gannfields, and tomorrow, I was thinking a luncheon down at the country club, really show everyone that you're back. Of course I hope you packed something nicer than those rags, you ought to let Lupe throw them out. God, there's never been any good shopping here, but maybe we can send to that place your father likes in Chicago to have something delivered. Nothing much, but a good suit, some nice shirts."

I sighed, pulling my bag out of the car and stepping into the heated garage. David shot me an amused and sympathetic look. He had been home a little longer than I had been, but he'd never minded Mother as much.

"It's nice to see you too, Mother," I said, planting a careful kiss on her professionally made-up face. She brushed it aside, leading us toward the house, still talking when Father came out to greet us on the front step. Everyone said Father and I look alike, and with every year that passed, that grew more true. We were similarly tall, though his blond hair was a shade or two paler than mine, and his eyes stared into mine as if looking for anything else that we could possibly have in common. He’d never found anything, not as far as I knew, anyway.

"Good to see you," he said, formally shaking my hand. "Your hospital doing alright?"

"It's not my hospital at all, but my work is going well," I said pointedly. I'd always had the feeling that they would happily tell their friends that I was the hospital director or something like that if I’d let them get away with it. Having their firstborn son turn away from the family lumber business had been bad enough, but when I’d announced my decision to pursue a career as a trauma surgeon, it had nearly given them both heart attacks. You know, most families were actually proud of their kids who decided to grow up to be doctors … heaven forbid the Reeds ever follow suit.

Father ignored my comment, shepherding all three of us into the breakfast nook for drinks. At least the drinks kept at Dracula's Castle tended to be better than average. I barely had time to look around at how exactly nothing had changed, when he started in.

"Did you think about that offer we talked about back in summer?" he asked as my mother worried at David's cuffs for some reason while my brother stood patiently waiting, as if he was five all over again.

"I did, and I told you my decision then," I said with a shrug. "Answer's still no, Dad."

He frowned.

"That's Reed money. It's not for frittering away on whatever fun you're having in Chicago."

I could already feel the tension headache threatening to descend. It was probably just as well that we were usually scattered to all ends of the earth for most of the year. If I had to live like this all the time, I'd be insane half the time and furious the rest.

"Last I checked, Great-Uncle Jim left me that money," I said, meeting my father eye to eye. "No riders or instructions to put it back into Reed lumber or anything like that."

My father glared, and he might have taken it farther- I almost wanted him to- but my mother descended.

"I need your measurements, Alex, I think I'll call the Chicago tailor now. With luck, we can get you some decent clothes for the luncheon. David tells me that the Lundorffs are going to be there, and their daughter Esme is visiting from school. She's a lovely girl, very sweet, majoring in education, isn't that nice? I'm sorry everything went belly up with that last girl you sent us a picture of, but you know, I never thought she was quite right for you.."

"Just based on the picture, Mother?" I asked, but she bulldozed straight ahead, plotting and planning right over me. That was familiar at least.

I shot David a dark look, and he grinned at me, shrugging slightly as he loosened his cuffs behind Mom’s back.

Better you than me, his look said, and obviously that hadn't changed either.

"Alex dear, you're what, twenty-four, twenty-five? It's long past time for you to find someone nice, settle down a bit..."

"I'm thirty, Mother," I said, and she shook her head in denial of my age as she had for the last five years or so, refusing to admit she’d given birth to me that long ago. Any sign of age for Mom was a no-go, even if it meant pretending she couldn’t remember her son’s birthday.

"Oh surely not," she scoffed. "Argue with me all you like, but you can't tell me that your life wouldn't be a little happier and a little brighter with a sweet girl at your side, especially one as lovely and well-connected as Esme Lundorff..."

She was off again, and no one really had to add anything to keep the conversation going so we stood around in awkward silence. What she said stuck with me, as a girl I didn't know brought us a tray of snacks from the kitchen.

When I thought of a sweet girl, I certainly didn't think of Esme, who had been known as a little girl for cutting off other girls' braids. Instead I thought of bright blue eyes and a fluff of dark hair, cheeks pink in the cold and a sassy mouth that just begged to be kissed.

Wherever you are, Chloe, I hope you're having a better time with this than I am...

*

I had made plans to stay up in White Pines for two weeks, skipping out on the actual Christmas celebration in favor of being back in Chicago. The actual holidays were a bad time for the trauma ward, and I had much more loyalty to my patients and my staff than I did to my family, who couldn’t be bothered with any loyalty to me.

Two days, drinks, a luncheon, a party and a family talk about how dirty Chicago was, and I had no idea how I was going to make it a week, let alone three. I might have taken off to go on a roaring bender with my brother, but David had actually somehow hit it off with Esme Lundorff- now tall and slender, it turned out, and no longer quite so inclined to cut other women's hair- and they were spending all their time in the indoor squash court.  On his way past with his racket, however, David had poked his head into the library.

"Mother wants you to escort her to some kind of winter garden party viewing this afternoon. She says she's expecting you in something festive. Fair warning."

I sighed. I could plant my feet, say I wasn't going to go, start a fight. Win or lose though, it would be unpleasant, and right then, it seemed far better to simply be impossible to locate. I pulled on the wool coat that I had worn up from Chicago and a battered pair of old boots that I found at the back of my closet and headed off into the woods instead.

The family house backed onto the Snake River, which circled about half of White Pines. Farther south, it slowed to a trickle and joined the Mississippi, but up in White Pines, it was a steady torrent.

The other side of the river was a national forest, but the side closest to town sported a thick fringe of woods and a pleasant, if slightly primitive, path along the water. The path was a little more run-down than I remembered it being, but it suited my mood just fine. I picked my way along the water and let my mind clear of everything, family included. It must have been a mile or more before I heard the shuffle of steps coming towards me, and then there was a girl walking around the bend. She was small enough to be a teenager, but I immediately recognized her blue coat, the same one that had snuggled up to me on the bus ride. It was nearly the same color as her eyes, and the knit yellow hat she wore over it was like a little spot of sun in the gray day.

"Chloe!"

She looked up at my greeting, and I got a flash of those bright blue eyes right before she missed her step and tumbled right off of the path. With a curse, I lunged forward and grabbed her arm before she tumbled down the long slope that led to the water below. Not soon enough to keep her from falling to her knees on the leaf-strewn ground, however.

"Oh God, give a girl some warning!" she gasped, her eyes huge with surprise, and I shot her a wry look.

"I thought I had, actually."

I set her upright once more and looked her over quickly. She looked fine, but I found myself strangely reluctant to get away. She looked up at me, her cheeks reddened with the cold, her lips slightly parted with the exertion of the fall, and I felt that same surge of electricity go through me again. It would be so easy to kiss her here, but my instincts as a doctor kicked in instead. Those instincts also kept me from automatically reaching out to dust leaves off her, thereby putting my hands all over her.

"Here. I'm going to hang on to you, and I want you to try to take a few steps, all right?"

Chloe did as I said, and when she put her weight on her left foot, she staggered a little.

"Hmm, sprained maybe," I said, but she shook her head.

"It's fine, it doesn't matter..."

"It really does, we should get you to a..."

"Could that have hurt my baby?"

I froze, caught as off guard as she had been a minute earlier. There were a dozen questions running through my head, but right now, hers was the most important one.

"Unlikely, but it's possible," I said at last. "If you're pregnant, we should definitely get to the hospital. They can tell you for sure what's going on."

She nodded bravely, but i could see the concealed panic in her eyes. She might be twenty-four, but there was something unusually sweet and innocent in her eyes, unjaded, something that made me want to comfort her.

"We should be safe, but you're probably fine. You didn't fall that far, and you didn't hit anything hard."

Chloe found a grin for me, bright and nearly dizzying.

"You saved me," she said softly. "Thank you."

Her thanks filled me with a warmth I really didn't care to look at too closely. Instead I looked up and down the path.

"Did you drive here?”

She nodded.

"My sister's car is just a few minutes back that way."

"Good. That's short enough that a piggyback ride is probably our best bet."

When she started to protest, I gave her an impatient look.

"The sooner we get to the hospital, the sooner you can confirm that everything's all right. You're hardly going to break my back."

She gave me a dubious look, but reluctantly, she consented to climb up on my back, and I set off in the direction she indicated.

"You must be a nurse," she said after a moment, and I stifled a laugh as I kept walking. She was a light but dense warmth over my back, and with her arms wrapped so trustingly around me, it all felt strangely right. Arousal danced through me at the feel of her warm body pressed into mine, but alongside it was something more. Something atypically peaceful and content.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because nurses are the ones who care," she said promptly. "I'm pretty sure a doctor would have just told me to get to the hospital."

"I'd argue with you, but I've known too many doctors," I quipped. "Sorry to disappoint, but I am a doctor. Trauma medicine though, and hopefully that keeps me from being too terrible."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "God, what was I thinking. I'd forgotten you're a Reed. I guess you wouldn't be a nurse, would you?"

It was close enough to something my father had said when I decided on medical school, something about being no better than a nurse, that I had to blink.

"I think I would make a pretty good nurse," I said offhandedly, and somehow, she must have sensed that there was some kind of disquiet there because her arms tightened around my shoulders, and she nuzzled me like a cat. It sent a bolt of sensation through me when she somehow found a bit of bare skin beyond the collar of my coat, and I wondered if she could feel the way that I shook a little.

"I know you would have been a great nurse, and I bet you're an awesome doctor," she said, soundly oddly loyal, and I had to laugh.

"I like to think I do alright."

Her sister's car was an exquisitely well-maintained Mercedes, and I was grateful for the size when I loaded Chloe into the passenger's seat. I ignored her protestations that she could drive, and pulled out onto the road.

"Should I call someone, let them know where you are?"

"Oh God no," Chloe said with a shudder. "Mara and Shannon are already going to be upset that I took off without telling anyone, and when it comes out that I almost hurt myself, I'll never hear the end of it..."

"Well, I meant your husband or boyfriend..."

She shot me an amused glance from the passenger seat.

"So sure it's a husband or a boyfriend? I mean, I might have a wife or a girlfriend..."

The thought hadn't actually crossed my mind, and when it did, it ended up being an image of Chloe, pretty naked Chloe, wrapped around another beautiful woman, and I banished it immediately because God, I could not be that kind of asshole. Could I?

"Do you?"

She laughed at me, and the sound, soft and bell-like, made me smile like nothing else had in the past two days.

"No, but I think you're blushing. I thought Reeds were way too well-bred to blush..."

"Yes, most of my family is actually made of marble. The only reason I can blush is because of a great-aunt made of ruby on my mother's side..."

She giggled a little bit at that, and I thought all over again about how much I liked that sound.

"Anyway, sass and blushing all aside, is there anyone you want me to call?"

Chloe looked down at that, not in shame, I realized, but out of thoughtfulness.

"No," she decided firmly. "I'll call my sisters later, but aside from them, there's no one that needs to know."

"That sounds like there's a story there."

"A dumb one, maybe. I was seeing a guy at home, Paul. He was nice enough, but I guess it was one of those situations where it turns out I was way more into him than he was in to me. I think he might have cheated on me a few times. Anyway. I got pregnant, he blew up and said that it could have been anyone's. I honestly thought that that would have broken my heart, but after he stormed out... I felt relief. Do you think that makes me awful?"

"I don't think anything could make you awful.” I found that I was surprisingly serious about that, but she laughed and continued.

"Well, I guess I wasn't into him as much as I thought I was. What I felt for him, it was like a candlelight that could blow out when a door slammed. But what I feel for this little one..."

She glanced down at her belly where she had laid her hands. There was something so tender and loving about how she gazed at her future child that I had to drag my attention back to the road. It made my heart beat a little faster, made me long for something that I wasn't sure I had words for. I was suddenly certain that she had the words, though, and in the back of my mind, I wondered if she would teach me.

"The love is a tower of fire, and I know it's never going to go out."

She said the words simply and sincerely, and I could tell she meant them to the bottom of her heart.

"Then he or she is going to be lucky indeed," I said quietly.

When we got to the hospital, it was quiet, and someone came to see us relatively soon. Patient had never been my middle name, and I’d become even more prone to impatience during my years in the city, it seemed, because it felt as if everything was moving as if it was stuck in tar. Nurses were slow, the doctor was occupied, and I was feeling more and more tightly wound until Chloe put a small hand on my own.

"Don't worry," she said. "The nurse said that there was no overt sign of trauma. Everything after this is just details."

For a moment, I wanted to pull away and run down the doctor myself if I had to, but I knew that she was right. I sat on the hard plastic chair next to her, and surprisingly, she didn't let go of my hand. Her small fingers laced through mine and I didn’t hesitate to wrap my own around them. She didn't sleep, but she closed her eyes, resting quietly until someone could come to see us. I found myself wishing she’d lean into me, like on the bus, but she didn’t.

"I really know how to show a guy a good time, don't I?" she murmured without opening her eyes. "For my next trick, I'll make you take Mara's car to the car wash."

"Well, I think you can do better than that," I said with a slight grin. "Maybe give it a try?"

She opened her eyes just a little, the blue a slight sparkle.

"Gas station sandwiches?"

"No..."

"Winter time petting zoo?"

"No."

She paused for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft and serious, no joke in it at all.

"There's...a star shower tomorrow night. The Geminids. We could go to see that. I'll bring hot chocolate."

"I would love to," I said, and I brought her hand up to kiss it. I meant it to be light and playful, but that electricity shocked us again. This time, there was no bus full of people to see or an injury to tend to. Her eyes were wide as I reached out to touch her face, but she didn't resist as I moved closer...

"Miss Becker?"

We pulled apart like two guilty teenagers, and for a minute,  I had a very satisfying image of simply pushing the doctor out of the room and barricading the door.

Instead I listened as he gave Chloe the usual cautions, told her to bind up the ankle, to use heat for pain relief, and cold to bring down the swelling. He did an exam that I stepped out for, and when I was called back in he told us both that there was no sign that any harm had come to her baby, but if she noticed anything unusual, she should come back in. Otherwise, she was free to go. Chloe flopped back on the exam table with a sigh of relief as he left.

"I'm glad you said yes to the date," she said softly. "I'm really glad..."

She never got to say what she was glad about, because the door opened and her two sisters stalked in. It was fascinating. There was a family resemblance, especially around the nose and the shape of the mouth, but otherwise, all three Becker sisters were totally different.

"No injuries?" asked the tallest one, her eyes as sharp and shrewd as Chloe’s were soft and gentle. She gave me an appraising glare.

Chloe rolled her eyes.

"No, Mara. I'm fine, the baby's fine. Alex was kind and got to me almost immediately.”

The other sister turned to me with a slight smile that took her from plain to surprisingly lovely. "Thank you so much for looking after Chloe..."

"And now we're going to talk about you taking my keys and my car, not leaving a note, and ignoring your phone," Mara said with deadly purpose, and I almost started laughing. Chloe shot me a despairing look.

"Thank you for your help, Alex," she said helplessly. "It looks like my sisters have got it from here. Run, run while you still can."

Despite her position, I could almost see the strong bonds of love that held the three sisters together. It was so different from the strained and bitter strings running between myself and my own family that it was like a punch in the gut.

"See you tomorrow night," I said, and reluctantly, I walked out.