Reunited with Doctor Devereaux
Autor
Allie Kincheloe
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13
CHAPTER ONE
AFTER EIGHT YEARS, three months, sixteen days, and—Camilla glanced up at the oversize clock on the wall of the law office—twenty-seven minutes, Danny Owens had walked back into her life. She swallowed hard.
Not that she was counting.
Counting would be stupid, considering that the last time they were together Danny had upended her entire future. So, no, she absolutely was not counting how long it had been since she’d seen the only man she’d ever loved. In fact, he was the last person she wanted to see, and her stomach churned as he knocked on the open office door.
Fleetingly, she thought it was good she hadn’t eaten much today. If she had, the whirlwind in her stomach might have gotten the best of her.
Oh, she’d dreamed of the moment when she’d see him again, imagining how he would look and his expression when he first saw her face. Of the time when he’d come crawling back with an apology on his lips, begging her to forgive the stupidity of his actions.
But he never had.
Seeing him now, in this way, was so much harder than she’d expected, although she’d certainly never thought it would be easy. Maybe today she’d finally get some answers on why Danny had ended their relationship so abruptly. Maybe this was fate providing her with the closure denied her for the better part of a decade.
“Dr. Owens, thank you for coming in today.” The estate attorney rose from his desk and offered a hand for Danny to shake. “Now that both you and Dr. Devereaux are here, we can begin.” In a crisp dark suit, Danny showed little sign that he’d been traveling. He was immaculately groomed and held himself tall, with an authority to his presence that demanded attention. Six feet one inches of firm muscle? Oh, yes, he certainly commanded her attention. Awareness buzzed through her as her eyes roamed the once familiar angles of his body, taking in the changes his time in the Army had made to his physique. The masculinity he exuded had grown stronger with the years that had passed, and despite their painful history, a deep yearning rushed over Camilla when his gaze flicked in her direction.
Heart racing like she’d just run a full marathon, Camilla made eye contact with Danny only to have him look away like she was a total stranger. She watched him in profile as he shook hands with the lawyer and settled into the leather wingback chair next to her, never once glancing her way again. Well, if she’d needed further confirmation that she’d never meant as much to him as he had to her, she’d just gotten it.
If he could push her out of his mind so easily, then she would do the same. Danny Owens wasn’t going to hurt her again, because she refused to give him that power. It had taken far too many years and prayers to fix what he had broken. Two could play this game. She straightened her posture and pushed away the burst of memories that threatened to overwhelm her. There was no time for a detour into melancholia, and certainly no time to let a shared past take her down the path to future heartache.
Letting stubbornness lift her chin, Camilla turned her focus to the attorney. “Are we ready to get started here?”
“Of course, Dr. Devereaux.” The attorney shuffled a few files on his desk, opening one and putting on a pair of thick, black-rimmed reading glasses before looking up. He offered them each a sympathetic smile. “So, it can be a terrible thing, the reading of a will. Especially for someone as beloved to our town as Dr. Robert Owens.”
“Yeah, yeah, we all know what a saint my father was,” Danny drawled.
The gravelly quality to his voice had deepened since their last meeting. It sparked a curiosity about how else he might have changed over the years they’d been apart. No, no, no, that line of thought was forbidden. Camilla pinched her wrist. She could not go down that rabbit hole with Danny. It would only end badly for her. But keeping her mind on the conversation in front of her proved difficult as her thoughts wanted to drift off to the man sitting within arm’s reach, the man she’d first given herself to, heart and soul.
“Your father was the best man I’ve ever known,” she argued.
Robert Owens had been the only positive male role model she’d had. After bouncing from foster home to foster home for most of her formative years, she’d finally landed in a group home in Greenbriar, Kentucky. It was while attending the local high school that she’d met Danny. Then he’d brought her home to meet his parents, Robert and Linda, and his younger brother, Robby. For the first time in her life, she’d seen what a normal family dynamic looked like, warts and all.
Her early years had taught her that love was a fantasy only accessible to those with a tremendous amount of luck. And the one thing she’d most certainly never had? Luck. But Danny’s gentle touch and the way he and his family had treated her, like she truly mattered, had given her hope, and so she’d finally risked opening up enough to let someone in. To fall in love.
And just look where that got you, Camilla Ann.
“To you, maybe,” Danny growled out, his clenched jaw showing his displeasure.
Finally looking at her, his brown eyes flashed with an anger she was all too familiar with. Those chocolate brown eyes had always mesmerized her, tempting her close with every sparkle, but the vibe he projected now silently screamed for her to keep her distance. A lot of feelings were displayed within the intensity of his gaze—anger, grief, frustration, but nothing loving. Nothing that showed their history mattered to him in the slightest. He closed his eyes in what would seem a long blink to anyone not watching him as carefully as Camilla was, and when he looked at her again, his face could have been chiseled from stone for all the emotion he showed.
“But then again, good ol’ Dad never held your past transgressions against you like he did mine. He always loved you no matter what, didn’t he?”
In some ways, she’d been expecting that comment. From the moment she’d met them, Danny and Robert had butted heads at nearly every step along the line. Yet she still gaped at him in shock. Somehow, she’d expected Danny to cool the animosity now that his father was gone, but the anger radiating off him remained raw and unfazed by time.
“Ahem. Perhaps we can stick to the topic that brought us here today,” the attorney interjected before Camilla could form a rebuttal to Danny’s accusation. “And that is the terms of Dr. Owens’s will. I have a letter from him that he wished to have read aloud today. If you are ready?”
He paused, one bushy white eyebrow raised, until both Danny and Camilla acknowledged his question with a nod. Pulling a sheet of lined yellow paper out of the file, he cleared his throat and began to read.
“‘Danny, Camilla, the two of you were my sole reasons for going on after Linda and Robby were taken from me too soon.’”
Danny stiffened next to her.
The lawyer paused for a second, but when Danny didn’t speak, he continued reading. “‘Have strength today, although I know how hard it is to say goodbye. Know that you were both deeply loved, and lean on each other as you grieve, but do not grieve for long. Life is far too short to spend time lost in the memories of the past.’”
Camilla could hear the words in Robert’s deep baritone, as if he were sitting right there, speaking the words to them directly. Closing her eyes, she pictured his kind face. It was only a few days ago that she’d sat by his side, holding his hand while he took his final breaths. Oh, Robert, how I will miss you!
“‘Danny, my dearest son, I may not have said it enough in life, but I couldn’t help taking this last opportunity to tell you just how proud you have made me. Although I didn’t agree with your decision to join the Army, you were right that it was your choice to make. Go forward in life with the fortitude your time in service has instilled in you. To you, my boy, I leave the lake house and all its contents. So many of my fondest memories of your childhood were made on the shores of that lake. It is my hope that someday, standing on the dock there and looking out over the water will fill you with as much peace as it did me.’”
The lawyer took a sip of water before continuing.
“‘My cherished Camilla, you filled a void in my life only a daughter could, and these last months have only been possible as a result of your dedication to my care. I hope that you know how much you were loved and appreciated by this lonely old man. Take that knowledge into your future with an open heart. Be willing to take a chance when love comes your way again. To you, child of my heart, I leave the house on Maple Street and all its contents. Turn that house into the home it once was and is meant to be again. Fill it with children, laughter, and above all—love.’”
Danny scoffed, his mask of indifference slipping momentarily. “Of course, he leaves you my childhood home and I get a shack on the lake. Even in death, he’s still punishing me for defying him.”
“It’s hardly a shack.” She rolled her eyes at his grumbling. While the lake house was smaller than the house, Robert had renovated it a few years back to a high-quality standard. Given Danny’s avoidance of Greenbriar, though, he probably had no clue what his father had done to it. If Danny wanted to sell it, then he’d have no problems getting a good price for it. But rather than continue to argue that point, she’d let him discover for himself what a gem he’d inherited.
“What about the medical practice?” Danny asked.
Holding her breath, Camilla awaited that answer. This was the part of Robert’s estate she’d been waiting to hear about.
“I wasn’t finished.” The attorney waved the letter, his impatience with Danny’s interruptions starting to show. He cleared his throat and continued to read. “‘It is my last wish that the two of you will find your way back to each other, despite the years, despite the physical and emotional distances between you. Forgive an old man this last chance to meddle in the affairs of his loved ones, but I had to try. I conditionally leave Greenbriar Medical Clinic, both the building and the practice, to the both of you. You will run it together for the next six months and own it jointly at the end of that time. However, if you refuse to abide by the terms of this will, the clinic will be dissolved, liquidated, and any proceeds diverted to various military-connected charities, as well as the Greenbriar group home.’”
With her heart sinking all the way to her feet, Camilla stood and went to the window. She stared across the town square to the aging brick building that held the medical practice where she’d worked for most of her medical career. The sharp stab of what could only be labeled as betrayal cut through her. Day in and day out, she’d worked side by side with Robert. First as his employee, then later with the expectation that one day she would be a partner or take over when he retired. Robert had never said outright that he would leave the practice solely to her, but he’d strongly implied it.
Robert had known that she wanted—no, needed—to stay in Greenbriar, and their conversations had led her to believe that the clinic would be hers upon his death. He’d been more aware than anyone how badly Danny had destroyed her. His shoulder had been the one she’d cried on. They’d grieved together. He’d stood by her when she’d picked up the shattered pieces of her heart and stuck them back together with stubbornness and a little duct tape. Robert had been the only one who saw the depths of her pain. How could he put her future in the hands of a man who had already abandoned her once?
She took a deep breath and blinked away her fears. Now was not the time for that line of thinking. She had to find the strength that had carried her through those dark days and kept her moving forward. She would not let Danny Owens take away her future again.
Come on, Camilla. Pull it together. No tears. If you survived years of foster homes and having your heart marched across by Danny, you can handle six months working next to him.
She’d simply set a schedule where they didn’t have to see each other on a daily basis and cross the days off on the calendar like she used to whenever she moved into a new home. But instead of counting up to see if any new home would break the record length of one hundred and forty-three days, she’d count down the one hundred and eighty days until Danny was gone from her life once more. She would get through this, like she’d gotten through every other hard time in her life, and when Danny left once again to go back to his, she’d continue on like he’d never shown his face here in her town.
“You’re telling me that if I want to inherit my father’s medical practice, I have to move back to a town that doesn’t even qualify for a map dot for the next six months? I have commitments I can’t fulfill if I’m stuck here in the middle of nowhere.” Tight with anger, Danny’s voice held a no-nonsense tone that demanded a reply.
“The terms of the will are set,” the attorney confirmed. While he didn’t cower at Danny’s growling, the attorney looked uncomfortable. His eyes flicked toward the door as if he were getting ready to run out of his own office to avoid further confrontation.
“I’m not exactly jumping for joy at the thought of spending the next six months with you, either, Danny,” Camilla said over her shoulder. Leaning her head against the window frame, she fought to regain her composure. She hugged her arms tight around her body, desperately trying to combat the creeping fear encasing her soul. The uncertainty of having her future in Danny’s hands chilled her to the core, but she would not let him see how badly his presence upset her. “I’ve worked hard for this practice. I know the patients and their conditions. I have been on call for years so that your father could rest, and I took over entirely when his health deteriorated. I expected—”
“You expected him to just hand you the keys to a house and a profitable medical practice,” Danny interrupted.
She spun around at the harsh accusation he threw at her. “I did no such thing!”
Hot stinging behind her eyelids reminded her of when she’d tripped and fallen flat on her face on her first day in a new school. That had been the last time she’d cried in public, too. She blinked hard, praying that the tears would stay where they belonged. She had come to this will reading with very little expectation, and for Danny to say otherwise was unfair.
“Come on, Camilla, what’d you think was gonna happen here today? You’d get everything even though he was my father?” Danny folded his arms over his chest and his suit jacket pulled tight across his broad shoulders. The straight set of his spine and the rigidity of his posture must have come from his time in the military, because the boy she’d loved had never been so solid. His sharp glare would wither a weaker person, but she had been through far too much in her life to shrink away from anything he could dish out. “Is it cutting to your core that you didn’t get the lake house, too?”
“No,” she asserted, standing up straight and facing him head-on. “I thought he’d leave me the practice and leave everything else to you. And if you truly think otherwise, then it’s a good thing you and I didn’t work out, because you clearly don’t know me at all.”
The thought that Robert would leave her everything had never even been a blip on her radar. The house was unexpected—very much welcome, but unexpected, nonetheless. She’d been renting the large, two-story home from Robert since he’d moved into the remodeled lakeside cottage when he’d gotten sick and stairs were too difficult for him to manage. That house was the only place she’d ever really considered a home and for Robert to have recognized that fact touched her heart, but she’d certainly never even hoped that he’d leave her anything more than the clinic she’d worked so hard for.
“Ahem. The letter continues, if I may,” the attorney interjected, silencing any further argument. “‘Here’s where I’ll say, quiet your protests. I know the two of you very well, so I’m sure you’ve both just had a moment. There may have been some yelling or even tears, but the time for that has gone. Find peace with my decision and know that it was made with your best interests at heart. Family is the most important thing in this life. Never forget that. And never forget just how much you were both loved. Now I’ll say goodbye.’”
The attorney refolded the paper and laid it back on the file. Pulling his glasses off, he squeezed the bridge of his nose. His attitude screamed that he’d aged a decade in the reading of that letter. “Now, you can contest the will, but doing that will just take longer than the six months you two would need to work together.”
“Does the six-month period have to begin immediately or can I have a few weeks to get things settled away from Greenbriar? I have commitments, a job. People are counting on me.”
Camilla snorted. “Your father counted on you and you weren’t here.”
Danny closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm the storm of emotions rushing over him. All he managed to do was get a lungful of Camilla’s familiar, sweet perfume. The soft floral scent permeated his being and stoked memories of times best left forgotten.
As if he could ever forget her.
Trust his old man to take one more stab at righting what he’d seen as one of Danny’s biggest mistakes. His father had never forgiven him for pushing Camilla away, but what Robert Owens hadn’t known was that ending things with Camilla had been the only way Danny could think of to protect her.
And now, thanks to his father, he was tied back to the town he couldn’t wait to leave, and had to spend the next six months working with her. The very idea of them working peacefully side by side for an extended period of time was laughable. He’d spent eight years in the Army, some of that time in a combat zone; he’d watched people he loved die right in front of him, and the idea of spending one hundred and eighty days at Camilla’s side scared him more than anything ever had.
She’d been his everything once. They’d planned to conquer the world together, or at least this one little corner of it. They were going to get their bachelor’s degrees together, then go to med school, and then come back to Greenbriar and take over his dad’s medical practice. Only part of that plan materialized when they’d been unable to get into the same medical school. Despite that hiccup, they’d stayed as close as possible through medical schools on opposite ends of the country. Then, in the blink of an eye, everything had changed. His mother and brother had been killed in an accident and he’d been behind the wheel.
When Camilla had shown up in his hospital room, he’d sent her away, filled with self-loathing and guilt. Ending things with her had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. He’d broken her heart because he knew he was no good for her. He’d been no good to anyone at that point, even himself.
But in the process, he’d broken his own heart, too. And now they had to coexist in a work environment made hostile entirely through his own efforts.
Fantastic.
Danny had a strong suspicion that his dad had guessed how difficult it would be for him to work side by side with Camilla and had probably done it to push him out of his comfort zone. His dad had never given up hope that Danny would “come to his senses” and beg for Camilla’s forgiveness. This stunt was just a last try to push them back together. Even in death, the old man wouldn’t relent.
“Dad never told me how sick he was,” he argued. If he had known, he would definitely have made more of an attempt to come home sooner, to rebuild those bridges he’d burned with such enthusiasm on his way out of town. At least the ones with his father... He should have made time to visit when he’d processed out of the Army, rather than going straight to Boston and jumping right into his job there as an attending in the emergency department. But his dad had kept his health struggles tightly under wraps and hadn’t let a sliver of information come out that would have clued Danny in to the cancer poisoning his father’s organs. He’d only found out two days ago, when his dad’s oncologist had called to tell him that his father was at peace, his suffering now over, and it was time to come home to lay his body to rest.
He’d had two days to come to terms with his father’s death and it still felt unreal. He kept expecting his dad to walk through the door, gruffly saying, “What kinda son makes a man fake his own death just to get him to visit?” Man, he wished it had all been a joke. What he wouldn’t give to hug his old man just one more time. He squeezed his hand into a fist and resisted the urge to slam it into the wood paneling lining the office. He hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.
“Well, if you’d visited him anytime in the last two years, you would have seen it for yourself.” Even when she called him to task for his transgressions, Camilla’s voice was low and even. Her unique ability to maintain this soft and steady tone had never failed to impress him. The coldness in her eyes told him she hadn’t forgiven him—not for the words he’d hurled at her that still haunted his soul, or his absence since that fateful day. Some wounds not even time could heal.
Not that he blamed her. He knew he’d given her something she’d never had—love and acceptance—and then snatched it away from her in that hospital room. In one cruel moment, he’d stolen years of hard-won progress from her. Her background had taught her that “love” meant someone wanted something from you. It had taken a lot of time and coaxing for her to open up to him and he’d stomped all over her trust, even kicking dirt into the wounds. What he had done to her was unforgivable.
“Camilla, I...” He trailed off. Every word he thought of saying sat heavy on his tongue, refusing to roll off into another lie. He’d lied to her enough. If nothing else, she deserved his honesty today. “Okay, you’re right. I was a lousy son.”
He looked away, not wanting to see the judgment in her eyes. As a sixteen-year-old boy, he’d fallen head over heels with the beautiful girl from the group home whose mismatched clothes never fit properly, but who had so much sass that she kept him on his toes. He’d promised her the world. It was a resolution he’d been unable to keep, unfortunately.
After he’d broken so many promises to her, he couldn’t bear to look her in the eye. Not coming home had made it easier to avoid Camilla. Staying away allowed him to minimize the drama he assumed he’d find if he set foot in Greenbriar. He’d created a cocoon around himself that kept everyone at a distance, even the people he saw on a daily basis. But in protecting himself, he’d missed his father’s final days.
One thing he couldn’t avoid, though, was the guilt. He hadn’t been there when his father needed him. He was a doctor, after all, so he should have heard in his father’s voice how sick he was. There should have been something audible that told him the man was dying, but even in their final conversation last week, his dad had sounded the same to him as he always had. He’d asked for Danny to come home like always, lectured him again about the choices he’d made that had carried Danny away from Greenbriar and Camilla, but he’d ended the call with the same brusque “Love you, son.” Like every phone call they’d had in the last eight years.
Why hadn’t his dad told him he was sick?
Why hadn’t his dad given him the opportunity to truly make things right between them?
Why was Camilla even more beautiful than the day he’d broken off their three-year engagement?
Inhaling deeply, he shoved that thought back into the box of memories he kept locked away in the dark recesses of his mind. He couldn’t relive the day he’d broken their hearts or revise the inner turmoil that he still struggled to shake.
He shifted his weight and let the pain of seeing her again wash over him. Eight years and it still hurt. Today he savored that pain, though, because the angry ache pulled him into the present and gave him something to focus on. It was a welcome distraction from the crushing emotions threatening to pull him under.
“I think asking for a couple weeks to settle your current affairs out of town is a reasonable request, and I see no reason why that can’t be accommodated.” The attorney pulled a blank notepad out and grabbed a pen. “How does beginning on February first sound to the two of you? Then the six-month time frame can end on August first.”
Camilla murmured her assent.
Danny nodded. He could only hope that the administration at the hospital where he worked would be willing to let him out of his contract this soon. Maybe when he explained the circumstances, they’d be understanding. He’d only been a civilian for three months and already he was going to have to ask for concessions from an administration who eyed him warily at best.
Danny blew out a breath. It wasn’t like he had many options. His dad had backed him into a corner, and after all the pain he’d caused in the past, Danny couldn’t take the clinic from Camilla now. He was sure his father had banked on the fact that he’d realize she was the one who’d be hurt if the clinic had to close and that there’d be enough lingering love, or guilt, left inside him to keep him from rejecting the terms of the will and forcing the sale of the clinic.
The attorney jotted down some notes on the yellow paper. “I’ll get this formalized for you both to sign. There are also a few signatures I’ll need for the transfer of property from each of you.”
Before any of them said another word, the door opened and slammed hard into the wall. Danny jumped at the sudden noise, heart racing. He had to force himself to breathe when his brain clued him in that there was no immediate danger and he waited for the adrenaline spike to ease. Even after being stateside for well over a year now, sudden noises still threw him back to his time in the war zone and the fear he’d felt as bullets whizzed past his ear.
The young woman who had burst into the office spoke in a rush, the words tumbling past her lips with barely a pause for breath. “Dr. Devereaux, Caden’s having a lot of trouble breathing. I didn’t know if it was safe to drive him all the way out to the emergency room, and they said it would be forty-five minutes before the ambulance could get out here because there’s a big accident up on the highway.”
In her arms she carried a small boy, maybe four years old, who was wheezing loud enough that Danny could hear the gasps from across the room. His mind sought to diagnose, beginning with the thought of asthma.
Before he could put voice to that, though, Camilla was already ushering them back out the door. “Let’s get him over to the office and get him a breathing treatment. Have you given him his inhaler today?”
Their voices faded as they walked away.
With a quick glance at the attorney, Danny followed them out of the office. His gaze moved over the downtown area as he crossed from the attorney’s office. The sleepy Southern town was cold this time of year. Dreary and dull, with the only action being the old men driving around the square in their pickups. When it was warm, they’d take up residence on the stone wall in front of the courthouse with their chewing tobacco and empty bottles to spit in. There was no coffee shop on the corner to get a caffeine jolt, just a single diner where the old women of the town occupied half the booths and gossiped about the old men.
If it weren’t for the movement of the trucks, someone might think the town had been abandoned years ago. None of the vehicles within sight were current models and several looked to be as old as the buildings surrounding the square, including Danny’s father’s medical practice.
Stepping through those clinic doors was like stepping back into his childhood, though, and took his thoughts from the town that never changed to the grief of a son now orphaned. The hideous faded floral wallpaper his mother had picked out when he was a child still graced the walls but was now faded, and memories of her excitement at finding what she’d considered the perfect pattern fluttered through his mind. Other than the shiny new computer sitting at the reception desk, everything was exactly as he remembered.
A large picture of his parents hung on the back wall. Their thirtieth anniversary, he recalled. They’d never made it to thirty-one. His mom had passed away three months later. His brother, too.
He still took the long way into Greenbriar to avoid driving that stretch of road. And now his dad was gone, too. He swallowed hard, trying to shake the feeling of being at home for the first time in so long. To shake away the guilt that had settled back on his shoulders when he’d passed the city limits sign.
The only way to get through this was to focus on all the things he’d hated about Greenbriar. He couldn’t afford to get sucked into the nostalgia and any comfort he might find here. While he needed to call somewhat of a truce with Camilla, he also had to make sure that she knew reconciliation wasn’t an option—not that he was too worried about that last. The ice daggers she’d been shooting from her eyes ever since he’d arrived had showed no sign of thawing.
But he had to remove any temptation.
It was going to be a balancing act, for sure. He’d have to be nice enough to maintain the peace, but enough of a jerk that she didn’t soften toward him. He took a deep breath and fortified his resolve. He’d faced down insurgents with semiautomatic weapons; a petite doctor with skin as soft as velvet shouldn’t be too hard.
Stepping into the hallway, he looked into the first exam room and quickly moved past it to the second. There he found Camilla with the young mother and child. Camilla was setting up a nebulizer.
“Are you giving him albuterol?” he asked. The standard medication used to treat an asthma attack, albuterol was often given via a nebulizer like the one Camilla had in her hands. It would have been his first step, too, if the kid’s lungs sounded as bad as his breathing indicated.
She glanced up at him briefly before opening a small vial of medication and pouring it into a chamber on the tubing. She slipped the mask over the child’s face and turned the machine on before giving him an answer. “You know that I am.”
“Steroids, too?”
Camilla nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“I’d grab them for you, but I don’t have access to the medication cabinet.”
“It’s fine,” Camilla muttered to him. She laid a hand on the mother’s arm. “I’m going to step out and talk to Dr. Owens in the hallway.”
“Dr. Owens?” The young woman looked confused. “But I thought...”
“I’m his son Danny,” he said, hoping to clarify things for her. She looked vaguely familiar, like most of the people in this town, but he couldn’t seem to come up with her name.
“I’ll be back in just a moment to check on Caden.” Camilla smiled softly at the worried mother and then turned to him, and that softness disappeared into a harsh frown. “I’m going to fetch those steroids and get them into him. If you would...” She waved a hand toward his father’s office across the hall.
He stepped through the open door. Another intense wave of grief rushed over him when he stood in front of the antique walnut desk his father had kept polished to a shine. He ran a finger across the dark, gleaming surface.
Why didn’t you give me the chance to say goodbye to you, old man? Did you hate me that much?
“What are you doing here, Danny? I am perfectly capable of taking care of a child with asthma. I don’t require the assistance of a big-city trauma surgeon.” Camilla crossed her arms over her chest and his gaze flicked down to the hint of cleavage her blouse revealed. Immediately adjusting her clothing, she hissed out, “Keep your eyes on my face and your thoughts to a PG rating, please.”
“Maybe I just wanted to check out my inheritance,” he snapped, trying to regain the high ground with her. He knew he couldn’t afford to let his guard down, but even so, the baldness of those words sat hard on his heart. Maybe it was the heartbreak he glimpsed in her eyes before she shut down and the emotionless facade of their teen years returned to her gaze. But it was too late by that point to retract the words; the harm had been done. “That came out badly.”
He was the one who had hurt her. She had done nothing but love him and she certainly had the right to be suspicious of his motives now. He’d given her plenty of reason. He’d broken her heart because he knew he wasn’t good enough for her. He’d been of no use to anyone, even himself. So, why was he acting so defensively toward her?
Guilt, maybe? His mom had always said, A guilty conscious will stalk you for the rest of your life. If this wasn’t proof of that...
Tilting her head, Camilla scrutinized him. He tried not to let her see what he was feeling, but her time in foster care had made her an expert at decoding faces. She’d always been able to read him like a book, while he’d struggled to name a single emotion from her. She’d kept her feelings close to the chest, burying things so deep he wasn’t sure she even processed them.
When they’d first started dating, he’d tried to get her to open up to him about her past, to discover details about her childhood, but she had shut that line of questioning down fast. Even when they’d been together long enough for her to trust him, there were things she still refused to share, topics that he couldn’t touch without her walking away.
Camilla had a policy that the past was the past and it had no place in her present or future. Knowing that, his last words to her eight years ago had been cold, cruel, and designed to cut straight to her core—the only way he knew how to protect her from himself.
He still hated himself for using that knowledge to his advantage.
In doing so, he had put himself in the position of being her past, and despite being forced together for the foreseeable future, there had never been more distance between them.
