Love In Bloom Read online

  "Jeez! What happened to you?" Ben asked.

  Paige's gaze didn't seem to be drawn as much to the long jagged scars around Clay's shoulder as to his chest. Her eyes on him made the eighty-degree temperature seem over a hundred.

  "Climbing accident."

  "Mountain climbing?"

  "Rock climbing. Mt. Everest was never in my plans." So he'd been told.

  "Jeez," Ben repeated. "Did a bear get you, too?"

  Paige moved slightly and Clay knew she was going to cut off Ben's questions. But he shook his head at her. After all, this was what today was all about, wasn't it?

  "No bear. Rocks. The safety gear was defective. I went over the shelf first and..." He shrugged. "The rest is history. The doctors tell me I'm lucky to be alive."

  Ben just stared and shook his head. "My leg doesn't look anything like that. And you don't care if people see it?"

  "It's me, Ben. I have a right to swim or work out or do whatever I want. Sure, people stare. But usually a few words of explanation stop that. I just say I was in an accident. That's enough." He'd learned people could accept physical disabilities much more easily than mental ones.

  Paige was watching him more closely than Ben.

  Clay stood and unbuckled his belt. "So, you ready to swim?"

  He noticed that Paige's cheeks, already rosy from the heat, suddenly flushed redder. He followed her gaze to his hands. Hadn't she ever seen a man take off his shorts? He looked at her in surprise.

  She quickly averted her gaze. "You two go ahead. I'll be in in a few minutes."

  Clay frowned, but his attention was diverted as Ben stripped to his suit. The teenager glanced at his cane but didn't pick it up. When his eyes met Paige's, he mumbled, "I can manage without it."

  Ben picked his way carefully as he and Clay walked down the grass beach around clumps of sunbathers. Ben was limping but seemed steady enough. He tentatively smiled at a group of teenage girls who'd come out of the water. They returned the smile.

  Paige crossed her fingers for luck. So far, so good. Feeling self-conscious, she took off her blouse and shorts. She wasn't used to parading around in next to nothing in mixed company. Yes, she'd had swimming classes in boarding school--with all girls. In med school, she hadn't had time for sunning or swimming. In Africa, she'd kept herself covered most of the time because of the cultural taboos and the heat. When she'd traveled with her mother, water was a precious commodity meant for survival, not recreation.

  But today the lake called, and Paige was in the mood to answer. As she approached the water, she saw Clay's head break the surface. After a quick look around, he dived under again, swimming along the rope that bordered deeper water.

  As she made her way to the lake, she felt less self- conscious. Everyone else wore bathing suits much less modest than her navy maillot. At the edge of the water, she swished her foot back and forth. It was cold. She hoped Ben's muscles wouldn't cramp.

  Wading into the water steadily but slowly, she let her body get used to the temperature change. Goose bumps broke out on her arms.

  When she was in waist high, Clay popped up in front of her. He ran his hands over his face and shook his hair away from his eyes. Water droplets sprayed her and she shivered, but not from the cold water.

  She'd seen plenty of naked men since she'd been practicing medicine. But they'd been patients. With Clay, when she'd glanced at his gray trunks, the stretchy material hugging and molding, she almost couldn't breathe.

  His scars were wicked. But his bare chest and shoulders had held much more fascination for her. She'd never seen such a beautiful male physique. Drops of water caught here and there in chest hair and rolled down his bronze skin. There was one drop on his left cheekbone she'd love to taste...

  "Ben seems to be okay. He said he wanted to do a few laps."

  Clay's words drew her attention to his mouth. A very male, sensual mouth. Hers went dry. She swallowed. "I don't want him to get overtired."

  "I'll keep an eye on him. Anything I should know?"

  She walked forward to get deeper into the water and to keep from ogling Clay. "Stay close when he's ready to get out. The exertion might make his leg feel weaker, and in the cold water he won't notice it."

  "Will do. I--"

  Paige stepped forward and the stony floor dipped unexpectedly. She lost her footing.

  Clay's arm went around her to steady her. She looked up and was caught by his green gaze. His arm around her, her breasts pressing against his chest, created an excitement so powerful she couldn't speak; she could hardly breathe. Her nipples hardened; her pulse raced. Her head swirled, and she knew the sensation had nothing to do with the cold water and hot sun.

  Clay's fingers languidly caressed the small of her back, sending spirals of tingling feelings through her body. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, Paige swayed gently forward.

  "I forgot to warn you about falling..." Clay trailed off to a whisper as his eyes suddenly darkened to jade. Paige thought she would get lost in them as slowly, ever so slowly, his head bent closer and she lifted hers, ready for the touch of his lips.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "Dr. Conrad, I'll race you to the post!" Ben called.

  Clay and Paige sprang apart. Clay's hand lingered on her arm only long enough to make sure she was steady on her feet.

  Finding her voice, Paige called back, "I'll be right there."

  When she turned to Clay, his face was expressionless, his tone neutral. "I'm going to deeper water for a few minutes. I won't be long."

  She felt as if she'd just stepped into very deep water. She nodded because she didn't know what to say. As Clay swam off, she waded toward Ben, still feeling too much heat in her cheeks, feeling as if she'd missed out on something important.

  The teenager shaded his eyes against the sun. "Sorry about that. I called before I saw his arm around you."

  She floated her hands through the water. "I almost fell into a hole. He caught me."

  "Anything you say, Dr. Conrad." Ben's words belied his skeptical grin. Then he shrugged. "Ready to race?"

  She needed to be immersed in the water to forget about Clay Reynolds, to work off the excess energy of the adrenaline still pumping through her. "Yes. One post length. You call it."

  Ben steadied himself on his feet, glanced at her to see if she was ready, then said, "Ready. Set. Go."

  Paige stroked through the water steadily, but didn't swim full tilt. She and Ben were swimming neck and neck. They emerged from the water at the same time.

  Ben's face was strained so she asked, "Why don't we get out for a while? We can play another game of cards before we eat."

  He nodded and waded with her to shallower water. Before she knew it, Clay had unobtrusively come up on Ben's other side. He must have been watching.

  Ben was fine until they left the waist-high water. As he walked without the water's buoyancy, his left leg gave way. Clay caught him.

  The teenager swore and Paige ran for his cane. She snatched it up and ran back. Clay was propping Ben up.

  Ben glared at the cane with disgust. The group of girls he'd nodded to earlier were openly staring. "See what I mean, Dr. Conrad? They're looking at me as if I have two heads."

  "They're just wondering..."

  He yelled at the group. "This isn't a damn circus. Mind your own business."

  The girls looked shocked.

  "Not exactly the way to make friends, Ben," Clay said quietly.

  The teenager grabbed the cane and turned on him. "And what the hell would you know? Sure, maybe you tore up your shoulder once upon a time, but it's fine now. You have two strong legs that'll let you do whatever you want. You've got nothing to complain about. I do. I can't even get from the lake to the blanket on my own power."

  "I still have problems with my shoulder, Ben. But I lift weights. I never stop strengthening it."

  "But it doesn't affect your life! You didn't have to quit something you loved because of it, did you?"
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  Paige noticed quite a few onlookers were watching with interest. She clasped Ben's shoulder. "Let's go to the blanket and talk."

  Ben's face flushed beet-red. "See? You don't like to be stared at anymore than I do. See what it's like?"

  He limped toward the blanket. When Paige glanced at Clay, he looked grim. He looked as if he was in pain. Did his shoulder bother him that much? Had this whole idea been a monumental mistake?

  Unsettled, she followed Ben and sat down on the blanket beside him. "This is the first time you've been swimming other than therapy, Ben," she said gently. "You overdid it a little, that's all."

  "I used to be able to swim forty laps easy."

  Clay folded himself down on the other side of Ben. "That's the first thing you have to change, Ben. Thinking about used-to-be's won't get you anywhere." His voice sounded strained, but Paige didn't think Ben noticed.

  "What did you used to do? How's your life different?"

  "I don't go rock climbing. I've changed my whole life around because of the accident. Things that used to be important before aren't now."

  "It's not the same thing. I don't want to change anything. I want to be able to walk over to those girls and ask one out and have her say yes."

  "How do you know she won't?"

  "Not after that little performance. Jeez, they could all see I couldn't even stand on my own two feet! I used to be able to date anyone I wanted--"

  "Grow up, Ben."

  Paige's instinct to defend made her interrupt. "Clay--"

  "He needs to hear this, Paige."

  "What do I need to hear?"

  "You've got your life, Ben. From what Paige tells me, you've got a family who's willing to do anything for you. You're intelligent and young and capable and you can be anything you set your mind to be. Okay, you can't play football. So pick something else you can be good at and do it instead of whining about what you can't do. Do you know how many people who are in accidents never walk again, who have serious internal injuries that shorten their lives, who have to relearn--" Clay stopped. "Think about it, Ben. Think about how lucky you are. Think about what you can still do, rather than what you can't do."

  Clay stood, slipped on his moccasins, and grabbed his clothes. "I'll go get the cooler so we can eat."

  He dumped his clothes on the bench and headed for the SUV. And he'd thought he could keep this afternoon uncomplicated. Instead it was like paddling a canoe, all right. In a hurricane. What the hell made him think he could pull this off? He wasn't in the habit of deluding himself. He prided himself on facing life straight on. Well, his initial reaction to having anything to do with Ben had been correct. Clay pulled the cooler from the backseat of the vehicle and slammed the door with more vigor than necessary. The last seven years, his life had been peaceful and ordinary. Then one compassionate, pretty doctor sashays into town and...Damn!

  Maybe he shouldn't have been so hard on Ben. But Clay had the feeling that everyone up to now had treated the teenager with kid gloves. Clay's family and doctors had treated him that way, too, for a while. Until they realized he'd never get his memory back. Then he became an oddity, a stranger, and they didn't know how to treat him. Today with Ben on the beach, the stares from everyone around them....

  Clay remembered standing on his parents' front porch with the woman he'd supposedly loved before the accident. She'd looked at him so strangely when he'd told her he might never remember his life before the accident. She'd shaken her head, told him recuperation was one thing, but never remembering the two of them as a couple was another. She said he'd changed and now they didn't have anything in common.

  Since Clay couldn't remember loving her, the pain of parting hadn't been intense. But the pain of rejection had been. Her reaction had been the same as the reaction of friends he'd supposedly had before the accident. They didn't want to make the effort to make friends with the different man Clay had become. Like his father, they wanted the old Clay. He couldn't pretend to be someone he wasn't.

  And then, more recently, there had been Clare...enough. This was what Clay didn't want. The rehashing. The memories of struggle, and, God forbid--the nightmares. He wouldn't let them terrorize him again. The best way to keep them at bay was to forget everything to do with the accident and his recovery.

  When Clay got back to the picnic table, Paige looked upset. "Ben wants to go home."

  "Running away won't help, Ben."

  Ben gave him a glare that could have knocked a giant flat. "I'm not running anywhere. I'm tired. What's the point of sticking around here--"

  "Dr. Conrad went to a lot of trouble to get this picnic together. The least you can do is eat the food she prepared."

  "Clay, it's all right. The fried chicken will keep."

  "Ben?" Clay's tone held challenge.

  "All right. We'll eat. But forget the canoe ride."

  Clay opened the cooler and started lifting out the containers of food. "It's forgotten."

  They ate, but they didn't talk much except for "Please pass the potato salad." Clay tried and so did Paige, but Ben's sullenness was difficult to ignore.

  Clay drove Ben home. After the teenager had gone inside and Clay drove toward Doc's, he asked Paige, "You think I handled him all wrong, don't you?"

  "I don't know. I just don't want him to become isolated."

  "He is isolated. Recovery's a lonely process because he has to do it on his own. Others can help, but they can't do it. He has to break out of his self-pitying haze. And he might need some plain talking for it to sink in."

  "Did someone do that for you?"

  "Trish. She was always there holding up a mirror, making me see the truth, telling me what I didn't want to hear."

  "She sounds special."

  "She is. Full of laughter and hope and honesty."

  "Did your recovery take long?"

  "Much longer than I would have liked." He'd considered himself healed when the nightmares ended.

  "Longer than Ben?"

  "Longer than Ben." He couldn't say how long without telling her more than his shoulder was involved.

  "You hurt your shoulder when you wrestled Shep, didn't you?"

  Clay pulled into Doc's driveway. "I jarred it."

  "But we went canoeing--"

  "If I don't use it, it gets stiff. I put ice on it that night. The next day it was fine."

  She laid her hand on his arm. "Would you tell me if it wasn't?"

  His blood heated up. He knew her touch was only meant to give comfort, but instead it sparked dormant fires. "I don't know."

  She shook her head. "Macho attitude."

  He laughed. "Run into that often?"

  "More often than I'd like. It prevents me from helping."

  He covered her hand with his. "Ah, Paige. Out to heal the world. The time isn't always right." His thumb caressed the top of her hand. He wanted to stroke more than her hand. He took his fingers from hers and leaned away.

  Paige folded her hands in her lap. "This afternoon didn't go the way I'd planned it."

  "Does it ever?"

  She smiled. "Maybe not."

  The lights of desire in her eyes told him she remembered their embrace in the lake. He did, too. Much too well. He'd almost kissed her. But getting involved would be sheer stupidity. They'd both get hurt. It was a good thing Ben had interrupted.

  "Clay, no matter what happens with Ben, thanks for trying today." And before he knew what was happening, Paige leaned toward him. Her lips were warm on his cheek, as gentle as a butterfly's landing but as disturbing as the embrace in the lake.

  She slid toward the door. Without another word, she opened it and climbed out. As she walked up the path to Doc's door, Clay put his fingers to the place her lips had kissed.

  ****

  The cold. Freezing, insidious cold burned his face, his fingers. He moved, and his leg fell into nothingness. If he moved too much, he'd fall into nothingness. Somehow he knew.

  His head pounded and he couldn't open his eyes.
It hurt too much. Shouts. People yelling. A drone above him. Or was the sound connected to the pounding in his head?

  His shoulder burned with a different fire than the rest of his body. When he moved it, slicing pain stabbed him over and over. He had to get away from it. He had to escape the cold. He tried to turn over but he couldn't and he found himself falling...falling...falling...

  Clay awoke, his sheets drenched in sweat, his throat parched and dry, probably from yelling for help. He was shaking all over. He reached for the spread and pulled it on top of the sheet. He was cold. So cold.

  Dragging in pockets of air, he tried to slow his racing heart. And then he swore a string of epithets that didn't begin to describe his frustration.

  Determination took hold. He would not let the nightmares start again. He would not cry out in terror and spend the rest of the night recovering from the panic.

  This nightmare had been mild compared to most of them. But what had brought it on? Had Paige stirred it all up? Clay touched his cheek where the touch of her lips still remained. Or had it been Ben? That made more sense. The day with Ben, the remembrance of similar experiences brought the unconscious to the surface.

  Clay raked his hand through his damp hair. Either way, he'd stay away from them both.

  ****

  The next morning, Clay went to the garage for his car. When he reached for the front door, he saw the cooler on the floor in the back. He'd forgotten to take it inside last night.

  As he lifted it, he saw something on the floor next to it. Paige's sweater. She'd had it slung over her arm when she got into the SUV. She'd said she might need it for the canoe ride. Somehow, it must've gotten thrown in the back when they packed up.

  Clay set the cooler on the seat and picked up the sweater. It was white, soft, and he could smell a slight floral scent. Without thinking, he brought it to his nose and inhaled. It smelled like Paige--sunshine, flowers, woman. His body responded.

  Right, Reynolds. You're not going to see her again, remember?

  He tossed the sweater back into the car as if it were a hot potato. Hadn't last night taught him anything? He'd spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning, trying to forget the nightmare, block out Paige's face, set aside Ben's recovery process.