Healing His Heart (13 page)

He needed to deal with whatever had happened. Somehow Caleb had to face himself, to forgive himself, before he could come to her fully.

Julia wanted him fully, needed all of him like she needed air. After ten long years, Julia had found love again. Stronger this time, even more wrenching. She'd loved Steven like the young girl she'd been, but Caleb filled her heart and soul.

She'd known for several days now that she loved him ... and that doing so was a risky game. There were no guarantees Caleb would forgive himself for what had happened in his past.

How did a woman go about healing a wounded warrior? Could she help him face his demons?

Caleb needed warmth and comfort, needed long, passionate kisses. Needed to be held in sheltering arms. Julia would love him with everything she had. Maybe it would be enough.

*

He shouldn't have touched her, Caleb brooded, driving down the small country lane that led to Julia's property.

Shouldn't have touched her that first day when she'd worked with him on the sub-flooring. After that, everything had gone downhill. When it came to the temptation she presented, he had acted like a man who didn't know better.

Experience had removed any doubt about his character. He wasn't a man who could bear the responsibility of a woman's love.

But he wanted Julia. Had wanted her in the beginning. And he wanted her now, even more than before.

It was an addiction, the need to inhale the natural smell of her naked skin, to know again the taste of her on his tongue.

The last few days had been hell. He'd gone to sleep hard for her and woken that way, finding no solace even in his dreams. Every day he worked himself like a dog trying to distract his mind and body from thoughts of her. Worries about her.

And when she came to the house, hovering a discreet distance, he'd made himself turn away, act as if he hadn't seen her, pretend he couldn't take the time to talk to her.

All because he craved her like a drug.

He'd caved in that one night, told himself he'd screw her just once more, satisfy the encompassing hunger one more time.

Only it hadn't felt like screwing. Julia had welcomed him when he came skulking at her door like a thief in the night. She'd wrapped her slender arms around him and kissed him with all the seduction of heaven's temptress.

It had felt like magic to touch her again, stroke her beautiful, naked body until she cried out. But the craving had come back by the time he'd made himself slink away in the dawn.

He knew he had to break away, knew he just needed to finish her house and leave as he'd planned. Once he got far enough away, he'd suffer through withdrawal. From her.

And she'd get over him soon enough. Chalk him up as her one big mistake. The next man would be better.

Despite the fact he had no integrity, had let her give herself to him, Caleb hated having to hurt her.

Scanning the driveway before he turned into the property had become a necessary thing. If he saw her car, he'd drive on by.

It was that or make love to her up against a tree.

Seeing the empty drive, Caleb turned in and saw her car there, pulled over onto the grass, made invisible from the road by a thicket of scrub oaks.

For a moment, Caleb considered backing out and driving away. Instead, he found himself parking the truck and turning off the engine.

There was a fine line between avoidance and running like a coward. He might be a heartless bastard, but he didn't run away.

She wasn't in her car.

Despite having spent so much energy avoiding her, he found himself searching for Julia now. He glanced into his trailer and walked through the empty house.

No sign of her.

Scoping out the rest of the property, Caleb found himself climbing to the bluff.

There, just over the rise, Julia sat under a small tree.

In a sweeping glance, he took in the scene.

On the ground beneath her was spread some sort of cloth atop a quilt. A picnic basket sat next to her and the cloth had been laid with two place settings, real china and crystal.

But she was the feast.

A flowery sundress of some clingy knit fabric faithfully molded her body, leaving her long, slender legs bare. Her discarded sandals and a big floppy sun hat lay next to the quilt.

The sight of her just about did him in. He felt himself swelling against his jeans and fought against the urge to take her then and there. Sweep aside the dishes and cutlery and rip off her clothes.

Julia smiled up at him. "You found me."

Oh, God.

"Sit down." She patted the cloth beside her. Caleb sat down several feet away.

"What are you doing, Julia?" he asked when he found his voice again.

"Making a surprise picnic for you. You've been working so hard all week, I thought you needed a break."

Hell, yes, he needed a break. After the life he'd been living, he
deserved
a break. Maybe God would do him a favor and strike him dead at this moment.

Caleb cleared his throat. "That
's...
nice of you."

She rewarded him with a dazzling smile.

"Are you hungry?" Julia reached for the picnic basket. "I made a few things. Potato salad, fried chicken."

He was hungry down to his soul, but he didn't think potato salad would stop the ache. Still, Caleb handed her his plate.

Sitting on the bluff in the shade, the faintest of breezes wisping over him, he watched her, battling an almost blinding lust. He knew he shouldn't jump on the woman every time he got near her, but this tightening of his body seemed automatic.

Caleb wrestled with his libido, forcing himself not to stare at her delectable cleavage or her nipples, obvious against the thin fabric. Instead, he looked at the tablecloth beneath them, an old one with its delicate embroidery.

The china, crystal, fancy tablecloth. Why had she gone to all this trouble? Most women, when treated the way he had her this week, would have met him with complaints and recriminations rather than a home-cooked meal.

Julia served him, chatting about the progress on the house.

"We've been fortunate to stay on schedule. The spring thunderstorms were really well timed."

"Yeah." He balanced the delicate china on his knee, puzzled. She was so nonchalant, so natural, as if they'd done this a hundred times before.

"I've had a pretty good week," she said, biting into a pickle spear. "Only one staff meeting at the hospital. Did I tell you? The guy I'm in practice with did his internship at Methodist. Maybe you know him. Jim Stallcup?"

"No." Caleb shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Well, he had this really interesting experience with a patient. The kid had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder." Julia scooped up a bite of potato salad. "But several members of his family had a history of magnesium deficiency."

Any mention of patients and doctoring typically set him on red alert, but with the shade and delicious food, Caleb couldn't find the energy for a full scale reaction.

"So Jim tested the kid and he was low. After two months of dietary supplements, the boy's behavior was significantly better," Julia declared. "I saw the kid in the waiting room. He was sitting there like a normal child, reading a book. Usually he fidgets all over the place and drives the receptionist crazy."

"Really?" Caleb said, interested in spite of himself. "Any studies on the subject?"

"Several with initial findings, but nothing conclusive."

"That whole ADD
/ADHD
diagnosis is such a catchall term. Any difficult kid ends up with it," he heard himself say. "There's got to be a better treatment than medicating all of them with amphetamines."

When she made no reply, Caleb glanced up at her. Her fork clinked against her plate . . . and she sat watching him with the most tender look on her face.

Realization hit him then, slamming into his gut like a sledgehammer. Julia thought she was in love with him.

Caleb had heard of men tasting fear, but he'd never had the experience before. It all added up. The picnic, Julia's sunny acceptance of his evasiveness. The damned glow in her eyes.

Going on with the conversation, she smiled and looked away.

He heard her voice, a buzzing sound, incomprehensible to his stunned brain.

How could this have happened? He'd done nothing to earn her respect, much less her love. Julia wasn't the kind of woman who went for abusive, unprofitable relationships.

But she was smiling at him like an angel.

This was never what he'd wanted. He'd acted as ruthless and heartless as he knew he was. Surely that should have warned her off.  Yes, he'd become considerably more cautious when she'd told him about Steven and her virginity.

She'd thought it could be "special" between them. And the sex was incendiary. But never, never had he intended this. His behavior in the last week had been designed to underscore the impossibility of any lasting emotional relationship between them. After first sex-particularly incredible sex-men were supposed to call, bring flowers, act interested, for God's sake.

He'd done none of those.

Because he had nothing to give her. Other men obviously handled the responsibility of being loved better than he ever could. He'd been down this road and had failed in a spectacular way to give a woman what she needed. Failed even to save her life when he'd been trained to do so.

And Julia was so much more. Deserved so much more. She'd be hurt. The thought killed him, made him want to shudder in the hot summer afternoon.

He shouldn't care, he knew that. He should take what she offered because he wanted and needed it. And he shouldn't care that later she'd suffer for her illusions about him.

But he did care.

"More fried chicken?" Julia asked him, her voice soft.

"No," Caleb said, putting his plate down. He knew what he had to do.

She had to be warned off, had to be shown the kind of man he was. All he could give her was sex. That he could do morning, noon and all night. But anything else was impossible.

He was unworthy of the light in her eyes, but it grieved him to douse it. Still, he apparently had a shred of decency left.

"Julia," he said. "You've always wondered why I quit practicing medicine, haven't you?"

She looked up, startled. "Y-yes."

"It's not a pretty story," Caleb warned, "but I think you ought to hear it."

Julia sat waiting, her breath feeling tight in her chest.

She'd decided to give Caleb room, to show him by her actions that she could ride the waves with him. Never had she thought he'd feel intimate enough to confide in her so quickly.

"I am responsible for letting a woman die," he said flatly. "You could just as well say I killed her."

Julia was sure she wouldn't have said any such thing. No matter what had happened, Caleb wouldn't take a risk with a patient. She sat quietly, knowing the dam had burst and he needed to pour it all out.

"Erin and I were lovers," he said grimly. "We'd dated for over a year."

Julia sat back, his unexpected words sending a shock wave through her. Of course, she'd assumed he had had lovers before. That was blazingly obvious. Still, she preferred not to think of it.

But his great trauma, the event that had blighted his life and career was the loss of the woman he loved?

"We spent weekends together when I wasn't on call or working. It got to be a regular thing." He reached down to jerk u
p a strand of tall grass. "Erin...
wanted more. She felt we needed to 'move forward.' She wanted a commitment from me."

Caleb looked up to meet Julia's eyes squarely. "I cared about her, but I couldn't give her what she wanted."

“You weren’t ready?” Julia hazarded a guess.

He shook his head. "It was more than that. I liked Erin, liked sleeping with some
one regularly. But I didn't...
love her."

Julia couldn't help feeling a surge of joy. If he hadn't loved this woman, surely he could recover from her loss.

"Things got pretty tense," Caleb went on, his voice even flatter. "Erin realized I was having thoughts of ending it. She was very upset. She'd call me at work, page me, leave messages on the machine at my apartment. Sometimes I'd return them. A lot of times I didn't.

"Still," he said with self-condemnation, "I didn't have the nerve to just break it off clean. I thought I could let her down easy. The truth is that I didn't really want to end all of it. It was nice to have regular sex and someone to hang out with."

His dark gaze searched Julia's face, as if trying to gauge her reaction to his admission. "So it dragged on. I kept thinking she'd level out. In the beginning, Erin hadn't said a lot about love
or the future. I thought she'd...
get over it."

"But she didn't," Julia interjected quietly.

"No. Instead, she started having panic spells. At least, I thought they were panic attacks," Caleb said bitterly. "She'd call and tell me her heart was racing and that she felt dizzy. I'd
tell her that I could come over
the next day or the day after that."