It Had to Be Love (An It Had to Be Novel) (5 page)

He shook his head. “Not likely. Mick Jagger is really old, something like . . .”

“Seventy. You’re right.”

As they approached the clinic, Tara moved ahead to get the door. Couldn’t the woman leave him with even a shred of his manhood?

He lunged forward and beat her to the handle. Swinging the door open for her, he said, “After you, Kung Fu Panda.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him for the first time and a wave of warmth shot through his chest.

Tara was the prettiest woman he’d ever met. Weirdly, he admired the way she’d beaten the crap out of him.

Too bad she had her eye on his brother. Tara might have been the one woman able to tempt him to break his in-town dating rule.

T
ara felt horrible about hitting Ryan. Who would have thought she’d be able to do that much damage with one punch? But the dentist in her needed to know his teeth were all right, so she quietly followed behind Ryan and the nurse who’d sent her a scowl after they explained what had happened.

Once the nurse got Ryan onto his back with an ice pack on his face, she turned to Tara. “You aren’t family, so you can’t be in here.” She placed one hand on her hip and the other pointed to the door. Her name tag read “Joyce” and she looked about as old as Mick Jagger.

“I just wanted to check his mouth. I’m the new dentist in town.”

Joyce raised a brow. “I know who you are, young lady, and I don’t appreciate sass—”

Ben walked in. “She can stay. I do my best work with pretty ladies around to impress.”

Ryan and Joyce both grunted.

Joyce shook her head and stood silently by Ryan, like she was protecting him from her.

Then the door opened and Ryan’s sisters, Casey and Meg, flew inside. Casey said, “We heard Ryan broke his nose.”

Casey, tall, elegant, and willowy, ran the hotel. Meg, short and cute, was opening a lodge across the lake. Both were pretty brunettes with big smiles just like Ryan’s.

Ryan groaned. “It’s no big deal.”

Ben turned to Tara. “See what you got yourself into, moving here? Word travels fast.”

Meg said, “Yeah, Joyce called and told us Tara beat you up, Ryan. We wanted to see for ourselves.”

Casey moved the ice pack from Ryan’s face. “Man, she clocked you good.”

“Wait!” Meg’s brows shot up. “That had to hurt. Let me see your hand, Tara.”

Tara reluctantly held out her aching palm.

“Ouch.” Meg cringed.

That had Ben zipping across the room and taking her bruised hand in his. “Can you move your fingers?”

The girls gathered around as Ben gently probed her hand. He finally said, “I think it’s just a bad bruise. Joyce, will you get Tara an ice pack too?”

Joyce huffed out a breath as she left.

Ryan sat up. “I’ll go home and take some aspirin.”

“Nope.” Ben pushed Ryan onto his back again. “We aren’t done with you yet.” He turned to his sisters. “Meg, get up here and sit on him and hold his shoulders down. Casey, you hold his head still. Sorry, buddy, but we need to straighten out the damage.”

Tara couldn’t watch. She shut her eyes as Ben counted backward. “Three, two, one.”

Ryan let out a loud curse, and then a slow groan. He scowled at his brother. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

“Only a little. Tara, you want to come check his teeth now? He’d probably bite my fingers if I tried.” Ben helped Meg off of Ryan and to the floor, while Casey moved away from the table to make room.

Tara slipped on a pair of gloves and stood beside Ryan. As badly as her right hand throbbed, it was obvious Ryan’s pain was ten times worse.

Because of her.

Her eyes stung with tears.

Meg ran a hand up and down Tara’s back. “He’s going to be fine and just as pretty as before, Tara. He must’ve startled you somehow, huh?”

Not too long ago, Meg had accidentally seen the scars on Tara’s torso. Tara hadn’t told Meg what happened, but she must’ve put two and two together. Tara was grateful Meg had never pressed for an explanation. “Yeah. Maybe I took that self-defense training a little too seriously?”

Ryan’s eyes locked with hers. “I’m not mad at you, Tara.”

“Thank you, Ryan.” Relief washed through her. “Open up, please.”

Concentrating only on his mouth, not all his glorious, bare-chested muscles, she pressed two fingers against his front teeth, happy when they didn’t move and he didn’t flinch. After a little more gentle probing, she tugged off her gloves. “Luckily, your teeth fared better than your nose. If they’re still bothering you after a few days, will you promise to come see me?”

Ben slid next to her and said, “I’d listen to her, Ry. Tara just proved she’s the only one in town who can kick your ass.”

Ryan closed his eyes. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

His sisters and brother all said, “Nope!” in unison.

Joyce finally came back with an ice pack. Ben traded it for a prescription from his pad, and then gently took Tara’s hand. He gazed into her eyes and smiled before he laid the blessedly cool pack on her palm. “Fifteen minutes on, fifteen off. And if it still hurts in a few days, promise you’ll come back and see me?”

Ben was an incredibly handsome man. So why wasn’t her stomach doing that flipping thing it did when Ryan smiled at her?

While Ben flirted with her, Ryan slid off the table and stood to leave. Tara pulled her hand from Ben’s and said, “Can you make it home all right, Ryan?”

Casey wrapped her arm around her brother’s shoulders. “Meg and I will walk him home and tuck him into bed.”

Ben called out, “Pick up his meds on the way out from Joyce. Be sure he eats before he takes them. And Ryan, take it easy today!”

Ryan lifted a hand in response.

Casey said, “We’ll make sure he does.”

Tara started walking behind them, but Ben said, “Can you wait a second please, Tara?”

“Sure.”

“So his teeth and gums looked okay?” As Ben jotted notes in Ryan’s chart, a single strand of his perfectly styled and gelled hair moved. Ben was like a Ken doll, perfect in every way. Maybe too perfect. Would a woman have to fight for bathroom mirror time in the mornings with a man like that?

“His teeth looked fine. But he has some bruising on the upper gum, so he must be sore.”

Ben scribbled another note and then slapped the file shut. “I’ll make sure to ask about it in a few days. Thanks.”

“It was the least I could do.” She started for the door. “I feel awful about this. I hope he takes his meds instead of trying to tough it out like most men.”

Ben caught up and walked out beside her. “Casey will make him take the pills I had Joyce send along. They’ll knock him out for hours.”

“Ryan doesn’t strike me as someone who likes to be told what to do.”

Ben chuckled. “Nope. But Casey helped raise Meg and Ryan and is the one person besides our grandmother who those two stubborn mules will listen to.” He shot her a grin, showing off his movie-star white teeth again. “I hope your hand doesn’t pain you too much today.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks.” The gleam in his eyes made her fear he’d ask her out again. After her awkward conversations with Ryan, maybe she wasn’t as ready to date again as she thought? Especially with a guy who wore more expensive shoes than she did.

What had she been thinking when she’d accepted Ben’s earlier offer? He wasn’t her type at all. True, she vowed to never marry again, and though a confirmed bachelor like Ben would be just the ticket, the attraction just wasn’t there.

She said, “Better go, I have patients in a few. Thanks for the ice pack and send me Ryan’s bill too, okay?” She started for home at a jog.

Ben called out, “No charge. Take care.”

Ryan’s face hurt too much to protest his sisters’ babying, so he just gave in. Arguing with them was futile.

After they’d served him breakfast in bed and made him take the pills Ben had sent along, he considered pretending to be asleep so they’d leave. Then he’d go sit on the couch and read or something.

When Meg popped her head inside his bedroom to check on him, he recalled the conversation Tara and Meg had in the exam room.

“Do you know why Tara reacted so strongly today?”

Meg blinked rapidly like she always did when she didn’t want to tell him something. Luckily, she never lied. “Maybe. She hasn’t told me where the scary-looking scars on her stomach and back came from, but when I mentioned them to Josh, he said he suspected she’d suffered some sort of attack by the way she reacts to men.”

Josh was a former FBI agent whose specialty was extracting the truth from people, so his instincts were good. “She seemed fine with Ben earlier.”

Meg nodded. “Josh thinks it was a larger man who hurt her. She gets nervous around Josh too, like she does around you.”

Tara was nervous around him because of his size? It wasn’t that he was a cop and she had something to hide? Or maybe it wasn’t size at all. Maybe she was nervous around Josh because he could tell if she was lying?

Meg added, “Don’t tell anyone else, okay? She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

“Fine.” But that just set off a dozen new questions about Tara he felt compelled to know the answers to. Mostly, where was the person who’d hurt her and was she safe?

“Ryan, you have to give me your word you’ll leave this alone. I would’ve never told you, but I know you can keep a secret.”

He couldn’t promise he wouldn’t look into it. It was his duty to be sure she wasn’t in danger. “I’ll keep whatever I find to myself.”

Casey slipped inside behind Meg. “I called Mike and told him you wouldn’t be in today. He said he’s eating your breakfast burrito. And he wanted to know who hits harder, him or Tara?” She crossed her arms. “Can you be trusted to rest if we leave?”

Tara hit ten times harder, and he’d be sure to rib Mike about that later. “I promise to stick around the house if that’ll get you two to go away.”

“Okay.” Casey tugged Meg out with her. “But just know we may drop in unannounced later, so be good!”

As they left, he called out, “What makes that different from any other day?”

His answer was the extra loud slam of his screen door.

He waited a few minutes to be sure they’d really left, then changed into sweats and headed out to the living room. He wasn’t going to lie around in bed all day like a damn invalid. He switched his big screen TV to ESPN for background noise and then picked up a book.

He tried to read but his mind kept going back to what Meg had said about him making Tara nervous. Maybe if he could help her understand he’d never hurt her, and that maybe he could help her, then he’d have a chance with her?

But Ben was interested in her so that was a stupid thought. Must be the pain meds clouding his thinking. And making him really tired. But his face felt a ton better. He turned off the TV, closed his eyes, and laid his head on the back of the couch. Maybe he’d rest for just a few minutes.

He awoke to the sound of knocking on his screen door. That was his first clue it wasn’t one of his pushy relatives who always just let themselves in. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and called out, “Come in.”

His face ached again. Must be time for more medicine.

The door creaked open and Tara tentatively stepped inside with three Styrofoam boxes in her hands. “Hi. I brought you some dinner. Gloria sent extra pie along too.”

He glanced at his phone on the coffee table. How the hell was it five thirty? His brother had drugged him up good. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It was no . . .” Tara’s eyes widened when she spotted the cherry wood built-in bookcases he’d just finished. Dropping her big purse and the boxes onto the coffee table, she crossed the room and danced her fingers lightly across the fragile spines of his antique books. “Wow! Are some of these first editions?”

He stood and moved near her, careful to keep some distance. “A few. But mostly they’re just my favorites.”

She pushed her blonde hair behind one ear as she tilted her head to read the titles. “You do have some Keats. I’d wondered.”

He hated that she’d gone straight for that. He only had the two, but it probably made him look wimpy. “They’re collector items. I’m not really . . .”

Tara glanced up and grinned. “Poetic?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Just a curious guy full of personal questions then, I guess.”

He smiled. She was such a contradiction. One minute it was as if she was afraid of him, and the next she teased him. He liked a woman with a sense of humor. “I love a great story. When you’re ready, I hope you’ll tell me yours.”