Luke (15 page)

"Hey." His big, warm hand settled gently on her arm, stalling her retreat.

She studied his shoes. Nice ones. She wondered if his socks matched. Probably they did, since he was always so organized—

"Faith?" Bending slightly, he tried to peer into her eyes, and when she wouldn't let him, he captured her chin and slowly raised her face. "You're not okay."

He could see that? Well, wasn't that just fine and dandy. She spent a lot of effort trying to look like she felt perfectly fine even if her heart hurt. Come to think of it, her head hurt too. And damn if she wasn't just the slightest bit light-headed. "Of course I'm okay. We're busy today, so I'll just—"

"Did you eat breakfast?"

"I've told you, I can handle this thing."

"You need a snack?"

"I have a bagel on my desk. I'm going to get to it, I—"

"Get to it now." His thumb rasped over her lower lip, setting off a whole set of reactions in her body.

"You're pale."

"Fine." Tossing the schedule down, she picked up the bagel and stuffed a bite in her month. "Happy?"

"I will be." He waited until she'd swallowed. "More." He looked at his watch. After sixty seconds, he lifted his head. "Feel better?"

"Yes," she admitted, and found her throat tight.

"Faith, sometimes you'll be off just because. It's not your fault."

At the sympathy in his gaze, she nearly burst into tears.

"I want you to go on insulin."

That dried her up. "No." She was standing her ground on this. "Insulin isn't the answer for me."

"Because it's
conventional?"

"I'm going to overlook that sarcastic and uncalled-for comment because I can see you're worried about me, but—"

"Damn-A-straight I'm worried about you." He pulled her close. "I think about you all the time."

"Really?" Because she couldn't handle the heat, the concern, the devastating affection in his gaze, she turned her back to him and crossed her arms over her chest. "Because you didn't come over last night. Or the night before." Or the night before, but who was counting?

"Faith—"

"Forget it." She covered her eyes with her fingers. "I didn't mean to say that, didn't mean to sound like a nagging wife. We talked about this, it's a casual sex thing, nothing else—" She gasped when he whipped her around.

She expected anger, or more frustration, not the sadness. "I stayed away from you," he said, "because yes, we agreed this was a casual thing, a weekend thing, an over-in-a-few months thing, and while I said it, agreed to it, I found myself…" He grimaced. "Look, just know that you're not the only one having trouble with this, okay? But it's all I have to offer you for now." His eyes were devastatingly regretful.

She swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. "I knew that up front."

"I don't do hard-core relationships, I—"

"I understand, Luke."

"I give everything to my work, which leaves nothing else—"

"I said I understand," she repeated softly.

He stared at her, then winced and closed his eyes. "But how can you, when I don't?"

"I just do. We're really very much the same. I give everything to my work, too, and often." She lifted a shoulder. "There's nothing left. In the long run, you and I would burn out, I know that much. We wouldn't give enough to each other, we couldn't give it, that's just a fact."

Eyes solemn, mouth grim, he reached out and stroked her jaw. "Only a few weeks left," he whispered.

Unable to talk, she turned her cheek into his palm and sighed. "So maybe we should make the most of
it."

"Yeah." His mouth came down on hers, and because her eyes were still closed, it made her dizzy, a good dizzy this time, so she flung her arms around his neck and let it take her.

"Tonight?" she gasped when they came up for air.

His hair was wild from her fingers, his eyes, hot, hot, hot. "Tonight." Lowering his mouth, he feasted on her throat, her shoulder.

At a knock on her office door, they breathlessly broke apart.

"Faith?" called Shelby. "Is Dr. Walker in there with you? We could use him in room three."

Faith looked at Luke. "He's coming."

"Am I?" he murmured with a wicked smile.

"You will tonight," she murmured back, soaking up his low laugh.

Oh, yes, he was going to break her heart, and oh yes, she wanted him anyway. If this was all she could have, well, then, she wasn't going to waste a second of it.

It was a cruel joke that she couldn't seem to get sated, that she always needed more, but she'd deal with that, too, when the time came. But for now, she was going to smile.

"Tonight then," he whispered, and with one last hard kiss, he was gone.

* * *

One day the next week, Luke staggered into the hospital, his body still humming from the night he'd spent with Faith. He'd just had the hottest, steamiest shower of his life, and it had nothing at all to do with the water temperature, but the fact Faith had joined him with a naughty smile and a handful of soap.

He wondered if anyone could read what his idiotic grin meant, and attempted to swipe it off with darker, somber thoughts of work, but he couldn't.

He practically danced down the hospital hallways. Passing the nurses' station, still smiling, he waved.

Clearly still a little cautious of him, they waved back.

One week left.

Ah, there it was. A thought that managed to dim his smile. Only one week.

Briefly he considered making another stupid comment to the press about the clinic, one which would guarantee the need to spend another three months there. But since he couldn't even remember how or why he'd felt so strongly against it in the first place, and since it would only hurt Faith anyway, he wouldn't do it. Couldn't do it.

At least for the next few hours, he was blessedly busy, and didn't have time to think about anything other than what he was doing. There'd been a pileup on the 405, and an odd strain of the flu, which caused appendicitis-like symptoms, so he was completely swamped,
up to his eyes in puke and broken bones.

In the midst of the chaos, one of the nurses asked him to check a patient that wasn't his.

"She asked specifically for you," the nurse said with a shrug.

When he pulled back the curtain, he was shocked to find Emma there, the woman with cancer that he'd met at Faith's clinic. She was fast asleep, which gave him a moment to read the chart. She'd passed out in the grocery store.

"Emma?" Gently, he stroked her far-too-thin arm until her groggy eyes fluttered open. "Hey. What happened?"

She sighed. "I think it was just the pain."

"Have you been going to the acupressure appointments?"

"And massage therapy as well." Her eyes filled as she shook her head. "It's not enough. Faith told me to talk to you, that you'd get something stronger for the pain, but I thought I had it handled. Then the grocery store incident." She managed a smile but it was watery. "I guess the truth is, I'm getting scared."

This was the part he hated, not having all the answers, doing the best possible job and having it not be enough.

"Faith believes in you," she said. "So do I."

He looked into Emma's solemn eyes and inexplicably felt like crying. "We'll take care of you."

She sighed, even smiled, and trusting him, laid back and closed her eyes.

If only he trusted himself half as much.

Yeah, Faith believed in him. Enough to trust him with one of her patients. It was a stunning revelation, and a powerful one.

Soon, in one week, he'd go back to his life and Faith to hers. So simple in theory, but suddenly he didn't know how he could have ever believed it.

There was nothing simple about never seeing her again, never laughing with her, holding her, being with her. Nothing.

* * *

Later, Luke sat on a large rock on the beach outside his house and watched the waves hit. He'd conferred with Emma's specialist, and had learned what Faith had already told him weeks earlier—there was nothing to be done for her other than to make her comfortable.

He'd done that, while silently ranting at the fates that gave them such a vicious, demoralizing disease he couldn't conquer.

Luke liked to conquer his world, damn it, and hated it when something prevented him from doing so. And though they hadn't lost Emma yet, he felt the despair the same as if they had.

"What are you doing out here moping when I made you a Mexican casserole that tastes better than heaven?"

He looked up at Carmen as she lowered herself to the beach next to him. "Thanks, but I'm not really hungry."

She let out a theatrical, diva-like sigh. "You screw up with Faith?"

"No."

"Uh-huh. I suppose you messed up a good thing because you got to the usual two-month mark, and went claustrophobic.
Si?"

"Actually, it's been nearly
three
months, and I never did get claustrophobic with Faith."

"Then she annoyed you in some way. Maybe she snores?"

"No."

"Okay, then, she chews with her mouth open. Or forgets to put the lid on the toothpaste."

"Carmen…" He scrubbed his hands over his face. "You're loco."

"I'm
crazy? You're the one sitting here instead of being with your woman. You break up or something?"

"We're not together, and after next week when I'm done with the clinic, we're not seeing each other anymore."

"Well, who made up that brilliant rule?"

He sighed. "Don't you have a toilet to clean or something?"

"I'd rather bother you." She leaned back, made herself comfortable. "So let me get this straight … here's the first woman in forever to grab you by the heart strings and hold on tight, and you're going to walk away from her? And all this time I thought you were so smart."

"We both agreed this was just a temporary—" He broke off, stared at the pounding surf. Temporary. He was beginning to hate that word.

"A temporary sex thing?" She cackled. "Well, I'm all for that. Only it turned out to be more, you big, fancy idiot, and now what … you're too proud to say so?"

"More never works out for me. Not with my lifestyle."

"So a doctor isn't allowed to have a life now? You know what I think?"

"If I say yes, will you be quiet?"

"I think it's more than that. I think you're afraid."

He managed a laugh. "Don't be ridiculous."

"You're afraid to get married and have kids because you think you'll be no better of a daddy than yours was."

Startled, he looked up at her. She nodded. "Your brother called me yesterday. Wanted to check up on you. I told him everything, so get over it. Matt said he thought maybe you didn't want to get involved since your parents didn't like the responsibility of having kids and never even looked at the two of you. He said that'd been his problem until he was knocked off his feet by some fancy, beautiful scientist he's going to marry."

He was going to kill his brother. "Carmen—"

"Right." She rose. "Mind my own business. Sure." She started to walk away, only to turn back. "I guess the thing I'm really surprised at is that Faith is being as stubborn and proud as you. I mean, we all know what's holding you back. Stupid, male pride. But what's holding her back? I would have thought at least one of you would have had the guts to fight for this." With that, she walked away.

The waves hit the shore with a relentless rhythm that now matched his new headache. He
did
know what held him back, and yes, maybe part of it was fear, part of it resignation that he could never have a normal family life, so he figured why try.

Sitting there on the sand watching Mother Nature do her thing, he could admit, it'd always been easier to date casually, letting women in and out of his mental revolving door rather than try to solve the problem.

But what the hell held Faith back?

Chapter 12

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A
nd then it was their last weekend. Faith was going to open the clinic both days, as they were doing a special Women's Awareness Day on Sunday.

Luke had agreed to work the entire weekend, so readily that Faith actually let herself believe he didn't want it to end any more than she did.

Faith woke up feeling blue. She told herself she was worried about money, worried about a few patients, worried about a class she wanted to work into her schedule, worried about her blood sugar since late the night before. Driven by stress, she'd broken into Guy's personal stash of candy and had wolfed down two candy bars.

But what was really bothering her had nothing to do with any of those things and everything to do with the fact that tomorrow, after Women's Awareness Day, Luke would be gone.

Guy had bought some goodbye decorations at a party shop, and was dressing up their staff room. Shelby had made cookies, oatmeal with raisin, of course, and was proud of the fact that they contained no sugar or wheat.

They tasted like bricks, but that wasn't what caused the unswallowable lump in Faith's throat and she knew it.

Only two more days.

Forty-eight hours.

Two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes.

She was mentally calculating the seconds when Luke walked into the room wearing his usual neat trousers and button-down shirt already shoved up to the elbows. He smiled at the decorations, grabbed a cookie and turned to Faith.

He took her breath.

Leaning back against the counter, he studied her while he took a bite. His eyes seemed to see everything, the way she'd pulled her wild hair back in an ineffective attempt to tame it. The crystals she'd put in her ears, guaranteed to make wishes come true … she'd be putting those to the test today. The high spots of color she could feel on her cheeks. The snug, unusually flattering knit dress she'd chosen hoping he'd notice that it actually made her look good—

His eyes flared with appreciation as they roamed over her, assuring her he'd noticed. He popped the rest of the cookie into his mouth and pushed away from the counter. "Those are awful," he said, and cupped her face. Tilting it up, he ran a thumb over her lower lip and destroyed a whole host of brain cells.