Coltrain's Proposal. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ few seconds. He stared at her without speaking and she felt her heart beating wildly against her ribs. She hated being helpless.

      He moved back, watching her relax. He took another step and saw her release the breath she’d been holding. Every trace of anger left him.

      “It takes time for a partnership to work,” he said abruptly. “You’ve only given this one a year.”

      “That’s right,” she said tonelessly. “I’ve given it a year.”

      The emphasis she placed on the first word caught his attention. His blue eyes narrowed. “You sound as if you don’t think I’ve given it any time at all.”

      She nodded. Her eyes met his. “You didn’t want me in the practice. I suspected it from the beginning, but it wasn’t until I heard what you told Drew on the phone this morning that—”

      His eyes flashed oddly. “You heard what I said?” he asked huskily. “You heard…all of it!” he exclaimed.

      Her lips trembled just faintly. “Yes,” she said.

      He was remembering what he’d told Drew Morris in a characteristic outburst of bad temper. He often said things in heat that he regretted later, but this he regretted most of all. He’d never credited his cool, unflappable partner with any emotions at all. She’d backed away from him figuratively and physically since the first day she’d worked at the clinic. Her physical withdrawal had maddened him, although he’d always assumed she was frigid.

      But in the past five minutes, he’d learned disturbing things about her without a word being spoken. He’d hurt her. He didn’t realize she’d cared that much about his opinion. Hell, he’d been furious because he’d just had to diagnose leukemia in a sweet little boy of four. It had hurt him to do that, and he’d lashed out at Morris over Lou in frustration at his own helplessness. But he’d had no idea that she’d overheard his vicious remarks. She was going to leave and it was no less than he deserved. He was genuinely sorry. She wasn’t going to believe that, though. He could tell by her mutinous expression, in her clenched hands, in the tight set of her mouth.

      “You did Drew a favor and asked me to join you, probably over some other doctor you really wanted,” she said with a forced smile. “Well, no harm done. Perhaps you can get him back when I leave.”

      “Wait a minute,” he began shortly.

      She held up a hand. “Let’s not argue about it,” she said, sick at knowing his opinion of her, his real opinion. “I’m tired of fighting you to practice medicine here. I haven’t done the first thing right, according to you. I’m a burden. Well, I just want out. I’ll go on working until you can replace me.” She stood up.

      His hand tightened on the brim of his hat. He was losing this battle. He didn’t know how to pull his irons out of the fire.

      “I had to tell the Dawes that their son has leukemia,” he said, hating the need to explain his bad temper. “I say things I don’t mean sometimes.”

      “We both know that you meant what you said about me,” she said flatly. Her eyes met his levelly. “You’ve hated me from almost the first day we worked together. Most of the time, you can’t even be bothered to be civil to me. I didn’t know that you had a grudge against me from the outset…”

      She hadn’t thought about that until she said it, but there was a subtle change in his expression, a faint distaste that her mind locked on.

      “So you heard that, too.” His jaw clenched on words he didn’t want to say. But maybe it was as well to say them. He’d lived a lie for the past year.

      “Yes.” She gripped the wrought-iron frame of the park bench hard. “What happened? Did my father cause someone to die?”

      His jaw tautened. He didn’t like saying this. “The girl I wanted to marry got pregnant by him. He performed a secret abortion and she was going to marry me anyway.” He laughed icily. “A fling, he called it. But the medical authority had other ideas, and they invited him to resign.”

      Lou’s fingers went white on the cold wrought iron. Had her mother known? What had happened to the girl afterward?

      “Only a handful of people knew,” Coltrain said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “I doubt that your mother did. She seemed very nice—hardly a fit match for a man like that.”

      “And the girl?” she asked levelly.

      “She left town. Eventually she married.” He rammed his hands into his pockets and glared at her. “If you want the whole truth, Drew felt sorry for you when your parents died so tragically. He knew I was looking for a partner, and he recommended you so highly that I asked you. I didn’t connect the name at first,” he added on a mocking note. “Ironic, isn’t it, that I’d choose as a partner the daughter of a man I hated until the day he died.”

      “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked irritably. “I would have resigned!”

      “You were in no fit state to be told anything,” he replied with reluctant memories of her tragic face when she’d arrived. His hands clenched in his pockets. “Besides, you’d signed a one-year contract. The only way out was if you resigned.”

      It all made sense immediately. She was too intelligent not to understand why he’d been so antagonistic. “I see,” she breathed. “But I didn’t resign.”

      “You were made of stronger stuff than I imagined,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t back down an inch. No matter how rough it got, you threw my own bad temper back at me.” He rubbed his fingers absently over the car keys in his pocket while he studied her. “It’s been a long time since anyone around here stood up to me like that,” he added reluctantly.

      She knew that without being told. He was a holy terror. Even grown men around Jacobsville gave him a wide berth when he lost his legendary temper. But Lou never had. She stood right up to him. She wasn’t fiery by nature, but her father had been viciously cruel to her. She’d learned early not to show fear or back down, because it only made him worse. The same rule seemed to apply to Coltrain. A weaker personality wouldn’t have lasted in his office one week, much less one year, male or female.

      She knew now that Drew Morris had been doing what he thought was a good deed. Perhaps he’d thought it wouldn’t matter to Coltrain after such a long time to have a Blakely working for him. But he’d obviously underestimated the man. Lou would have realized at once, on the shortest acquaintance, that Coltrain didn’t forgive people.

      He stared at her unblinkingly. “A year. A whole year, being reminded every day I took a breath what your father cost me. There were times when I’d have done anything to make you leave. Just the sight of you was painful.” He smiled wearily. “I think I hated you, at first.”

      That was the last straw. She’d loved him, against her will and all her judgment, and he was telling her that all he saw when he looked at her was an ice woman whose father had betrayed him with the woman he loved. He hated her.

      It was too much all at once. Lou had always had impeccable control over her emotions. It had been dangerous to let her father know that he was hurting her, because he enjoyed hurting her. And now here was the one man she’d ever loved telling her that he hated her because of her father.

      What a surprise it would be for him to learn that her father, at the last, СКАЧАТЬ