Back in the Bachelor's Arms. Victoria Pade

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      “The seat belt unsnapped itself before the accident ever happened. I’d had to take it off. I guess it was lucky the air bag came up when it did.”

      “Then we don’t need to worry about injury from the seat belt, do we?”

      More sarcasm before the unpleasant physician continued outlining the exam he would need to perform on her.

      “I’ll listen to your abdomen with the stethoscope, apply some pressure to see if that causes you pain you might not otherwise be aware of, listen to your heart and lungs. I can do everything on the outside of the gown and I’ll be as hands-off as possible. Believe me, I’ll be as hands-off as possible.”

      Because he didn’t want to touch her.

      And she didn’t want him to touch her.

      Did she?

      Of course she didn’t.

      So why was it so insulting that he seemed to abhor the idea?

      It just was, that’s all. But Chloe tamped down on that to deal with what she was being forced to deal with. “And it won’t take long?” she asked.

      “Not one split second longer than it has to.”

      So not only didn’t he want to touch her, he didn’t want anything between them prolonged either—that was the message he was relaying.

      “Okay,” Chloe conceded reluctantly.

      “Shall I go or stay?” the confused-sounding nurse asked then.

      “Stay!” both Chloe and Reid said at the same time.

      Then Reid added, “Definitely stay.”

      As he went to the nearby sink and washed his hands the nurse stepped to the side of the bed, smiling reassuringly but still appearing as if she didn’t understand what was going on.

      But then she’d already told Chloe that she was new in town. Which meant that she likely didn’t know that once upon a time Chloe and Reid had been teenagers madly in love with each other.

      Until Chloe had turned up pregnant.

      And all hell had broken loose.

      Chapter Two

      Monday morning came to life with a clear blue sky full of sunshine falling on more than two feet of pristine white snow. And Reid was there to see it all because he was awake and out of bed and watching the day break as he stood at the picture window in the living room of the house he and Luke owned together and shared. Directly across the street from the Carmichael house they were about to buy.

      But it wasn’t the sunrise or the snow that was on Reid’s mind at that early hour. It was Chloe Carmichael and himself and the past and the present and what a mess everything seemed to have turned into again in the blink of an eye.

      It was also the fact that he knew he’d earned a swift kick in the ass for his behavior the night before.

      Fourteen years ago Chloe Carmichael, together with her parents, had taught him a harsh lesson in frustration and helplessness.

      But fourteen years was a long time. And in the early hours of the morning, once his unreasonable anger had subsided somewhat, he’d decided he wasn’t proud of the way he’d acted the previous evening. And he definitely wasn’t proud of the way he’d treated Chloe professionally.

      In fact, while behaving like a scorned adolescent was dumb, not doing what he should have as a doctor was inexcusable.

      Okay, so he didn’t think that he’d missed anything during the exam or that Chloe actually had been more hurt than she’d seemed to be. He’d seen enough accident victims to recognize the difference between severe injuries and minor ones like the scrapes on her arms and the bruise on her leg.

      But still, he’d gone about the examination at the same inept level he’d gone about his very first patient exam in medical school—he’d been as reluctant to actually put his hands on her as some rookie.

      It was just that touching Chloe even slightly had shot him back to a time when touching her, kissing her, holding her, had been almost the only things he’d ever thought about. It hadn’t been something he could do professionally—medically—without remembering that. Without reliving it.

      Without wanting even now to do more of it. In a private setting. And in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with his job.

      Inexcusable, unacceptable, unwarranted and inappropriate.

      And it sure as hell wasn’t the kind of physician he was. Any more than being a surly SOB was the kind of man he was.

      Which led him to the conclusion that this had to be fixed.

      Not that he was looking to be overly friendly toward Chloe Carmichael at this juncture. Or to rekindle anything. He’d done his damnedest to do the right thing fourteen years ago and it had blown up in his face; he didn’t want to get into anything with her again now.

      But as long as she was in Northbridge, as long as he was in the situation he’d discovered when he’d arrived home last night, he’d rather have a temporary coexistence with Chloe that was amicable. And in order for it to be amicable, he knew he had to rise above his old wounds and make the best of things as they were right now.

      “Hey. What’re you doing up so early?”

      Reid’s brother surprised him from behind and Reid turned to find Luke obviously just out of bed, padding in on bare feet from the bedrooms down the hall.

      “You won’t believe it when I tell you,” Reid responded, leaning one shoulder against the cold glass.

      “The snow? It was falling before I went to sleep,” Luke said with a nod towards the big plate glass window that was bracing Reid’s weight.

      “Not the snow. What the snow brought in with it.”

      “Yeah? What did the snow bring in with it?” Luke asked.

      “Chloe Carmichael,” Reid said as if he were dropping a bomb.

      Bomb enough to wake up Luke. His eyes opened wide beneath arched brows and for a moment he was gape-jawed before he said, “Chloe Carmichael? She’s here? In Northbridge?”

      Reid inclined his head at the window, too. “Not only in Northbridge. She’s across the street. Apparently staying at the house.”

      Luke grimaced and let out an expletive as he joined Reid to look out at their soon-to-be rental property.

      If Luke had been expecting to see signs of Chloe he was disappointed. There weren’t any to see. Which prompted him to say, “How do you know?”

      “She ended up in my emergency room at midnight after hitting a telephone pole.”

      “Was she hurt?”

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