Victoria Pade - Back in the Bachelor's Arms

She still had the straightest nose. The most luscious pink lips. And despite the fact that he couldn’t see them because she was looking down at the bed, he had no doubt she also still had the biggest, bluest eyes….

No, those fourteen years hadn’t harmed her any. They’d only made better what he’d thought was perfect before.

Damn it.

And just like that Reid flashed back to one of the last times he’d seen Chloe Carmichael—the beginning of the end for them….

It had been a night in early summer, in the front yard of that house that would be his and his brother’s very soon. The house he and his mother and the town minister had been thrown out of. The house he’d been banned from. The house Chloe Carmichael had had to sneak out of to talk to him.

The memory was so vivid. The memory of cupping the soft skin of her beautiful face between his hands. Of kissing warm lips and tasting the salt of the tears that had brimmed from those eyes.

“I don’t care what they say, this isn’t the end of us. It’s only the beginning. I’ll make sure of it,” he’d told her that night.

Big words. A lot of bravado. All for nothing.

Nothing but misery.

“What are you doing?” the nurse’s voice intruded again. “I thought you wanted to get this over with so we could go home. But here you are. Are your feet glued to the floor or what?”

Reid didn’t respond as the nurse entered the center of the fishbowl to do the paperwork that went with the release of the college girl.

He merely continued staring across the distance at the patient he was supposed to see. The patient who wasn’t just another patient.

The patient who was Chloe Carmichael.

And it astounded him suddenly that that was all it took—her name, a glimpse of her, knowing he was about to come face-to-face with her again—to make old feelings spring to the surface.

Old, ugly feelings.

Red-hot anger.

And plenty of it.

Even after all these years…

“Dr. Walker will be in to see you soon….”

The nurse’s words rang in Chloe Carmichael’s ears as she nervously plucked the hospital bedcovers into pyramids.

Dr. Walker…

She wanted to hope that the Dr. Walker who was to examine her was from a different Walker family than the one she’d known growing up. The Walker family who had been her neighbors. Her friends. One of them more than just her friend.

But what were the odds that the Dr. Walker she was slated to see was a different Walker than the Walkers she’d known?

Not great, she thought.

At least the Walker family she was familiar with had been a big one. Five kids—Reid, Luke, Ad, Ben and Cassie. Cassie—the one girl.

Maybe I’ll luck out and Dr. Walker is Cassie Walker—a woman doctor. All the better…

But while Chloe wouldn’t be thrilled with being examined by Luke, Ad or Ben if one of them was the Walker who had become a doctor, she just hoped it wasn’t Reid.

Please don’t let it be Reid…

It was bad enough to be back in Northbridge, let alone in the emergency room there. But to be waiting for a doctor who might be Reid?

Just please, please, don’t let it be Reid…

Northbridge and Reid.

The place she was afraid she could never come to again without feeling embarrassed and ashamed.

And the man who had grown from the boy she’d had to hurt.

Northbridge and Reid Walker and shame and embarrassment and pain and remorse—no, not a chapter in her life she wanted to revisit.

And she hadn’t thought she would have to.

When her parents had been killed in a boating accident eleven months earlier, Chloe had inherited the house they’d all lived in in Northbridge. The house her parents had employed a Realtor to rent out since they’d all hurriedly left the small town.

But Chloe hadn’t wanted any part of anything connected to Northbridge or her past and so, after considering the financial aspects of selling the place, she’d finally decided to do it.

The same Realtor who had handled the house as a rental property had put the place up for sale, assuring Chloe that selling the old house could be accomplished without Chloe’s personal appearance in town. Which had been the plan.

But once the Realtor had buyers, she’d called.

There was some furniture, some clothes, some Carmichael belongings packed in boxes in the attic. Did Chloe want it all sent to her?

Chloe had considered it. She’d even looked into the cost of having it brought—sight unseen—to Arizona. But the cost was substantial and since she was unsure what she would want to keep and what she would merely throw away, it seemed unwise to bring everything to Tucson only to toss it out there. She needed to go through the things herself before paying to have anything shipped to her.

So she’d resigned herself to making this trip. She’d intended to slip into Northbridge, do what needed to be done at the house and slip out again, not attending the closing. No more than a few people would ever know she had been back where the events of fourteen years ago had been the talk of the town.

But now here she was, brought in by a police officer, her rental car in need of towing after being smashed into a pole. That was a commotion that would never go unnoticed in Northbridge. That was a story that would be told. And repeated. And repeated. Along with the fact that Chloe Carmichael had been behind the wheel.

That was certainly not slipping quietly in and out of Northbridge’s back door.

Best-laid plans…

The curtain that was pulled most of the way around the bed opened just then and Chloe’s eyes shot from the pyramided covers to the person who had thrown it wide.

She didn’t need to read his hospital badge to know who he was, even though he’d changed considerably since she’d last seen him. She would have recognized those staggeringly handsome features anywhere. After all, the younger version of them had materialized in her mind’s eye more times than she could count in the last fourteen years.

“Reid,” she whispered more to herself than in greeting.

He took it as a greeting, though, and responded in kind, “Chloe.”

Well, maybe in kind wasn’t exactly accurate. There was nothing kind in that single utterance of her name. Clearly Reid Walker wasn’t any happier to see her than she was to see him. In fact, if the grim expression on his face and the cutting tone of his voice were any indication, he was even more unhappy than she was. More than unhappy, actually. He seemed ticked off, disgusted, put out and all-round disgruntled.

Probably no more than she should have expected.

Chloe took a deep breath and tried to make the best of a bad situation. “It is you. The nurse said Dr. Walker would be in and I wondered if maybe Cassie or one of your brothers had ended up going to medical school. Or if it was you. Apparently it was you…”

“Apparently.”

Snide. Sarcastic. Downright nasty.

This was not going to be nice.

His gaze dropped to the chart he held in his hands but Chloe had the sense that more than studying whatever was written on it, he just couldn’t stand to look at her.

“Single?” he said after a moment, obviously reading what she’d marked on the papers she’d filled out. “Is there anybody you want notified of the accident? I know your parents are gone—”

“I appreciated the flowers and sympathy card your mom sent. I wondered how she knew—”

“The newspaper ran a small article,” he explained curtly, still looking only at her chart and wasting no time going back to what he’d been saying. “Is there anyone else you want notified of the accident or asked to come here to be with you? Friends? Other family? A boyfriend or fiancé?”

Was he being persistent about that as a matter of course or was he trying to find out if she was unattached?