Ann Evans - Home To Family

“Thirty thousand! Damn, I knew I went into the wrong field of medicine.” He spotted his brother Nick in a corner alcove and was shocked to see him nuzzling the neck of his wife, whose eyes were closed in pure delight. That kind of behavior from Nick surprised him. “I see my big brother’s gotten drunk.”

“What makes you say that?” Leslie asked, with a frown in her voice.

“He’d die before indulging in a public display of affection.”

Leslie glance back at him, laughing. “He’s in love, silly.”

Conceding that love made people do crazy things, Matt moved on, catching sight of his sister talking to a tall, handsome fellow he didn’t recognize. Most of the men inside wore casual clothes, but this guy had on a suit that hadn’t come off any department-store rack. Neither of Matt’s parents had mentioned a new man in Adriana’s life.

“Who’s the blond Romeo talking to Addy? He’s better-looking than Stacey Merrick.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

“Don’t tell me he’s the new man in her life.”

“No.” Again, she looked back over her shoulder at him. This time, she smiled broadly. “Actually, he’s the new man in my life. Perry Jamison.”

He couldn’t help jerking upright suddenly. In the old days, Leslie had hardly dated, and when he thought of her recently, for some reason he never envisioned her with anyone. He shook his head. “He’s not your date.”

She scowled at him. “Why? Don’t you think I can attract someone that good-looking?”

She sounded a little hurt, and Matt realized he’d made a mistake.

“Of course you can,” he said quickly. He lifted a strand of dark hair off her shoulder, rubbing it between his fingers. It felt like silk. “I just meant he doesn’t strike me as your type.”

“I don’t have a type.”

“Sure you do,” Matt told her with a smile. “Every woman is drawn to a man for very specific reasons. Whether or not she understands exactly what those reasons are…” He jerked his head toward the window. “So what’s he offering?”

“He’s attentive and treats me well. Comes from one of the founding families of Colorado—”

“God, a blueblood.”

“Good breeding is important.”

“If you’re a poodle at the Westminster Kennel Club.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “He’s confident. Has money. Power—”

“But you’re not completely sold on him yet.”

“What makes you think that?” she asked sharply, her head tilting to give him a close look.

“Because if you were, you’d be in there by his side instead of out here keeping me company.”

He let go of her hair, swinging his gaze back to the parlor. The guy laughed at something Addy said. Matt recognized that sort of false, patronizing good humor, the kind of focused attention that most women seemed to crave. He’d used that trick often enough himself.

“What’s the matter?” Leslie asked.

He realized he was frowning, but frankly he was disappointed at Leslie’s choice. “You can do better than that pompous ass.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed. “You don’t even know him.”

“I know him all right. And I don’t like him.”

“Well, I do,” she said stubbornly. “And you don’t get a vote.”

“C’mon, Les. Look at the arrogance in his stance, the superior way he tilts his head, as though Addy’s requested an audience with a king. You can just tell that he thinks he’s someone special. God’s gift to the world.”

She made an annoyed sound, though he could tell she wasn’t really angry. “Oh, now I get it. You’re afraid he’ll take that title away from you.”

“If I was, I promise you, I’m not anymore.”

His response stunned him. He didn’t like the way those words came out, slightly bitter and angry-sounding. He felt every muscle in his body tense. When Les’s smile faded and her posture went rigid, he knew she’d heard it as well.

“Matt—”

“Sorry,” he said, hoping to keep her from saying anything he didn’t want to hear. “I didn’t intend to kill the mood.”

Before he could stop her, she lifted his left hand and tilted it toward the light.

Sometimes that hand seemed like a foreign object to him now. A part of him, and yet not. It wasn’t misshapen or repulsive, really. Some unattractive scars where the bullet had entered and exited. A network of stitch marks from the last surgery that had excised scar tissue bogging down the tendons. Most of the damage couldn’t be seen.

Leslie turned his hand over a couple of times, looking at it closely, like a mother inspecting a messy kid before he sat down at the dinner table. “How bad is it?” she asked in a soft voice. “Really?”

He considered lying. He didn’t want to discuss it, not even with Les. But she knew him too well, and because she was a nurse, she’d probably know if he tried to down play it.

Still, he shrugged, trying to sound as if he didn’t spend nearly every night wondering how the hell he was going to reinvent a medical career that depended on the most subtle dexterity of both his hands.

“The flexor tendons are still totally screwed,” he told her on a ragged breath, in a voice he hardly recognized. “There’s triggering in both the middle and forefinger so that there’s a sixty percent loss of flexibility.”

She looked up at him. “Cortisone injections?”

“Back in the beginning.”

“Therapy?”

He gave her a grim smile. “I’ve had some progress since the immobilization cast came off. The ring finger used to be completely locked so I had to straighten it by force, but that’s getting better.” He shook his head. “It could have been much worse, I suppose, but you know as well as I do what the ramifications will be if I can’t get significant mobility back.”

Les shook her head at him. “I wish you’d have let me come to Chicago to help you. Doc would have given me the extra time off, and I know I could have made a difference.”

That was the last thing he had wanted—Les or his family seeing him at his worst. “I had the whole hospital helping me,” he told her. “There’s nothing you could have done for me that wasn’t already being done.”

“I’m not talking about just the physical help,” she said. “I know how to make you do what’s best for you. How to keep you on the straight and narrow when all you want to do is slack off.”

He knew that was true. Les had always been the practical one, the one who never let him get away with anything. But the thought of her witnessing his weakness, his struggle…. In their relationship, he was the one who had always been strong.

“It wasn’t a good time,” he admitted. “I wasn’t someone anyone liked to be around, and I would never subject you to the person I was during all those months of recuperation.”

It wasn’t just the poor lighting. She looked stunned. He realized that, before this moment, she hadn’t had a clue how serious this injury was for a man who’d been touted in a medical magazine last winter as one of country’s rising stars of microsurgery. No reason why she should have known, he supposed. God knows, he hadn’t shared much of this with his parents, who already had enough to worry about with running the lodge.

Lost in the private misery of his own thoughts, he wasn’t prepared for Les’s reaction.

Cradling his hand in hers, she bent her head, touching her lips to the center of his palm. Spellbound, he could do nothing more than watch her, every nerve in his body tingling. In all the years of their unique history together, they’d never shared this kind of deliberately intimate moment before. Not once. Not even on that cold January night so long ago.

He felt a sweet sense of expansion in his chest, and a piercing alarm, all at once. He might even have reached out with his good hand to stroke her hair.