“My patients don’t think its OK to invade my personal time.” His words weren’t anything he hadn’t said a hundred times be
fore, but tonight each one seemed to penetrate Melissa.
“What would you have me do? Tell Wilma to grow up? That death is a part of life and to just deal with it?” Anger pierced her questions. “The woman found her husband crushed, cut to pieces, held him while he died. Give her a break if she was half-hysterical with grief and I refused to leave her until I knew she was going to be OK.”
Death was a part of life and a person did just have to deal with it.
James knew that better than anyone. He did his damnedest every day to cheat death, and still memories of the lives he had failed to save haunted him. Cailee, his baby sister, in particular. Oh, yeah, death was a part of life, and he had dealt with it, but that didn’t mean he ever saw a baby without remembering the three-month-old sister he hadn’t been able to save.
Closing his mind to the past, he took a sip of his lukewarm beer. “You’re right. I’m just frustrated that yet again we missed out on spending the evening together.”
He patted his lounge chair, indicating he wanted her to sit with him.
Melissa’s anger evaporated as quickly as it had appeared and she settled between his legs, her back pressed against his chest.
He wrapped his arms around her, breathing in her warm fragrance, wishing he could snap back to the beginning when she’d rushed home to him every night, when he’d been able to look at her and know he put the glow on her face.
She snuggled closer. God, she’d lost more weight than he’d realized. He’d only stayed in Nashville for two nights. Hadn’t she eaten while he’d been gone?
He removed the band holding her hair and dropped it onto the deck. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders like a silky curtain. James inhaled the scent of her shampoo. His body stirred against her bottom pressed enticingly into the V of his legs.
She placed her hands over his and squeezed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t home when you got here,” she softly apologized.
“Me, too.” Because it was the catalyst that had pushed him into making a hard decision.
If he wanted the magic back, he had to make it happen.
She relaxed against him, running her palms over his denim-covered thighs in a caress. “This is nice.”
It was nice. And long overdue. Too much work and too little time was hard on any relationship. Theirs was no exception. He needed to pressure her to quit this country craziness and relocate to a job that wouldn’t demand so much from her soul.
“I’m moving out tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TWO
MELISSA stiffened, her life flashing before her much as she imagined it did prior to death. She had to have heard wrong. She twisted and their gazes met in the failing light.
“What did you say?”
James’s eyes appeared almost midnight-black, but they held steady. “I’m moving to Nashville.”
The words pelted her heart like chunks of hail through rusty tin. He was leaving?
Shocked, hurt, reeling, she scooted out of his embrace. How could he hold her and tell her he was dumping her in the same breath?
He couldn’t be dumping her.
“You’re breaking up with me?” The question sounded so high schoolish, but she didn’t know how else to take his words.
“I think we need some space apart.”
Space needed. The kiss of death for any relationship.
“You’ve met someone, haven’t you?” She ached at the thought, but why else would he suddenly decide to move out?
“That isn’t it.”
“Then what is?”