Page 34 of Rescuing Dr. Marian
Trace tilted his chin up at Foster and then gestured for me to join them. “Listen, why don’t the two of you head back to SERA and get cleaned up? I’ll review this morning’s case with the students and quiz everyone on it after lunch. It’ll give you plenty of time to get back here for the drill.” He handed Foster a set of car keys.
Foster nodded silently and handed Chickie’s leash over to one of his students before heading toward a large black pickuptruck with a SERA logo on the side. I fell in line behind him and climbed up into the passenger seat. Instead of speaking, I lowered the window and focused on drinking my water and inhaling the fresh mountain air as Foster drove out of the trailhead parking lot.
Long minutes passed in silence as tense as a long shift during a mass casualty event. The truck cab felt suffocating despite the open windows.
Screw this, I finally decided.
“What happened to being professional?” I snapped. “Trace says we worked well as a team, and you scoffed? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You were distracted on the way down.”
I stared at him. “Distracted? I was trying to keep my patient alive while dangling from a fucking rope!”
“Can’t have distractions when lives are on the line.”
The words stung because they carried a grain of truth. I had been distracted—by the way his muscles flexed as he worked the ropes, by the memory of those same hands touching me in Hawaii, by the growing frustration of being treated like a stranger despite our obvious chemistry. But it hadn’t been on the way down.
At every moment of our rescue, I had focused on the patient and doing the job to the utmost of my ability. How dare he call my professionalism into question.
“Name one thing I did wrong.” My voice sounded low and accusatory.
He hesitated but persevered. “You were staring at my ass while I was rigging anchors.”
Heat flooded my face because he wasn’t wrong. “I was observing your technique as I approached the scene!”
“Bullshit.” He stared at the road with nostrils flaring and his jaw clenching. “Look, I get it. You’re having your little experiment, but some of us are here to work.”
“Experiment?” The word came out strangled. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Married guys looking for some action on the side,” he said without looking at me. “I’m not interested in being someone’s dirty little secret.”
I stared at him, my brain struggling to process what he’d just said. It snagged on one word. “Married?”
“Don’t play dumb, Tommy. I was there, remember?” He pulled the truck into the lot by our cabin and shifted into Park before throwing the door open and striding toward our cabin.
I stumbled after him, legs shaky from the adrenaline crash and low blood sugar. “What?”
“Married, asshole!” The words exploded out of him as he yanked the cabin door open. “As in, you makingvowsto the woman who was wearing the Bride sash while standing next to you in that lobby. Ring a bell?”
My world tilted sideways. All this time, all the cold shoulders and professional distance—he thought I was married. He thought I’d kissed him while engaged to someone else… and then married her anyway.
“Foster,” I said slowly, my voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t get married.”
He went very still, shoulders rigid. “What?”
“I called off the wedding. That morning, after—” Iswallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. “Kari gave me an ultimatum—marry her that day, or we were done. I chose done. I thought you knew.”
The silence stretched between us, broken only by the distant sounds of birds in the trees through the cabin’s open windows. Foster’s face went through a series of expressions—confusion, disbelief, and something that might have been hope before he seemed to catch himself.
His hands slowly unclenched. “You called it off.”
“Yes.”
Foster’s breath came out in a rush. “Jesus, Tommy.” He raked both hands through his hair, pacing to the window and back. “All this time, I thought?—”
“I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t let me explain?—”
“You tried to tell me?” His voice cracked. “When?”
