Return of Dr Irresistible

It would be better if she knew it in some logical manner that came with charts and graphs. Doctors probably loved charts and graphs!

‘I can’t breathe.’ She probably had caught some awful horse-bite disease. Everything was wrong. Everything.

He let go of her wrist suddenly and grabbed her hips. Half an accelerated heartbeat later she was sitting on the counter in front of him, gasping for air and shaking all over, helpless against the onslaught of tears that swamped her vision and poured down her cheeks.

Reece cupped her cheeks, tilting her head until he had her gaze. So blue. So steady.

He said something. His thumbs stroked her cheeks, wiping away the tears as they poured down. She had no idea what he was saying, calming sounds. Comforting sounds. And they reached her. The tears slowed along with her breathing, and behind them she felt a stampede of embarrassment. And confusion. What the heck had just happened...?

‘That was a panic attack?’ her voice rasped, the raw sound causing a few aftershock hiccups.

He nodded, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her to his chest. Warm. Firm. Right where she’d wanted to be.

‘I’ve had some experience with them.’

It was hard to imagine anything rattling Reece like this. ‘They’re awful,’ she mumbled, drained, ashamed, and wantonly breaking rule number two.

‘Yes, they are.’

She’d stop breaking rule number two in a second, but right now she needed the hug. And with her face hidden by his chest she didn’t have to look him in the eye...

When she didn’t say anything else, he added, ‘They’re your family, and they love Gordy too. They’re not going to make any decisions while you’re getting your injury tended to.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know why... I don’t know what happened. I don’t usually act like a crazy person.’ She swiped her eyes again and pulled away, before she did something even crazier.

It had just been the shock of seeing him again for the first time. But that shock was gone, it couldn’t last forever. So it was done. She willed it to be done and she was the one in control of her emotions...not the other way around. Never again. Focus on one big emotion at a time, that was the key to remaining tethered to her sanity. And right now that one big emotion had to be concern for Gordy. He needed her. She could fall apart later.

Forget that the last time she’d been this scared she’d been sixteen and watching Reece drive away into the world alone, and remember how all the faith she’d put in him—all the worry she’d had for him—had meant nothing. In the end he had been just like her father, who, incidentally, had been good at hugging too.

She should remember all that. If Reece was going to consider her request, it wouldn’t be because he cared so much about them. She had to find another angle. ‘You should finish.’ Because she’d freaked out before they’d got to bandaging.

He nodded, looked at her longer than she was comfortable with him looking, then resumed treatment—dabbing on ointment, placing a couple of rectangles of gauze onto the wound, which he had her hold in place so he could deal with the tape.

‘Don’t worry about this. You’re just wound tight right now. We all are. I’m worried about him too.’ A couple of rips of tape later and he replaced her fingers with white cloth tape, guaranteed to hold even if she should bleed again and get the whole mess wet. ‘If it starts feeling hot or hurting more, tell me.’

‘I know. Antibiotics.’ She pretended he hadn’t said anything about worrying about Gordy. He could turn his worry on and off like a light switch or he didn’t really feel anything. Or Doctor Worry was different from the worry of mortal men who couldn’t worry and fret over loved ones while ignoring them utterly.

‘If I had my kit, I’d start you on them right now,’ he muttered, and smoothed down the last strip of tape. ‘You haven’t got any bigger, have you?’ He squinted at her in a way she could only deem as judgmental.

‘I’m big enough. Not everyone aspires to be a giant’s stunt double.’ Sarcasm: Her Refuge. Her voice-activated ten-foot pole for keeping things away, keeping things from getting to her.

‘I’m not judging. I was considering your weight for prescription purposes.’

‘Oh.’ Okay, so maybe she wasn’t totally done being crazy. But it was easier to jump to a negative conclusion than to think that he cared. He was still here to destroy her everything. Time to go. She slid off the counter on the other side of him and hurried to the door. ‘Lock it when you leave.’ Not waiting for an answer, she took the stairs at a near run.

‘Do you want some pain relievers?’ he called from behind her. She heard the question as the door swung shut but didn’t go back inside to answer him. Pain relievers? Hell, yes, she’d like some. She’d also like some amnesia pills. And she’d like him to take them too and forget the last ten minutes.

Even if the small part of her mind that was currently sane said that no one would put Gordy down without giving her time to say goodbye, she was still more than half-terrified she’d get back to the stables and find him already gone.

* * *

Reece stared at the screen door for several seconds, expecting it to open again and for Jolie to come back for some ibuprofen or something. But she didn’t.

He shook a couple of pills out, laid them on yet another paper towel and folded it around the pills so he could stick them in his pocket. Before the night was over, someone would need them. Possibly him. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that panic attacks were contagious. That he’d somehow given her the one he’d been fighting all evening.

A mess of paper towels and tape littered the counter, so he spent time tidying it up before he left. That was one thing always ground into the circus kids: keep your living area tidy. When it’s small, and on wheels, you had to be as tidy and deferential to everyone else as you could be. And you had to be okay with making things work, even if that meant taking a shower with the garden hose behind the RV because you were on a schedule and all the other showers were occupied. You learned to make the best of things. He could control the physical mess he left behind, and the only speculation he could offer to the emotional devastation he knew he’d leave in his wake? He could only hope that they could make the best of it.

It was their nature. It was her nature.

Three years age difference between them, but circus kids grew up fast. Especially Jolie. When they’d gotten her back, she’d never really been a normal little kid. Always looking over her shoulder. Always afraid something would go wrong. Children learned behavior, like worrying, and she’d learned it then and learned it well.

He’d spent the last ten years trying not to think about what she’d learned by him leaving.

He still didn’t want to think about that, even with it staring him in the face.

His worry for Jolie could cripple him. It certainly would’ve had him running back home to her that first week away at school if he’d so much as let his mother mention her name. It had been his only survival tactic. The only way for him to stay in school had been to quit Jolie cold turkey.

She might be the same size, but she’d changed in other discouraging ways. He’d probably played a part in that. Thirty minutes in her presence had dredged up more questions than just how she was going to handle him closing down the circus.

The show music had stopped a while ago, so Mom was either at her RV or the mess tent. She always liked to eat with everyone. Keightly Circus really did band together as a family, which was the hardest part of shutting it down. They ate together. Off-seasoned together. Raised their children together. The elderly performers even tended to retire to the same places...

He flipped the lock on the doorknob and stepped out, giving it a good pull. Locked up. As requested. Now to find Mom and get more information.

* * *

An hour later, having received the lecture from his mother that Reece had been dodging for a decade, he walked into the stables with two plates and bottles of water.

He found Jolie alone with Gordy, who was now utterly unconscious. A simple cot had been slid into the remaining space in Gordy’s stall and Jolie sat on it, her back to the wall and her legs dangling, eyes fixed on the small white stallion. Though by her glazed look, she wasn’t really looking at Gordy.

Reece knew only too well that you could stare right into your past if left to your own thoughts long enough. Usually at the memories you least needed to focus on. The ones you’d probably be better off forgetting entirely.

Since he’d stepped foot onto the lot, when he’d had any time alone with his thoughts, he got images of his father’s blood, muddying the sawdust and sand in the ring...

‘What are you doing? You look sick. Is the food really that bad?’ Jolie’s voice cut through his haze. Thinking too hard was contagious too...

‘It’s fine. I’m fine. Brought dinner. Thought you might be hungry and I’d like to know what the vet said.’ He nodded toward the cot—it was big enough for both of them to sit on without touching each other, provided it stood the weight. ‘You mind?’

A suspicious squint answered him, but that was better than the panic earlier. Her green eyes still had that glassy look, like emotion wasn’t too far beneath the surface. She was the first to look away, but she held up her good hand for the plate, freeing one of his so he could fish the water bottles from his pockets before he sat. ‘So?’

‘He said front-leg breaks are worse than back, which aside from his circulation issues... I don’t really understand.’ She rested the plate on her thigh, freeing her hands to shuffle the water bottle off to the other side. It must still be hurting. ‘Not sure if he means that they happen more frequently or if they are harder to splint, harder to heal, harder on the horse, or if it’s Gordy-specific...’ She gestured to the new harness on Gordy with the toe of her boot. ‘But that sling is more comfy and it’s not bound by notches. They got it perfectly seated. Mack said it’s possible he twisted something inside when he fell, so it was good that we got him on his feet so fast. They couldn’t feel anything when palpating his belly, but he was out of it by then and couldn’t have told them it hurt even if the pain was blistering.’

‘Prognosis?’ He looked at the food, not able to bring himself to take a bite yet. She hadn’t either, even if she was using her feet to gesture so her hands could keep hold of her dinner. Well, hand. She wasn’t using the injured arm for anything but keeping her water tucked against her thigh.

‘Oh...’ She breathed the word, her tone confirming the worst, and that she wouldn’t agree with it until forced to. ‘He said it’s rough... We would try...’

But.

She didn’t actually say it but he still heard it.

He put his bottle down, fished the pills from his pocket and placed them beside her leg. ‘Anti-inflammatories,’ he murmured, leaving her to take them or not, and went back to the conversation about Gordy. ‘So what’s the next step?’

‘Sit with him. Keep him comfortable. Watch for signs of colic.’ She took the pills. ‘And I have both pain medicine and tranquilizers to inject if he gets worse.’

‘You did really well with the tranquilizer earlier. Hit the vein the first time. Did you take courses on animal care too?’

‘No, I learned to care for people, but I’ve given injections and done blood draws on the horses before. And I read. A lot.’

He remembered that. She read anything zoological in nature, didn’t matter if it dealt with the horses and dogs that were in the show or wild animals, which had not been in the show since her twice great-grandfather had been mauled by a lion during an act. The circus was always dangerous, but it had got a little less dangerous when they’d got back to their roots and away from the exotic-animal fad popular from the Victorian era.

‘Thank you for dinner.’

He kept his eyes on the food, but not looking at her didn’t keep memories at bay. He made himself eat. It would be a long night, as he had every intention of spending it here at her side. ‘You’re welcome.’ He looked at her again. Dammit.

The wild auburn curls had been worked into some kind of fancy braid so he could see her clearly even in the dim light of the stable. Still the prettiest girl he’d ever seen in the flesh. Even prettier than when he’d left. She might have cried again since she’d left her trailer—her wide-set green eyes looked bigger, glassy, and heartbroken. There was a little crease between her brows that said she frowned more than she should, and even now, with her expression mostly blank, the shadow of that unhappy crease remained.

‘I know it’s not the right time for this, but I wanted to apologize,’ Reece said, feeling his way through the words as he went.

‘For leaving us?’

CHAPTER THREE

NO. HE COULDN’T apologize for that. ‘For...’ He looked at her again and drew a deep breath. ‘I mean about the circus. About what I’m here to do. I know it’s not what you want, but I want to help you get settled wherever you want to go after Keightly.’

‘I don’t want to go anywhere else,’ she said.

None of them did. He was the bad guy in this, but for the right reasons. One day she’d see that. ‘I know you don’t.’

She put the untouched plate aside and turned on the cot to face him. ‘Listen. I didn’t expect to see you tonight. Actually, I didn’t think I’d see you at all until Ginny and Mack’s wedding. And what happened to Gordy...I had a plan for how it should go when you came to the farm. What I wanted to say... But it sort of evaporated when I freaked out.’

She had a plan? She had pictured him coming back and it didn’t involve being a crazy woman? ‘Don’t say you wanted to talk me out of closing.’

‘I was going to ask you to work with me and change what we do. No more traveling circus, a new future.’

That sounded an awful lot like ‘Please don’t close’.

‘There is no future for Keightly, Jolie. This isn’t just about me and what I want to do with my life. It’s dangerous. Especially with people getting older, it’s getting more dangerous for them. Gordy is an old-timer and—’

‘He’s not an old-timer,’ she cut in, the flash of her eyes telling him that the crazy woman might be about to make a reappearance if he didn’t watch out. ‘He’s twenty-eight. Miniature horses live much longer than big horses, and we have some big horses on the farm that are over thirty-five. Gordy is firmly middle-aged.’

She was still afraid someone was going to announce plans to euthanize the little guy. ‘Not what I’m getting at.’

‘Number one, the big-spectacle acts, the ones that are the most dangerous, aren’t done by the core troupe any more. We get contracts for the headliners—fliers. We had a Russian bar act a couple years ago. But just because the core group is getting older doesn’t mean that they want to give up the life.’

‘I know they don’t want—’

‘Number two.’ She held up two fingers, silencing him. ‘I don’t want to keep the circus on the road. I don’t even want to keep it a circus.’

‘Not keep it a circus?’ His headache was increasing. ‘Stop counting lists of supporting...whatever, and tell me what you want to do with Keightly.’

‘I want to make a circus camp,’ Jolie said, her voice softening. ‘At the farm.’

‘A circus camp.’

‘The older performers can still teach. I’m proof of that. Just because I don’t perform any more doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do things. I can be the demonstration, they can instruct, and we can make sure to...to...’ Her hands flew up, a gesture he knew was meant to summon some word that had temporarily eluded her, and which had always been his cue to finish her thought when her mouth got ahead of her. Not that he could do that any more.

‘Circuses are dying.’ She abandoned that train of thought and started again. ‘They’re dying out. There were probably thousands in North America, now how many are left? How many close every year? How long before these art forms are no longer even remembered? Sooner, if we don’t teach them to children and pass on our knowledge. Plus, we’re only half an hour from Atlanta, and people love Keightly in this part of Georgia. They’d love to send their children to circus camp in the summer. Physical activity, fun, a day camp while their parents work. And for the rest of the year we could do the circus-school thing for older kids. Like high school and college age, those who are at their most fit and can best handle the rigors.’

‘Wait.’ He lifted a hand to rub his forehead, a headache blazing to life dead center behind his eyes. It wasn’t exactly asking him to keep things going as they were, and while he appreciated that... ‘You make good points. All your points are good, but Mom is done with running things. She’s said so over and over again and that’s why I’m here. But I don’t have time to devote to co-running a circus camp. I have a practice to build and run.’

‘I’m not asking Ginny or you to run anything. I’m offering. I will run it. I can do it. I’m not a little girl any more.’ It wasn’t that she didn’t like being told no, she just wouldn’t be told no about this. Her fingers twitched then drummed against her legs, trying to calm her indignation. ‘You do whatever it is you want, focus on your practice. Ginny can retire and participate however much or little she wants to.’

‘My name is on it, this is my equipment, I’ll have to take a hand in it. Plus, there’s also no way I want to subject children to that kind of danger.’

‘I wouldn’t just welcome them and throw them on the trapeze without a net,’ Jolie said, and then winced, realizing how badly chosen her words had been for him. ‘We’d be safe. Start slow. Probably start with simple tumbling for children without any gymnastic experience. And it’s not all acrobatics. You know as well as anyone that there are a blue million different disciplines within the circus that don’t even approach performance. Including costume design, set designs, tending animals...’

‘People like you who don’t perform any more.’

‘Right.’ She stopped looking him in the eye, shifting her gaze back to the sleeping Gordy.

Because she’d basically told him to stuff it earlier when he’d asked why she hadn’t been dressed to perform. He couldn’t tell if she didn’t want to talk about that or if she just didn’t want to talk about it with him. Screw it, he wanted to know! If it was another of his sins, he had to know so he could fix it. ‘When did you stop?’

‘I stopped when you did.’

His stomach lurched. ‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘I just did.’

‘You had to have had a reason. You loved it...’

She shrugged again. ‘I didn’t want to any more.’

‘Jolie—’

‘I still practice, do different things, it’s a good way to keep in shape. I don’t do the trick-riding, but I figure the rest of the Bohannons have that market cornered anyway.’

She didn’t cast blame on him, and that was something he should be thankful for. What could he say if she brought up his past sins? And why was he digging into her history and motivations when he really didn’t want her digging into his? Because he was an idiot. Because he couldn’t know her without wanting to know every single thing about her.

Because he couldn’t say no to her, which was why he had stayed as far away as he’d been able to.

And it was because he couldn’t say no to her that he had to get out of there now. Bad plan to stay with her. ‘Are you going to be all right here on your own tonight?’

‘Yes. Someone will come and try to relieve me in a few hours.’ She looked him fully in the eye again, somehow managing to look even smaller on the cot beside the unconscious horse. ‘Will you at least think about it?’

He knew what he thought about it. He thought—no, he knew—it was a bad idea. No matter how badly she wanted it.

‘Please? Give me some time to show you how it can be. After Gordy is stable enough that he doesn’t need me round the clock? After we relocate to the farm?’

After her arm healed? After he told her he had a probable buyer for all the equipment?

He stretched to buy a few seconds in the vain hope the right words would appear, present him some way to let her down easily, but his words were as elusive as hers had been. ‘Okay. I’ll wait until we’ve settled at the farm, see what everyone else thinks about the idea. Weigh the pros and cons...’

She breathed out slowly, in what he could only term as relief, and leaned back against the wall. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but could you also stay away from me for a few days?’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Because if you’re around, I’ll just keep wanting to ask you to do it, and then—’ She stopped suddenly, her cheeks flaring pink. ‘Well, not do it, obviously, because that would be stupid. Obviously.’ She was repeating herself so she stopped, shook her head, and then tried again. ‘I wasn’t talking about sex. Obviously.’

If she said ‘obviously’ again...

‘We don’t...not sex. I wasn’t talking about doing that. Hah.’ She shook her head. The more she tap-danced around, trying to clarify, the worse it got. ‘I meant doing...the camp. I would keep asking you to do the camp...’ A great sigh came from her and she stopped talking. Finally. Without more obviouslys.

‘Sure,’ he said, working to keep his voice normal. Unaffected. ‘I can give you space. You should sleep. Mom’s got my number if you think the bite’s growing infected. I need to go take care of some things anyway.’ He walked out.

He had important things to do, like locating his backbone before he just said yes to whatever she wanted to keep from letting her—and everyone else—down.

It was like that. The reason he didn’t want them in the circus any more? He didn’t want any one hurt. Any kind of hurt. But physical hurt—which could kill—had to trump emotional hurt. The emotional hurt just made you feel like you were dying.

They would acclimate to life off the road and outside the circus, he reminded himself yet again. And if they couldn’t, he’d help them find new homes. Somewhere he could stop worrying about them. Somewhere someone else would have to take responsibility when luck turned and those death-defying feats could no longer defy.

Since the second his father had died, that responsibility had passed to him, and even when he hadn’t actively been with the circus, he’d felt it. Oh, he’d ignored the hell out of it, but now that he could no longer do that he felt the weight of every life in his hands. And it was about damned time he used those hands to shield them.

He was a man now, not a boy to be shushed and ignored.

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