something, but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say to this woman who was so clearly in need of...something. She was messed up, and that was putting it mildly.
It didn’t concern him. Wasn’t his problem. And yet...Noelle would have wanted him to do whatever he could to ease her twin’s transition to life back in San Amaro. He was fairly certain Rachel had no one to talk to, no real friends now that her sister was gone. She seemed to need someone. And maybe it was the part inside of him that made him a rescuer, but, Noelle’s wish or not, he wanted to somehow help Rachel cope.
* * *
RACHEL FOCUSED ALL HER energy on even, unhurried steps all the way to the car. Cale hadn’t gotten to her. The meeting hadn’t gotten to her. Nothing could get to her unless she allowed it to.
Yeah, she couldn’t even convince herself of that this time.
She got in the car and pulled the door shut, ensuring her touch was gentle in an effort not to slam it. Sucking in a slow, measured breath, she put the keys in the ignition and started the engine. She calmly pulled the gear stick into Reverse and got the hell out of the well-lit library parking lot and away from Cale.
For the duration of the drive home, she worked to compose herself. The lump in her throat grew so big as she tried to block out everything Cale had said that it caused her pulse to pound in her temples. She could no longer breathe, couldn’t swallow. God...she couldn’t stand this.
She lowered her window and the cool wind that rushed at her helped a little. When she finally was able to inhale again, it was a shaky, shallow breath. As she exhaled, she pounded her fist on the steering wheel.
She was not going to succumb to tears. Not. Going. To. Cry.
In the year and a half since that awful night, she’d not lost it yet. Had not had a single crying jag—and she wasn’t about to give in now. Because Rachel was pretty damn certain that if she weakened for an instant and let the first tear fall, she would never, ever be able to stop.
CHAPTER FIVE
RACHEL’S HEAD WAS still spinning Saturday morning from her mother’s frantic departure—to play eighteen holes of golf, of all things—when her brother, Sawyer, sauntered through the back door.
“Another day off?” she asked from her perch on the kitchen counter, where she was eating a gourmet ham and three-cheese omelet her mom had whipped up. “I wanna be a surgeon when I grow up.”
“You wouldn’t be tall enough to reach the operating table, shorty.” Sawyer winked and tossed his keys on the table. He opened the refrigerator to hunt down some food. The way he ate, he should have weighed four hundred pounds.
“I came to finish up the garage from hell. Only made it about halfway through the other day. What’s up with you? Just get off work?” he asked, eyeing her scrubs.
“No. These have just permanently melded with my skin, so I don’t need to worry about changing clothes anymore.”
He nodded knowingly. “How was the night in the E.R.? Busy?”
“Extraordinarily slow until about five a.m. Now I’m so keyed up I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Good thing you can run on no sleep, just like Mom. Where’d she run off to, anyway? I saw her tearing around the corner in her car.”
Rachel jabbed a bite of omelet with her fork and shook her head. “The woman I used to know as my mother was on her way to play golf.”
Sawyer emerged from his refrigerator search with a fat carrot. As he noisily crunched a bite off, Rachel couldn’t help laughing to herself at the boyish image he presented. No one would ever guess he was a brilliant surgeon who could pretty much write his ticket to anywhere if he only wanted to. His ash-brown hair reached almost down to his collar in back and he was wearing a baseball cap backward on his head. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him without a healthy goatee, shaggy enough it was clear he hadn’t just forgotten to shave for a couple of days, but not dense enough to call a beard.
“Is Tatiana Goodwin playing with her?” he asked.
“Who’s that?”
“Mom’s archenemy on the course. She pretty much always beats Mom, and Mom’s on the perpetual warpath.”
“I don’t know the first thing about it,” Rachel said.