Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) - By Elizabeth Ruston Page 0,44
a proper uniform for medical personnel up on the mountain, since Sarah looked around the clinic and saw several others dressed that way, but it didn’t give a patient much information.
“Can I take her home?” Joe asked.
“Let her have a few sips of water while she’s here and I’ll be back in a few minutes. But if she seems fine, then yes, you can take her.”
Joe reached for Sarah’s hand, and she let him. And as easy as it would have been for her to let him take the blame and feel guilty about what had happened, Sarah knew she couldn’t do that.
“I’m not a delicate flower,” she told him as soon as they were alone. “I’m actually very strong. You’re just catching me on a very bad week.”
“Sarah, I never should have . . . ”
But he let the rest of the sentence trail off, and Sarah understood why: never should have told her the truth? Never should have tried to apologize? Neither of those was right.
“You just took me by surprise,” Sarah said. “Classic mistake. I asked a witness a question without knowing the answer first.”
Joe clutched her hand harder, then leaned forward and gently pressed a kiss to her lips.
Too soft, Sarah thought somewhere in her animal brain, too soft when there was obviously a deeper kiss hidden behind it, and all she had to do was reach for him, pull him toward her by the back of the neck, angle her head, open her lips, feel his tongue and his teeth, block out reality for just a moment and take comfort in a feeling that she missed and remembered too well.
But he was careful, too careful, and that was right. I try to be right.
The kiss lasted only a moment, but its effects lingered on. Sarah’s stomach felt queasy. She had to close her eyes and bend her head forward while she pressed her finger against a spot between her brows. It helped her sometimes to get rid of headaches. Right now the only thing it accomplished was sparing her from having to look at Joe.
He handed her a bottle of water. Sarah took a few sips. She looked around the clinic at the people who obviously needed to be there—people in leg splints and arm splints, presumably doped up since they were sleeping instead of screaming.
“Let’s go,” she told Joe. She waved to the doctor or the nurse, whichever it was, across the room. “I’m fine,” she said. “We’re going home.” Then she let Joe put his arm around her as they walked toward the door.
The cold air hit her again, drying the sweat from her face. It felt good, bracing, alive.
“I know you won’t believe this,” she said, “but I’m still glad we came up here. This is better than being in my room all day. I felt like an invalid.”
Considering that she was slowly shuffling away from the medical clinic, she knew that probably didn’t make much sense.
Joe hadn’t said anything for a while. Sarah glanced to the side to gauge his condition.
“Burke. Stop. Look at me.”
She knew she was too cold to stand there for long, but what she needed to say couldn’t wait until they finally reached the car. He might have broken her heart once, but she wasn’t looking for revenge. At least not so much anymore. Regret? Yes. She’d love for him to feel regret, and lots of it, if she could help it. But she wanted him to suffer for legitimate reasons, not this one.
“You’ve been a saint this whole week,” she told him. “Nobody in my life except my parents would ever do what you’ve done for me. Thank you. I’ll never be able to thank you enough. But it’s for this, all right? This is separate. No matter what you did in the past, this was something good.”
“Sarah,” Joe growled. His eyes flashed with intensity. He grabbed her by both shoulders, and she could feel the tension in his hands radiating through her body and practically lifting her from the ground.
Then Joe seemed to stop himself from whatever he was going to say or do, and instead looked up at the sky and shook his head. He let go of her arms. Then he turned to the side again and curved his arm around her waist and steadied her toward the car.
What just happened? Sarah wondered. She could still feel the energy pulsing through his arm and his hand, electric against her back and her hip.