Once and Again. Brenda Harlen

after.

      But he didn’t respond to her challenge. He didn’t say anything about their tumultuous history or what—if anything—that night had meant to him. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all for a long moment.

      “Why do I care?” He repeated her question, considered.

      She held her breath, waiting for his response.

      The elevator doors slid open.

      He shrugged. “I guess I don’t.”

      Nick saw the flicker of hurt in her eyes, the hint of sadness in the whiskey-colored depths, before she turned away and stepped out of the elevator.

      He bit back a sigh of regret, knowing his response had been unnecessarily harsh, needlessly cruel. It had also been untrue.

      The truth was, he cared a whole hell of a lot.

      Maybe too much.

      And seeing Jessica again, after so many years, with so many things still unsettled between them, made him a little irrational. There was something about Jessica that had always made him crazy.

      He sighed inwardly. The fact that she still did was his own problem, and one he would need to deal with so long as she was in Pinehurst. Which, he reassured himself, wouldn’t be very long.

      Seeing Jessica had distracted him from his original purpose—to check on Caleb. Then again, Jessica had always been something of a distraction.

      As a kid, he’d thought of her as Kristin’s pesky friend, a solemn child who’d followed him around asking questions about anything and everything. By the time she was fourteen, she’d become a distraction of an entirely different kind, with curves that other girls envied and teenage boys lusted for. He’d been a perfectly normal teenage boy, which created something of a moral dilemma for Nick and made him all the more anxious to go off to architectural college and escape his prurient desires.

      And it had worked—at least for a while.

      But he was an adult now, not a hormonal teenager, and while there was still something about Jessica that got to him on a basic level, he wasn’t about to let it distract him.

      Jess stopped in the middle of the hallway, so abruptly he nearly ran into her. He wasn’t sure if her hesitation was because she didn’t know where she was going or because she was unsure what she would find when she walked into Caleb’s hospital room.

      Or maybe she was just having second thoughts about being anywhere in his company.

      It had been that way for the past eighteen years—as soon as one of them entered a room, the other would leave. He didn’t think it was obvious to anyone else, especially since their paths had crossed only a half dozen times during that period. But it was obvious to him, and he knew it was his fault.

      Maybe if he’d been able to get past his own hurt and anger to let her explain why she’d made the choices she had, there wouldn’t be this painful awkwardness between them now. Or maybe he was deluding himself. Maybe there was simply no way to get back to that place where they could be friends, not after they’d been lovers.

      “Room 426,” he said gruffly.

      “I know.” She turned to him with obvious reluctance, her even white teeth sinking into the soft fullness of her bottom lip. His gaze dipped automatically, lingered.

      So much for not letting her distract him.

      “I just wanted to know…” She hesitated. “Jake wasn’t able to tell me much about…Caleb’s condition. He only said that he’d been hit…by a car.”

      Her golden eyes pleaded softly.

      He felt his resolve weaken.

      “He was knocked out initially but regained consciousness by the time the paramedics arrived. At first he was lucid, but they admitted him as a precaution, to continue to observe his condition.

      “Late last night he had a seizure, and then another one this morning. Now he’s lapsed into a coma.”

      She flinched.

      He’d had the same reaction when he’d first heard the news. One little word—four seemingly innocuous letters—that had the power to destroy his sister’s family.

      “He rode off the end of the driveway, into the street, right in front of Harold Lansky’s car. Mr. Lansky wasn’t driving very fast, and the doctors say that, along with the fact that Caleb was wearing a helmet, probably saved his life.”

      She drew in a deep breath and nodded for him to continue.

      “Still, they suspect that the force of the impact when he hit the windshield bruised his brain.”

      “Have they considered sending him to Midtown Children’s Hospital?”

      He bristled at the question. “This is one of the best hospitals in the country—even if it isn’t in New York City.”

      “But Dr. Reid—one of the best neurosurgeons in the world—is at MCH. I had a client whose ten-year-old daughter had a brain aneurysm,” she explained. “He did the surgery.”

      “Do me a favor,” he said. “Don’t mention that to Kristin.”

      “Why not?” She sounded genuinely baffled.

      “Because I don’t think she’d be thrilled about the idea of any doctor, regardless of his reputation, poking around in her son’s brain.”

      She blinked, obviously startled by his vehement response. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

      “Yeah, well being sorry doesn’t always cut it.” He heard the bitterness and resentment he’d tried so hard to control, knew she couldn’t have missed it.

      “Are we still talking about Caleb?”

      “Right now, he’s the only thing that matters.”

      She nodded. “Then maybe we could shelve the hostility for a while?”

      Nick shrugged again, as if her sudden and unexpected appearance here didn’t bother him. As if her proximity didn’t stir within him the familiar battling forces of hatred and longing.

      He hated that she’d walked away from him without a backward glance when he would have gone anywhere with her. He hated that she’d chosen her career over their relationship when he would have done anything for her. And he hated that, after eighteen years, he still wanted her.

      Even when he looked at her now—the long dark hair he remembered cut stylishly short, the soft, luscious curves that still haunted his dreams elegantly covered by a silky top and slightly rumpled linen trousers—all he could think about was peeling away those layers of polish and pretense to reveal the uninhibited passion of the woman inside.

      Except there was no hint of that passion in the gaze that met his own, only a silent plea he cursed himself for being unable to ignore.

      “Consider it shelved,” he said.

      Her smile was brief, tentative. Still it stirred something inside him. Something he didn’t want stirred.

      He followed her reluctantly into Caleb’s room, wishing that she’d go back to New York.

      If it hadn’t been for the fact that Nick was right on her heels, Jess might very well have hesitated again. She was nervous, uncertain of the reception she would receive after being away for so long. Uncertain of so many things when it came to the woman who had always been her best friend. But she walked briskly into the room, refusing to give Nick even a glimpse of the doubts that plagued her.

      Kristin was perched on the edge of a narrow mattress, one leg tucked beneath her, both hands cradling one of her child’s much smaller ones.

      Jess battled against the feeling of helplessness that threatened to overwhelm her as she searched for something to say.

      It was Kristin