Coltrain's Proposal

She hadn’t thought about that until she said it, but there was a subtle change in his expression, a faint distaste that her mind locked on.

“So you heard that, too.” His jaw clenched on words he didn’t want to say. But maybe it was as well to say them. He’d lived a lie for the past year.

“Yes.” She gripped the wrought-iron frame of the park bench hard. “What happened? Did my father cause someone to die?”

His jaw tautened. He didn’t like saying this. “The girl I wanted to marry got pregnant by him. He performed a secret abortion and she was going to marry me anyway.” He laughed icily. “A fling, he called it. But the medical authority had other ideas, and they invited him to resign.”

Lou’s fingers went white on the cold wrought iron. Had her mother known? What had happened to the girl afterward?

“Only a handful of people knew,” Coltrain said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “I doubt that your mother did. She seemed very nice—hardly a fit match for a man like that.”

“And the girl?” she asked levelly.

“She left town. Eventually she married.” He rammed his hands into his pockets and glared at her. “If you want the whole truth, Drew felt sorry for you when your parents died so tragically. He knew I was looking for a partner, and he recommended you so highly that I asked you. I didn’t connect the name at first,” he added on a mocking note. “Ironic, isn’t it, that I’d choose as a partner the daughter of a man I hated until the day he died.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked irritably. “I would have resigned!”

“You were in no fit state to be told anything,” he replied with reluctant memories of her tragic face when she’d arrived. His hands clenched in his pockets. “Besides, you’d signed a one-year contract. The only way out was if you resigned.”

It all made sense immediately. She was too intelligent not to understand why he’d been so antagonistic. “I see,” she breathed. “But I didn’t resign.”

“You were made of stronger stuff than I imagined,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t back down an inch. No matter how rough it got, you threw my own bad temper back at me.” He rubbed his fingers absently over the car keys in his pocket while he studied her. “It’s been a long time since anyone around here stood up to me like that,” he added reluctantly.

She knew that without being told. He was a holy terror. Even grown men around Jacobsville gave him a wide berth when he lost his legendary temper. But Lou never had. She stood right up to him. She wasn’t fiery by nature, but her father had been viciously cruel to her. She’d learned early not to show fear or back down, because it only made him worse. The same rule seemed to apply to Coltrain. A weaker personality wouldn’t have lasted in his office one week, much less one year, male or female.

She knew now that Drew Morris had been doing what he thought was a good deed. Perhaps he’d thought it wouldn’t matter to Coltrain after such a long time to have a Blakely working for him. But he’d obviously underestimated the man. Lou would have realized at once, on the shortest acquaintance, that Coltrain didn’t forgive people.

He stared at her unblinkingly. “A year. A whole year, being reminded every day I took a breath what your father cost me. There were times when I’d have done anything to make you leave. Just the sight of you was painful.” He smiled wearily. “I think I hated you, at first.”

That was the last straw. She’d loved him, against her will and all her judgment, and he was telling her that all he saw when he looked at her was an ice woman whose father had betrayed him with the woman he loved. He hated her.

It was too much all at once. Lou had always had impeccable control over her emotions. It had been dangerous to let her father know that he was hurting her, because he enjoyed hurting her. And now here was the one man she’d ever loved telling her that he hated her because of her father.

What a surprise it would be for him to learn that her father, at the last, had been little more than a high-class drug addict, stealing narcotics from the hospital where he worked in Austin to support his growing habit. He’d been as high as a kite on narcotics, in fact, when the plane he was piloting went down, killing himself and his wife.

Tears swelled her eyelids. Not a sound passed her lips as they overflowed in two hot streaks down her pale cheeks.

He caught his breath. He’d seen her tired, impassive, worn-out, fighting mad, and even frustrated. But he’d never seen her cry. His lean hand shot out and touched the track of tears down one cheek, as if he had to touch them to make sure they were real.

She jerked back from him, laughing tearfully. “So that was why you were so horrible to me.” She choked out the words. “Drew never said a word…no wonder you suffered me! And I was silly enough to dream…!” The laughter was harsher now as she dashed away the tears, staring at him with eyes full of pain and loss. “What a fool I’ve been,” she whispered poignantly. “What a silly fool!”

She turned and walked away from him, gripping the car keys in her hand. The sight of her back was as eloquently telling as the words that haunted him. She’d dreamed…what?

For the next few days, Lou was polite and remote and as courteous as any stranger toward her partner. But something had altered in their relationship. He was aware of a subtle difference in her attitude toward him, in a distancing of herself that was new. Her eyes had always followed him, and he’d been aware of it at some subconscious level. Perhaps he’d been aware of more than covert glances, too. But Lou no longer watched him or went out of her way to seek him out. If she had questions, she wrote them down and left them for him on his desk. If there were messages to be passed on, she left them with Brenda.

The one time she did seek him out was Thursday afternoon as they closed up.

“Have you worked out an advertisement for someone to replace me?” she asked him politely.

He watched her calm dark eyes curiously. “Are you in such a hurry to leave?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said bluntly. “I’d like to leave after the Christmas holidays.” She turned and would have gone out the door, but his hand caught the sleeve of her white jacket. She slung it off and backed away. “At the first of the year.”

He glared at her, hating the instinctive withdrawal that came whenever he touched her. “You’re a good doctor,” he said flatly. “You’ve earned your place here.”

High praise for a man with his grudges. She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes wounded. “But you hate me, don’t you? I heard what you said to Drew, that every time you looked at me you remembered what my father had done and hated me all over again.”

He let go of her sleeve, frowning. He couldn’t find an answer.

“Well, don’t sweat it, Doctor,” she told him. “I’ll be gone in a month and you can find someone you like to work with you.”

She laughed curtly and walked out of the office.

She dressed sedately that evening for the Rotary Club dinner, in a neat off-white suit with a pink blouse. But she left her blond hair long around her shoulders for once, and used a light dusting of makeup. She didn’t spend much time looking in the mirror. Her appearance had long ago ceased to matter to her.

Drew was surprised by it, though, and curious. She looked strangely vulnerable. But when he tried to hold her hand, she drew away from him. He’d wanted to ask her for a long time if there were things in her past that she might like to share with someone. But Louise was an unknown quantity, and she could easily shy away. He couldn’t risk losing her altogether.

Drew held her arm as they entered the hall, and Lou was disconcerted to find Dr. Coltrain there. He almost never attended social functions unless Jane Parker was in attendance. But a quick glance around the room ascertained that Jane wasn’t around. She wondered if the doctor had brought a date. It didn’t take long to have that question answered, as a pretty young brunette came up beside him and clung to his arm as if it was the ticket to heaven.

Coltrain wasn’t looking at her, though. His pale, narrow eyes had lanced over Lou and he was watching her closely. He hadn’t seen her hair down in the year they’d worked together. She seemed more approachable tonight than he’d ever noticed, but she was Drew’s date. Probably Drew’s woman, too, he thought bitterly, despite her protests and reserve.

But trying to picture Lou in Drew’s bed was more difficult than he’d thought. It wasn’t at all in character. She was rigid in her views, just as she was in her mode of dress and her hairstyle. Just because she’d loosened that glorious hair tonight didn’t mean that she’d suddenly become uninhibited. Nonetheless, the change disturbed him, because it was unexpected.

“Copper’s got a new girl, I see,” Drew said with a grin. “That’s Nickie Bolton,” he added. “She works as a nurse’s aide at the hospital.”

“I didn’t recognize her out of uniform,” Lou murmured.

“I did,” he said. “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

She nodded amiably. “Very young, too,” she added with an indulgent smile.

He took her hand gently and smiled down at her. “You aren’t exactly over the hill yourself,” he teased.

She smiled up at him with warm eyes. “You’re a nice man, Drew.”

Across the room, a redheaded man’s grip tightened ominously on a glass of punch. For over a year, Louise had avoided even his lightest touch. A few days ago, she’d thrown off his hand violently. But there she stood not only allowing Drew to hold her hand, but actually smiling at him. She’d never smiled at Coltrain that way; she’d never smiled at him any way at all.

His companion tapped him on the shoulder.

“You’re with me, remember?” she asked with a pert smile. “Stop staring daggers at your partner. You’re off duty. You don’t have to fight all the time, do you?”

He frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone knows you hate her,” Nickie said pleasantly. “It’s common gossip at the hospital. You rake her over the coals and she walks around the corridors, red in the face and talking to herself. Well, most of the time, anyway. Once, Dr. Simpson found her crying in the nursery. But she doesn’t usually cry, no matter how bad she hurts. She’s pretty tough, in her way. I guess she’s had to be, huh? Even if there are more women in medical school these days, you don’t see that many women doctors yet. I’ll bet she had to fight a lot of prejudice when she was in medical school.”

That came as a shock. He’d never seen Lou cry until today, and he couldn’t imagine her being upset at any temperamental display of his. Or was it, he pondered uneasily, just that she’d learned how not to show her wounds to him?

Chapter 3