The Secrets You Keep Read online

  “Of course.” Callan steps aside, allowing me to pass. But he doesn’t leave like he said he was going to do.

  Johan smiles when I make it to the edge of his bed. “Hey, tough guy. How are you feeling?”

  “Like brand new.”

  I reach to pull the covers back, stopping before I expose him. “Mind if I look?”

  “The goods are covered. I think it’s safe,” he teases. “Until the third date, at least.”

  “A man with standards. I like that,” I joke back. Callan watches from the other side of the room as I fold back the blanket and inspect Johan’s thigh. “It looks great.” I bring my attention to Callan’s piercing blue eyes. “You cleaned and covered it well.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches. “I had a little help.”

  “I have more bandages if you need them.”

  Without thinking, I pull the comforter up and tuck in Johan. The same way I do my father when he’s cold. Callan moves toward me, placing his hand on the small of my back when he gets close enough to touch me.

  “Thank you. I’ll let you know.” He takes another step forward. His front now just inches from my rear.

  I fight the urge not to back into him, to feel his heat against mine. He moves, and his fingers brush the top of my butt. My eyes fall to the floor to hide my reaction.

  “Get some rest,” he tells Johan. Then he drops his hand and walks toward the door.

  I want more—more of his touch, more of him.

  “Thank you,” Johan says.

  I follow Callan to the door. “You’re very welcome. You take care of yourself, okay?”

  He holds his fingers up the way I did when we first met. “Scout’s honor.”

  I shake my head and laugh. He looked it up.

  Callan walks me to my room, and before I can stop myself, I invite him in.

  “Maybe another time,” he declines without reason or even a lame excuse.

  He just… declines. And oddly enough, I don’t feel rejected by it. Something about his answer makes me feel valued, respected. Like he was fully aware of what I was offering yet had complete control of his body’s reaction. Another man would have taken the invitation for what it was and ran with it—an hour of no expectations and no commitments, just two adults helping each other forget the outside world. But I’m quickly learning Callan isn’t anything like any other man. He steps behind me as I place the key card against the flat, black pad on the door until the light flashes green. He’s so close that I breathe in his scent as if it were my own. My hand pulls the lever, opening the door so I can go inside. Please change your mind.

  My heart races while I turn to face him. “Another time, then.”

  Please change your mind.

  He doesn’t.

  He doesn’t even smile at me. He just clenches his jaw and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

  “Another time. Good night, Grace.”

  “Good night, Callan.”

  ***

  The ghost of Callan’s voice whispers my name against my ear as I sink into the hot water of the claw-foot tub. I lay my head against the porcelain and grab onto one side. My legs part as my hand trails from the top of my knee to the inside of my thigh. I close my eyes and see his face, his eyes burning into me, commanding me to bend at his will. My touch is gentle, but something inside me doesn’t want his to be.

  “Touch yourself,” I imagine hearing him say. “Show me how good it feels.” My hand slips farther between my legs and into the water, finding the spot that craves him the most. I look down at an absent face, imagining his head between my legs, his mouth on my flesh, his tongue on my clit. “You like that, don’t you?” My hips rise up, meeting my middle finger. It’s not enough. I need more. Another finger. Thrusting. Pumping. My other hand circles my clit. The water sloshes around me, splashing out onto the tile floor.

  “Yes,” I answer him, not caring that he’s not really here.

  I’m lost. Lost in my desire to be fucked. Lost in the feel of what it would be like to have him. Harder. Deeper. My fingers hit the sensitive spot against my walls, and I let them rest there for a minute, filling me, putting pressure where my body needs it while I rub my clit. Oh, my fucking god, it feels so good. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and moan. A vowel sound, I think. Or maybe a full syllable. I don’t know. I’m consumed by the pleasure. “Come for me.” My body starts to clench around me, and my hips buck all the way out of the water when I come, moaning his name. Callan.

  ***

  I wake up feeling refreshed and alive. I haven’t slept that soundly in months. I’ve rubbed myself to sleep in the past, but it’s always been to relieve a dull ache, an empty craving. There’s never been a face and definitely never a voice to guide me.

  I called Annette before I buried myself underneath the comforter to make sure everything was okay back home. She assured me everything was fine and that she’d call if anything changed. I didn’t call Natalie. She was too angry to speak to me the night I took her to the hospital, and she hadn’t spoken to me since. I say a prayer for Lucas, hoping it falls on God’s ears.

  When I told my parents that I’d spent ten years in medical school only to use my license to help the less fortunate, making half of what someone with my education should be making, I thought my father was going to disown me. He’d worked hard and sacrificed so much to build his construction business from the ground up so we could live a comfortable life… so I could go to medical school and make something of myself. I was “wasting a good education” he had said with clenched teeth behind a glass full of amber liquid. No matter how many times I’d told him I didn’t become a doctor to make money, I became a doctor to help people— he still spent six months ignoring my calls. Then Mom got sick, and he couldn’t ignore them anymore.

  When I get to Gateway Hospital, I look around at the desperation that surrounds me and I don’t regret my decision at all. Yesterday the hospital had five doctors on staff. Today there are three. As the only public hospital for hundreds of miles, Gateway sees hundreds of patients every day. HIV, TB, and malnourished children are among the majority of the cases they treat. Over five hundred babies are born in this hospital every month, but many of them will never see the outside of these walls or live past the age of three. To say it’s heartbreaking would be an understatement.

  The cots fill up as soon as we can empty them. One of the elderly women keeps ripping and pulling violently at her clothing, shouting to the entire ward that she’s on fire. Her arms flail from her torso to her calves as she yanks and tugs at the fabric. I’m exploring areas of the hospital that I’m not yet familiar with in order to find a CNA to help me restrain her. I see Callan talking to one of the male nurses just outside the waiting room. Dressed in all black, he looks like every sin I’ve ever wanted to commit.

  “I thought you said you aren’t a doctor.” My tone is light, and I’m a bit surprised to see him here.

  His mouth twitches in the beginnings of a grin. “I’m not. But Dawie says he’ll welcome the help any way he can get it.”

  “Dawie, huh?”

  He nods to the man standing beside him. “Oh yeah, we go way back.”

  His tone is light and perky, nowhere near the cold and dark voice I heard when we first met. I’m starting to like it. All of it. The light and the dark. A lot. I’m starting to like him. A lot.

  I chuckle. “Well, I hate to take you away from Dawie.”

  “I’m all yours,” he says, with no idea how I wish that were true.

  At least for one night. Then he can go back to dodging bullets and keeping secrets, and I can go back to saving babies and taking care of my father. We’ll be continents apart, living our lives as though we never met. Nothing keeping us together except for the memory of a night well spent to help me rub myself to sleep.

  He walks away from Dawie and over to the nurse’s station, handing a piece of paper over the counter. When he moves, everyone around him pays attention. Callan is like the sun. The
rest of the world seems to orbit around him. I know I should keep my distance, but I’m drawn to his warmth. I have to remind myself to be careful not to get too close. Getting too close to the sun only gets you burned.

  Can I have a one-night stand? Am I even capable of it? Of all the clubs I’ve gone into looking for Natalie, all the men I’ve had to slip past or sweet talk, none of them have ever affected me the way Callan does. I want his hands on my breasts, his mouth on my clit. I want to feel the heat of his cock inside me. To hear that voice in my ear, telling me what he wants, how good I make him feel.

  I drop my eyes from his gaze, just in case he can see past them into my thoughts. I hate the way my body tingles in his presence, and I love it all the same. I hate it because it goes against everything I’ve tried to keep on the back burner for almost two years. And I love it because it makes me feel alive and sexy.

  For a split second, I forget about the burning woman and the two hundred beds full of needy patients. Then Callan clears his throat, and I startle back to the present.

  “Sorry, these hallways are still new. I’m trying to make sure we go the right way.”

  Lies. All of it. But it sounds a lot better than, “Sorry, I was imagining your tongue on my skin.”

  I’m busted. The darkness in his eyes gives it away. He knows. And from the way he’s looking at me, he might have been imagining the same thing. If he was, he doesn’t say anything.

  The nurse behind the counter eyes Callan carefully as he starts to follow me away from the registration area. She starts to say something, but something in the way he looks at her steals the words from her tongue.

  “I’m visiting a friend. There’s no form for that, is there?” he says, as though her answer doesn’t affect him either way.

  She shakes her head, earning a smug grin from Callan. I had to fill out enough paperwork to fill a novel, and all he does is smile. But I guess since he’s not the one handling patients, a smile is all he needs.

  “There’s something I have to take care of first. Then I can be all yours, too,” I say.

  This is my weak attempt at flirting? I need help. I have no doubt he sees right through my inexperience, but he remains a quiet gentleman.

  Callan follows me down a short hall to a large open room full of cots separated only by faded red curtains. He ignores the passing glances of hurried nurses as though he belongs here just as much as they do. The woman is still screaming and ripping at her clothes.

  “Stay here. I’ll be right back,” I tell him as I point in the direction of the woman.

  “There’s no way you’re going to restrain her,” he says, ignoring my suggestion to stay put and somehow knowing exactly what I planned to do.

  “No, but I’m hoping your friend Dawie can.”

  “Do you have access to twine?”

  Twine? Why would we have twine? And what’s he going to do with it?

  “Maybe in the children’s unit. For balloons.”

  “Good. I’ll go get it. You don’t need Dawie.”

  What is he going to do? And of course I need Dawie. This woman is pumped up on fear and adrenaline. I’ll never hold her down long enough to administer a shot of Ativan. I spend the next five minutes talking to and soothing the woman, convincing her to let me put my hands where she feels the pain. She relaxes long enough for me to check known tender points, from the back of her neck to the front, then to her forearms near the crease of her elbow. Every time I touch her, she screams but manages to keep her hands under control. Callan comes back with a fist full of white rope. Where he found it, I can’t say. And what he’s going to do with it, I can only imagine.

  “Callan, there are rules. You can’t—”

  I can’t let him touch her. Can I?

  “I’m not going to hurt her. You have to trust me.”

  With the calm assurance of a confident professional, he instructs the woman to relax. And as though his voice holds the key to her tranquility, she obeys. He takes her wrists, making two loops with the rope, then threading them through each other until it looks like a makeshift pair of handcuffs. I watch in reverence as he pulls the rope over her wrists, locking them in place without hurting her. My pulse throbs in my neck as my heart pounds with arousal. My chest heaves with each heavy breath I take, never moving my eyes from his hands. Skilled hands. Capable hands.

  “This is something I happen to know a little bit about,” he says, with a slight bob of his Adam’s apple when he finally looks at me.

  “Boy Scouts?” I hope I said that out loud. I’m not sure I’m able to find my voice right now.

  He answers with a smile. “Sailing.”

  Oh. Right. Of course. What else would it be? I regain my composure and act like the professional I am.

  “I guess it’s a good thing you showed up when you did, then.”

  “I guess it is.” His deep blue irises sear into my darkest thoughts, calling out to parts of me I thought were gone for good. Raw, sexual power rolls off his shoulders in waves. Waves that threaten to sweep me up and take me under, leaving me breathless and fighting for air, then thanking God I’m a strong swimmer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Callan

  She could have said she was from any city in the world, and it would have been just fine. But she said Miami. The one place I vowed to never set foot in again. If there is a God, He’s sitting on a throne somewhere laughing at me. I told myself I should stay away from her. I told her thank you for helping Johan, and that should have been enough to help me sleep at night. But it wasn’t. I stayed up all night thinking of her. Then I saw her again the next morning in the lobby, and the draw I felt the first time I ever saw her pulled at my gut again. My impulse and my control played an invisible tug-of-war. I fought to stand my ground, to stay on my side of the line. But some unseen force keeps pulling me to her. And every time I see her, I lose a little more of my grip.

  I know when a woman wants a man. And Grace wasn’t inviting me in last night to watch The Golden Girls. I don’t get involved with women, and I definitely don’t have one-night stands. Instinct tells me she doesn’t either. So, why me? Why now?

  I don’t like to beat around the bush. And I wasn’t spending another sleepless night wondering about the answers to questions when I could just walk right back to her room and ask her myself. Just as I lifted my hand to knock on her door, the sweetest fucking sound I’d ever heard crept through the cracks. A moan. At first, it took me by surprise. Because I thought she was here alone. Then I wondered about the man who made that sound come from her lips. Where was he when she was having dinner? I’m not jealous. I don’t have that in me. But I still wondered about him… and her. And the things that make her body react that way. Until I heard something else. My name. She moaned my fucking name, and my mind went blank. In that single moment, hearing my name on her lips, I went from apologetic man to hungry beast. I wanted her. So much that I had to fight the urge to knock on her door so I could hear her moan it again.

  ***

  I have shit to do, but I can’t get warm brown eyes and a sweet, sweet voice out of my head. I wonder how many more times she made herself moan my name before she fell asleep. Gateway Hospital. It’s ten miles out of my way, and I can’t be sure I’ll even see her, but fuck it. I stop by there anyway. I need to see that delicious little flush in her cheeks again.

  It turns out, I do get to see her, dressed in her white coat and light blue scrubs. Her long hair is pulled up in a ponytail. She looks beautiful. With no effort at all. When she walks into the room, it’s brighter, lighter. The world doesn’t feel so heavy anymore.

  I wasn’t going to tell her I was here. I was perfectly happy watching from the sidelines. I grabbed the first nurse I saw, a man called Dawie, and asked for a volunteer application. I never expected her to walk in and find me the way she did. But here she is, and I think to myself that maybe God isn’t laughing anymore.

  She needs my help, but her pride won’t let her ask for it. I have a feeling
she’s not a woman who admits she needs a man. Even though she wants to. She’s got something to prove. To who? I don’t know. The world maybe. Or maybe it’s someone. I just know she’s determined. I also know she’s tired. Tired of being determined. The way her eyes fall when they hold mine too long. The way her voice quiets when I speak. The way she conceded to my will to treat Johan, even when it went against her principles as a doctor. Yes. She wants to give up control. She just needs me to show her what that means.

  There’s an elderly woman who obviously needs to be restrained so she can be sedated. She needs my help. I can handle this. I’ve tied people up for worse things— and some of them for better… depending on who and when.

  When I return with the silky twine, I lose my focus. Grace leans forward, comforting the woman, speaking softly in her ear. Her smile radiates kindness and compassion. She’s so careful when she lifts the woman’s head and gently touches a spot at the base of her skull. The woman cries out, and Grace smooths the top of her hair with her free hand. Her smile never leaves as she tells the woman it’s going to be okay. She doesn’t get irritated when she touches the woman again, prompting another yell. This is who she is. This is who she was with Johan. She told me she just wants to make a difference, and I didn’t realize the scope of her statement until now. Watching her with this woman. This screaming, thrashing woman. She’s so calm, so reassuring. She owns the situation. She’s in complete control. Her strength surpasses her beauty, making her completely irresistible. She never bats an eye or loses her patience. She sees beyond the pain, beyond the fear. She sees the beauty in all the chaos. And suddenly I need to feel a part of that too. Suddenly, I need her.