White Christmas with Her Millionaire Doc, page 2
She forgot her worries, suddenly, recalling Jax’s low, gravelly Montana drawl. It had come to her unsummoned from time to time since her interview with him and Dr Carson Fenway. Before that she’d never had a conversation with anyone who had a set of vintage skis mounted on the wall behind him, but it wasn’t just the décor of their million-dollar ski lodge that had stuck with her.
Jax was undeniably handsome. She recalled the way her words had caught in her throat, in spite of her cool demeanour, when she’d first logged on to the call and seen his piercing eyes, the slight dimple in his stubbled chin, the way his broad shoulders and big, strong arms filled out his sweater. He’d been consummately professional, and so had she, but there had been a moment at the end of their conversation, she swore, when they’d met each other’s eyes for a handful of long, silent seconds, seemingly just taking one another in, acknowledging a sudden shared shift in normality. It had left her feeling quite flustered for the rest of the day.
Thinking twice about the real-life Jax waiting for her at the airport, she hastily checked her mascara hadn’t streaked mid-flight. They were almost at Bozeman.
CHAPTER TWO
THE TEENAGE GIRL at the coffee cart in the airport took seven minutes to make her latte. It was almost amusing, watching how she did it with such pride, at a pace that wouldn’t much rival a snail’s. She’d be fired for being that slow in Brooklyn.
‘Dr Lavelle?’
Ophelia spun around at the voice, and promptly had her words snatched away by her sudden intake of breath. He was much taller than she’d expected.
‘Jax Clayborn,’ she managed, adjusting her hat and matching scarf. His dark almond eyes studied her with the same depth and intensity that had stirred her up in their video call, but it reached inside her now on a whole different level. Jax was as striking as she remembered, but he was all about presence too, commanding the attention of everyone who passed, especially the women.
‘It’s so nice of you to come pick me up.’ She watched him remove one glove, then took his bare outstretched hand. Big, she noted, like my father’s hands.
Tufts of his dark hair flicked outwards from his beanie hat, and when he clamped his palm firmly to hers, something told her she should wake up now and pay attention. It was the strangest feeling. It totally caught her off guard as he studied her eyes up close.
‘Shall we?’ he said. He pushed a stuffed bear into her hands and then bent to pick up her suitcase.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, turning it over in amusement.
‘A welcome gift. Everyone gets one.’
The air was freezing outside. A dark cloud promised more snow. Craggy white-peaked mountains framed Jax like a moving painting as he carried her case towards a huge white truck in the parking lot. Damn, he looked good in those jeans, she thought. He was even seriously pulling off a flannel shirt under his ski jacket—not an easy task for any man.
He caught her eye as he flipped the trunk on the shiny four-wheel drive. ‘Again, my apologies for being late, Doctor. I was out on the slopes, then I got the call about the bear attack...’
‘A bear attack?’ she echoed.
Jax lifted her suitcase into the back as if it were nothing but a feather and flicked the red scarf she’d tied around the suitcase handles. ‘I wouldn’t go waving this colour around here. Unless you want to attract that bear right into your room.’
She swallowed. ‘I’ll remember that.’
The first step up into the truck was almost knee height. Ophelia placed the stuffed bear on the seat first and tried to climb in gracefully. Jax hovered behind her to make sure she wouldn’t fall—he was probably fighting the instinct to make a comment about her rather impractical high-heeled boots, she thought.
‘I like the heated seats, nice touch,’ she told him, self-awareness making her hot.
‘I liked them too, last time I broke down in a minus-thirty snowstorm,’ he remarked.
When he dropped to the leather seat behind the wheel and closed the door, she still hadn’t managed to fasten her seat belt.
‘Need help with that?’
She stopped breathing as the smooth sleeve of his padded winter coat slid a millimetre above her lap. His fingers made a split-second job of clinking the chunky seat belt into place, and there it was. His wedding ring. Disappointment surprised her, but there was something in Jax’s expression as he spotted her clocking the ring that stunned her into looking away.
She knew that kind of emotional pain very well indeed. A bad divorce?
No, he’d likely have taken the ring off if that was it. It was more than that, something worse.
Something had happened to his wife.
‘So, where did you say this bear attack took place?’ she asked when the silence during the drive got too heavy. He didn’t seem too chatty. She was aware of his every slight movement in the driver’s seat, the way his eyes scanned the mirrors and the roadsides intently, as if he was expecting a grizzly to pounce at any moment.
‘Guy got unlucky out on the Trout Camp Trail... Eagle Peaks Mountain Club community, slightly northwest of Sunset Range.’
The geographical information meant nothing to her. She was still thrown from seeing that look in his eyes, the same one she’d seen all too often in the mirror... She’d know the face of grief on anyone. What had happened to his wife? Jax was older than her, maybe by a decade, but being widowed at his age would be grossly unfair, not to mention tough.
‘Seems like it was a pretty surprise encounter,’ Jax continued. ‘Pretty is probably the wrong word for it. Poor guy had to crawl up to the road after the bear left him for dead.’
She winced. ‘That’s...terrible.’
‘The ranger up there found him. He thought it was weird that some guy was taking a break, just sitting in the snow. Then he saw the blood everywhere. Guy couldn’t speak but he scratched out “BEAR” in the snow with a stick.’
Ophelia put a hand to her mouth. ‘God, I can’t even...’
‘The fire department brought him to us, but we sent him to Willow Crest Trauma. The lacerations were beyond our team’s capabilities to fix on-site. He had puncture wounds on his face and all down his back. Slashes all up his arms and stomach, and you don’t want to know what those claws can do to a man’s—’
‘I’m pretty sure I can imagine.’ Ophelia hoped she didn’t look as horrified as she felt. She thought she’d seen it all in New York, but never a bear attack. ‘I can’t imagine it, actually,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just too horrendous.’ What sort of job had she walked into?
‘Don’t worry, this kind of thing is very rare. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’ll give you a tour if you like, show you where not to go. Are you going to open that, by the way?’
Ophelia held the stuffed bear up to face her. ‘This?’
‘Open it.’
Obediently she dug inside the bear’s belly to find a clasp. Pulling out the aerosol container inside, she held it up over the dash. ‘Bear spray. Are you serious?’
‘If you need it, start from the feet, right up to the head. And if that doesn’t work...’ He reached across her knees again, and she caught a whiff of his scent, no cologne, something primal and musky that was all his. It left her breathing in expectantly, wanting more. Pulling the glove compartment open, he revealed loose rags, a few sticks of gum...and a gun.
Ophelia froze. ‘Have you ever actually used that?’
He seemed to contemplate her question. ‘I wouldn’t carry it if I didn’t need it.’
‘So, you have, then.’
He snapped the compartment shut, and his almond eyes narrowed behind the wheel. ‘We’re not at the top of the food chain out here, Ophelia. No matter what happens, we all respect that. But we always shoot as a warning, never to kill. I can teach you how to use a gun for protection.’
‘I probably won’t take you up on that.’
‘As you wish.’
When she looked at him, he was smiling faintly, as if she amused him. He’d probably laugh out loud if she mentioned her own attempts at self-defence, the taekwondo classes in an old gym hall in Brooklyn that she’d given up on after only three weeks. She shuffled in her seat. How was he affecting her like this?
‘So, Dr Lavelle, you must love the winter, huh, coming all the way out here?’
‘I like this new opportunity you’re all giving me,’ she said carefully. ‘Call me Ophelia. Or Ophie. Or...’ She trailed off. The name Fia still got stuck in her throat.
Jax flicked a lever that made his windshield wipers work overtime. Thick snowflakes were fluttering on the edge of a blizzard that had come out of nowhere. ‘How many names do you have?’ he asked.
‘My brother was the only one who called me Fia,’ she told him as her hand went to the silver arrow—Ant’s Celtic talisman. It hadn’t left her neck since the day of the funeral.
‘Was?’
‘He died.’
Jax drew one side of his lip between his teeth. He stared at the road and his next words were heavy, as if he’d had to drag them from the bottom of a deep well. ‘It never goes away, does it? The feeling, like you’ve lost a part of yourself too. It’s always there deep down. You can’t run from it, Ophelia. It follows you.’
The baritone of his voice seemed to reverberate through her bones, and she felt trapped suddenly. She dug her nails into the bear. It wouldn’t do to get emotional.
‘How long ago did he pass?’ he asked.
‘Fifteen months,’ she managed, shifting her gaze to the window. She couldn’t even mention losing Little Bean too; it was too much to think about right now.
‘I’m sorry that happened, Ophelia.’ He paused, eyes still fixed on the road. ‘I lost my wife, Juno, four years ago.’
Her next breath stuck in her throat. So she’d been right. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Jax,’ she heard herself saying.
In the next instant she was scolding herself for being glad that he was single. That was a terrible thing to think, and besides, not all single men were available, especially not after losing a wife. Would he tell her how it happened, if she asked? she wondered, before deciding that it definitely was not the right time to be baring all their secrets. They drove the rest of the way in silence.
CHAPTER THREE
IT HAD TAKEN all of twenty minutes to cross the snowfields from the grand entrance to Clayborn Creek to the inlet of guest cabins in a snowy enclave, next to a forest of Douglas fir. Lamps lined the pathways. At night, closer to Christmas, they’d illuminate the towering trees and several outhouses with fairy lights in rainbow colours—she’d seen it in photos already and the thought sent a flash of excitement straight through her.
In the distance Ophelia could see the ski lifts juddering up the mountain of Sunset Slopes. The medical centre Jax called Base would be somewhere over there. Her breath caught as she glimpsed the main house, where Jax lived. It was more like a mansion built from red timber and giant logs. The roof sloped to six or seven feet above the ground, like a fairy-story house on a grander scale. The snow clung to the tiles and windowsills, and lights flickered in the windows.
She longed to know suddenly who else lived there, how many rooms it had...whether Jax kept the memories of his wife alive inside. He hadn’t mentioned her again. But she hadn’t mentioned Ant either. It made her feel anxious getting that close to the very topics she’d come here to avoid.
The bed in her cosy cabin was a beautiful four-poster with pillars constructed from thin, full-sized tree trunks. A couple of hours after arriving, as she sat gazing out at the snowflakes, she couldn’t help thinking how her home for the next two months would be perfect, if she hadn’t been warned about the grizzly bear on the prowl.
It was a world away from her childhood bedroom anyway.
Moving back to her parents’ place from Chinatown after her break-up with Sanjay had been a blur. The whole of the last year had been a blur, slowly crawling out of the hole of grief and resuming her regular existence. Except it had never gone back to normal. People had tiptoed around her at work. She’d focused on the bullet wounds and the car-crushed limbs in the ER, but the whispers had been constant in the background: ‘She lost her brother, and a baby, and then her fiancé left her...just imagine, the poor thing.’
She’d adjusted to a new kind of isolation in crowds, until it had started following her home. Alone she’d felt like a failure on every front. The miscarriage had brought her and her mother much closer, though. She really should call her, she thought, and let her know she’d arrived safely...
A knock on the door.
Ophelia hopped from the bed to the sheepskin rug on the floor. ‘Who is it?’ she cried, making a grab for the bear spray on the way to the door.
‘It’s just me. Jax.’
The sight of the handsome, broad-shouldered Jax against the backdrop of Montana winter pines was enough to make her blink, as though she were waking from a dream.
‘If you think a grizzly will knock on your door before it goes for the jugular, you’re mistaken.’ He smirked from the doorway, gesturing to the can.
‘Very funny,’ she said, tossing it to the bed, flustered and embarrassed that he probably thought she was out of her depth. She tried to imagine Jax in New York and couldn’t. Already he seemed to belong right here, and only here, like a vital element of the wild she’d stumbled into unprepared.
Jax was wearing a puffed sleeveless vest over a thick-knit burgundy sweater, and the same jeans tucked into black boots with red laces. ‘You left this in my truck.’
‘Oh, thanks, I hadn’t noticed.’ She took the red scarf that had been tied to her suitcase handle.
Jostling the snow from his hat with one hand, he peered around her slightly. In a shaft of sunlight she noticed the salt and pepper flecks across his shadowed jaw that only made him look sexier. ‘How’s the unpacking going?’
Ophelia stepped aside, allowing him to see the open suitcase on the bed, still full. ‘I guess I got distracted by the view,’ she said truthfully, cursing the underwear she now realised was on full display, along with a pile of cables and charging equipment. Several of the items she’d packed screamed ‘city’ rather than ‘wilderness’, she thought with an internal groan, spotting a cropped jogging top and wondering again if he thought her amusing, if he regretted offering her the job.
‘I don’t seem to have Wi-Fi in here,’ she told him quickly.
‘No Wi-Fi in the rooms, I’m afraid. 4G should work?’ Jax seemed more than a little distracted now. He kept glancing round the side of the wrap-around porch behind the door and she seized the chance to sweep her clothing into a pile that hid her bras and lacy knickers, and a black bikini she’d last worn at a fancy spa in the Catskills.
‘Most people like to connect with nature instead, while they’re here. If you do need the other kind of connection, we provide that over in the lodge.’
‘OK... Well, I guess I can connect my laptop to my phone...’
‘Such a city girl,’ he quipped. ‘Cody, what are you doing?’
‘Cody?’ Ophelia stepped past him barefoot in the doorway, then found herself letting out a laugh. A little boy, no more than eight or nine, was standing at ground level below her porch decking, placing a row of snowballs on the deck, one after the other.
‘These are for you, in case you need to throw them at the wolves,’ he announced, gesturing to his handiwork in huge blue padded gloves.
‘Cody, don’t scare her by mentioning the wolves.’ Jax snickered. Ophelia crossed her arms, amused by them both.
‘Well, thank you very much. It’s good to know you’ve got my back,’ she told the kid with a smile. She was aware of Jax close beside her, watching Cody roll another snowball in his gloves. This was his son. She knew it without Jax saying a word. Cody’s soft features were those of a younger Jax: he had the same almond eyes, the same high cheekbones and the same slight dimple in the cleft of his chin.
Her heart went out to him suddenly. Cody had lost his mother. She didn’t know how, but now Jax’s loss took on a whole other meaning. This family must have been devastated.
‘I’m Ophelia,’ she said, holding up a hand at the boy. ‘And I should probably warn you, I’m a snowball-fighting champion from New York. That’s mostly why I came here, you know.’
Jax raised an eyebrow under his hat. A smile played on his lips just for her, and as their gazes met she felt the same jolt of adrenaline she’d felt in the truck on the way here.
‘Do New Yorkers wear high heels when they engage in these snowball-fighting activities? Or any kind of shoes?’ he teased, motioning with his chin to her bare feet.
‘You’re on fire today, Doctor,’ she shot back, and this time his eyes smiled along with his mouth.
Thud.
A snowball hit the porch just by her bare toes. Jax stepped in front of her and took another hit to the front of his denimed thigh. ‘Cody, that’s enough!’
‘It’s OK.’ She laughed as Cody made to dart off into the trees. Jax was careful to shake the wet snow off away from her doorway, and she felt flushed, feeling his eyes on her painted toes and all the way up to the neckline of her cashmere sweater.
‘I should put some boots on and get outside, you’re right,’ she said quickly. ‘Do you guys want to walk me to the lodge?’
* * *
‘Dad usually watches Cody after school, but he didn’t want any distractions in the Christmas store today,’ Jax explained, putting her coffee down in front of her. He took the stool next to hers, careful not to brush her leg with his knees. Already her sophisticated perfume and subtle make-up had him all riled up, though he’d never show it. ‘He’s gone to get the lights already. He likes to jack this place up like Disneyland at this time of year.’
