Page 34 of Tracked
With my first bite, the desire to talk faded. Like most of my meals, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I started eating. There were days when I’d go a whole ten-hour shift without anything more than a protein shake. It wasn’t healthy, but to me, that was being in health care. I gave my all every second I was in the hospital and only returned to myself and my well-being as an afterthought.
But this ... Calder’s dinner was delicious. The sweet starch of the potatoes, the savory spiced beef, and the slight crunch of the kale.
“This is incredible,” I barely managed to get out between bites, scarfing down everything on my plate.
“Thanks,” Calder drawled, and it took me a minute to realize he was staring.
Heat flushed my cheeks, and I quickly dropped my fork onto my empty plate, noting how his was still half full. “Sorry,” I mumbled, wiping my mouth with a paper towel and searching for the right words to explain why I ate every meal like I was going for gold in Olympic speed-eating. “I don’t get a lot of time to eat on my shifts, so I’ve gotten good at eating ... quickly.”
I tried not to think about how much of my life outside of work was lived in short bursts. Eating. Sleeping. Reading. I didn’t slow, let alone stop, and maybe that was why I never saw my crash coming.
Calder made an indecipherable sound. “So, Colorado State for medicine and then ended up in Arizona?”
Right.This exercise in preparation couldn’t be one-sided.
“My residency was there, and then I decided to stay.”
“What hospital?”
“Sunrise Medical Center,” I answered and felt a delayed sting of worry.What if he looked it up? Or saw the story in the news?I didn’t wantto talk about what had happened any more than he probably wanted to talk about his brother’s accident or his mother’s death.
“What did you tell them?”
“I’m sorry.” My heart slammed into my ribs so hard, I swore one cracked. “What do you mean?”
Calder frowned, gathering the last of his food on his fork. “For why you’re here? Did you tell them about your sister?”
“Oh. No.” I swallowed. “I’m just taking personal time.”
“This would be hard on anyone, Dr. Crane, but like the rest of your team, you have the full support of the hospital. However, you need to take the four weeks off. It’s not negotiable while legal does what they need to do.”
I turned my head away, unable to stop the memory of Dr. Morgan’s face when he’d put me on leave. Nor the way he couldn’t give me any confidence that I’d still have my job when these four weeks were up.
“I guess maybe we should figure out some basics? For tomorrow?” I blurted out, trading my own demons for the ones who’d taken my sister. “We’ll need to be on the same page.”
“Okay,” Calder said and looked up, waiting for me to go on.
“Well, I think we should come up with a different job for you. I’m guessing being any kind of investigator / retrieval specialist is going to bring more questions than answers. So what job do you pretend to have when you’re someone other than Calder Stone?”
“Rancher.”
“Right.” I blew out a breath.Maybe his nickname should be Captain Obvious.
Calder sat forward. “So, you’re worried about my fake job but not about the fake relationship we’ll need to have?”
“No—I mean, yes. I mean, I thought we’d keep that part simple. We met in college, went our separate ways, and then connected again back in Wyoming ... The best lies are the ones closest to the truth, right?” I bit into my bottom lip, and his nostrils flared like I’d bit him.
“And what about us is ‘simple’?” Calder asked, the huskiness of his voice settling into my veins the way an anchor sinks to the ocean floor.
Nothing.Nothing about Calder, nor the way I was attracted to him, was simple. Not then. Not now. Not in this fake story and not in reality.
“We just have to fake enough to get to the retreat. It should be easy enough then to find Rachel, right?”
I didn’t like the way his mouth drew into a tight line.
“And if she’s not there?”
“Her car is there. You can’t tell me that Rachelnotbeing there is the more likely scenario.” Defensiveness saturated my voice. I knew we’d been through this, but I also knew she had to be there.
