a hand through his hair and his eyes darkened for a moment. The fun-loving Beau she’d known had had some hard times recently.
“Seriously?” She blinked, startled by the answer. “That’s a long time to go without a good night’s sleep.”
He nodded, his face grim. “It’s been a rough year.” He rubbed a hand over his face.
“Is it something you want to talk about?” She leaned forward, then cringed when her back tightened at the movement.
“You know that I have a child? A daughter... Chloe.”
“Oh, I see. If she doesn’t sleep, you don’t either?” She smiled. That explained a lot. In her pediatrics experience she’d heard that story many times from parents.
“Yes, well... Julie...my wife...died right after Chloe was born, so it’s always been just the two of us.” He dropped his gaze and cleared his throat, then picked up Aurora’s file from the desk again.
“Beau, I’m so sorry. Do you have someone to help you?”
Surely he wasn’t trying to cope with everything all by himself. Everyone needed help—especially in a situation like this. Grief for him cramped her heart. He had to be in such pain. No wonder he wasn’t sleeping.
Instead of answering her question, he looked away and cleared his throat. “How about for now we focus on you? We can talk about the disaster of my personal life another time.”
“Okay. Sure.” Now she reached out and placed her hand over his. As she did so the simple movement stirred a hot, burning sensation from her wrist to her hip. “Oh! Ow.” She cringed, unable to hide the grimace on her face.
“You really do need some body work done, don’t you?”
“Body work?” Her eyes went wide, then she frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Manipulation and massage.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
“Let’s get you into the treatment room and I’ll see what I can do.”
WHEN AURORA LEFT the clinic an hour later she was walking straight for the first time in months and she could take a deep breath of the fresh Pennsylvania air without pain. Awesome. All because of Beau.
For the first time since the crash she had hope. Beau had given that back to her.
After making the drive to her mother’s house, Aurora stepped through the door to the fragrance of her mother’s cooking. Instantly she was transported back to when her mother had given her cooking lessons as a child, when she’d had to stand up on a stool to reach the counter and the stove. Those were lessons she’d hated at the time, but she used them almost every day now. Go figure.
“Mom? Where are you?”
“In the kitchen.”
Walking through the living room to the kitchen, Aurora began to feel the stiffness that Beau had warned her about. She wanted to lean back on an ice pack, the way he’d recommended, and read on the couch for a while. Reading had saved her life as a kid, during the long Pennsylvania winters, and she hadn’t done nearly enough of it in the last few years. Today seemed like a good time to catch up a little, but first there was the task of telling her mother she was moving out.
“What are you making? It smells great.” Steam wafted up from every pot on the stove and a blast of heat caught her in the face.
“Making beef stew for dinner. It’s better if it simmers all day.” Sally looked at her daughter. “You didn’t forget that, did you?”
“No, I remember.” Her stomach growled in response to the fragrance. “Guess I need to eat something now, though.”
Opening a drawer, Aurora pulled a zipper bag out of the box that her mother always kept there. She moved to the refrigerator and filled the bag with ice cubes.
“How was your appointment with the doctor? Does he think he can get you straightened out?”
“Yes. Beau thinks he can get me fixed up and off the pain medications.” Now she was going to try ice on the hip he’d adjusted and go with an anti-inflammatory instead of the narcotic-based medicine.
“Beau? Do you mean Dr. Gutterman?” Her mother tossed a small glare over her shoulder and stirred some mysterious spice concoction into the brew. “You shouldn’t call him by his first name. It’s disrespectful.”
“I went to school with Beau. I’ve known him a long time. I can’t call him Dr. Gutterman now. That would be weird.”
She tried it out inside her head and it sounded like the name of some old doctor, ready to retire. So not the Beau she knew, who was young and vibrant and sexy as hell.
“Well, I’m going to call him Dr. Gutterman. It’s good to have a hometown boy bringing some business to the area. We need more medical people around here.” Sally inspected Aurora through fogged-up glasses and gave her a pointed stare.
Perfect introduction.
“That’s good, because he offered me a job.” “Offered” was a loose interpretation of their mutual arrangement. Desperately needed was more like it.
“What?” The expression on her mother’s face looked as if she said she’d just gotten a job at an exotic dance club, not a respectable healthcare business. “You can’t be working yet! You’re still recovering.”
“Mom, it’s been over two months since the accident. When I got out of the rehab facility we agreed I would come here temporarily. I can’t sit around doing nothing or I’ll go mad.” She patted her mother on the shoulder. “It’ll be all right. It’s part-time, and I’m not going to do more than I can handle. That was my agreement with Beau.”
That assurance would comfort her mother and buy her some time. Her mother was a controller, and wanted things done her way, which was part of the reason Aurora had left town at such an early age.
“You won’t believe this, but his nurse went into labor just after I got there and we delivered the baby together.”
“You’re kidding!” That got her mother’s attention, and she gaped at Aurora. “Everyone’s okay?”
“Yes—but that’s why he needs a nurse right now, and I start tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? So soon?”
Concern showed in her mother’s eyes, and though she hated to disappoint her Aurora knew she had to live her life—not the one her mother had planned for her. Although her mother loved having her around, she had no objective boundaries. It was all or nothing. And Aurora wasn’t about to be turned into an invalid lying on the couch while her mother spoon-fed broth into her mouth.
“Yes. Tomorrow. Which brings me to another point. Beau has a small apartment over the office that I’m going to move into.”
There—she’d said it. Short. Sweet. Firm. No question about it.
“What? You just got here.” This time her mother faced her fully, major disappointment on her face. “I had so many plans for us.”
“I know you did. But right now what I need is to work, get my career back, and not let the accident take away any more of my life than it already has.” She looked into her mother’s concerned eyes. “We can still do some of those things you have planned, but I have to work. It’s what I’m good at, and I need that right now.”
Boundaries. It was all about boundaries with her mother.
At that her mother pressed her lips together for a moment as she surveyed her daughter. “You always were too independent.”
“For me, there is no such thing,