What the hell was he doing? Why was he worried about this? It wasn’t like it mattered. He wasn’t starting a relationship with Holly. He was protecting her. It was all he could really give her. He’d proven he couldn’t handle a real relationship. He’d put his work in front of his marriage. He’d started out caring for Caroline, but he’d cared so little for her in the end that he’d left for months at a time. She’d had to travel halfway around the world to tell him she was leaving, and then he’d gotten her murdered.

He didn’t deserve Holly. He couldn’t give her the life she deserved. He was too dark for her. How could he tell her all the things he thought about, dreamed of? He couldn’t.

But then did Alexei really deserve her?

“Knock, knock.” A soft feminine voice floated in from the outer office.

Caleb stopped. He didn’t think he had any appointments. Just Alexei’s very thorough checkup and Holly’s intensely awkward one. How was he going to put impersonal hands on her? Even checking her pulse gave him a hard-on.

He certainly wasn’t expecting Nell Flanders.

“There you are!” Nell didn’t walk. She sort of floated, as though her dainty feet didn’t quite touch the earth she claimed she was so connected to. Nell was a healthy thirty-year-old with shiny brown hair and a penchant for public protests. “I’m glad I caught you before you opened up.”

God, he hoped she wasn’t going to ask to go on rounds with him. Nell had a reputation for attempting to experience everything. She’d tried working with just about everyone in Bliss in order to connect with the people around her. Her experiments had ranged from the successful—she was quite good at selling baked goods at The Trading Post—to the utterly disastrous—she’d nearly given Max Harper a heart attack when she had tried to set all of his horses free. Luckily Max was a damn fine horse trainer and on a short leash from his far more patient wife. Otherwise, Nell Flanders might have been in trouble.

Caleb didn’t need trouble today. He had all he could take. He would run these tests for Holly, and then he would leave town for a few days because he wasn’t going to watch her date Alexei. No way. No how.

Except he had to. Callie was having a baby. Fuck. He couldn’t leave. First he had to deliver the baby, and then he had to stay around because newborns required checking. Maybe he could call someone else in? Who was he kidding? There wasn’t anyone else.

“Uhm, am I interrupting something?” Nell stood, staring at him, a basket of green in her hand. Some sort of plant.

“No.”

She looked around the office, her eyes studying the surroundings. “Oh, well, you were really concentrating. I thought you might have been doing some serious meditation.”

More like some serious freaking out. “I don’t meditate. What do you need?”

Yep, his bedside manner was in full swing.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

He stared at her, suspicion tickling at him. No one wanted to talk to him. He’d cultivated a reputation as a taciturn bastard. If it wasn’t about a physical malady, no one attempted to engage him in conversation. He could sit for hours in Trio or Stella’s beside someone and never utter a word until it was time to go. “Hello” and “good-bye” was about what he’d trained people to expect from him. That and “take a deep breath” or “this is going to sting.”

Except Alexei. He’d talked a lot that day. And he’d taught the Farley brothers. He’d felt bad for those kids from the moment he’d heard they were getting bullied, but until Alexei had talked to him about it, he hadn’t done anything. That day by the pond, he’d really talked to Bobby and Will. He’d given them advice his own father had given him. It had been easy because he’d known if he fucked up or said the wrong thing or had a panic attack, Alexei would take care of them.

“Have I lost you again?” Nell asked.

“All right. I’ll hear you out,” he said slowly. This was Holly’s friend. He could listen.

“I want to talk to you about Holly.”

Or not. He turned back to his equipment, dismissing her entirely. How large bore of a needle could he convincingly use on Alexei without really breaking his Hippocratic oath?

He could hear her foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the linoleum. “I’m not going to go away because you ignore me.”

“Most people do.” And he liked it that way.

A confident little huff came out of her mouth. “Most people haven’t handcuffed themselves to giant trees for days at a time. You know, you learn a lot when you protest. I know how to talk when being screamed at and threatened with bodily harm and various lawsuits. I’ve been called every name in the book. I’ve been shot at and played chicken with a bulldozer. I won. You can ignore me all you like, and I’ll just keep talking until you listen to me. That can be now or five days from now. I’ve cleared my calendar.”

Crap. He believed her. He turned back to Nell, who set down the potted plant and smiled. He gave her his best scowl, but she simply brightened her smile. She wasn’t going away no matter how much he tried to intimidate her. He knew when to retreat. “All right. I’m listening.”

“You know I like you, Caleb.”

He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that. He hadn’t really thought about whether Nell liked him or not, but she seemed to require a response. “Thanks.”

Her smile widened. “Oh, thank you. I really do like you. You’re a healer. You have a healer’s aura. It’s beautiful. You’re really lucky. Some people get auras that don’t blend well with their natural coloring, but yours is just lovely. Unfortunately, you also have a black cloud that follows you around.”

Again, he had no idea what she wanted, but she stood there, her doe eyes wide, forcing Caleb to respond. “Sorry.”

She waved him off. “Oh, you can’t help it. Something happened to you, something traumatic to damage your aura, but it’s fixable. I don’t suppose you have any interest in seeing a shaman? She makes awesome Blizzards, too. I can get you in for half price.”

No way was he going to Crazy Irene unless he needed some steak fingers. “No. I’ll keep my dark cloud.”

She continued on as though that had merely been the opening volley in her attack. “It’s not a literal cloud, of course. Just a dark lining around your naturally sunny aura.”

Now he was sure she was insane. He’d never been sunny. Not one day in his life.

Nell continued, her voice filled with earnest pleading. “But you let that dark cloud affect everything. I can see plainly that you have feelings for Holly.”

Now it was time to lie. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. Everyone knows it. You’re not exactly hiding it.”

He thought he had been. “What gave me away?”

She stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language and then replied slowly. “Uhm, you go into the diner three times a day. You turn around and walk out when Holly isn’t working. I happen to know that Stella has taken to just giving you Holly’s schedule so you don’t scare her customers by walking into the middle of the diner, staring everyone down, and then walking back out without saying a word. Seriously, Caleb, people think you’re a terrorist or something.”

“I accept that.” As long as no one shot at him, he really didn’t care what they thought. And a little adrenaline never hurt anyone. It was good for the heart to have a little shock every now and then.

Nell crossed her arms over her chest, frustration evident in her squared shoulders and down-turned mouth. “You scare the tourists. Strangely though, you don’t scare Holly. She doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that you stare at her like a tiger waiting to pounce. I think what makes her sad is that you haven’t pounced at all, and now Alexei is going to pounce, because let me tell you, that tiger isn’t sitting on his hill waiting for gosh knows what to happen. That tiger just knows he’s hungry, and he’s going to eat your pie, Caleb.”

He was having trouble following her. First he had a cloud following him around, and now he was a starving tiger on a hill and he had an odd diet. “Tigers eat pie?”

“In my version of life, they do. In my perfect world, tigers are vegans, too.”

And in Nell’s perfect world, he would crap rainbows. “Nell, are you asking me to pounce on your best friend?”

Her hands came up, fists pumping in victory. “Yes. I am so glad you understand. I don’t get it, but sometimes people don’t think I communicate well.”

It said something about him that he sort of understood her. “I don’t think pouncing on Holly is a good idea. I don’t think I would be a very good boyfriend.”

Nell stepped forward, stopping just shy of putting a hand on his shoulder. “I think you’re underestimating yourself. You can do anything you want to. Are you willing to try?”

He wanted to. It was right there on the tip of his tongue to say yes. Maybe he could just pretend to be the same man he’d been twenty years before. He could pretend he still believed in things like happiness. “It’s not a good idea.”

She frowned, but held her ground. “All right then. You were my front-runner, but since you’re getting out of the game, I have to ask you to step aside. I mean really step aside. No more longing looks. No more stepping in when trouble happens. Yes, we all know you’re the one who paid for her roof and her car, and you’re the one who forced the mayor to okay the new stop sign in front of Stella’s because you’re worried she could get hit crossing the street. And the next time there’s a killer in Bliss, let someone else take care of Holly. And there will be a next time, Caleb. We all know that.”

His entire body tensed at the very idea. He wouldn’t be able to breathe not knowing that she was okay. When she’d been in danger before, he’d needed her right there, or he’d have been utterly worthless.

Nell’s finger wagged his way. “You don’t like the idea, do you? Well, I don’t like my best friend crying over you. It’s time to decide if you’re in or you’re out, Caleb Burke. And if you’re out, you need to leave her alone. What you’ve done isn’t fair.”

“I never even asked her out.” He could hear the sullenness in his voice. He sounded like a fucking five-year-old. Why did that asshole have to come back? Why couldn’t he have just stayed in Florida? He was forcing Caleb to make decisions he didn’t want to make. Holly had been crying over him? God, he hated the thought.

“No, but you made her think you liked her,” Nell replied. “And I think she might hold back from Alexei if she hopes there’s a chance for the two of you. Let her go, Caleb. Let her be happy with Alexei. Unless, of course, you want to join them.”

“Fuck no.” He didn’t share. He wasn’t going to get involved in one of the crazy threesomes this town seemed to thrive on. Even if they did work out and everyone was happy and secure. Nope. Not going there. “Do you think he really cares about her?”

Nell’s eyes softened. “I think he was willing to die for her, and he barely knew her name. He’s been very reliable in communicating with her, and that can’t have been easy given what he’s been through. I think she’ll be safe with Alexei.”

Confusion was riding him hard. He didn’t want to think about the long letters Alexei had sent to him. They had been full of confessions and gratitude at first, and then he’d simply started telling Caleb about his life. As if Caleb wanted to know. He’d only read them because he’d had nothing better to do. “Then why the hell would you want me to be with her? If you think Alexei is so damn good for her?”

Nell didn’t react at all to his huffiness. She merely smiled, though it struck Caleb as a sad thing. “I thought Holly would be good for you, Caleb. In some ways, I think you need her more than Alexei does. But you don’t see it, and I can’t make you. You’re going to follow this path. I can see it plainly now.”

Caleb felt his chest tighten. She was really going to be with Alexei. Holly was really going to choose the Russian.

Choose? You never gave her a choice, and now it’s too late to force her into one. She would be miserable and possibly resent the hell out of whoever made her choose. Face it. You fucked up. It’s what you do.

Nell sighed. “No moving you, is there? I suppose the world needs its mountains like it needs the air. Well, since you’ve made your decision, you should know that if you screw up Holly’s new relationship and her happiness, then I will do very terrible things to you.”

It was like Snow White threatening to kill him. “Terrible things?”

She nodded primly. “Yes. I don’t know what those things are yet, but I have a very good imagination. And I have years of pent-up rage. Oh, I lock it away because I believe anger is useless, but I swear on the god of your choosing and whom I honor because I honor all religions, that I will find a use for all that rage. I will direct it at you, and it won’t be pleasant. You like to be alone, don’t you?”