Kitabı oku: «When One Night Isn't Enough», sayfa 3
And yet he couldn’t bring himself to regret one minute of it.
Ali lay slumped against his chest, her head wedged in the nook between his neck and shoulder, the only indication she was alive the puffs of warm air on his skin when she exhaled. She’d fallen asleep. He appreciated the quiet disturbed only by the movement of water from the stream, the rustle of dried leaves, an occasional car pulling into or out of the bar parking lot.
He had no desire to talk, or move. So he sat, with her still straddling his lap, in no hurry to leave, enjoying the feel of her in his arms, which he tightened around her, slipping his hands under the bottom of her sweater to warm them. They fit together like two distinct halves purposely manufactured to become one seamless whole, a feeling he wouldn’t soon forget.
What a mess. He hadn’t intended to take things this far, hence the lack of condoms. He never should have shown up at the bar where he’d known Ali and her friends would be.
But he’d been at odds with himself. After a few hours of sleep, he’d packed his life into his rolling duffel then prowled around his apartment with nothing to do but think. Of Ali, and how he wanted to see her one last time. A smiling Ali, not the angry one who’d scowled at him when the police officer had shown up at the E.R. Or the one who, when her shift ended, had left the hospital without so much as a glance in his direction.
Break them up before Michael proposed. That had been the plan. One glimpse of the fire in Ali’s eyes the first time they’d touched, of her temper when she’d joined a young mother’s fight against Child Protective Services, and Jared had known she’d never achieve Stepford wife status, no matter how hard she tried. Yet, in Michael’s presence, she’d transformed herself into the soft-spoken, malleable woman Michael wanted in a bride.
The ultimate deception, a relationship based on pretense.
Having suffered through one, Jared had every intention of sparing his friend the heartache, and legal problems, he’d experienced.
Jared’s plan:
Stage One: flirt. Reveal what he sensed was Ali’s true nature. Evoke her passion, a passion Michael wasn’t man enough to satisfy. A passion she’d tamped down with rigid control. Until tonight.
Stage Two: tease, taunt and prod. Point out Michael’s shortcomings. Joke about them. Give Ali a chance to vent her frustration with Michael’s routine tendencies, to realize what a mistake it would be to marry him. Instead she had praised and defended Michael, never saying an unkind word. Deep down, Jared longed for the day a woman spoke with such conviction in support of him.
When Ali had proved too strong to manipulate, Jared had implemented Stage Three, turning his energy to Michael. A few carefully chosen words, a “chance” encounter at a bar with a woman Michael thought highly of, and the deed was done with remarkable ease. It turned out Michael had harbored a growing concern about Ali’s malleable nature when she’d tried to change up their bedroom routine.
Now Michael, one of the few friends who’d stood by him during the DEA investigation, was genuinely happy with his equally boring new girlfriend. While Ali, a woman he barely knew, a woman who had tried to con his friend, was anything but happy. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
So he had amended the plan, adding a Stage Four: make Ali forget about Michael by turning her focus onto him. Who’d have known he’d enjoy her so much? Their banter over the past month the most fun he’d had in years.
Since the day he’d said, “I do.”
Jared stretched out his legs. His feet were cold. He reached down to touch Ali’s bare thighs. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t shivering. He shifted her weight. “Come on, honey. It’s time to go.”
She didn’t budge.
“Ali.” He kissed the top of her head, her soft hair tickling his chin. Nothing.
He took her by the shoulders and pushed her off his chest. Her head hung down between them. Great. Now what the heck was he supposed to do?
CHAPTER THREE
Five weeks later
THE storm dubbed The New Year’s Eve Nor’easter raging outside had no effect on the festivities or attendance at the Madrin Memorial Hospital New Year’s Eve Gala.
“No champagne?” Victoria yelled to be heard over the dance music blaring from the DJ’s speakers immediately to the left of their table.
Ali shook her head. Not that she was ever a big drinker, but she hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since her park-bench encounter with Dr. Padget. Didn’t trust herself. Waking up in her bed with no clear memory of how she’d gotten there, or what she’d done after straddling his lap down by the river, was an effective motivator for maintaining sobriety.
“You’re missing out on some primo bubbly,” Roxie called out, chugging down the contents of Ali’s flute after the waiter topped it off.
“Who’s driving you home?” Ali asked Roxie, who scanned the crowd.
“I haven’t decided,” Roxie answered with a mischievous smile and a wink.
Polly slapped Roxie’s arm. “You are so bad.” She leaned in close to Ali. “We came together. I’ll be driving Roxie home.”
Ali scanned the dance floor packed with her smiling coworkers and wanted to shoot off a champagne cork or two into the crowd. No. Just because she was in an awful mood it didn’t mean she begrudged her friends a good time. But having no one to kiss when the ball dropped, and watching everyone who did, was not on her agenda for the night. Excuses that would get her home before midnight started to take form.
Stomachache? A possibility. Menstrual cramps? She wished. Itchy rash? Headache?
Back when they’d been dating, she and Michael had talked about getting engaged prior to the New Year. Michael made good on the plan, proposing to Wanda on Christmas Eve in front of the Christmas tree on the pediatrics floor. It’d been the talk of the hospital. Ali could have done with a bout of sudden-onset hearing loss.
No such luck.
So she smiled and told everyone she wished the sickeningly happy couple well. In private she researched how to make voodoo dolls. Three of them. And stockpiled enough pins to start her own clothing line.
The DJ took a break, blessing them with some quiet background music, and Lyle Crenshaw, the catering manager on staff at the hospital, took the opportunity to approach their table.
Three years ago, after a major expansion and renovation to upgrade facilities, hospital management had left space in the rear of the building for class and conference rooms and a large party room for hosting fundraisers, staff appreciation luncheons and the occasional hospital celebration. While the outside of the building screamed hospital, the inside could have been the lobby of any four-star hotel. The transformation from abandoned medical services departments to premier catering hall was so significant; people in the community had expressed an interest in holding their weddings, communion parties and the occasional Bat Mitzvah at the hospital, creating an unanticipated stream of income and making Lyle Crenshaw a bit of a hero in town.
“Hello, there, ladies,” Lyle said with his trademark southern drawl. “I’d like to invite ya’ll on a tour of my office later this evening. I’ve brought some Southwestern charm to the Northeast, and I’m eager to show it off.”
“Do you want us all at once?” Roxie asked with a twinkle in her eye, her voice taking on a seductive tone. “Or one at a time?”
“Well, I’ll take you any way you want, sugar.” Lyle smiled, well aware of Roxie’s antics after her behavior at last week’s new IV pump in-service held in the large conference room.
Roxie batted her eyelashes and smiled back.
“Is that who I think it is?” Polly asked, pointing at the main entrance to the ballroom.
Ali turned to see Jared Padget decked out in a tux, looking too handsome to be a real flesh-and-blood man, and her heart skipped a beat. A few beats actually, allowing the blood to drain from her head. At the same time her lungs ceased to function, and she held on to the table to keep from falling to the floor.
Shame and embarrassment did not begin to cover her feelings at that moment. She’d accosted him in a bar, forced herself on him, and proceeded to pass out immediately following the finale. And the signs he’d been in her bed had not boded well for her going right to sleep upon returning home. Despite the lack of blood flow to the upper reaches of her body, her face felt on fire.
While she regretted her choices that night five weeks ago, her gramps had taught her there’s nothing you could do about your past so focus on your future. Ali had put their interlude behind her, didn’t allow herself to think about it, or him. And had no desire to revisit either.
Voilà! The perfect reason to blow this party, before the horns and noisemakers. “I’m out of here,” Ali said to Victoria as she stood, stooping a bit, trying to blend in with the people milling around the dance floor.
Victoria knew what had happened between Ali and Dr. Padget. At least the parts Ali remembered. “We’ll head him off,” Victoria said, sending Polly one way and Roxie the other.
Ali ducked behind the DJ, watched her friends make their way through the crowd. Roxie reached him first, grabbed at her throat, pretending to choke, and collapsed to the floor at his feet. Ali smiled at the scene, Dr. Padget dropping to his knees to render first aid, a crowd gathering, Victoria and Polly off to the side, laughing. As if sensing her watching, Victoria motioned for Ali to get moving. Which she did, heading for the rear hallway, planning to loop around, pick up her coat and boots at the coat check and hop into one of the designated driver cars, coordinated by the hospital, lined up outside.
No sooner had she entered the brightly lit hallway of closed doors than she saw an entwined Michael and Wanda leaning up against the wall of her planned escape route. While she no longer had feelings for Michael, and had conquered her anger at Wanda, she preferred to avoid seeing the two of them together. Or alone for that matter. So she turned, only to see Jared walking in her direction. The hairs on her arms rose and leaned in his direction. Ali scanned the hallway, looking for an alternate route. When she saw none, she tried the doorknob for the main conference room on her right, ecstatic to find it unlocked, and slipped inside before he spotted her.
In the safety of darkness, Ali leaned against the closed door, allowed her breathing to slow and her eyes to adjust to the shadowed interior.
A few minutes and she’d peek outside. If she skipped the coat check she could duck out the rear exit and be home in five minutes.
The doorknob at her right hip turned with a click. Had Dr. P. found her so quickly? And if not him, how would she explain standing alone in the dark in an empty conference room?
“Michael,” she heard him say just outside the door. “Have you seen Allison?” She froze.
“Hey, Jared,” Michael answered. “I heard you were coming back.”
What had he heard? And why hadn’t she heard?
“Four weeks this time,” Jared said.
Joining the traveling nurse corps was looking better and better.
“Have you seen Allison?” he asked again.
Ali didn’t wait to hear the answer. Instead she took off in a rapid tiptoe, as quietly as she could, into the black, cave-like conditions at the far end of the rectangular room. Feeling along the wall, she found the rear door that led to Lyle’s office, and slipped inside just as the door to the conference room opened.
Ali didn’t want to risk making any noise so she rested the door against the frame rather than pulling it closed.
Aside from knowing where it was, Ali had never been inside Lyle’s office before. It was darker than the conference room. There didn’t appear to be any windows, just a thin strip of light at the base of the door on the far side of the room. She stood perfectly still, willing her eyes to adjust, wishing she hadn’t left the protection of her friends and cursing the impractical trendy stilettos that pinched her toes.
“I don’t see anything but darkness,” Allison heard Wanda say, her deceptively sweet voice too close for comfort.
Allison didn’t know which was worse, looking like she was stalking Michael and Wanda or being found by Dr. Padget. She took a step back, preparing to duck behind the door if necessary, and bumped into what felt like a tall filing cabinet. Apparently Lyle was not as conscientious as he appeared because the file drawer he’d failed to secure in place, the one her right hip connected with, shifted the few centimeters necessary to click closed, the top corner snagging a section of Ali’s skirt in the process.
“Does Lyle really have an award-winning cactus in his office?” Wanda asked. “Or did you plan to get me alone so you could have your wicked way with me?” Wanda giggled.
Wicked way? Yuck!
And a cactus was the little bit of Southwestern charm Lyle had invited them to his office to see? Exactly when would his tours begin?
Ali tugged at the drawer to find it locked in place. She yanked on the beaded mesh of her ridiculously expensive dress. It didn’t budge.
Tears threatened.
Tonight was supposed to be her night to shine, to show her coworkers partying down the hall that she’d put Dr. Michael Shefford behind her. That she’d moved on. And she’d planned to look damn good doing it. Only nothing had gone as planned.
First, Victoria’s brother, who had agreed to pose as her enamored out-of-state date, had fractured his fibula in a skiing accident and hadn’t been able to travel to New York. As a result, Allison was dateless, on New Year’s Eve, at the same party as her ex and his fiancée.
And now this, attached to a filing cabinet, in the dark, like a pagan sacrifice to the god of stupidity.
She twisted a lock of hair around her finger until the roots pulled at her scalp.
There has to be a way out of this, Ali thought. Calm down and think of it.
“I heard people talking about that cactus,” Wanda said. “I want to see it.”
Don’t you dare bring her back here, Michael. In a panic Allison tried to twist free. With a distinctive rrriiippp, she gained some room to move, but not her freedom.
“I’ll show you something much more impressive than that puny cactus,” Michael said in the Humphrey Bogart voice he’d imitated so many times throughout their relationship. Hearing him use it with Wanda caused the surf and turf in Ali’s stomach to churn. Unwilling to sacrifice her favorite designer heels, she swallowed back the urge to vomit.
“Here, on the conference room table?” While Wanda sounded surprised, Ali couldn’t be more shocked. This was totally out of character. Michael didn’t have an adventurous bone in his body, at least while he’d dated her.
Wanda giggled again. “Oh, Mikey,” she said a moment later, her words ending in a moan.
Just great. Here she stood caught like a fish on a hook, forced to listen to the man she’d planned to marry make love to the woman he’d chosen over her. To make the situation all the more nauseating, Wanda was a moaner. The only bright spot was that Michael made love like Speedy Gonzalez on stimulants. The torture would be over quickly.
Not quick enough to suit Ali, however, who spent the minutes of their lovemaking continuing her futile efforts to escape the filing cabinet’s clutches. By the time the conference room door closed behind the lovebirds, not only was Allison still stuck but she’d managed to twist and turn to the point that the lower portion of her dress was now bunched up around her hips.
The conference room door opened again.
She held her breath.
It closed.
Her body tense, she listened, waited for someone to walk in and find her, braced herself for the questions, the laughter. Her heart rate shot up. But she heard nothing. No footsteps. No voices.
She sighed with relief, but still had to free herself. Now. Before someone stumbled upon her. Freedom was all that mattered.
Then it happened, like it usually did whenever her desperate need to escape a situation overrode her capacity for rational thought: she did something that would inevitably make the situation worse.
In a fit of desperation, she yanked and tugged and pulled with all her might, until the side seam of her dress split open, a portion of her skirt still stuck.
“No,” she cried out in frustration. A week’s salary, fifty hours of bedpans, IVs, catheters, dressing changes, medications and back-breaking patient transfers destroyed as efficiently as if she’d used scissors to hack her paycheck into hundreds of tiny, unidentifiable pieces.
“Ali?”
Ali recognized Jared’s voice instantly. She froze, near tears. Please, please, please, not him, not now.
The rear door to Lyle Crenshaw’s office creaked open. Bright light blazed from the overhead fixtures. Allison squinted in response, trying to hold the side of her dress closed with one hand, splaying her other hand in front of her hips, seriously regretting her choice of panties, knowing the translucent pale pink thong she wore left her lower body, for the most part, totally exposed.
His shiny black dress shoes came into focus first. As she lifted her head, her eyes traveled over the black pants covering his long legs, the black tuxedo jacket, perfectly fitted over his broad shoulders, the satiny black bow tie tucked beneath his snow-white shirt collar, finally meeting the peridot-green eyes of Dr. Jared Padget. As good as he looked in a pair of hospital scrubs, strutting around the emergency room, nothing could compare to the man decked out in a tux. His dark brown hair was cut shorter than the last time she’d seen him. He looked smart, astute. He looked hot.
Don’t think like that! Jared was a womanizer, a toxic pollutant contaminating the dating pool. No. Don’t think of him as Jared. He’s Dr. Padget. A colleague. That’s all. He is not your friend.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, hoping if she ignored the absurdity of her situation maybe he would, too.
“Looking for you,” he replied innocently. “As if you didn’t know.”
“You have some nerve showing up uninvited.” Unannounced. Unwanted.
“I think you’re pretty lucky it’s me who showed up and not someone else.” His eyes scanned up the length of her legs to her bare hips, leaving a trail of warmth. They paused at her breasts, his heated gaze as effective as a caress, making her nipples harden. They traveled to the spot where her dress connected to the filing cabinet. He had the nerve to smile. “What the heck did you do to yourself?”
Ali looked around for something to throw at him. Never a bowling ball around when you needed one.
“Dare I ask what led to your current predicament?”
She’d been trying to avoid him! “Not if you want to walk out of here with all your body parts intact.”
He laughed. “You’re awfully feisty for someone in obvious need of assistance.”
A good point. She let out a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s been a rough night.” And she had an ominous feeling it would get worse before it was over.
He stood there looking at her, his eyes slightly squinted.
“When you’re done staring, do you think you could find a pair of scissors on that desk and cut me loose?” She tugged to show him she was, in fact, stuck.
He continued to study her, tilted his head and ran his fingers over his chin.
“Hello?” Ali waved her hands in front of him. “In need of a little assistance here.”
He snapped back to life. “I think I like you right where you are.”
He interrupted Ali’s protest, holding up a hand to stop her from talking. “Just for a few minutes. I have a proposition.”
“You have got to be kidding me. Your prospects are so slim you’d stoop to propositioning a woman in dire circumstances?” Unable to slap his face after what he’d said insulted her.
He chuckled. “Your circumstances are hardly dire. Are you uncomfortable?”
No, she wasn’t. But … “Yes. Terribly uncomfortable. Release me this instant.”
He scrutinized her face. “You’re an awful liar,” he said. “Two minutes. I have a few things I’d like to say, and I’d rather not have to chase you around while I do.”
Ali looked at her watch and made like she’d activated a stopwatch feature, even though she didn’t have one. “Okay.
Go.”
“I think we got off to a bad start.”
“Ya think?” Her voice came out laced with sarcasm.
“I’m not going to apologize. Whether you realize it or not, I did the right thing.”
“According to you.” As a result of his actions, Ali was once again alone, with no prospects for the future of contentment she’d hoped to have with Michael.
“I’d like for us to start over.”
“Ah.” Ali nodded. “I get it. No luck getting laid over in Buffalo? You figure I took pity on you once, maybe I will again?”
Jared looked like she’d slapped him. “Once?”
Too late she remembered finding evidence he’d shared her bed the night before he’d left town. “I mean twice.” Shoot. Her “twice” came out more question than statement.
“You don’t remember?”
Ali thought about refusing to answer on the grounds she might incriminate herself.
“Three times, Ali.” He held up three fingers to emphasize his point. “After the bench by the river, when I tucked you into your bed, you dragged me in there with you.” He folded down his ring finger with the index finger on his other hand.
He was big and strong. If he’d wanted to fight her off he could have. Fight her off. How humiliating.
“After the second time, I tried to leave again. You begged me for more.” He folded down his middle finger.
If a giant sinkhole were to form beneath her, it would be perfectly okay.
“And the third time …” He folded down the last finger standing. “Let’s just say I will never again call you Kitten.”
Her face felt like she’d fallen asleep in the midday sun on a tropical island beach. Maybe the erotic dreams that plagued her sleep were actually snippets of memory. Wait a minute. Ali felt sick. Three times? They’d had sex without a condom three times. Because she hadn’t found any wrappers at her condo—she’d checked. Everywhere. If the filing cabinet hadn’t been holding her up, she’d have collapsed down to the floor.
Someone jiggled the front doorknob to the office. Ali spun her head in that direction. It sounded like a group of people stood just outside in the hallway. In his southern drawl Lyle called out, “Hold on there, darlin'. I’ve got the key right here.” The ticking time bomb counting down the seconds to disaster echoed in Ali’s ears.
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