by Virna DePaul
There were collective congratulations and even clapping along the length of the table. My new colleagues were smiling and standing to shake my hand. But I wasn’t done.
“On one condition.”
Chapter 20
Noah
I’d wanted Raegan to find herself again. She’d helped me find myself, and more than anything, I wanted to return the favor.
The tabloids had run page after page asking, Where was Dr. Noah Alexander? I hadn’t posted anything to Instagram or Twitter in days. I was losing followers. Public interest was dying. And I didn’t miss it at all.
I’d gone back to work, and I’d been myself. Just me as Noah. I didn’t need the cocky persona anymore, the playboy antics, the bachelor swagger. I was me and I did my job. And that was all because of Raegan.
“Hey, Sue, I’ll take the check whenever you get a moment,” I said, swirling the last few sips of coffee around the bottom of my mug.
“Sure thing, hun.”
I’d needed some air and separation from all the insistent voices and texts and headlines that constantly demanded to know where I was, what I was doing, why I was so absent lately. I’d put on my helmet and hit the road, driving my motorcycle to the diner. It was exactly what I needed.
But I wouldn’t let myself admit I’d also come here because I’d shared such a special night here with Raegan, and I wanted to be closer to her memory. I sat in the exact seat I sat in that night and I looked longingly at the barstool beside me.
I didn’t regret my decision. Sure, that position at Graton’s Gift was the position of a lifetime. It made me smile, knowing Raegan would have it. She’d be brilliant there. She’d be back where she belonged. Okay, sure, it stung a bit that it wouldn’t be with me. And I feared that sting wouldn’t be going away any time soon.
It would be like a splinter just under the skin, a soreness in the back that never eased, a weariness that wouldn’t leave my feet alone. I’d live. But I’d live with the sting.
Sue walked by with a tray of sodas balanced on her shoulder and dropped off the check. But it wasn’t just the check. The handwritten receipt was clipped to a manila folder.
For a second, I stared blankly at the folder sitting there on the Formica bar counter. Then, after glancing around in confusion and seeing no one besides regulars in the diner, my curiosity got the best of me.
My eyes flew over the paperwork inside. I saw my name. I saw Graton’s Gift. I even saw a title: Co-Chief Surgeon of Cardiology.
Shocked, I read back over it all, even as my eyes jumped around. Co-Chief Surgeon of Cardiology. The words burned into my mind.
“Sue, what is this?” I asked when she returned to the bar.
Coffeepot in her hand, Sue smiled and nodded over my shoulder. I swiveled in my chair and through the windows noticed a yellow moving truck parked outside. Leaving a twenty on the counter, I slipped off the stool, tucked the paperwork under my arm, and shoved open the door.
The sun shone bright and fierce from the sunset over the ocean, and I shaded my eyes. The door to the moving truck opened, and a long, tanned leg emerged. My heart stopped when Raegan hopped down from the cab of the truck in her delicate white lace dress and scuffed sneakers. She put her hands on her hips.
“The gas mileage is shit,” she said, glancing back towards the cab. “But it’ll get us to Denver.”
I wasn’t positive she wasn’t some glistening mirage in the middle of the desert.
“Us?” I asked, surprised my voice worked at all.
She looked at me. “Us,” she said without a trace of hesitation.
“You set all this up?”
“I want you with me for this. I need you with me for this.”
I came closer until I was mere inches away. Several golden strands of hair had slipped from her braid and danced in the warm wind as if beckoning me closer. “I need you, too,” I whispered.
Raegan smiled, then pulled a pen from her bra and held it up. “Us?” she asked, eyes sparkling.
I didn’t reach for the pen. I barely even looked at it. Instead, I slid my hand behind her neck and pulled her face towards mine.
The manila folder slipped away and the papers scattered across the asphalt. I’d pick it up later. I’d find a pen later. I’d sign later. Right then, Raegan’s lips against mine were more important.
I pulled away from the sweetness of her kiss just long enough to whisper one word.
“Us.”
Epilogue
Raegan
My dress lay ripped and in tatters beneath me on the bed, just like the last time we were here in the Dominican Republic.
The silk felt the same against my body. Noah’s fingers dug into my wrists, which he held high above my head, exactly like they had before. He filled me and made my eyes roll back in my head and my toes curl and my voice grow raw from screaming his name just like before.
But it wasn’t just like before.
We’d flown to the Dominican Republic for our first vacation after a year working together as co-chief surgeons at Graton’s Gift. Noah had surprised me with a large box the moment we stepped inside the private suite where so many of our memories lived.
His hands wrapped around my waist, and his breath was hot in my ear as I lifted the lid.
Inside was a dress even more beautiful than the gold one I’d worn for our first helicopter trip around the island.
“Care to join me for dinner tonight, Mrs. Erikson?”
I turned and kissed him softly on the lips. “I’d love to, baby. But I don’t want to be Mrs. Erikson tonight.”
He smiled and trailed his hands down my back to squeeze my ass. “No, well then who do you want to be, my dear?”
I wrapped my hands around his neck. “I want to be me.”
“Mmm,” Noah groaned, nipping at my throat, “I am going to devour you, Dr. Raegan Reynolds.”
“What if that isn’t me?” I asked, tilting my head to give his tongue more access as his hands searched for the zipper to my sundress.
“What do you mean?” he breathed against my tingling skin.
“What if I was Dr. Raegan Alexander?” I asked.
Noah paused and looked down at me.
“Are you serious?” he whispered.
I smiled and nodded.
“I’d like that very, very much,” he’d said before leaning back down to kiss me.
An hour later, the dress was on the bed like before. We lay panting side by side like before. The air was hot and humid and thick with the smell of sex like before.
But I was pretending before.
I wasn’t pretending anymore.
Thank you for reading Dr. Hottie! If you enjoyed spending time with these characters, be sure to check out my other sexy romances!
* * *
Like edgy bad boys? Try my HARD AS NAILS Series.
* * *
Here’s a sneak peek of Book 1, Hard Time:
Hard Time Excerpt: Prologue
Katie
* * *
My mom used to tell me to dream big. That I could be anything I wanted to be. Funny, I never wanted to work in a prison cafeteria, but that’s exactly what’s happened. Now my days are a never-ending vortex of the same mundane task, tossing two scoops of what can only be described as slop into each tray as inmates march down the service line.
They all look the same. They all act the same. It’s impossible to distinguish one from the next, even though they vary in skin color and personality. It’s a blur of one ghosted face after another.
Some of the men scare me.
Most of them do, to be honest.
But he scares me most of all.
Thomas Street.
In the montage of blurry faces, his sticks out like a sore thumb. Something about him is different. Mary, my older—and far wiser—co-worker says that something different is the way he looks at me. I laugh her comments off, but deep down I know she’s right. He’s always staring, his eyes on me even as he settles at a t
able and pokes his fork at barely edible food.
I look at him, too. I have for months. And while I tried not to get caught looking at first, I soon abandoned all pretense. Even when he’s not around my gaze searches for him. My body yearns for him. And when I finally spot him, it’s always more than a quick gaze.
Like now.
Entrapped by those deep, piercing blue eyes, I can’t look away. I’m stuck in place, dreaming into the abyss of space between us while he eats.
Even as I’m lost in an unwelcome world of longing and desire, my hands continue to scoop slop against trays. It’s the easiest job I’ve ever had, and I’ve become accustomed to running on autopilot. I’ve become a robot, a machine, in the six months I’ve spent here.
I often find myself wondering if the inmates that pass me notice. If they see the emptiness hidden behind my hazel eyes. Probably not. They’re too lost in their own fantasies, if not of what it would feel like to rip my clothes off and fuck me where I stand, then what it would feel like to be on the outside again, living a life of freedom. Little do they know that even when I go home for the day, I wonder the same thing.
How’d I get stuck behind these prison walls? At what point in time did I say to myself, You know, maybe I should go serve processed food to the most dangerous men on Earth. Even worse, how is it that when I’m in my car driving home after work, I often feel like I’m going from one kind of prison to another?
It’s so ironic—this place is my escape from the outside world, and yet each of these men wish they could find an escape to the outside world. In here, I almost feel safe.
I jerk when I feel fingers wrap around my wrist. There’s no one in line, and I’d just scooped slop onto the metal counter in front of me.
“What’s up with you?” Mary asks with a furrowed brow, letting me go. “What are you dreaming about?”
Heat swamps my face as I imagine Street witnessing what I’d just done. I shoot Mary a weak smile as I clean up the mess I made.
“You know me, Mary. I don’t dream.” It’s a lie, of course. I dream about him and I’m sure she knows it. But I’ll never admit it out loud. I sigh and pull the latex gloves off my hands. “Reality is reality; no amount of dreaming will change that.”
“You’re watching him, aren’t you?” She shifts slightly so that her eyes are angled at Street. “I don’t blame you if you are.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I huff and flip a switch, turning the heat lamp above the dish of slop off.
“He watches you too.”
When I say nothing, when this time I manage to keep my eyes on her face, she laughs and turns to the kitchen. I follow her, but take one last glance—this time it’s a quick one—at Street before pushing through the swinging double doors.
He’s still staring at me, as if he couldn’t take his eyes off me if he tried. There is a landmine of magnets between us, with a pull impossible to ignore, but he’s off limits. He’s a man behind bars, and I’m a woman caged in another form of prison, one that’s my own personal hell.
When my shift is over, and the food is prepared for the next day, I begin the long walk to freedom along a path flanked on either side by towering fences with barbwire, one separating me from the prison courtyard, and the other cordoning off some utility buildings. My feet plod against the beaten gravel as I speed down the path, hurrying so I can get home in time to prepare dinner for my boyfriend.
He’s a man with a temper, and nothing sets him off like coming home to an empty table. Sometimes, it seems as if all I do is cook.
The dying sun beats against my face as it prepares its descent from the horizon, and a light trickle of sweat traces down my forehead. I hear the shouts of men playing basketball in the courtyard. Suddenly, my body tenses. My skin prickles. And somehow, without seeing him, I know Street is there. As if to confirm my suspicion, someone calls his name, and I stop and turn.
Street dribbles a basketball along a concrete court, weaving his way around his opponents. Any other time, the inmates wear their prison garb, but for some reason, in the yard when they’re playing basketball or working out, the prison lets them wear athletic gear, and play shirts or skin.
Street’s showing lots of skin. He’s tall; I’ve always known that, but somehow he looks taller without his shirt on.
His abs are crunched tight as he shifts downward, spinning beneath the arm span of a man on defense. He quickly gains his footing, steadies himself, and throws the ball into the basket, scoring a three-pointer with ease. In celebration, he claps his hand against a teammate’s as they cheer, and they bump chests.
Men.
His fingers fall to his hips, pressed against his body where the line of his black basketball shorts melts against tanned skin. A spider spins a web beginning at the arch of his right shoulder, and trailing all the way to his elbow in the form of an ashen-colored tattoo. On his left shoulder, a tiger with the same bright blue eyes as Street threatens to pounce.
His teeth sink into his lip, and it’s like he’s putting on a show. But there’s no way he can know I’m watching, right? He hasn’t even shifted his attention in this direction, giving me time to study him. He has a strong jawline and even though I can’t see it now, he has a long scar just under his right ear, where some left-handed nemesis tried to cut his throat in a fight.
It happened before I arrived. From what I know, Street’s been here about a year and still has several years left. When he walks, that scar will go with him.
If he doesn’t stay clean, it’ll be a way for someone to identify him.
But for me, it will always be a sign that there’s much more to him than meets the eye.
A guard caught me staring at Street once and assumed I’d been staring at his scar, which in all fairness I had been.
The guard told me he’d gotten it during a prison riot, when one gang had gone after another. “Street’s one of the few inmates not in a gang,” he’d said, and I’d heard the hint of admiration in his tone.
“So he just got caught in the cross-fire?” I asked, unable to squelch my damn curiosity.
“Nope. He waded right in.”
“Oh,” I’d said weakly.
“Saved a newbie. A kid that had been targeted to be raped.”
“Oh,” I’d said again, this time my voice stronger. “That’s…nice.” I’d known it was a lame thing to say, but if it were true, it was damn nice, literally putting your neck on the line to save someone else. Even if you were a man in prison who’d obviously made mistakes.
According to Mary, who’d heard it from another guard, Street is serving time for a burglary gone bad. Apparently the house owner had interrupted him. Someone had pulled a gun. The owner had been shot but lived.
The talk was that Street had accepted his fate, never trying to fight the ugly fight of feigning innocence. It doesn’t erase his actions, but now when I see his scar, I’m reminded of a book I read about a young Odysseus who joined his grandfather and a group of uncles for a hunt on the wooded slopes of Mount Parnassus. Odysseus was the youngest of the group, but when the men and dogs spotted a giant boar, Odysseus was the first to go after the beast with his spear. The boar dodged the blow and gored Odysseus in the knee. Thereafter, the scar was used to identify Odysseus, but also to symbolize his rite of passage into manhood. The scar helped make Odysseus into a man and marked him as one.
I view Street’s scar the same way. No matter his past sins, the scar will forever be a testament to his bravery.
Jesus, Katie, you’re a fool.
I’ve romanticized the scar, romanticized Street. Except for random bits of information, I really know nothing about him. Most of what I know is what I see. Yes, I really like what I see, but what does it say about me that I’m drawn to such a man for the shallowest of reasons?
His eyes.
His abs.
Those biceps, and a particularly beautiful smile.
His lips, and did I mention his eyes?
Maybe it’s the hint of da
nger in spite of my relative safety. He can’t touch me, but what if he could? What if I couldn’t stop him? The thought heightens my desire not just for physical release, but for an adventure to escape my mundane life.
His head cranes in my direction, and with a fire burning in his eyes, I know I’ve been spotted. I’ve been caught. I swallow a lump in my throat as I try to turn away, but crave just another second of visual contact.
He bites his lip again, and this time it’s intentional. He’s beckoning me, letting me know that he’s spotted me, and I know, more than ever, that he thinks of me the same way I think about him.
Sometimes, the torture continues into the depths of the night where I’m left yearning for something more while my boyfriend snoozes beside me. Sometimes, the only way I can shut it all off, and close my eyes, is when I picture Street on top of me.
Picture him inside me.
I shake the image out of my head and once again walk down the path, fighting the urge to turn back around for one last peek.
I sling my purse over my shoulder, and dangle my keys in my hand. I smile at Ken, the prison guard behind the counter as I shuffle toward the front door; one of only two routes out of the prison.
But something catches my attention—behind the counter and behind Ken, an unfamiliar guard with a severe, attentive face has a phone pressed against her ear. Her eyes shift, and she hangs up the phone with an amused but abrasive smirk.
“Fucking animals,” she says with another shake of her head.
“What happened now?” Ken questions without flinching from scribbling on a notepad.
“There was an incident on the courtyard.”
“Let me guess,” he groans and spins to face her. “Someone was running his mouth, and someone else threw punches.”
“Close, but no cigar.” She reaches for a pen from her pocket and clicks it, prepared to do some scribbling of her own. “An inmate stabbed another inmate with a shank.”
