A Fairbanks Affair (An Odds-Are-Good Standalone Romance, #3)

by Katy Regnery

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I mutter. “Now, leave it.”

  “Thanks,” she whispers. “Trauma bay six...and Trev? The girl with the broken foot? I like her.”

  Not that I require Marlena’s approval, but I find myself grinning at her before walking quickly over to Faye’s bedside.

  Me too.

  ***

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Findley,” says the doctor two hours later. “But the X-rays are conclusive. You have an avulsion fracture of the proximal fifth metatarsal.”

  “Layman’s terms, please?” Faye asks.

  “You broke your foot. We need to set it, then cast it or boot it.”

  I’m in a chair beside her, where I’ve been sitting since she returned from radiation twenty minutes ago. “What do you recommend?”

  “The boot,” he says, “as long as you only take it off for showering and don’t try to walk around for at least six weeks, but probably closer to eight.”

  “Six to eight weeks!” Faye exclaims. “What about the bathroom? What about work?”

  “Yes, you can go to the bathroom with crutches, and yes, you can take off the boot to shower. No, you cannot go back to the office yet, but luckily, we live in the internet age.”

  “Work remotely?” she asks, her voice hushed and shocked.

  “Is your office nearby?” he asks.

  “Only if you consider Boston local.”

  He chuckles. “Oh, Ms. Findley, you’re a hoot.”

  “So that’s a no?” she asks.

  “That’s a hell no,” says the doctor. “The injury aside, that’s a long flight, which could lead to edema. You can fly back to Massachusetts on”—he looks at his watch—“or around Valentine’s Day. Until then, welcome to Fairbanks! You’ll need to stay put. Now, I’m going to go arrange for a boot. You sit tight.”

  “Six weeks,” she laments, looking up at me. “But I’m supposed to be home on January second!”

  “You heard the doc,” I say.

  “But...but I can’t just stay here.”

  “Yes, you can,” I tell her, reaching for her hand. “You’ll stay with me.”

  She whips her neck around to face me, her eyes wide. “I can’t...no! I can’t stay with you. No. You don’t even like me anymore and besides—”

  “I like you better than anyone else,” I tell her, “so there is no ‘besides.’ You’ll be my guest until you get the doc’s okay to go home. Deal?”

  “I already have a room at the Chalet Blanche. I’m sure they can extend my reservation until—”

  “Faye,” I say, lacing my fingers through hers. “Look at me.” I clear my throat. “I would like to invite you to be my guest for the month of January and half of February. I have plenty of space in my home, and I want you to stay with me.”

  “Three hours ago,” she says, trying to pull her hand away from mine, “you were pretty nasty to me.”

  “Sweetheart,” I say, unlacing our fingers but still holding her hand. “I am not smooth. I am sometimes an asshole, yes, but I promise you, I don’t mean to be.” I rub her hand in mine, lifting it to my lips before lowering it again. “I was surprised. I was caught off guard. I was—oh fuck—I was attracted to Faith and that felt like cheating on Faye and cheating is...is...”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she says. “Faith and Faye are the same person. Me!”

  “I’ve had a weird year where cheating’s concerned,” I tell her. “Cut me some slack, huh?”

  She inclines her head just a touch, then says, “You placed the ad, but you acted all shocked and bothered that I answered it. Why?”

  This is a tougher question, because the honest answer is that I’m probably a little sexist, which is totally and completely unfair. I have no right to judge her for something I was also willing to do. But...she’s a virgin.

  “Didn’t you want your first time to be special?” I ask her.

  “When I answered your ad?” Her shoulders slump. “No, actually. I just wanted to get it over with.” She takes a deep breath and exhales. “I had no prospects, no boyfriend, no special feelings for anyone. I thought...well, I thought I’d come up here and just...you know...have fun...see what all the fuss is about...jump-start my love life...”

  “By having sex with a total stranger.”

  “Yes,” she says, locking her eyes with mine. “Same as you.”

  “But you changed your mind?”

  “Of course,” she says. “I wouldn’t have agreed to spend New Year’s with you if I hadn’t.”

  “Why’d you change your mind?”

  I’m ninety-nine percent sure I know the answer to this question, but I need to hear it. I need to know.

  Her lips tilt up in a gentle smile as she reaches forward to cup my cheek with her free hand. “Because I met you, T. Because after I met you...I didn’t—didn’t want anyone else to be my first. I want you. That’s all I know.”

  I tilt my face so I can kiss her palm. “I want you too.”

  She wets her lips. “Did we just make up?”

  I nod slowly. “I think we did.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t mind a long-term houseguest?” she asks me.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  ***

  Carrying Faye from my car up to my bedroom is the easiest work I’ve ever done.

  She leans her weary cheek against my shoulder, and her curls, which only seem wilder after our crazy evening together, tickle my throat. Still clad only in her underwear, a hospital gown and a coat borrowed from the hospital Lost & Found, I lay her gently on my bed in the moonlight.

  “Give me a second,” I say. “I’ll turn down the covers on the other side and get you a T-shirt to wear.”

  She leans up on her elbows. “I hate to be so much trouble. I could stay at the Chalet Bl—”

  “You’re staying here,” I tell her, my voice firm and brooking no dissent. “That’s final.”

  “Thank you, Trevor,” she whispers, lying back.

  I turn on the light in my bathroom to add some ambient light to the room, then rifle through my top bureau drawer for a T-shirt. I choose one that reads, “My Compass Points North” over the logo of North Star Spirits and hand it to her. Then I fish the vial of hospital-prescribed painkillers out of my pocket and put it on the bedside table next to my water bottle.

  “Do you need help?” I ask. “With your clothes?”

  “No,” she says, looking up at me from my pillow. “But maybe a little privacy?”

  “Fuck,” I say, jumping a step backward. “Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, her voice tired but slightly amused.

  “I’ll be right downstairs,” I tell her. “What can I get you? Vodka? Gin?”

  “Tea?” she asks, her voice dipping a little. “My mother used to make me tea when I was sick.”

  “I don’t know what I have,” I warn her, “but I promise I’ll...find something.”

  As I stride to the open door, she calls after me, “Come back, T.”

  “Right now?”

  She chuckles softly in the dark. “No. Just...come back. I’m...I don’t want to be alone.”

  “I’ll be back with your tea,” I say, praying I have at least one tea bag somewhere in this house and closing my bedroom door behind me.

  For a second or two, I lean against the closed door in the hallway, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. With Faye safely in my bed, about to get a good night’s sleep she sorely needs, it’s the first easy breath I’ve taken in about five hours. I think about our fight in the lobby of the Chalet Blanche, the sound of her cries when she broke her foot, seeing Marlena’s face in the ER, and making up with Faye after her X-rays...and my heart...fuck, my heart...hurts. Or finally doesn’t hurt. I don’t know. I just feel so much, and it’s almost entirely focused on the woman in my bed, who is going to be my guest for the next six weeks or so.

  And it’s that thought that makes my eyes open and my lips tilt up i
n a smile.

  For the next six weeks, Faye Findley is all mine.

  Frankly, I can’t think of anything I’d like better.

  I hurry downstairs to the kitchen, where I comb my cabinets for a tea bag, finally finding Yerba Mate in the back of my aluminum foil drawer, no doubt put there by Inez and enjoyed while she’s working.

  I heat up a mug of water in the microwave and put a tea bag in the hot water, letting it steep for a minute or two while I lean against the counter.

  You could throw a dart at tonight and hit twenty crazy occurrences, but the craziest of all to me wasn’t actually when I realized that Faye and Faith were the same person...it was realizing that my feelings for Marlena are absolutely, positively over. I was surprised to see her, of course, but it didn’t hurt my heart or make it soar. It just...was. Oh, here’s my ex, Marlena, the nurse, to help my injured girlfriend, Faye.

  I jerk away from the counter as I realize that I called Faye my “girlfriend” in my head.

  My girlfriend...mine.

  It’s far from the truth because we’re still getting to know each other, and yet people who meet during extreme or extraordinary circumstances often find themselves moving faster than those who evolve from friendship to romance or date for ages before declaring a commitment.

  And the reality is...between the ad I placed and our pen names as Mr. Fairbanks and Faith Crawford, in addition to the way we met by chance on Christmas Eve and spent Christmas Day together, only to realize we knew of one another in real life, and ended up spending the next two days together...it has been extraordinary. Somehow Faye Findley and I have packed months’ worth of circumstances, emotions, and coincidences into a five-day meeting. It’s sped up everything. I haven’t even processed all of it yet.

  Throwing the tea bag in the sink, I head back upstairs and tiptoe into my room, gingerly placing the mug on the bedside table next to Faye, who somehow managed to wiggle under the covers with her boot on. Because she’s meant to keep it elevated, I steal two pillows from the guest room across the hall, and lift the covers of my bed to place them under her foot. Unfortunately, I wake her up as I’m holding her bare leg in my hands.

  “T?” she murmurs.

  “I’m here, sweetheart,” I say, finishing my work, covering her up, then squatting down beside her so my face is closer to hers. “I just wanted to get your leg elevated.”

  She sniffles softly. “I broke my foot.”

  “You did,” I say.

  “I can’t go home for six weeks.”

  “I know.”

  “It h-hurts,” she half-sighs, half-sobs.

  “Did you take a painkiller? I left them—”

  “I did,” she says, sniffling again. “It hasn’t kicked in yet.”

  “It will,” I say, brushing the hair from her forehead. “Soon.”

  “Will you...will you lie down?” she asks. “Next to me?”

  “Yeah. Of course,” I whisper, standing up and pulling off my suit jacket.

  I grab some sweats and another T-shirt from my bureau and take them into the bathroom. I throw my pants, shirt, undershirt, and socks in the hamper and quickly change. When I come out, her breathing is deep and easy, and I think she’s asleep until I slip under the covers beside her.

  “I need to be sure you know,” she says, turning her head to face me, “that I only walked into that lobby tonight to tell Mr. Fairbanks that I’d met someone else. I was going to call the whole deal off. I have a check in my purse that I was going to offer him to cover his expenses.”

  I slide my hand across the bottom sheet to find hers. Once I do, I lace our fingers together.

  “I know,” I say. “I was there to do exactly the same: to tell Faith Crawford that I’d met someone else with whom I wanted to share my New Year’s.”

  “Lucky you,” she deadpans. “Now you get to spend the entire month of January and half of February with her too.”

  I squeeze her hand, then lift it to my lips and kiss her knuckles, one at a time, each in turn.

  “Lucky me,” I whisper into the darkness. “Lucky fucking bastard that I get more time with you.”

  She chuckles softly. “Maybe I broke my foot on purpose so we wouldn’t have to say good-bye yet.”

  “If you did, that’s completely brilliant. You knew what I wanted even before I did.”

  “Thank you for letting me stay...for taking care of me,” she says.

  I scooch closer to her, until our hips are side by side and touching. Then I lower our joined hands to my chest and rest them over my heart.

  “Thanks for breaking your foot,” I say. “Now get some sleep, sweetheart.”

  ***

  Faye

  Despite the weariness of my body, it took a while for me to fall asleep in someone else’s bed.

  I don’t know how late it was when I finally drifted off, but I had to go to the bathroom around three and woke up Trevor by mistake when one of my crutches crashed to the ground. He insisted on carrying me to the bathroom, but pulling down my underwear proved challenging, and standing up from the toilet made sharp darts of pain shoot up my leg. I called to him when I was finished but forgot to flush the toilet, which bothered me for over an hour before I gave up worrying about it and finally went back to sleep.

  My eyes open and focus, staring first at the ceiling, then to my right, alerted to T’s presence by the light tap of fingers on a keyboard. He’s sitting up beside me with an open laptop, which—for no good reason—makes me happy.

  I clear my raspy throat. “’Morning.”

  He stops typing and slides his eyes to me. “Hey...look who’s awake!”

  I try to sit up, but my foot immediately protests, screaming in pain, and my bladder, which hasn’t been emptied in nine hours, sloshes around, full again.

  “Ohhhh, fuck. I’m a mess.”

  “What?” he asks, putting his laptop aside and jumping up. “What do you need?”

  I look up at him, my eyes filling with tears, feeling so goddamned helpless, it’s pathetic.

  “I need to pee...I’m thirsty and hungry...my foot is killing me...”

  He squats down beside me, opens the vial of pills beside the bed, takes out one, and hands it to me with a bottle of water. “For the pain.”

  I swallow it down gratefully, chugging the rest of the water in the bottle because I’m so thirsty.

  Trevor stands up. “Ready for the bathroom?”

  I nod, reaching my arms up to him. He pulls off the covers and scoops me up, opening the toilet seat with his foot and settling me gently on top. “Call me when you’re done.”

  “Thank you,” I murmur, sniffling pathetically as he closes the door.

  I plant my good foot on the floor, lean up, and yank at my panties. One side gets caught between my thigh and the seat, but I finally manage to pull them down enough to pee, all the while letting my tears flow freely.

  In my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this helpless or this pitiful. I mean, I own a massive company, a huge house, two cars, and my bank accounts have millions, but I can’t even get to the bathroom on my own. This situation is...humiliating...and humbling...and a little terrifying too.

  I need to get on my phone or laptop and explain to Carlene and the board that I won’t be back in Boston until mid-February. Except I don’t even have a laptop with me. All my stuff, including my phone, is at the Chalet Blanche.

  My steady trickle of tears turns into full-blown sobs that echo loudly in the tiled bathroom and you know what? I don’t care. I don’t. I let it out. I let it all out. The pain. The helplessness. Everything.

  “Faye? Faye, are you okay?”

  I continue to weep loudly, shaking my head back and forth, no, even though he can’t see me.

  “Faye, did you fall? What’s going on?”

  I didn’t fall. My life is in shambles.

  “Faye, if you don’t answer, I’m coming in.”

  “I’m...on...the...t-toilet! Stay out!”

>   “Why are you crying?”

  “Because...I’m...a...m-mess!” I sob through a deluge a fresh tears. I pull some toilet paper from the roll and blow my snotty nose.

  “Well, if you finish up in there, I’ll come and get you, and we can talk. I can help. I promise.”

  I don’t want to talk, I think, feeling very, very sorry for myself.

  “Faye?” he prompts. “I called the Chalet Blanche, explained what happened, and they said my brother could go pick up your things as soon as you called them yourself to release the room and your things.”

  This appeals to me because, although it’s a tiny step, at least it’s a plan to address one of my current woes: getting my stuff.

  “O-Okay,” I say. “C-Can I b-borrow your ph-phone? I’ll c-call them.”

  “You know,” he says, “my brother, Cez, broke his foot when he was sixteen. Same kind of fracture as yours. He was playing ice frisbee and slipped. Anyway. He was in bed for a couple of days, but my dad found him an office chair...you know...with casters? And he could roll around from room to room, and it gave him a lot more freedom. I have an office chair downstairs. I could bring it up and you could use it to get around.”

  Actually? That sounds amazing. So much better than relying on Trevor to carry me everywhere.

  “Um...I don’t know if you remember, but across the hall from my room, there’s a guest room. It has a bed and bathroom, but it also has a desk area. I was thinking you could use it if you wanted to.”

  Two thoughts immediately pop into my head.

  The first is Awesome. I’ll be able to get some work done.

  The second is He doesn’t want me in his bed. One night with me was more than enou—

  “I mean...” He clears his throat. “You can use the room for work. Not the bed. Sleep in my bed...with me...okay?”

  For the first time since I started crying, a small smile blooms across my face, because I’m so relieved that he’s not trying to get rid of me.

  “Yes,” I say, taking a jagged breath and sighing. “Thank you. All of that sounds...really good. Thank you, Trevor.”