“I think I don’t fucking have to care what you think anymore, Kat, so just go away.”
“Don’t be like that,” Kathy said, moving closer.
Kai’s chin came up immediately. “You know, I don’t usually hit women, but I might make an exception for you.” Her tone was conversational, but her expression was far from casual.
“You won’t,” Kathy said, undaunted. “You won’t because you’d rather fuck me than hit me…” She slid her hand up Kai’s chest, feeling the other woman shudder. “See? You miss me. Just admit it so we can move forward.”
“Still married?” Kai asked sharply.
“We’re getting divorced,” Kathy said, as if that made everything okay.
Kai gave a short laugh, shaking her head. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” Kathy had said as much about her husband, back when they were both in the Middle East and their romance had been hot and heavy, or so Kai had thought.
Tossing aside her cigarette, she grabbed Kathy’s hand at the wrist and pointedly removed it from her, staring down into her eyes.
“Get your hands off of me. I don’t belong to you anymore,” she said, and with that shoved Kathy away.
Kathy stepped back, her eyes flaring. She wasn’t used to not getting what she wanted.
“You will come back to me, Kai,” she said sharply. “And when you do, I’m going to make you sorry you pulled this little power play.” She narrowed her eyes in the nasty way Kai remembered so well. “I was, am, and will always be your superior, Kai Marou Temple—don’t ever forget that.” Kathy pivoted on her heel and marched back into the club.
Kai winced as the door slammed, then banged her head on the wall a couple of times, praying to the powers that be that Kathy wasn’t right.
“Fuck!” she yelled, hitting the back of her head on the concrete once more.
She didn’t see the blond woman standing just off to the side, who had been doing her best not to overhear everything that had been said. Nor did she see the grimace the woman made when she banged her head on the concrete.
Finley Taylor did her best to leave the area without Kai Temple noticing her. Fortunately, she succeeded.
Chapter 1
“Fin!” called one of the nurses.
Finley craned her neck around to look at the woman, who was gesturing at the small brunette practically bouncing with energy. Nodding, Finley motioned to the girl to come over, even as she sighed. This one was becoming a lot of work now.
“Hi, honey!” the girl said, bounding up to her and kissing her lips.
“Hey, Jenny,” Finley said, making sure her voice reflected her chagrin at Jenny showing up at the ER where she worked. “This really isn’t a good time…”
“But you said we were going out today,” Jenny said, pouting prettily, as she dragged the toe of her heeled pump on the pavement.
“I got called in, Jenny. It’s cold and flu season—a lot of staff are out,” Finley explained patiently, trying her best not to be completely annoyed.
This girl was particularly cute, with her long, curly brown hair with boatloads of blond highlights. She was dressed in amicro mini dress with thigh-high black-and-white-striped tights and black high heels. There was some fairly spectacular smooth, tanned thigh showing, and Finley found it somewhat distracting. The girl was sexy all the time, and Finley knew she was using her for exactly that. She pretty much used them all for sex, never bothering to get too deep with any of them. Most of the girls she ended up with wouldn’t understand ninety-eight percent of what she’d say if she actually tried to talk to them about more than clothes, hair, and/or makeup.
“But…” Jenny began, looking at Finley through her bangs. Her pretty blue eyes, heavily made up, were glassy with tears.
“Come on, don’t do that,” Finley said, knowing full well the girl was laying it on thick. “You know I gotta work.”
“You always gotta work.”
“That’s what it’s like dating a doctor, hon.” Finley grimaced mentally as she saw a beatific smile light Jenny’s face up.
“We’re dating?” Jenny asked, her voice painfully hopeful.
“Well, you know…” Finley said, keeping her tone casual, even as she turned her back to Jenny and made faces at herself. “Like seeing a doctor… you know, like that.”
Turning back around, Finley could see she hadn’t gotten out of that one. Damnit, damnit damnit! The last thing she wanted was for this girl to think they were dating—it meant she’d want even more time from her that she wasn’t willing to give.
“We’ll go out sometime next week, okay?” she said, smiling.
“You promise?” Jenny said, already looking for commitments.
“I’ll call you,” Finley said, avoiding promising anything. “And maybe I can buy you something to make it up to you… okay?” She knew the offer would entice Jenny.
“Really?” Jenny asked, her blue eyes lighting up like it was Christmas morning.
Finley smiled, nodding. “But I gotta get back inside before I freeze!” She put her hands inside her blue sweatshirt with Cedars Sinai on the breast pocket.
Ten minutes later and an orgasm for Jenny achieved easily enough around the side of the building in a dark corner, Finley walked back into the ER.
“When you gonna stop that shit?” asked Jackie, the heavyset black nurse who had known Finley for the ten years that she’d been at Cedars Sinai and considered herself Finley’s “other mama.”
Finley looked guilty for a moment, wondering if Jackie somehow knew about the quick and dirty sex at the back of the hospital. “Stop what shit?” she asked as she went to pick up the charts for the three patients they’d taken in in the few minutes she’d been outside.
“Datin’ those pretty little nothings,” Jackie said, making a sucking sound through her teeth when Finley only grinned. “Don’t you grin at me like that, girlie! I’m serious!”
Finley turned to lean against the counter next to where Jackie sat, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “It’s easier, Jacks. They don’t require a lot of work.”
Jackie gave her a narrowed look. “Work’s part of a real relationship, Finley Ann Taylor.”
Finley rolled her eyes. “Who says I want a real relationship?”
“Girl!” Jackie exclaimed. “The Good Lord put us on this Earth for one reason and one reason only. To find love!”
Finley laughed, shaking her head. “I know, I know.”
“So you gotta get to it. Those beautiful looks aren’t going to last forever, ya know.” Jackie circled her finger to indicate Finley’s face.
Finley Taylor was a beautiful woman, of that there was no doubt, with naturally curly honey-blond hair like spun silk and brandy-colored eyes in a beautiful, finely boned face, and pouty lips and a curvy but fit body that could have been sculpted by Botticelli himself.
“Jesus, Jackie, I’m thirty-four—can I have a life first?” Finley said, rolling her eyes.
“Don’t you want babies?”
“Oh God, don’t start that!” Finley shook her head. “You know not all women actually want kids, right?”
“Oh, come on, you’d make such beautiful babies!”
“Like I have time for that. Any woman I’d have kids with would have to have the kid.”
“But then it wouldn’t get your beautiful genes.”
Finley grinned. “Yeah, I could live with that.”
“But your mama would just love grandbabies…” Jackie said, her tone changing slightly.
“Like I care what she wants. Besides, she’d want me to have a kid with a man, she’s okay with me dating women, but she doesn’t get the concept of in vitro or any of that stuff, Jackie, and me with a man… that ain’t happening!”
“Well, none of these little pop tarts you’re dating would have a baby.”
“And I never said I wanted a baby, Jacks,” Finley countered. “I gotta go check on patients,” she added, giving her dirty look.
Jackie stared after
the young woman, shaking her head. The girl was far too headstrong for her own good sometimes.
****
“You did what?” Kai asked the blonde sitting across from her in the passenger seat of her car.
“I kind of used his credit card…” the girl replied, cringing.
Kai dropped her head back against the headrest, banging it a couple of times. “He’s gonna go ballistic. Jesus, Cass, why?”
There was an impatient honk behind them. Kai threw her hand up in a gesture of acknowledgment. They were sitting in a bright green Mercedes-AMG GT R, with its sleek lines and low-slung appearance. The car was parked at the curb at the Los Angeles International Airport, known as LAX.
Cassiana Temple stared at her half-sister. She was still stunned by Kai’s appearance. She hadn’t seen any recent pictures of Kai; she’d only ever seen photos of her when she’d been younger, around twelve, and she hadn’t looked anything like she did now. Gone were the gangly arms, replaced by lean, sharply defined muscle. The legs that had looked long and skinny were now well muscled, outlined in tight, faded jeans and sharply bent at the knees as Kai lounged comfortably behind the wheel of her sports car. Also gone was any sign of the awkwardness that had been apparent in Kai’s younger pictures.
This woman looked anything but awkward; in fact, she seemed extremely comfortable in her own skin. It was something Cassiana longed for. At sixteen, she felt so completely out of place in her life, and Kai had been the only person she could turn to, so she’d acted on impulse and stolen their father’s credit card to pay for a flight to Los Angeles from Washington DC
“I had to get out of there, Kai Marou…” she said tremulously.
“Why, what happened?” Kai asked, narrowing her eyes slightly.
Cassiana looked nervous suddenly, shaking her head. The guy behind them honked again.
“Are ya fuckin’ kiddin’ me, dude!” Kai yelled, gesturing for him to go around her. There was space on the curb in front of her car—the guy was just being an asshole, and she wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Cass, what happened?” Kai knew how volatile their father was, and was worried that he’d actually lost his mind and gotten physical with the girl.
Cassiana picked at the stitching on the leather seat, her eyes downcast. “He caught me…”
“With?” Kai asked, thinking if Cassiana was about to say “a boy,” the next call she’d get would be one asking her to go bail her father out of jail for murder.
“A girl,” Cassiana said, shocking the hell right out of Kai.
“I’m sorry?”
Cassiana raised her head, her stare accusing. “How can you act like that? You’re gay!”
Kai laughed, shaking her head. “I’m just thinking that history is repeating itself, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Dad caught me in that same room with a girl when I was fourteen.”
“Oh…” Cassiana said, her eyes widening. “How did he react?”
Kai gave a short bark of humorless laughter. “I was in a military boarding school two days later.”
Cassiana had turned pale. “What?”
There was a sharp rap on Kai’s window. She glanced over and saw the guy from the car behind. He was short and stocky. Kai narrowed her eyes as she opened her window.
“You can’t park here, lady. This isn’t your gab-fest parking,” he snapped.
Kai looked back at him for a long moment, much like a cat examines at a mouse. Then she reached for the door handle, climbed out of the low-slung Mercedes, and stood looking down at the guy, who only came up to her chin.
“Do you see the curb space in front of my vehicle?” she asked evenly as she gestured to the open area.
“That’s not the point! You rich bitches think you can park your Mercedes anywhere you want. I’m in a hurry!”
Kai narrowed her eyes dangerously, then slowly turned her head to the truck he was driving—predictably, it was a piece of crap on wheels. She looked back at the man.
“Sir,” she said, her tone still even, “if you were really in a hurry, and not just being an asshole for what you think I have that you don’t have, you’d have moved the fuck around me five minutes ago, and not come bitching at me.” She pointed a long-fingered hand at the end of a well-muscled arm, on full display in her tank top, at his truck. “So move that piece of shit before I take that horn of yours and wrap it around your neck. You got it?”
The guy looked back at her, his eyes blazing, and she could see he was itching for a fight. She canted her head slightly with a grin that told him she had no problem beating him senseless even though she was dressed for a night out rather than a brawl. His gaze swept over her—she definitely looked like she could back up what she was saying.
He turned around to walk back to his truck, muttering, “Fuckin’ dykes…”
“We won’t fuck you,” Kai said, loudly enough for anyone nearby to hear. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?”
She heard people laughing as she got back into her car, looking over at her half-sister, who was laughing too.
“Wow, you really told him,” Cassiana said.
Kai watched as the man pulled around her car and parked at the curb in front of her. “Guys like that are a dime a dozen,” she said, curling her lips in derision. She grinned. “Let’s get out of here before the cops decide to come hassle me next.”
They went to a restaurant in West Hollywood called Norm’s. It was a diner-style place, and the staff seemed to know Kai even though she obviously didn’t eat much of the kind of food they served. Kai ordered a Greek chicken salad with dressing on the side, while Cassiana ate like a teenager, ordering a burger, fries, onion rings, a shake, and a Coke.
“How can you eat that?” Cassiana asked, giving her half-sister a disgusted look.
“I could ask you the same question,” Kai replied mildly.
“Dude, it’s all-American food!”
“Which is why more than a third of Americans are considered obese,” Kai said with a pointed look.
“Do I look fat?” Cassiana asked, gesturing to herself.
“No,” Kai said, grinning. “You got lucky with the genes.”
“Uh-huh.” Cassiana rolled her eyes. “You haven’t seen my mom.”
“No, I haven’t,” Kai said, her tone changing slightly.
“Sorry.” Cassiana knew it was likely a sore spot.
Kai sighed. “It’s okay, Cass. It’s not surprising at all to me that my dad cheated on my mother. She’s such a doormat he could probably become the next Hitler and she’d be okay with it.”
“But still…”
Kai chuckled softly, her tone far from humorous. “Cass, you’ll find that our father and I aren’t exactly on the same page on most things, least of all relationships and what’s appropriate.”
Cassiana’s mother, an administrative clerk for Kai’s father, had had an affair with General Marou Temple for two years while he was stationed over in Iraq. Cassiana had been the result. Fourteen years later Cassiana’s mother had shown up on the Temple doorstep, demanding money from Marou for his daughter’s child support. A nasty court case had been avoided by Marou paying Cassiana’s mother off and taking Cassiana into their home, much to the disappointment of Kai’s mother, Cho Temple. Not that it had been enough to get Cho to divorce Marou. Nothing was ever enough for that, not even shipping their only daughter off to military boarding school for being gay.
Kai had only met Cassiana through email and chat because Cassiana had found her contact address in their mother’s stuff and started emailing her, wanting to reach out to her only sister. They’d had long conversations about how Cho treated her “like a bug in her house.” Their father had no idea how to handle girls, and so he didn’t really deal with her either.
“Did he really send you to military school because you were gay?” Cassiana asked nervously.
Kai nodded seriously. “Yup. I never lived at home again.”
“Yeah.”
“Which school was it?”
“RMA—Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia.”
“I’ve heard of that place…” Cassiana looked scared. “Do you think he’s going to do that to me?”
Kai shrugged. “I have no idea, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if he tried.”
“Tried?”
Kai looked at the girl. She was small, only about five foot four inches, and weighed perhaps 110 pounds, with no muscle whatsoever. When Kai had been fourteen, she was already taller than Cassiana and had some muscle tone because of her need to be out of the house—she spent a lot of time running.
“Do you think you could make it in a place like RMA?” Kai asked.
“Hell no!” Cassiana exclaimed, startling the people around them.
Kai grinned. “Okay, well, then we’ll have to talk him out of it.”
“You’d help me?”
Kai looked pensive for a moment, but nodded. “Yeah, I’d have to.”
“Why?”
Kai looked at her for a long moment. “Because I don’t want your life to become like mine was.”
“Was it that bad?”
“It wasn’t good.”
“So you’re a dyke?” her platoon leader asked her first day.
“Sir?” she asked, fortunately conditioned from birth to address people in authority with respect.
“A fucking dyke, Temple—you know, a cunt that likes other cunts,” the man said, getting right in her face.
She could hear the other plebes snickering. She narrowed her eyes, her temper flaring.
“Oh, you mean a girl that thinks your dick is too small to be useful,” she said, her tone as disrespectful as she could make it.
She was actually stunned by the punch to the gut that had her doubling over in pain; she should have been ready for the knee to the face that put her on the ground, but she just wasn’t. Foolishly, she’d thought her dad’s name would protect her here. She had no idea that he’d been the one who’d ordered them to get the idea of her being a lesbian out of her head once and for all.
Quid Pro Quo Page 2
