The Marriage Prescription

by Debra Webb

  Alex Preston. Jealousy slid through Beth making her want to claw the eyes out of a woman she’d never even met.

  Fortified with wine and fury, Beth glowered at him. “Are you saying that you think I’m not woman enough for you? Is that it? A good girl like me couldn’t possibly do the job right?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  She grabbed him by the shirtfront, pulled him down to her and kissed him hard on the mouth, then released him.

  “Never judge a book by its cover, Zach.” She lifted her chin a notch, daring him. “You might be surprised at what I can do.”

  He grabbed her this time. His mouth came down on hers with crushing intensity. His arms clamped around her like a vice, molding her softness to his muscular contours. She could feel every hard ripple and bulge. His tongue thrust into her mouth at the same time that his hands slid over her bottom and pulled her against his hips. She moaned her approval, helpless to do anything but cling to him.

  When his fingers slipped beneath the hem and discovered the bare skin of her bottom, he groaned his own satisfaction. Lost to the desire singing through her veins, Beth could only whimper when he scooped her into his arms and strode toward her room. He kicked the door closed behind them, his mouth still punishing hers with a sensual roughness.

  When her feet were on the floor once more, his hands were already on the zipper of her dress. He kissed her throat now, hot, lingering kisses that made her blood boil. The dress eased off her shoulders and slid down her body, the silk making her skin tingle.

  His mouth followed the descent of the flimsy fabric. He paused to admire her breasts, his warm breath sending hot, licking flames of desire coursing over her. Her nipples jutted out for his attention and when he’d had his fill of looking, he took one in his mouth. She cried out her pleasure as he dropped to his knees, his mouth and fingers working magic on her aching breasts. Her own fingers threaded into his silky hair, urging on his delicious ministrations.

  Then he moved lower.

  Beth stopped breathing. She wasn’t sure she could live through this exquisite torture. His mouth and tongue laved her skin, pausing at strategic spots to nuzzle and pay special attention. His fingers kneaded her bare bottom, adding another layer of sensation.

  He suddenly stopped.

  Beth almost cried out.

  She could feel his ragged breath against the skin he’d so thoroughly moistened and sensitized with his mouth and tongue. His hands stilled on her hips.

  Wanting more, she looked down at him to find out why he’d stopped. He was staring at her belly button. Or, more accurately, at her belly button ring. The one she’d gotten at the tattoo parlor.

  He lifted his gaze to hers, his expression unreadable.

  He didn’t like it. Dread pooled in her stomach. She shouldn’t have—

  A devilish smile slid across that masterful mouth. “Oh, baby, you do have a wicked side.”

  A tiny smile tugged at her lips. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  His gaze still on hers, he stood. He pulled the pins from her hair and allowed it to fall around her shoulders. Then, while they stared into each other’s eyes, he opened his shirt, one button at a time. He drew out each step, making her wait. Making her want to beg for him to hurry.

  Finally, the shirt drifted to the floor. The air that had only just started filling her lungs once more caught as her hands flattened against his beautiful chest. He stood, frozen, while she smoothed her palms over him…the way she’d dreamed of doing for so very long.

  Way before she’d had her fill, he lifted her against him once more. As he moved toward the bed she kicked off her shoes. Pushing aside the pillows she’d so strategically placed, he laid her gently on the soft comforter. He kissed her, tenderly this time, his powerful body hovering over hers. When his mouth left hers, he stood next to the bed and unfastened his belt…reached for his fly—

  Her pager sounded off like a siren, shattering the sweet silence.

  She reached for it, the move second nature, and read the display. The hospital. Snatching up the receiver, she focused on slowing her respiration while she punched in the numbers.

  “I thought you weren’t on call tonight,” he said, sitting down on the bed beside her.

  Was that disappointment she heard in his voice? “I’m not. But Helen or Colleen could have been in an accident.”

  The information relayed to her made her heart squeeze in her chest. It wasn’t their mothers, it was Laurie Ellroy. She’d been rushed to the emergency room an hour or so ago, and now she was being admitted.

  Beth had no choice.

  She hung up the receiver.

  “I have to go.” She looked up at Zach and wished she could stay. He looked magnificent. Her body ached in protest of what she knew she had to do.

  “I understand.” He stood and turned toward her door.

  Just when she thought he was going to walk out, he bent down and picked up her dress. He brought it to her, then rounded up her shoes. Touched by his thoughtfulness, Beth scrambled off the bed and into her dress. He zipped it for her while she held her hair out of the way.

  “I’m sorry,” she offered. “This patient isn’t even mine anymore…not technically. But I promised her mother that I would be there for them.” She turned to Zach and prayed he would somehow understand how difficult this was, both leaving him and knowing Laurie was worse. “I really am sorry,” she repeated.

  He brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek. “Don’t be. I can take a rain check. If this patient needs you, you should go. Call me when you get back.”

  Stepping into her shoes, it hit her that she’d had two glasses of wine only minutes ago. She swore softly.

  “What’s wrong?” Unlike before, his fingers were making quick work of buttoning his shirt.

  “The wine. I probably shouldn’t even be driving,” she fretted. “But I have to go.”

  In five seconds flat he was tucked in and buttoned down. “I’ll drive you.” He smiled. “After all, I’m the one who brought the wine.”

  She made a distressed face. “I can’t be sure how long I’ll be there.”

  He shrugged. “They still keep magazines in the waiting rooms, don’t they?”

  Beth didn’t argue any further. She had to go, and, she admitted, she was glad he was going with her.

  At least they would be together. And that suddenly meant a great deal to her.

  ZACH FOLLOWED Beth down the long, sixth floor corridor. His stomach had tightened instantly at the smell upon entering the place. A dozen memories of sitting by his father’s bedside while the life drained from him overwhelmed Zach. He didn’t like hospitals. Then again, he countered, pushing away thoughts of death and dying, who did? He watched Beth’s purposeful strides as he considered his question. He supposed doctors and nurses did. Or maybe they just felt compelled to do their work with no concern as to where it was performed. He had a feeling that Beth cared deeply for her work. And she was good. He knew it without his mother having told him what the hospital administrator had to say.

  How many doctors would rush to a hospital to hold the hand of a patient that wasn’t even hers any longer?

  Not many, he felt certain.

  Beth had explained on the way that this twenty-two-year-old woman had leukemia. She needed a bone marrow donor or she would die. The mother’s own health problems prevented her from being a suitable donor. The father was dead and the girl had no siblings. Regret twisted in his stomach at the thought of such a tragic waste. The patient had just graduated from college, according to Beth, and would have started her first teaching job this fall had fate not played such a dirty trick on her.

  “Dr. Daniels!” A feminine voice called out from the nurse’s station.

  Zach slowed, allowing Beth to go ahead of him. The woman, who looked to be in her fifties, threw her arms around Beth. He resisted the urge to frown at the woman’s use of Beth’s married name. He wondered why she would want to retain her ex’s
name. Could there be something between them still? Irritation, fierce and unreasonable, tightened his jaw.

  “I’m so sorry I had to call you.”

  Beth drew back to look at her. “Don’t even think about leaving me out. I told you to call me. I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t.”

  The woman nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. “She’s better now. Sleeping.” She sighed. “I was just going to have them call you and tell you not to come.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good,” Beth told her. “I would have come anyway. Can I get you anything?”

  The older woman swiped her cheeks and managed a smile. “No, no. I’m all right.”

  “You’ve eaten?”

  The woman nodded. Zach noticed how thin and tired she looked. But then he imagined that watching one’s child die would do that to a person. That and much worse, he added, that sick feeling rising in his gut again.

  The woman looked over Beth’s shoulder and caught a glimpse of Zach, then she took in Beth’s appearance a little more closely. As if she’d just deduced what she may have interrupted, her hand flew to her mouth then fluttered in the air. “I am so sorry. You shouldn’t have come.”

  “Oh, gosh,” Beth said, color tingeing her cheeks as she realized her oversight. “I forgot all about you, Zach.” She ushered the woman toward him. “Jenny Ellroy, this is Zach.”

  Zach nodded an acknowledgment. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. I’m very sorry about…the circumstances.”

  A frown etching its way across her features, the woman extended her hand. “You look so familiar.” Her frown deepened. “Are you from Cartersville?”

  He took her hand and shook it gently. “Zach Ashton,” he told her. “I was raised in Kelso. It’s not far from here.”

  “Ashton?” she echoed.

  The color drained from her face right before Zach’s eyes. He was certain she would have swayed had it not been for Beth’s arm around her shoulders.

  “I think you need to sit down,” Beth offered. “Let’s get you back to Laurie’s room.”

  The woman nodded distractedly, her gaze never leaving Zach. He wasn’t sure what he should do or say. Maybe all the stress from her daughter’s illness had suddenly hit her.

  He followed Beth and Jenny into a room four doors down from the nurse’s station. He felt a little uncomfortable in a stranger’s hospital room, but the girl was sleeping so she would never know. While Beth situated the mother in a chair near the bedside table, Zach took in the features of the daughter. She looked extremely pale. The color of her skin was parchment white, a sharp contrast to her dark hair. Like her mother, she appeared to be rail thin. And so very, very young. She looked like a child rather than a recent college graduate. What a terrible waste. Surely a donor would be found.

  “Zach,” Beth whispered from right beside him.

  He tried not to show how much she’d startled him. “Yeah?”

  “Would you go down to the cafeteria and get Mrs. Ellroy a cup of black coffee and something sweet. A doughnut, maybe. She needs a little perking up.”

  He nodded. “Sure.” He glanced in the woman’s direction and was surprised to find her still staring at him. Her strange preoccupation with him didn’t really make him uncomfortable. It did, however, concern him. Had his presence added a strain to an already stressful situation?

  “I’ll be right back,” he told Beth. “Then maybe I should hang out in the waiting room.”

  Before Beth could say anything, Mrs. Ellroy leaned forward. “Please,” she whispered just loud enough for him to hear. “Please, don’t go.”

  Chapter Eight

  By 2:00 a.m. Zach had seen a great deal more suffering than he’d wanted to. The young girl, Laurie, had awoken suddenly and all hell had broken loose. Between the bouts of vomiting and plummets in her blood pressure, the girl had scared the wits out of most of the staff working her case. The oncologist had finally arrived and things had calmed down.

  Though Zach was no stranger to suffering, he’d watched his father die an excruciatingly slow death with cancer, this was somehow different. When his father had died, he’d been sixty-five years old—still too young to die by any standards—but watching a girl so painfully young that she’d barely tasted life hang on by a mere thread was almost more than Zach could take. It made him ponder the unfairness of life more deeply than he ever had before.

  The one bright spot had been watching Beth. She was utterly amazing. Her burning desire to help was so clear. She was relentless. Every moment, every breath she took was focused on her patient and the patient’s mother. He couldn’t see how anyone could lose hope with Beth on her side. Her steady reassurances and enthusiasm under fire were a credit to her professional ability. He could definitely understand why the hospital wanted to keep her.

  Just another reason they could never be. She was needed here. She obviously loved her job. And Zach loved his job back in Chicago. Though he certainly couldn’t claim the healing and life-saving skills Beth offered to her patients, he was very good at what he did. Victoria Colby told him time and again how she couldn’t manage without him. And he could never be the kind of attorney who sorted out divorce cases or drew up last wills and testaments for his clients.

  Laurie was resting again by 2:30 a.m. Even Zach felt grateful. Maybe her mother could get some badly needed rest now. Zach waited near the door while Beth said her goodbyes. Though she wasn’t on duty, she insisted she’d be back later in the day to check on Laurie.

  The final, beseeching look Mrs. Ellroy focused on him shifted something in his chest. He couldn’t say what it was exactly, but he felt something for her. Sympathy, maybe? He offered her a smile and that seemed to placate the expectant look in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry I kept you here so long,” Beth murmured as they walked in the direction of the elevator bank on the sixth floor. She sounded exhausted.

  “It wasn’t a problem.” Instinctively he placed his hand at the small of her back for comfort. “I’m glad I had the opportunity to see you in action.”

  One of the nurses called goodbye to Beth as they passed the nurse’s station. The elevators were located at the far end of the corridor where this new wing connected with the original structure. When they reached their destination Zach pressed the call button.

  Beth looked at him for a time before she finally spoke again. “Tonight was one of the less pleasant aspects of being a physician.”

  “You handled it extremely well.”

  She made a sound that could have been a laugh had it not been entirely humorless and far too dry. “But it’s not enough.”

  The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. Both remained silent as it glided into downward motion, then bumped to a stop on the lobby level.

  “Maybe they’ll find a donor soon,” he offered when they’d exited the building.

  “We can hope,” she replied, her tone lacking optimism.

  Zach inhaled deeply of the cool night air, clearing his lungs of the medicinal smell of healing and the underlying stench of death and dying. He’d discovered over the course of the night that the sixth floor of the hospital’s new wing was the oncology floor where death loomed among the miracles like a towering hawk ready to swoop down on its victims.

  Pushing that harsh reality from his mind, he opened the car door for Beth, but she hesitated and looked up at him. Even in the sparse moonlight and the pale glow from the car’s interior lamp, he could see the tears glittering in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry things didn’t work out tonight, Zach.” She moistened her lips and sucked in a shaky breath. “I wanted things to be perfect. I…”

  He took her in his arms and held her close.

  “I wish…” she sobbed. “I wish I could do something.”

  He didn’t say anything, he just kept holding her against his chest. He knew she wasn’t talking about him now or their missed time together. She meant the patient she’d left on the sixth floor. With a fierceness that su
rprised even him, he wished he could do something, too. But he couldn’t. All either of them could do was hope.

  Zach had known how selfless Beth was, but now he understood something he hadn’t before. Whenever she lost or felt on the verge of losing a patient, she lost a little piece of herself as well. He wanted more than he’d ever wanted anything before to somehow make up for that. To fill in the voids left by the reality of her chosen profession.

  To make her whole.

  So he stood there, in the near darkness, with the September breeze wafting around them as he held her, and he knew that no matter what happened from this point on there was no turning back for him. He loved Beth. Nothing would ever change that. He would give her whatever she asked of him and then he’d go back to Chicago and leave her here where she was happy…where she belonged. He would never, no matter how much he wanted to, ask her to leave what she loved. Even if she felt the same way about him, he wouldn’t ask her to chose.

  Marriage wasn’t for him anyway. He’d made that decision the day she walked down the aisle with another man. What would he do with a wife and kids? He didn’t have time for that kind of life.

  She hadn’t asked him to marry her anyway, she’d asked him to have an affair with her. Proof positive that she didn’t feel the same way he did.

  Oh well, he supposed it served him right. He’d broken enough hearts over the years. Time about was fair play, wasn’t it?

  HELEN POUNDED on Colleen’s kitchen door and waited, her patience growing thinner with each passing moment. Finally, Colleen jerked the door open.

  “Why on earth are you knocking?” Colleen griped. “You’ve come in and out of this house at will for over forty years. Why change your routine now? Besides, what could be so all fired important at this hour?”

  Helen raised an accusing brow. “It’s nine o’clock in the morning. If you haven’t gotten your beauty rest by this hour, it ain’t happening.”