Tia couldn’t help raising one of her dark, perfectly sculpted eyebrows. “He’s only three weeks out from surgery. He needs to ice regularly. Social engagements or not.” Tia turned to Eli. She couldn’t be proprietary over him in a personal way, like this Katie woman apparently could. But he was viewing her as his doctor. And she’d be damned if she wasn't gonna wield her medical clout a little. “And speaking of that, Eli, you really should get off your feet. And I’d like to make sure your ace bandage isn’t restricting circulation.”
The smile that bloomed over Eli’s face took away the breath of both of the women standing before him.
“Oh. So you’re like actually his doctor?” Katie asked, a skeptical look coming over her face as she swept her eyes from Tia’s feet to her hairline.
“Yes,” Eli immediately answered. “And she’s an old friend from high school. Come on, Doc. Nice to see you, Katie. Enjoy the party.”
Eli took Tia’s hand in his own and it was nothing like holding hands with Marcus. Tia’s hand was immediately swallowed by his large, rough one. That buzzy heat gathered between their palms again and this time it was so acute that Tia could feel it shooting up her arm. She was suddenly uncomfortably hot.
“Old friend from high school?” she said to him, making him look back at her. “Eli, you don’t even remember me from high school.”
His smile faded a little and his eyes suddenly narrowed as he tugged a little bit harder on her hand all of the sudden.
She expected Eli to lead her to the couch where Jay and Marcus were sitting and chatting with a few people Tia didn’t know, but he walked right past them, pulling her all the way through the living room and down a back hallway. Tia did her best to ignore the countless daggers that were being stared into her by the other women at the party.
He pulled her down the dark hallway, flipping lights on as he went. He walked past a few rooms with their doors slightly ajar and Tia got déjà vu of the one other time she was in the place where Elijah Bird lived. The party where she’d snooped in his room. And written in his yearbook. Oh lord. She was grateful for the dim hallway when her cheeks went pink.
Finally he tugged her into a room at the end of the hall. It was a cozy den space with dark green walls and an enormous bookshelf on one wall. He motioned for her to sit on the plush love seat that, Tia saw with surprise, faced a large window instead of a television. It was too dark to see what the window looked out on. She sat, crossing one leg over the other and watched Eli drag a finger along the spines of one shelf of books, obviously looking for something.
“Have you actually read all these books?” she asked, mimicking his earlier question back at him.
He laughed. “Not even close.”
She looked around her. What were they doing back here? She started to feel like maybe she should check on Laura.
“Eli,” she started.
“Ah! Here it is!” He plucked a sickeningly familiar book off the shelf and came to sit right next to her on the love seat. It was small enough that they were pressed together, hip to knee. Eli lifted his arm and placed it along the back of the couch behind her so that he wouldn’t be crowding her too much, but the effect was such that she felt utterly surrounded by him.
She stared at the yearbook that he unceremoniously plopped in her lap.
Oh lord. Did he know? Had he figured out that she was the one who’d written that lovesick note for him? Her stomach flipped with trepidation. This was not something she wanted to talk to him about.
“I feel terrible for not initially remembering who you are, Tia. Please. Find yourself in there. Jog my memory.”
Ok. So he just wanted to look at her yearbook photo. As a surgeon, Tia’s hands never shook. A fact that she was not so much proud of as she was extremely grateful for. And right now, her iron will didn’t fail her. She briskly flipped through the pages as if her heart weren’t doing the conga beneath her shirt. Avoiding the front pages, where she’d scribbled her love note for him, she went to the Cs and quickly found herself, pointing out her picture.
“Oh,” she noted with a little surprise. “It’s not as terrible a picture of me as I remember.”
Eli, leaning over the picture for a good look, looked down at her like she was crazy. “You look so pretty in this picture. You must have been nuts if you thought it was bad.”
They both leaned over it for a closer look. “I wasn’t nuts. I was a high school girl. They’re built to think that every picture reveals their worst flaws.”
Eli squinted at the photo. “Oh yeah. I do remember you, Tia. We had a class together. History or something?”
“History of religion,” she corrected absently, tracing a finger over her picture.
“Right. Right.” Eli strained to remember. “We did a project together, right? I’d forgotten that.”
“Yeah.” Tia wanted to look up but couldn’t. She could feel his gaze burning into the side of her face. “We had to do a visual timeline on the events of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You, uh, surprised me. I remember. While we were working on that project.”
Tia was talking like she too could barely recall having worked on that project with him. But the truth was, it had been so searingly exciting at the time, that she didn’t think she’d ever forget it.
He cocked his head to the side. “Surprised you how?”
Tia flipped through the book until she found his picture. His curly hair on his forehead and huge, creased grin. Looking exactly the way she remembered him. “I expected to have to do all the work by myself.”
He laughed. “Because I was a jock?”
Tia shrugged. “And because everyone loved you. The guys were all your friends, the teachers laughed at all your jokes, and the girls, well, you know how the girls felt about you.” She shrugged, wanting to quickly move past that. “And I guess I just thought you’d assume I’d do the project for both of us.”
She didn’t mention that she’d had it so bad for him, she’d have gladly done the whole project for them.
“But like I said, you surprised me. You worked harder than I did on the project.” She traced an absent finger over his picture as well. She barely noticed that she’d done it. But he did. “And then I felt badly for having such low expectations for you.”
Eli watched her. He remembered now, albeit dimly. Honestly, he remembered the project better than he did the girl. He wondered now how he could have been so blind. She had been cute back then, verging on very pretty. And they must have sat and talked and planned that project for hours. How could he have ever forgotten her?
Well, he knew how. His mother had died only a few years before that and Eli had still been in a cloud of grief. Each day a little less potent than the day before, but infinitesimally. Girls liked him in high school, sure. But honestly, he hadn’t paid much mind to anyone besides Jay, Marcus, and his father.
But he was paying attention now. And that pretty young girl had turned into an utterly stunning woman.
Eli’s heart thumped as he looked down at her. She looked back at him. Her eyes glowing and silver bright.
“Eli?”
“Yeah?” His voice was husky and dark and he couldn’t help but drop his eyes to her lips. Her perfect, luscious, serious lips.
“You’re welcome.”
He looked back up at her quickly, confused.
She cleared her throat and took his hand in hers, gave it a little squeeze. “You’re welcome for everything that happened that night of the accident. I accept your gratitude. I’m so glad I was there to do that for you.”
Eli gave himself a moment to let her words truly sink in. She wasn’t shaking off his words. She wasn’t telling him that it was perfectly normal for him to feel gratitude for his surgeon. She wasn’t talking to him about the gratitude that her other patients had felt as well. She was just looking him straight in the eye, and clutching his hand, and saying you’re welcome.
He waited for the fist of need in his chest to loosen. The one that had b
een pulling tighter and tighter ever since he’d met her. The one that was connected to her on a long, invisible string. It didn’t loosen.
Now that she’d fully accepted his gratitude, his need to thank her suddenly looked like something else to him. It was a rock, lodged somewhere in his chest. And it wouldn’t stop yearning. First it had been to thank her, and now it was yearning to be close to her.
“Wow,” Eli said, his eyes falling to her lips again. “Suddenly you don’t feel like my doctor anymore.”
“Oh?” Tia breathed, painfully aware of his leg pressed against hers, his arm around the back of the couch.
“Yeah.” He shifted a tiny bit. She would have thought that he would crowd her in a moment like this, a moment so heady and filled with romantic intent. But he did the opposite. He kept his eyes on hers, dead on hers and leaned back just the slightest amount.
Tia had the insane urge to lean into him. And she realized that was just, exactly, what he’d meant to have happen. He was reeling her in right now. Instead of invading her space, he was pulling her little by little into his own. Tia’s lips parted.
The grinning, floppy-haired Elijah Bird of high school was still flashing across her mind’s eye. The same photo of him that she’d privately sighed over countless times laid open on her lap. And here he was in front of her, all grown up and hers for the kissing. Of that she was sure.
Tia tilted her head, a tiny movement that would have meant almost nothing in any other context, but in this moment, smashed together on the love seat, his arm over the back, this heat thrumming in the air between them, Eli knew it meant that she was about to lean into his space. She was about to give him a little taste.
There was a roaring in his ears as he kept his eyes on hers, kept his body still as he could so he wouldn’t mess up the moment. She leaned forward—
“Elijah, where are all the—oh. Ah. Sorry to interrupt. I just couldn’t remember where you keep the extra darts for the dart board. You got them for me last time but I couldn’t remember from where.”
Tia’s blurry eyes eventually focused in on an absolutely stunning woman. Short, choppy blonde hair and a body to die for. She wore silky high-waisted shorts and a little fitted top. The words last time echoed in Tia’s head. Last time.
Of course. The red head and now this blonde and the countless other gorgeous women mingling out in his living room. Tia would bet all of them had had last times at Eli’s house. With a sinking in her gut like a stone in a well, Tia realized that this was her first time here at Eli’s, which was most likely the exact reason she was jammed onto this love seat with the heat of his arm searing her neck. She was a conquest. Which meant that at some point in the future, she’d be barging in on him with some other woman who was in the middle of her first time at Eli’s.
Eli was saying something to the woman, who gave Tia an embarrassed little wave before she ducked out. But Tia was too busy staring at Eli to pay much attention to it.
The fact was, he wasn’t the same boy she’d loved in high school. This wasn’t a stolen kiss in his blue bedroom like she’d wanted so badly as a girl. He was a man with a man’s appetite and she was a smart woman. She’d read the tabloid articles. She’d heard the sports announcers snickering at whatever woman had come to the game to watch him play that week.
And as painfully handsome as he was, as cute and alluring and…tall. With his white teeth and crinkly eyes and those creases in his cheeks. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that she could see the boy smiling out from him even now. No.
She wanted to kiss high school Elijah. Not Elijah Bird, star quarterback and chronic womanizer.
He said something to her that she didn’t hear and she made herself concentrate.
“Tia, are you okay?”
“Oh. Yes. Look, Eli—” An insistent beeping sound had her looking down at her phone. Thank god. Saved by the bell. “That’s the hospital. I’m getting called in.”
He rose alongside her and the two of them hurried through the halls of his house. “I can give Laura a ride home if you need to leave straight from here.”
“Oh! Damn.” Wow. Tia hadn’t even thought of her sister in the last twenty minutes. “Yeah, that would be great. Let me just run it past her real quick.”
They stepped out into the living room and Tia scanned until she spotted her sister in the corner. Was she? Yes. She was sitting in Jace Overshire’s lap. Without another word to Eli, Tia slipped away from him and hurried over toward her sister.
“Hey!” Laura said, narrowing her eyes at the expression on Tia’s face as she came hurrying over. She slid down from Jace’s lap. “Everything okay?”
“Yes. I just got called in to the hospital. Eli said he could give you a ride home.”
Laura’s eyes whipped back to Jace’s almost imperceptibly. “Okay, cool. I’ll be fine. But let me walk you out. Jace, I’ll be right back.”
Laura looped her arm through Tia’s and led her through the party. Tia turned and scanned for Eli. He was standing in the exact same spot that he was when she’d hurried away from him to get Laura. His hands were in his pockets and he wasn’t smiling at all. Instead he watched her with those tawny eyes. She raised her hand to him mouthed thank you across the party, and let Laura tug her out of the house.
“Spill,” Laura said the second they got outside.
“There’s nothing to spill.”
“Tia, don’t make me beat it out of you. You know I can.”
Tia sighed. “Alright, but it was barely anything. He was about to kiss me, I think, when one member of his harem walked in on us and it made me uncomfortable.”
“Being walked in on?”
“No. I mean, kind of. But no, I meant the idea of being one of his harem.”
Laura walked around to the driver’s side of Tia’s car with her. “I think he really likes you, T. You should have seen the way he was looking at you when you were talking to Marcus.”
Tia shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Sure it matters. It means that he would treat you with respect and kindness. Which we both know he would. Who cares if the guy has a harem? And wouldn’t it be kind of fun to try something new? You’re the one who said no more relationships after Owen. This is what the dating world is like, T. You can’t tie your self-worth up in whether or not the person you’re getting naked with thinks you’re the one.”
Tia considered those words, turned over the engine.
“Besides,” Laura said as she leaned in the driver’s side window and kissed her sister on the cheek. “You owe your high school self at least one kiss with Elijah Bird.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Serves you right, Marcus Marinos,” Kat Brady said as Marcus groaned and dropped his head to the countertop. It was the next morning after the party and Marcus was a little worse for the wear.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the bright morning light through the window. Kat—his and Eli’s second mother and Jay’s real mother—had come over to cook them breakfast, the way she often did after a big party. Kat, a very young 60, leaned on one of her Keds and then the other as she deftly pushed food around the frying pan with one toned arm. The smells coming from the stovetop both made Marcus’s stomach rumble and turn over in potential nausea.
“So many pretty girls,” Marcus groaned into the crook of his elbow.
Jay and Eli laughed from the breakfast table. Jay, health nut that he was, hadn’t had anything to drink last night, and he’d already been out surfing that morning, his hair wet from his shower. Eli hadn’t slept well, but he’d stayed in bed for a long time, nursing a bad mood.
He was irritated because he wanted to go for a run and couldn’t. He was irritated because he wanted to go to football practice and couldn’t. He was irritated because Jay and Marcus had stayed up late and cleaned up after the entire party. And he could clean up after his own damn party, damn it. And most of all, he was irritated because Tia Camellia had left his house with serious doubts about him.
> He could see it in her eyes. And he had serious doubts himself. Doubts that he’d get to see her again. And that just really bummed him out.
He rubbed at his ribs, at his incision, which was starting to itch as it healed. But mostly he was rubbing at the spot in his chest that she’d healed with her surgeon’s hands. The part that felt like it was attached to Tia on a tether.
“So what happened with Tia last night?” Jay asked, crunching on one of the apple slices his mother laid out for them. “Thanks, Ma.”
Kat accepted a kiss on the cheek. “Who’s Tia?”
Eli might have considered evasion with anyone but Kat Brady. The woman was impossible to lie to. “Tia Camellia. She was my surgeon in the hospital. I invited her to the party last night.”
Kat scooped eggs onto Eli’s plate. “Marcus, get your ass over here, hangover or not. We’re eating breakfast together. Tia Camellia? Is she one of the Camellia girls you three went to high school with?”
Eli nodded and then made puppy dog eyes at her until she relented and gave him another scoop of eggs. Marcus practically fell into the chair beside Eli and grunted gratefully when Eli poured him a cup of coffee.
“It’s such a shame about those girls’ parents,” Kat sighed as she put some eggs on her own plate and sat down at the table with her boys.
“What happened to her parents?” Jay asked.
Eli’s stomach turned over.
“You remember Marty Hightower?” Kat asked Jay.
He squinted. “Your hairdresser? Sure.”
“Marty was the Camellias’ next door neighbor for a long time. And about this time last year she was crying while she gave me a haircut. Told me that both the Camellias, Roger and Darlene, had been going downhill health-wise. And that their daughters had had to put them into a home for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Both at once. Can you imagine?”
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