Finish What We Started

by Amylynn Bright

  She lowered her gaze and sighed. “Thank God.”

  * * *

  She’d lost the baby a week ago. She wasn’t sorry the nausea was gone, or even the bigger breasts, but she grieved for her child. She walked around feeling stunned and vaguely lonely.

  Marisol was almost more of a wreck than she was.

  “Thank you for being so kind,” Candace told Marisol and Holly when they took her to lunch. “I’m fine. Well, I’m going to be fine.” She pointed a very serious finger at her roommate. “You are not to cry again.”

  The woman who had no problem staring down a bare-ass football player in a stinky locker room kept crumbling every time the subject of Candace’s lack of pregnancy was hinted at. “I’m sorry.” She swiped at her eyes. “I’m just worried about you.”

  “I appreciate it.” Candace said,

  “You were just so...stricken. I didn’t know what to do for you.”

  Candace remembered staring at the pile of clothes and feeling like she’d stepped outside of herself. And then the panic. Lee insisted she was crazy for thinking that, but she couldn’t help thinking there was something she could have done to prevent it all. Intellectually, she knew it wasn’t true, but there was still nagging guilt.

  Holly hugged her and offered to take her shopping as some retail therapy. Candace promised to take her up on it soon. Lee’s mother and Sarah brought over flowers and a casserole. Her own mother forced her to take naps and plumped pillows behind her head. Her daddy didn’t say anything, just hugged her tight.

  Lee had wanted to take a week off work to take care of her, but she’d refused. She had absolutely no intention of taking a week away from her own clinic. Work gave her something else to think about.

  Lee had quietly closed the door to the designated baby room and painted over the pastel swatches.

  Instead he took up the banner of wedding planner and things amped up to another level entirely. With only a little over a month until the wedding, there was plenty to be done. It was actually kind of weird how much he knew about weddings. What kind of favors should there be on the tables for guests? Did she want a stretch limo or would she prefer a Rolls-Royce? Did she think they should book Infinity Blue’s house jazz band or did she want to audition others?

  One night he steered her out on the balcony with a bottle of chardonnay and his three-ring wedding binder. “How about the honeymoon, love? Would you rather go to Hawaii or Europe? Did you ever make it to Italy? Rome would be romantic.”

  She agreed that Rome would be fabulous. She watched him bury himself in plans and figured it was better than him building a new wing on his house.

  The minute they were past the ban, Lee wooed her with dinner, a moonlight stroll and magnificent sex.

  The clinic clientele list was steadily growing and her schedule got fuller every day. She started to feel guilty when she realized she was feeling happy again. That started a whole new rapture of guilt. Eventually, the guilt and sadness that kept sneaking up on her would fade. That’s what all the online forums promised, anyway.

  The best cure for her funk came three weeks later. An adjunct professor she’d worked with closely at the University of Glasgow and during the internship she’d spent in Thailand was in town working with the veterinarians and zoologists in conjunction with the Save the Clouded Leopard Plan and the Zoological Park Organization of Thailand. She’d been fascinated by clouded leopards since childhood, and the zoo she’d grown up visiting had one of the few populations of the cats in North America, so she’d jumped at the chance to work with them.

  When Dr. Emil Godwyn called her at the clinic and offered her the opportunity to come down and participate in the breeding program, she convinced her brother Clay to take some of her afternoon appointments.

  Calling Lee from the Jeep, she told him her news. “Remember when I told you about my summer in Thailand and how I worked with the clouded leopard conservation group there? My mentor is in town.”

  “Wow,” he said. He sounded distracted and there was a tremendous amount of background noise. “That’s cool.”

  “I know! He just called and offered me the opportunity to go to the zoo and consult.”

  “Baby, that’s awesome.”

  “I know!” she squealed. “Do we have anything going on tonight?”

  “I have a game at six.”

  He loved it when she was at his games and she and Sidney had a ton of fun in the stands. But, a chance to consult? Come on. “Would you be all right if I miss this one? I don’t know how long he’ll be in town.”

  “Of course. Take your time. I’ll probably go out with the guys after.”

  That gave her the whole night. Oh my God, she was so excited. “I love you,” she said and made kissing noises into the phone. “Good luck tonight. Give Sidney a kiss for me.”

  Dr. Godwyn was one of the definitive experts on breeding the large cats. Even with all the studies and research, the clouded leopards were not a self-sustaining population. There had only been two successful breeding pairs in the last decade, so there was the continuing struggle to make the population more genetically healthy.

  She was met by the doctor himself, an affable, round man a good three inches shorter than she. He wore his thick brown hair long, held away from his face by a hair tie, and he wore one of those safari vests with all the pockets that made her want to say Dr. Livingston, I presume.

  “Candace,” he said with a grand smile and his thick Scottish accent. “So good to see you.”

  She embraced her old teacher. “You, too. I’m so excited you called me.”

  “Of course.” He linked his arm through hers, leading the way to the leopard enclosure. “My most enthusiastic student lives right here? Why wouldn’t I call? Crazy girl.”

  “How is the procedure going so far?”

  He shook his head. “You know how the leopards are.” One of the biggest issues facing the clouded leopard breeding program was hyper-aggressive males. Often they killed their female counterparts before the magic happened. “We’re trying a new drug protocol—psychotropic drugs to target stress aggression. We’re thinking if we can isolate the serotonin metabolism...”

  Oh my God. This was so exciting. “Interesting.” She nodded, trying to maintain her composure when all she really wanted to do was skip around the zoo grounds. “You’re not attempting IVF at this time?” In vitro fertilization was unsuccessful most of the time with clouded leopards, unlike assisted reproductive techniques in other large cats. This had been her primary study when she’d been in Thailand.

  “Not yet. I thought you might want to take part in the behavioral research.” He held the door open to the research center. “There is some excellent work being done here.”

  And she was going to be in on it!

  She followed behind him, taking it all in, trying to remember every detail so she could tell Lee about it later.

  * * *

  “The behavior studies are fascinating. I’ve been reading the research done so far and Dr. Godwyn is really hopeful the new drug combinations are going to work,” Candace told him while she set the picnic table.

  Lee turned the shrimp on the grill and then gave her all of his attention. She normally gestured a lot when she talked, but when she was excited about something, she was nearly lethal, waving her arms about with wild abandon. Her eyes grew wide and her impassioned grin showed straight, white teeth. He sipped from his long neck bottle of beer and nodded while she told him about the clouded leopard project.

  “Spending more time with the animals has really reminded me how much I love this stuff. I was watching Romeo Darling and Jose interacting the other day and the correlations between them and the big cats is fun to see. Even some of the same vocalizations. The leopards can emit a meow cry for a mate that can be heard for three hundred meters.”

>   “Romeo only does that when he thinks his dinner is late.” He placed the shrimp on a platter with grilled vegetables and warm corn tortillas and brought it to the table. “Speaking of dinner.”

  She set a bowl of fresh pico de gallo and another platter with Mexican Oaxaca cheese and shredded cabbage next to the others. “That looks fabulous. I’m starving. I forgot to eat lunch today, I was so into the observations.”

  “I’m so happy you love what you do.” He leaned across the table and kissed her. “You’re so beautiful when you’re happy.” Beautiful and sexy and brilliant, that was his fiancée.

  “I am happy. The clinic is doing great. I absolutely love this project at the zoo.” She set her wine glass on the table. “And I love you.”

  “Everything’s set, can you believe it?” He loaded a chip with guacamole and fed it to her. “We’re getting married in a week.”

  She bit her bottom lip around a grin and raised her brows. “I know.” She filled a tortilla with fajita fixings. “So, is your bachelor party all figured out?” She tossed the question out casually, like she wasn’t really interested. He considered it a good sign that she was feeling feisty again. She’d been so quiet since the miscarriage, he’d felt unsure of what to do for her and a nagging fear of his own he didn’t want to fully investigate. But if she was feeling possessive about him, then he felt immeasurably better.

  He lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “I assume so. Mark claims to be on it.” She looked concerned so he changed the subject to tease her. “I love shrimp fajitas.”

  Nodding around avocado and shrimp, she bunched her brows together. “Me, too. My bachelorette is the same night. The night before the wedding. Do you think that’s a mistake? You know, like, what if we have hangovers? That would be bad.”

  “I don’t plan to get that drunk. After all, I want to be able to remember my last night of stripper debauchery. All those boobies...” He clenched his hands open and closed and leered at an imaginary stripper.

  The look she tossed back at him was dry. “That’s very true. I’m definitely not going into old age without the memory of all those fine pretty-boy abs under my fingers.” She sipped her wine. “You know, they let the girls touch the male strippers. In fact, it’s actually encouraged.”

  Okay. Now this wasn’t funny. “Who the hell is planning your party? Whatever happened to tea and silly party games?”

  She chuckled and slid around the table to stand in front of him. Lee opened his legs. She stepped between them. Running her fingers into his hair, she bent and kissed him. His tongue tangled with hers, tasting the sweetness of the pinot grigio and the bite of salsa.

  “You know what,” she told him when she lifted her head, “those male strippers are usually gay.”

  “Really?’ He slipped his hands under the hem of her skirt and ran his palms along the silky skin of her thighs. His thumbs traced along the lacy edge of her panties.

  “No.” She giggled. “But you looked so worried. I wanted to make you feel better.”

  He pinched her butt. “You’re a bad girl. Just for that I shouldn’t give you your present.”

  She turned her head and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Present?”

  One thumb found its way under the lace and her breath hitched. “Mmm-hmm,” he hummed.

  “I like presents.”

  “I know you do. This one was hard to find, but it had to be just right.”

  She rocked her hips, silently promising there would be a reward for a spectacular present. “What if I promise to be really bad?”

  He set her away from him and stood before her. From inside his pocket, he pulled out a 1930s, one-and-a-half carat, vintage-diamond engagement ring. The firelight from tiki torches set the stone to twinkling. “A vintage ring for a vintage love.”

  “Oh my God.” She sucked in a breath. “I might swoon.” He slid it on her finger and she held it up to look at it better. “Wow. Just, wow.” Masculine satisfaction warmed him.

  “Make sure the strippers see it so they know you’re taken.”

  “It’s a bachelorette party, silly. They know I’m taken.” She stepped back and swayed her hips. “It’s their job to dance and rev the ladies up, just like those strippers Mark’s got lined up, too.” She started at the bottom of her shirt, slowly pushing the buttons through their holes, opening up her shirt with each one.

  This was interesting. “What are you doing?”

  The shirt landed on the grass. Her bra was hot pink with black lace.

  “I’m stripping for you.” The zipper on her skirt descended tooth by achingly slow tooth. Turning her back to him, she leaned forward while she pushed her skirt to the ground, revealing a matching hot pink thong.

  Oh, yeah. He was already rock hard. He shifted on the bench to relieve the pressure. “What would two carats have gotten me?”

  * * *

  Candace was the best kind of exhausted. The week leading up to the wedding she worked double—sometimes triple—duty, showing up at the zoo in the early morning while meds were delivered to the leopards, then zooming over to the clinic for appointments, and then back to the zoo to record observations when the cats were active in the early evening.

  Lee was being unbelievably supportive of her crazy schedule. He didn’t know what she was talking about half the time, but he listened intently and acted like he cared while she gushed about the latest research and how the project was moving forward. On Tuesday Dr. Godwyn had complimented her hard work and she floated around on that all day.

  “Of course he said that,” Lee told her. “You’re brilliant. He’d be an idiot not to recognize it.”

  On Wednesday, Dr. Godwyn asked her to come back to his office before she left the zoo that evening.

  “It’s no secret you were my favorite student.” He gestured for her to take the other chair in the room.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m heading back to Thailand soon to confer with the foundation on our findings. Hopefully all we’ve done will result in a successful impregnation here and many more globally.”

  She nodded, not sure what the point of this was, but he looked very serious so she stuck with him.

  He leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer you a job. Not here with the zoo, you understand, but with the foundation in Thailand, with my team. The opportunities are endless. You’d be working alongside some of the world’s leading researchers and scientists in reproductive research.”

  She swallowed, hard, but didn’t say anything. Her brain was swimming. No, she was actually having a complete and total freak out.

  Dr. Godwyn leaned back slightly. “I know that you’re getting married soon.”

  Finally she found her voice. “In three days.”

  “Yes. I sent my RSVP.” When she nodded that she’d taken his attendance into account, he continued, “I know how much you enjoy this kind of research, and you’ve quickly become invaluable to the team. Your instincts are second to none. I think you could make a real difference in the survival of this species and, by extension, many other large cat populations.”

  This was such an outstanding opportunity. A dream come true. A significant part of her medical education and training had been on the survival of at risk species and reproductive research. There were so many logistics to consider, but still the answer was obvious.

  “Primarily we spend our time in Thailand, at the preserve and research center, but there are many opportunities to travel the globe and do what we’re doing here. The salary isn’t significant. We’re always restricted by funding, but you know this.”

  “The salary has nothing to do with my answer,” she told him with a broad smile.

  “Do you need time to discuss this with your fiancé? This is a huge decision.”

&nb
sp; She wasn’t married yet, and she didn’t need any time. She knew her answer already.

  * * *

  Mark would not tell him the final destination for his bachelor party. Lee pestered and nagged and threatened, but his brother clammed up and just smiled. Finally, Mark told him to shut up, that he had a kick-ass night planned, and if he didn’t quit bitching Mark would whoop his ass.

  Jason was in the truck with them. With a goofy grin on his face, he informed Lee that he’d be more than happy to hold Lee down while Mark did the actual whooping.

  Instead of a club, boys from the baseball league, some of the guys in Lee’s work crews, old friends and a few family members went out to the casino.

  Mark’s friend was the chef at the new Asian Fusion place and he catered dinner in a private room they rented out for the night. Two gorgeous women were assigned as hostesses for the room. They kept the liquor flowing and flirted shamelessly. About halfway into the evening, a stripper actually showed up.

  Mark smirked at him from across the room while the girl tied Lee’s hands behind his back with her bra. “Like I wouldn’t have a stripper. You’re such a prick.”

  Afterward, all the hooting and hollering carried out to the casino floor, where they migrated to a craps table while their hostesses set up a poker table in their room. Lee and Clay both tossed a twenty-dollar chip on the pass line at the same time.

  “Your brother throws a good party.” Clay held up his highball and they clinked glasses.

  “Yeah.” His brother had done a good job, the jerk. “He’s a good guy.”

  “So, you ready for tomorrow? Even though she’s my sister, and I’m obligated to beat you to death should you hurt her again—”

  Lee let that slide. He hadn’t done all the hurting the first time around, but now hardly seemed the time to discuss that with his future brother-in-law. Besides, Clay was drunk.

  “—but, still, one woman for the rest of your life. You’re a better man than me.” Clay finished up by sloshing his whiskey over the lip of the crystal tumbler.

  Clay stumbled and Lee grabbed his shoulder. The man was bigger than Lee, easily six foot four and two forty. He didn’t need him to come crashing down on him. “Steady there, big guy.”