by Maggie Marr
“No can do,” Ellen said, her spine ramrod straight. “They’re leaving early and I have…” Her gaze flitted toward mine. “Well, I have a thing to do tomorrow.”
Ouch. She was parroting back my lame line from the night at the pool.
“Another time.” Selena pressed her card into Sophia’s hand. “Do call. I know you’re booked out with projects for forever, but I do have some clients that would love to work with you.” Her eyes glanced over at Ellen. “And, of course, if that med school thing doesn’t work out, you know where to find me.”
Ellen visibly cringed but pressed a smile to her face. How many times in her life had she heard someone make fun of her mad brainiac skills as though they were something unimportant? Steve crowed big about Ellen. But the rest of the Legend family? They seemed to be shocked that she’d work so hard for something she wanted when it would be so easy for her to fall back into the Legend lifestyle.
“So, Webber.” Amanda turned toward me. “Wondered if you had time for breakfast in the morning before we leave. We have a surprise for Daddy we want to discuss with you.”
“Babe, Steve is my numero uno client. Of course we can do brekky in the a.m.” I shot her a grateful smile. Of course, she couldn’t know that the hound in heat by my side was attempting to get me to umphay erhay and that I didn’t want to service her needs. Regardless, Amanda had just saved me from an all-nighter with Selena.
“Webber, don’t we have the joint division head meeting in the morning?” Selena purred and grasped my arm with a more-than-loving squeeze.
“Nope, nope, nope. That’s not until the next morning. I’m free tomorrow. See you ladies then.”
Amanda nodded and the three Legends walked across the bar and toward a table on the patio.
“You are going to be one tired man at that breakfast tomorrow morning,” Selena said and nearly climbed onto my lap. “I tried to save you. Give you some time to rest after our little”—her gaze stroked from my feet over my body and up to my eyes—“well, the workout I have planned for you tonight.”
Yowza. My heart pitter-pattered in my chest, and not from excitement. Fear. Cold, hard fear. This woman would eat me alive.
She leaned forward. “I even have some special toys I want to use on you.”
Doh! No. Nada. Big Boy was down for the count. By special, I couldn’t help but wonder if she meant the strap-on she was rumored to use with every man she did the horizontal mambo with.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Thank God for Dick Munch.
“Excuse me, doll.” I slipped the cell from my pants and pressed it to my ear.
“Webber?” Dick Munch was out of breath and panting in my ear. Was that fear I heard in his voice?
“Yeah man, what’s up?” I could commend him on his acting ability because from the way he was panting it sounded like there really might be an emergency happening. I turned away from Selena. “Take it down, bro,” I whispered. “You’re not on speakerphone.”
“No man, it’s the Legend. It’s Steve.”
“Okay, what about Steve?” I said and turned back to Selena and rolled my eyes like “how annoying that my biggest client would call at eleven thirty p.m.”
“Dude, he’s on his way to UCLA Med.”
My stomach flipped. “The hospital?”
“Heart attack.”
“Are you fucking around?”
“No, man,” Dick Munch said. “Wish I were, but dude, this is real. Ambulance. Paramedics. I’m on my way to the hospital now. You know how to get ahold of Amanda and Ellen? Trick and Ryan have been lighting up my line, say they’ve gone away for some girls’ night or some shit like that.”
My gaze landed on the three Legend ladies sitting poolside. They’d just gotten their drinks, and Ellen threw her head back and laughed. My heart ached for them. In less than three minutes, I was going to ruin that laugh and shatter their good time.
“Yeah, I know how to get ahold of them. I’ll take care of it.”
“Ok. Man, you’re coming back, right?”
“Yeah, dude, no worries I’ll see you soon.” I slid my phone into my pocket and looked over at Selena.
“Steve?”
I nodded.
“Go on, get back to LA. I’ll tell Jeff what’s up. You have to go.” She threw back her drink and ran her fingers over her hair.
“First I have to go tell them.” I nodded toward the table of happy women. I was about to piss on their parade, and until we heard from the doctors, who knew what we’d all return to Los Angeles to find? Fuck.
“Don’t envy you that,” Selena said and shook her head. She grabbed her clutch and pressed her lips to my cheek. “Don’t worry,Webber. You’ve still got my vote and you can owe me for later.”
“Thanks.” I nodded and took the last swallow of my drink because I was going to need every ounce of liquid courage I could get to tell Ellen, Sophia, and Amanda that their father might soon be dead.
Ellen
The look on Webber’s face when he walked up to our table in the bar was…odd. His eyes held a heaviness, his lips weren’t curled in the Webber smile that indicated he was about to say something completely inappropriate but wildly funny. My gaze slid past him toward his female companion for the evening. She still sat at the bar but was consumed with her phone. Her overenhanced mammary glands burst from the top of her dress. She was definitely more Webber’s usual flavor than I. No wonder Big Boy had problems last night. I returned my gaze to Webber.
He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t even cock his eyebrow with that wicked I-know-more-than-you look.
My heart pattered faster. A chill chased down my spine. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
His gaze landed on me, and he seemed to ask what the hell, Ellen, are you clairvoyant?
He cleared his throat. A heaviness, unfamiliar to his features, was on his face. “Your dad.” His voice was soft. “I don’t have details, but he’s on his way to UCLA Med.”
A giant hole opened in my belly. My fingers tingled and my breath caught in my chest. Daddy. For a moment it was just me and Webber. No one else existed in the world. My gaze locked with his and his concern and my fear swept between us, unspoken yet known.
“Daddy?” Sophia squeaked.
“Oh my God.” Amanda stood.
“What happened?” I tried to contain the emotional abyss that opened in my belly. I would soon be a doctor. I was supposed to stay calm in situations like this.
“They think a heart attack. He’s on his way to the hospital. Get your stuff together and let’s get you guys back. We can be there in an hour.”
Amanda was already walking from the table with her phone pressed to her ear. Webber was the bearer of this bad news because we’d all muted our phones at dinner and forgotten to turn them back on.
I heard Amanda ask, “Ryan, what do you know?”
Sophia was phoning Trick. I turned to Webber.
“Has anyone called Mama?” I asked.
“I don’t know. My assistant called me. He was on his way to the emergency room.”
“I don’t have a car up here.”
“We’ll go back in Amanda’s. We’ll find a spare agent to get Sophia and my car back to LA. Get them packed and ready, then meet me in the lobby in fifteen.”
Webber was good in an emergency. Cool. Composed. Absolutely tight. I turned away. My hand shook as I pressed Mama’s number. Somebody had to tell her that Daddy might die.
Chapter 13
Webber
“He arrived soon after the incident. We’ve put in a stent and relieved the blockage, but we need to monitor him. Once he’s released, Mr. Legend needs to remain”—Dr. Carmichael’s gaze landed on Ms. Delgado, Sophia and Ellen’s mother—“less excited.”
Nice job, Doc. No need to spill all the family secrets right now. Not that Ms. Delgado wasn’t aware of all Steve’s extracurricular activities. Hell, she’d started dating him before he married Joanna.
By excitabl
e, the doc meant not sleep with three twentysomethings at the same time. Dick Munch had discovered that Steve was having his own private orgy in a hot tub when his ticker had kicked to off. Heat. Three babes. The blow on the mirror beside the hot tub. Good times when you were young and virile, but a recipe for a coronary when you were pushing seventysomething.
“Can we see him?” Ellen’s mom asked.
God bless this woman. Where did Steve find such a saint? And how much did she love Steve?
“Of course, but maybe limit the visit to two of you for just a few minutes. Tomorrow after he’s rested the entire family may visit.”
Sophia and Ellen each took one of their mother’s arms.
“Sterling, you and Mama should go,” Ellen said and pressed her mother’s hand into Sterling’s.
He nodded and a grim smile passed over his face before he turned to Ms. Delgado and they both walked down the hall hand in hand. Sophia and Amanda also walked toward the family grouped in the waiting room.
Ellen still stood at the edge of the hallway, her gaze following her mom and Sterling. “She’s not going to like what she sees. I wish I could have warned her.”
“Hospital lighting makes everyone look bad.”
Ellen’s eyes gave away her emotions. Absent was the joking, replaced with sadness and worry. She turned and walked the opposite direction down the hallway and I followed her, eventually stopping in front of the vending machines. She stared through the glass as though she couldn’t understand what was on the other side.
“Hey.” I reached out and pulled her into my arms. “Everything will be fine.”
She fit against my body as though she were made to be mine, and I pressed my lips to the top of her head. I wanted to take the sadness away from her eyes, replace the worry and her frown with a smile, I wanted to—
“Well, I guess that answers that question,” Ellen said.
I guess Big Boy wanted a little something too.
“Babe, last night was a fluke. Mucho pressure. Too much for the Big Boy. I mean, you are who you are.”
Ellen pulled away from me and squinted. “What does that mean?”
Wow. Not the best time. Daddy-o just nearly kicked it. Nope. Not here. Not now.
“Babe, let’s table the discussion and get back to it when we’re not in a hospital after Steve had a cardiac event. Sound good?”
She stood in the middle of the hall with her arms crossed, all irritation and impatience, then her chest deflated and she dropped her arms to her sides. “You’re right. Not the best time to discuss anything.” She turned back toward the machines. A defeated tone in her voice, she asked, “Have any change?”
“You’re in luck.” I pulled quarters and dimes from my pocket, and she fed them into the vending machine.
“What’s your poison, babe?”
“Oreos.” She pressed A4. “My secret pleasure when things go wrong”—she glanced down the hall—“and Sophia isn’t around.”
“Ixnay on the ookiescay?”
“Yeah, she hates sugar. Which I get, I mean I’m in med school, but just because she’s sugar free doesn’t mean the world needs to be sugar free, right?” Ellen yanked open the sleeve and popped a cookie into her mouth.
“Right.”
She handed me a cookie and leaned against the wall. A slow, deep breath filled her lungs.
“Babe, you look whipped.”
“I feel whipped. Think once Mama is finished I’ll see if she needs a ride and then head home. This night—” She shook her head and twisted open a cookie. Her tongue scraped at the white center.
“Unbelievable, right?”
“Completely.” She pointed the sleeve of Oreos toward me. “And this isn’t over. I mean, he could have months of recovery depending…I mean, we just don’t know yet. Damn.”
I grabbed another cookie. “The health stuff with the parentals is tough. I’ve dealt with it since high school.”
“High school?”
I nodded. “Mom had early onset. Plus she had me late in life. So she was like fifty-six when the signs started. Wandering in her nightgown. Getting lost. Spent a whole lot of time in the emergency room until we got everything sorted out.”
“And your dad?”
“Ausente, babe. Total ausente.” I grabbed a third cookie. “Musician. In and out of my life. Have no idea where the dude is now.”
Ellen’s eyes widened.
“Yep. Just me and the mom. Well, and her gay best friend Ted, who attempted to be in loco parentis in the father role until it was time to learn to throw a football. Very stereotypical femme gay, that Ted.”
“Seriously, so you’ve dealt with your mom’s Alzheimer’s since you were—”
“About sixteen.”
“Wow.”
“Totally manageable until my second year at UCLA, that’s when the shit hit the fan. Kitchen fire. Bad scene. Had to get Mom some serious help.” I plucked the empty Oreo bag from Ellen’s fingertips. “But we managed. Right? That’s what you do with family. You make it work. I mean, you guys weren’t the Brady Bunch until recently. Unless Mike Brady had another family in Santa Clarita that Carol didn’t know about.”
Ellen crossed her arms. “Right. Exactly.”
She turned her head toward mine, and that need, that fucking need I kept fighting to brush my lips over hers and pull her into my arms, surged through me. Instead, I turned toward the trash can on the far side of the hall, crumpled the Oreo wrapper, and took my shot.
“Nice,” Ellen said as the trash swished into the bin.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Nothin’ but net.”
“This is where you two are?”
We both spun toward the voice from the main hall. Like looking into a mirror, if the mirror was the wicked sister, Sophia stood with her arms crossed, her lips pursed, and chin tilted.
Other people confused Ellen with Sophia, but I didn’t see how they could mistake one for the other. Sure, they looked the same but there was this softness around Ellen’s mouth and a quick smile, not hard, cold judgment in her eyes.
“Daddy nearly dies, Mama is a wreck, and you two are playing basketball in front of the snack machines?” She shook her head and looked at both of us as though we were children.
“Lay off, Sophia,” Ellen said and walked toward her sister. Ellen’s shoulders took on a noticeable slouch, maybe weighed down by her sister’s harsh tone and words.
“Trick and I are taking Mama back to our place tonight. She wants to come by here early in the morning and I told her we’d do that.”
I followed the two of them back to the waiting room. The entire family huddled and whispered, then slowly broke apart into groups of twos.
“Who’s taking Ellen?” Sophia asked as though her twin had to be a burden on someone.
“I got it,” I said and raised my hand. “Not far from my pad, can totally do it.”
A quick look passed between Sophia and Amanda. What was that? Usually I didn’t notice the no-talk communication signals that went on between the womenfolk, but that one, the cocked brow, the smirk, the hitch of the hip—pretty obvious signals.
“Are you sure? I mean, Ryan and I can—”
“It’s fine,” Ellen said and ran her hands over her hair. “Webber lives close. He can drop me.”
“Okay,” Sophia said and shrugged.
Ellen gave her mama a hug and kiss. And then Ms. Delgado walked down the hall with Trick holding her arm. Poor lady. She’d aged ten years in one night. The rest of the Legend clan followed.
“You ready?” Ellen asked.
“I’m always ready, babe.”
Ellen rolled her gaze toward the ceiling and followed her family. Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. I never knew whether my jokes would hit with Ellen or land with a complete thud. Maybe that was part of the draw. She kept me on my toes. I lived for her smile and that laugh.
Lived.
But I wasn’t getting any more of those tonight. Maybe not until Steve-o got the all clear.
Exhaustion hit me like a bag of wet sand. We headed toward my house, which wasn’t far from UCLA Med. I pressed my fingertips to my temples and made a small circular motion, hoping to hold off the throbbing at least until I could climb into bed. I slid my gaze to the left. Webber just stared at the empty streets and drove.
A quiet Webber? I didn’t know what to do with his silence. This attraction I had for him simmered in the back of my mind. A wave of embarrassment about Webber and our evening two nights before washed over me. I rubbed my eyes. “My God,” I mumbled.
“What, babe?” He turned onto my street. “You okay?” He pulled to a stop in front of my town house.
“Yeah.” No. Completely embarrassing that Webzie had now seen me naked and begging for Big Boy, not once but two times. And both times I’d gotten the no-go from Webber. I opened the car door then stopped.
My heart pounded in my chest.
I pulled shut the door. I had to say something. Had to. Webber and I saw each other way too much to have this weirdness hanging between us. My life was complicated enough. I was about to get kicked out of my surgical rotation, I might not get a residency, Daddy was in the hospital. My anxiety was careening toward the stratosphere. I didn’t need to add discomfort and embarrassment every time I was around Webber to my growing list of stress inducers.
“So here’s the thing,” I started. “The night before last.”
Webber turned away from me and looked out the windshield. He took a deep breath. “Babe, that was—”
“Look, I get it. You don’t have to explain. There was this weird attraction thing going on between us, but then it hit you that you totally weren’t interested and—”
“Babe.” Webber’s voice shot out and he turned toward me. “What hit me like a fucking ton of bricks was not that I wasn’t interested in you”—his brows were creased and his tone was sharp—“but that you totally deserve the next US ambassador to the UN, or the guy that cures cancer, or the president of the United States, but definitely not me.”
Even through the darkness, a sharp sincerity decorated his features. “I won’t ever be that guy, okay? I know what I am. I’m the Webzie, and while I’m the best damn Webzie in the universe—hell, I may be the only Webzie in the universe—I’m not the guy who’s climbing the ivy tower and throwing down the next big discovery that saves humanity. I’m the guy who’s schlepping scripts and screenwriters and actors and making movies on my best day. So don’t go telling me how I, or Big Boy, didn’t want you last night. Because we”—he paused and took a deep breath and lowered his voice—“because I did want you.” He pulled his fingers through his hair. “Still want you.”
