Plopping down on a chaise lounge in the shade, Ella took another long swallow of carbonated water. Wiping her lip, she set the bottle down on the table next to her and closed her eyes. Sighing, she stretched a lop-sided one-arm stretch, her right arm over her head, her left arm still resting next to her. But she could stretch out both legs and she felt it down to her toes. Relaxing when there was no pull across her chest from cracked ribs, she smiled. “I’m finally feeling human again. Finally starting to feel like myself.”
Running her fingers down her rib cage, she felt no tenderness. They had told her the cracked ribs would heal fast. Almost before the bruises and cuts on her face had disappeared, she was able to take a deep breath without cringing. Her right hand reached up to massage her left shoulder. She could feel the four tiny indentations that were the scars from her recent surgery. Tender but no real pain. The memory of Dr. Gould’s long tan fingers manipulating her shoulder abruptly interrupted her thoughts. She shuddered from the remembered heat. And the unreasonable fear. When would she lose the frightened panic that engulfed her when a strange man was near? When any man touched her?
His brandy colored eyes had widened when she stiffened at his touch, surprise almost immediately masked by his sinfully long, curly eyelashes. Only a slightly raised eyebrow revealed his curiosity about her reaction. She had always been a sucker for brown eyes. And deep voices. His voice was a cross between Sam Elliott and… No, Levi’s voice was almost exactly like her favorite silver fox’s voice. Sighing, she wondered if the two of them might have acted on the obvious connection if he had not been her doctor and she had not been his patient. In her previous life, she might have made a move on him. She thought—no, she was sure—he was interested. No wedding ring, those muscles flexing under his white doctor’s coat and the silver threads in his black curly hair would have compelled her to give him a side-long glance, purse her lips and utter something absolutely outrageous. “I hope that you are one of those old-fashioned doctors who make house calls to tend to your patient’s every need.” She tried her seductive voice from the old days but it fell flat. Good thing there was no one around to hear her attempt at flirtation.
“Miss Ella, are you out there?” The honeyed voice startled Ella from her reverie. It was Perky, from housekeeping. Her café au lait face peered around a huge fruit basket, as she entered the patio from the open bedroom door. “This basket arrived at the front desk just a bit ago and they sent me to bring it ’round to you since I was coming by to straighten up.”
With great relief, the chambermaid placed the overflowing basket onto the table of the patio dining set. Turning to Ella, she exclaimed, “Oh, honey, you got your sling off today! How does it feel?”
“It feels okay. No pain but no strength either. I could barely lift a bottle of water out of the fridge.” Ella laughed ruefully before she continued, “It was such a beautiful day and I was so tired when I got back from the doctor’s office, I just plopped down out here. I don’t feel like doing a thing today!”
Perky fussed with the pillows on the chaise, putting one under Ella’s left elbow to support it. “You’ve got nothing else you need to do that’s more important than you getting rested up so you can get better.”
An involuntary yawn escaped Ella’s lips. “I am more tired than I thought I would be after that short drive to an even shorter appointment.”
“Which of those handsome doctors did you end up seeing?”
Ella blushed as she muttered the name “Dr. Gould.”
“Ooo, eee! Well, he always gets my heart to fluttering. I’m usually breathless when I leave there. Takes me a little while to recover!” Perky laughed as she fanned her face with the small towel that had been hanging from her apron.
“He’s your doctor?”
“Uh huh. I have some arthritis in my shoulder so I stop by from time to time and he gives me a cortisone shot. He keeps after me to let him go in there and fix me up but I am just not ready for that yet. Even if he’s doing the cutting. You know what they call him?”
“The New York staff told me: Dr. Hottie Rock Star!” Ella actually cringed as she said it.
Perky put her hand on Ella’s good shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t listen to everything they say, honey. Dr. Gould is an excellent surgeon and a good man. He’s just a bit lost right now. It will only take one strong woman to set him straight.” She paused and laughed, “But, he’ll still be a hottie!”
Before Ella could reply, a loud growling noise came from her stomach. Both women laughed at the sound.
“You hungry, honey? I could fix you a plate of this fruit before I clean the kitchen.” Perky pointed to the festive basket overflowing with bananas, pineapple and kiwis, piled on top of gold foil boxes.
“I wonder who sent it. Hardly anyone knows I’m here.”
“The card says ‘Love, Mom and Dad.’ So I’m guessing your parents.” Perky handed the computer-generated card to Ella.
“Take some of that fruit with you, Perky, I’ll never be able to eat all of it before the fruit flies invade.” The abundance in the basket was almost overwhelming.
“Why, thank you. I surely will. But, you sound like you’re starving. What can I get you to eat?”
“Probably not what I really want. I’ve been dreaming of a Rueben since I left the doctor’s office. All the Florida sunshine, sand and surf had me longing for New York City. I get cravings for deli whenever I’m homesick.” Memories of late flights and hundreds of hotel rooms, made bearable by the unexpected gift of corned beef or pastrami on a room service menu, flooded her mind. Ella shook her head to keep away her nostalgia and longing for those comforting bits of her past.
“Well, you’re in luck then, honey! The room service menu always features a Rueben with the best dill pickles and potato salad! It comes with Dr. Brown’s soda or iced tea. I can call on over to Junonia and they’ll have one here for you in half an hour or better!” Perky was reaching for the phone on the table by the patio doors.
“Dr. Brown’s? Really? I’d kill for a diet cream soda and a Rueben. Thank you so much. You made my day!” Ella stood to hug the plump maid.
Both women laughed when Perky added a slice of New York cheesecake to the order, noting in an aside to Ella, “You need to build up your strength, little girl!”
Later, full of delicious food that was just as good as the Carnegie Deli, Ella snoozed on the chaise in the waning sunshine, dreaming of cold New York winters and the heat in Dr. Hottie Rock Star’s eyes.
Chapter Two
Images of the skittish blonde kept popping back into Levi’s mind for the rest of the day, despite a full schedule of patients and a late afternoon staff meeting. Staff meeting meaning Levi and Fitzgerald Ford—Fitz, the knee and ankle surgeon—hunkered down in Levi’s office to tele-conference with their partners in New York. Since the decision had been made to open a branch of their successful orthopedic practice in Florida three years earlier, he and Fitz had been trying to lure a hip guy down to the balmy bay location they had selected on Mimosa Key, the small island just a causeway west of Naples. They’d gotten one of the senior New York partners to relocate a year before but he’d up and died on them four months ago. Their pleas to their New York colleagues were met with hoots and insults about “God’s waiting room.”
“You guys are jerks. We serve a varied population here and with the opening of Bucks Stadium, we are getting more sports-related injuries than we can handle. We need a hip guy to operate on these crazy ball players who insist on sliding into bases feet first. Hell on their hips. We had to refer one of them to an ortho in Naples just last week.”
“We are stretched to the limit, guys. You better start looking around outside the practice. We can’t spare anyone for more than a week and we actually need another ortho up here.” Dr. Fein, the practice manager, and the premier shoulder orthopedic surgeon in New York, told them. “But, hey, I hear the Pirate is looking to relocate from Chicago. Maybe you can convince him to join you. He loves bones
and booty!” The mention of the maverick hip specialist that Dr. Fein and Levi had completed residencies with in Chicago brought more raucous laughter and a few curses that basically shut down the meeting.
Levi checked out for the day after the meeting, pocketing a message from Maureen, the practice manager, asking him to stop by the training room at Bucks Stadium on his way to work the next morning. Something about a young pitcher with a shoulder injury complication. Levi was happy to focus on the up-and-coming athlete and not the mysterious blonde as he drove up the east side of the island to his sprawling Key West-style house. Significant hurricane damage had compelled the elderly owners to sell their home on the northeastern edge of Mimosa Key and Levi snatched it up. After demolition, and a year of construction and landscaping, he had a beautiful house with Gulf access and acres of land.
Cruising along in the fading sunlight, he smiled at the great view that always greeted him on his commute. Water to the right of him, greenery to the left was a damn sight better than the rush hour views on crowded highways in urban New York. Everyone believed Levi’s weakness was women. He did have a propensity for romance—short-term, no strings, hot-and-heavy with gorgeous women who felt the same. But his real weakness was land. And equipment. He loved tractors, plows, caterpillars, trailers, and ATVs. Anything with a gearshift, huge tires, lots of power, and the ability to dig, lift or level earth. He was a city kid with a pioneer’s soul.
Coming up over the slight rise north of Bucks Stadium, he was treated to the sight of the uneven coast of Mimosa Key spreading out below him. Its tiny islands and inlets darkened as the sun dipped into the Gulf of Mexico, casting purple shadows across his land and giving the weathered gray shingles covering his home a silvered sheen. Pulling his lunar blue metallic Mercedes SUV into the circular drive, he let out a satisfied sigh. Then he smiled. Hershey, his faithful chocolate Labrador retriever, came bounding down the front porch steps.
His other weakness. Strays. He’d found Hershey about the time he’d found this land. Left by owners who had evacuated in advance of the impending hurricane, Hershey had been languishing in the local shelter with nothing but a worn leather collar and a beat-up tag engraved Hershey. Not fond of the name, but crazy about the dog, Levi brought him home that night to the villa he had rented at Casa Blanca until his house was habitable. Most of the time, Levi called his new canine companion Hersch in honor of his favorite uncle. The dog answered to almost any utterance from Levi’s lips.
Yeah, you just naturally attract strays. Stray dogs and stray people.
Missy, his favorite stray person, followed Hersch from the porch as Levi climbed out of the Mercedes. “Hey, Doc,” she called out. “How was your day?”
Levi paused briefly from scratching the Lab’s ears, which was sending Hersch into paroxysms of pleasure. Missy was a rough and tumble, raspy-voiced woman of indeterminate age—he would guess 35, but she had the energy of a 21-year-old and wrinkles around her eyes that put her at fifty...or at the end of a really bad time in her life. She’d shown up at the Saturday walk-in clinic at his office with a dislocated shoulder a few months after Levi moved to Mimosa Key. It was apparent someone else was responsible for the injury but Missy wasn’t talking and Levi wasn’t going to pressure her. Almost on the spot, he offered her a job as caretaker of his mini-estate, putting her up in a small cottage at the edge of the property, with views of the Gulf to help heal the scars he couldn’t see. Missy was a combination dog-sitter, housekeeper, handywoman and sometimes cook. And he couldn’t live without her. If he didn’t remember that, Missy made sure to remind him almost every day.
“Late day again today, Doc. Good thing for you I don’t charge overtime. You’d have to get rid of one of your expensive toys to keep me.” It was said in jest but they both knew it was true.
“I’d sell my soul for you, Missy, you know that.” Levi flashed the smile that had been known to bring women to their knees in less than sixty seconds. Fortunately, Missy was immune to his charms. And that was fine with him—he didn’t want a short-term arrangement with Missy. His comfortable life on Mimosa Key largely depended on her. She laughed, as she almost always did when they engaged in their end-of-day repartee, and this time the smile almost reached her eyes.
Grabbing his briefcase from the passenger seat, he ambled up to the porch, Hersch running circles around his legs. Spotting a tennis ball on the step, Levi dropped the briefcase, then hurled the ball across the drive into the ever-encroaching tropical undergrowth bordering the strip of lawn. The dog flew after the ball, yipping in delight. “That will keep him occupied for, oh, say, thirty seconds.” Levi crossed the porch and followed Missy into the open entry of the house. He took his briefcase into his office, to the left of the front door, coming back through the foyer before he crossed into the kitchen.
“God, it smells like heaven in here! Is dinner what I think it is?” Levi paused to wash his hands at the sink as Missy started removing food from the oven.
“It’s fried chicken, with biscuits and gravy, and greens. There’s beer in the fridge and carrot slaw. I even made you chocolate chip cookies when I saw how late you were going to be. And I bet you’ll be out early tomorrow morning.” Missy sounded enough like his mother to make Levi grin.
“It’s not that late, it just gets dark so early still. But I can feel spring coming. And it was almost light when I woke up this morning, Mom.”
She smacked the hand that tried to sneak a chicken leg off the platter, he knew, to reprimand him for both his greed and his impertinence. She felt comfortable touching him like that, but she still stiffened most times when he touched her, especially if it was unexpected. “Like the blonde today,” Levi thought.
“Are you eating with me tonight?” Levi asked, when he saw just one plate set at the huge center island.
“Nope. I got hungry so I picked while I was fixing dinner. Anyway, I’m heading over to La Dolce Vita. Frankie’s got a soap-making class starting tonight that I thought I would try out. Unless you need me….”
“No, go. I’ve got to go over some papers and then I’m going to watch a basketball game. Just let Hersch back in before you leave.” Levi went back to filling his plate. “Hey,” he turned to her as he heard the door open and Hersch rush in, “what car are you taking tonight? I’ve got stuff in the SUV, so why don’t you take the Volvo. It’s got gas.” Missy laughed and just waved the Volvo’s key at him before she closed the front door.
“Looks like it’s just us tonight, Hersch. Be good and you can have some skin. Or not.” Levi sank his teeth into a crisp golden chicken leg. “Mmmm. That woman sure can cook.” He arranged himself comfortably at the island, with the dog at his feet, gazing hopefully at him for more than a scrap of chicken. Levi flipped on the huge television in the family room facing the kitchen on the other side of the concrete island. He mindlessly watched the evening news while plowing through the pile of food on his plate, dropping the occasional biscuit crumb to keep Hersch quiet.
“Just you and me, boy. Just two old bachelors hunkered down for the night with beer and a basketball game. Good thing we’ve got Missy or we’d probably be sharing a TV dinner or take-out. Like we did when we first got here.” Laughing at the bleak and mostly false picture he had painted, Levi put his plate on the floor for the dog to lick while he retrieved another beer from the fridge. A familiar face on the massive TV screen caught his attention as he rose from wrestling the clean plate away from Hersch.
I know that woman. But, from where? Who is she? He turned up the sound and stood transfixed, his mind racing, as he listened to the entertainment reporter. “The latest entry in E. L. Levin’s “Bloody Murder” crime thriller series will begin shooting next month in New York City, we learned today. Sandra Bullock will continue the role of tough NYC detective lieutenant Barb McCartney and Kevin Costner will return as her partner, Joe Liccardi. There is no word on whether and when there will be another installment in the series. The author has recently been unavailable for interviews
, and calls to her agent and to Gotham City Press have gone unanswered. Levin’s last three novels in the series broke all records when the film rights sold in a package deal to TIG entertainment for a reported eighteen million dollars.” The story ended with a scene of Bullock and Costner racing across Times Square, guns blazing at three black mask-clad terrorist types. But it was the author’s face that was imprinted in his brain.
Almost stumbling over Hersch, Levi made a beeline to his office. Flipping open his laptop, he quickly typed in E. L. Levin. The author’s homepage was graced with a black and white photograph of an unsmiling woman in a black turtleneck. Her long blondish hair was swept up and away from her stunning face, in a messy bun of some sort. She had huge diamond studs in her ears that could not match the sparkle in her light eyes. Eyes that were fringed by heavily mascaraed eyelashes, beneath artfully arched brows. Her wide mouth was only slightly open, her lush lips coated in some dark shiny color. I know her.
Levi leaned back in his chair, running his fingers back and forth across his face. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the computer screen. “E. L., what does that stand for? E. L.?” Realization dawned as he repeated the author’s initials over and over. “E. L.! Ella!” He blew out a breath of both satisfaction and consternation. The haughty, confident woman who was staring back at him, the woman who wrote bloody murder mysteries for millions of devoted readers, this woman with curved cheeks and full lips bore little resemblance to the pale, thin, diffident woman who flinched when he brushed her arm. “Ella Anderson, what happened to you? And E. L. Levin, now you’re the mystery waiting to be solved.”
Chapter Three
Ella pulled into a mostly vacant parking lot fifteen minutes early for her appointment. Though the weather was still cool by Florida standards, she put the top down on her Mustang before driving along the almost empty coastal road a bit—a lot—over the speed limit. Exhilarated for the first time in months, she was grinning when she climbed out of her car. Her new black gym bag was in her hand as she slammed the driver’s door and turned a little too quickly toward the entrance to FL-Ortho’s building. And right into Dr. Hottie Rock Star.
Shoulder to Lean On Page 2
