Red Hot Lovers: 18 Contemporary Romance Books of Love, Passion, and Sexy Heroes by Your Favorite Top-Selling Authors

by Milly Taiden

  I could involve my father.

  My phone buzzed. Another message from Angela.

  All clear.

  Nobody paid much attention to my stroll through the ward, as if without my white lab coat I wasn’t anybody anymore.

  I opened Cynthia’s door.

  Marlena, the nurse friend of Tina, was inside, removing the IV. I froze up for a second, then forced myself to relax. “No more platelets?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Dr. Clements said her numbers were good,” Angela said. “I wrote them down.” She glanced at the nurse. “In case you wanted to see them.”

  “I saw them this morning.”

  Marlena cut her eyes at me, then away.

  Cynthia waited patiently for her to take it all away. “Almost time for art!” she said. “And I don’t have to take the pole!”

  I sat on the end of the bed. “That’s great!” I could see the question in her eyes about the new doctor, but she knew not to say anything in front of the hospital nurse. I guess if there was one good thing about the new arrangement, she wouldn’t have to lie or cover for us anymore.

  When Marlena finally left, Cynthia and Angela started talking at the same time. “What happened? Who is that doctor? Where have you been?”

  I said that I was officially on vacation.

  “Can we go to Disneyland?” Cynthia asked. “It’s really close!”

  Why the hell not? “Let’s see how your second treatment goes,” I told her. “Then, yeah. Let’s go to Disneyland.”

  “Can Tina come too?”

  I tilted my head, watching Cynthia. “What makes you think Tina would come?”

  “Because she likes you.”

  I froze. “How do you know that?”

  Cynthia picked up the image I had drawn of Tina as a princess in front of a castle. “It’s right here.” She pointed to Tina’s face. “Anybody can see it.”

  She was right.

  ***

  I waited by the curb in front of the hospital for Tina to come out at the end of the day. It felt strange to not be inside, working until late, fighting exhaustion. I hadn’t been this free since undergrad. Cynthia and I had spent the whole day making Brother Pix.

  Tina popped out through the glass entrance, immediately spotting my car. When she opened the door, the winter air came with her, fresh and cool. She leaned over to kiss me lightly, like it was an everyday thing for me to pick her up from work.

  I could get used to this.

  “I have a kept man,” she said. “I think I should keep you tied to the bed to await my pleasure.”

  I dropped the car into gear. “I think I like this new lifestyle.”

  I didn’t know what she’d think of where I lived.

  When we moved to San Diego, I was more or less in crisis mode with Cynthia, her stem cell transplant having failed and then her kidney removed. Since my father was familiar with San Diego and I didn’t have the time or energy to look around, I let him choose a place.

  Of course, he completely neglected Cynthia’s needs, as he refused to acknowledge her existence, and we ended up in a high-rise with no place for her to play. I’d made up for it with jaunts to Torrey Pines and the beach.

  When we turned into the valet circle, Tina said, “It’s close!”

  I remembered that night we first went to her apartment, when I had said it wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry. I lied.” I realized all the ways I had messed up with her.

  But she laughed. “I don’t think I’d trade that first night on the Pink Monster for anything.”

  The valet opened our car doors. Tina stood looking up at the grand covered entrance to the building. She seemed so small and uncertain. With her hippie clothes and pigtails in front of the marble facade, she appeared to have been transported from some other place, a stranger from another land.

  But it wasn’t the girl that was wrong. It was the place. We should have a house. With a yard. And a furry dog.

  I was remembering home with my mother.

  “This is fancy,” she said as I took her hand.

  “I mistakenly let my father pick it out.”

  “Not great for kids.”

  “Exactly.” A doorman nodded at us as we walked inside. “He always liked these modern skyscrapers. Mom always wanted rambling houses with scratched-up wood floors and rosebushes by the porch.”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” Tina said. “Both seem nice.”

  We rode the elevator up.

  “You’re not one of those penthouse people, are you?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not even close.”

  The carpeted hall was silent. Tina leaned in to whisper. “It’s like a hotel.”

  I laughed. “It sort of is.”

  I unlocked the door and stepped back to let her inside.

  Her head swiveled as she looked around, stopping to take it in. Then she turned to me. “Darion!”

  I closed the door and tried to see the living room through her eyes. It was the one thing I had spent time on during the hours I was here alone.

  The ceiling was vaulted and lit from within, creating a bright white sky. Additional recessed spotlights aimed at the walls. Pretty much every painting I’d ever made was in this room, carefully jigsaw-puzzled together to create a riot of color and images.

  “Are all these yours?” she asked with something close to awe.

  I clasped my hands behind my back, pleased that I had managed to actually impress her. “Yes.”

  She began to walk the perimeter of the room, dodging the neutral sofas and chairs, all chosen to avoid distracting from the art.

  “I saw you had a show once, in college,” she said.

  “Then you did Google me.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve managed to keep evidence of your sister completely off the internet.”

  “No Facebook, no blog, no Twitter. It’s not impossible to go off the grid.”

  She paused in front of an enormous painting of a two-year-old Cynthia, my mother before she was sick, and our old dog, Sparky. Cynthia was beaming, her cheeks pink. My mother was laughing at Sparky, who was sniffing at a neighbor’s kitten.

  “Is this from a photograph?” she asked.

  “A composite of two of them,” I said. “Sparky, the dog, nudged the kitten with Cynthia. I added my mother to the scene.”

  “She’s very pretty,” Tina said. She sat down on the sofa and continued to stare up at it. “I am not good at straight portraits. I’m far more abstract.”

  I slid in next to her. “I am not very imaginative. I stick with the world as I see it.”

  “Tell me about her,” Tina said.

  I took her small hand, still marred with marker smudges. “She was a free spirit. She sang all the time. ALL the time. Always said it took the edge off any task, no matter how bitter.”

  “Cynthia sang one of her songs for me once.”

  “Yes, the one about my father leaving us.”

  “You were the baby boy with gray eyes.” She stared at me. “I should have guessed that.”

  “There was no way to know. She changed her name back when my dad pulled the nasty stunt about Cynthia.”

  “What happened?”

  “He had been working at a county hospital where we lived. I was twelve. If you ask him, he’ll tell you how much pressure his own father put on him to move up, something he couldn’t do at that small facility. My grandfather got my father a position in Oxford at the med school. A huge step up.”

  “Why didn’t your mother go?”

  “Her own mother had just died, and she couldn’t see taking the only grandchild away from her father. Plus she was close to Grams, her mother-in-law. She had no clue my father would be gone for thirteen years.”

  “In the song, you were a baby.”

  I grinned at her. “Poetic license. Makes a sadder tale of woe.”

  “Then he came back.”

  “He visited a couple times a year. We made one
trip to England while I was still living at home. Mom was almost swayed by how lovely it was. Then her father got sick.”

  “I don’t understand why your father doesn’t claim Cynthia as his.”

  I leaned back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. “Mom was always very hippie. With my father gone, she didn’t even try to be normal. Even though we had a house, we spent summers living in communes. My father didn’t understand that world at all. He pictured men with a dozen wives, young girls taken advantage of.”

  “And your father decided she was cheating on him.”

  “If she did, I never knew it. She was wild, and men were always interested in her, but we always stayed together in rooms. I was a teenage boy. I would have noticed, I think.”

  “We’re always blind to our parents’ love lives.”

  “Maybe. My father came in unexpectedly to interview for a position in California. He’d already forced me to switch to premed.”

  Tina sat up. “And you did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You let him bully you?”

  “He was right.”

  “No!” She jumped up and waved her arms at all the paintings. “Look at this! You could have been great!”

  “So, you’re saying art isn’t great unless it’s in a museum? It can’t be great right here?”

  She got quiet. “No. It’s great here.”

  “My father is a smart man. What he said stuck with me.”

  “What was that?”

  “That I can be a doctor who does art for the love of it. But I can never be an artist who doctors on the side.”

  She sat back down. “I hate parents who are right.”

  “He was. I love being a doctor. And I love painting. I get to do both.”

  I curled her into me. “Mom got pregnant right as I was starting my internship. She was totally shocked since she was deep into her forties.”

  “Had your father been home?”

  “Yes, for those interviews. He got the position and went to Oxford to settle his affairs there. Mom waited until he was home to tell him, as a surprise. She had no idea what was coming.”

  I closed my eyes, reveling in Tina’s closeness. “He insisted on a prenatal paternity test. Mom was really hurt and refused until the baby was born. He took this to mean that it might not be his. She just didn’t want the risk of the needle.”

  “But she did one later?”

  “Yes, and it didn’t come out with enough markers. Said it wasn’t his.”

  “God.”

  “The thing is, after I found out about it all, I did a test with Cynthia and Mom, and it said she wasn’t the mother.”

  “Was there a switch?”

  “No, Cynthia is definitely ours. When we tested my tissue markers, she and I were a match. That’s how I donated stem cells.”

  “Doesn’t your father know?”

  “He won’t listen to me. And now that he’s gone eight years insisting that Cynthia isn’t his, he’d never back down.”

  Not that I’d make him. He didn’t deserve her.

  “Poor Cynthia,” Tina said. She snuggled her head into my neck. “Come here.”

  She began to unbutton my shirt.

  I stroked the fine hair of her head, sleek in the pigtails. “You know we’ve never even done anything on a bed?”

  She paused, thinking. “You’re right. Pink Monster. Pink Monster. Surgical Suite B.” She bit her lip. “That was crazy.”

  “Cabana,” I finished. “And cliff.”

  She moved to my lap, picking up one of my arms to place under her knees. Then she clasped her hands around my neck. “Take me to your bed, Dr. Marks.”

  I had no problem doing that.

  ***

  Chapter Forty Three: Tina

  The hospital seemed strange without Darion in it. I left the art therapy room to deliver the paperwork to the main office. I had decided to go the psychology route.

  As I crossed the main entry, I spotted a man who looked so much like Darion, I almost called out to him.

  He had the same no-nonsense stride, a strong jaw, and their mouths were identical. But then, I saw the crinkles around the eyes. And his hair was receding just a bit.

  He was headed the same direction as me, to administration, so I followed, picking up my pace to keep up.

  The man stopped beside the evil secretary’s desk. “I’m here to see Duffrey.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked. “You can sit over there.” She pointed to the hard-backed chair of doom, and I stifled a laugh. I hid behind a corner, pretending to shuffle papers while I watched.

  “I do not NEED an appointment,” he said.

  “Everybody needs an appointment,” she said. “Dr. Duffrey is a very busy man.”

  “So am I.”

  I so wanted to giggle.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Dr. Gerald Marks. California Board of Medicine.”

  My head popped up. Darion’s dad! Holy shit!

  “You can have a seat, Dr. Marks,” she said.

  Dr. Marks glanced at the chair. “I’m going in,” he said.

  The secretary stood up, looking more energetic than I’d ever seen her as Dr. Marks pushed through Duffrey’s door. She followed him in, saying, “I’m so sorry, Dr. Duffrey.”

  But she was clearly waved back out, as she returned to her desk and angrily stuck a pencil behind her ear.

  I decided now was not a good time to turn in my late forms.

  I dashed back to my room and typed out a quick message to Darion.

  Your dad is at the hospital! Just bullied his way into Duffrey’s office!

  He wrote me back right away, saying he was on his way.

  I’d never be able to concentrate on art therapy with this going on. I glanced at my schedule. The toddlers were being visited by some puppet troupe, so I wouldn’t see them. Thankfully, the only thing for the next couple hours was Albert.

  Whew. Good.

  I got out my painting of the ocean sunset and Albert’s last drawing, in case he was up for working on it. I wondered if I had time to make another run down to the office, to be there when Darion’s father came out.

  Probably not.

  I picked up Albert’s image, the circus scene on top of the crumbling cliff. That top clown still really bugged me. I knew I had seen it before.

  I had about ten minutes. I searched my phone for the shot of the clown I had taken and loaded it into Google image search.

  And suddenly everything became clear.

  Tons of hits. The clown on oil paintings. Posters. Mugs. Calendars. Coffee-table books. Two entire galleries devoted to it. Of course. I’d seen it a million times.

  I pulled up the Wikipedia article, and there was an image, clearly of Albert, although a much younger version, his crazy curls brown instead of gray. But the artist was named Claude Van du Seaux.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Claude Van du Seaux. He was ubiquitous in art circles and had invaded pop culture in the 1970s. There was no mention that this was an assumed name, but of course, if they’d listed Albert before, I could have found it the first time I searched. And if I’d found Claude, I would have recognized Albert immediately.

  I scrolled down the article, then stopped with shock.

  It said he died three months ago.

  I scrolled back to the top. I’d missed that. 1937–2014.

  I scanned through the headlines of the related articles.

  “Famous artist commits suicide at studio.”

  “Studio a bloodbath after artist slits wrists, says assistant.”

  “Image of blood-splattered clown goes viral after famous artist suicide.”

  I remembered this now. It happened right before I graduated. I was still talking on the self-help circuit, so people had forwarded me the links.

  But he wasn’t dead.

  Was Albert his brother, maybe? They looked so much alike.

  Not possible. I�
�d seen him draw that clown with my own two eyes. Plus, the scars on his wrists.

  Had he faked his own death?

  I paced the room, waiting for him to arrive.

  The time came and went. He didn’t show.

  Darion texted me.

  I’m in Cynthia’s room. All seems fine here.

  I wrote back.

  I’ll be there when I can. Class now.

  Except I didn’t have class. No Albert.

  I called up to the nurses’ desk to ask about him. The phone rang and rang with no answer.

  I slammed it down. Forget that. I checked my roster. He was on level six. I’d go find him.

  My heart hammered as I ran up the stairs, too worried to wait on an elevator. What if he had really died? When did they update my list? Would anyone tell me?

  Tears pricked my eyes. No, I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not today. Not with everything else going on.

  No one was at the desk, so I stopped a nurse. “How can I find one of my patients’ rooms?”

  The woman glanced down at my badge. “Ask the desk nurse.”

  “She isn’t there.”

  The soft voice of the paging system called a code. I had a sudden terrible feeling that it was Albert. “I need to find Albert Cisneros,” I say, my voice breaking.

  “Oh.” She pointed down the hall. “He’s right in there. 614.”

  “He’s okay? He didn’t come for therapy.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  I hurried in that direction. I knocked a couple times. No answer.

  The door was only partially closed, so I pushed it open. “Albert? It’s Tina.”

  Albert lay in bed, staring out the window. His hands trembled on top of the sheet.

  “Albert?”

  With great effort, he turned his head. “Tina,” he said, but his voice was strained and soft.

  I rushed over to him. “Albert? What’s going on?”

  “New drug is a bust,” he said.

  I took his hand. He didn’t have the Fall Risk bracelet anymore. I guess they didn’t expect him to try to walk at all now.

  “Are they going to try something else?”

  He stared at me, his eyes milky. “I think I’m done here.”

  “You have to help me finish the image! The cliff!”