by Kelly Favor
He just needed to focus, he told himself. He’d feel better once he had a shower and got to work.
But when he got back to the apartment, the bathroom door was closed, and the shower was already on. The door to the linen closet was open, and two towels were missing. Great. Now there was going to be no hot water.
He went to his room and picked out the suit he was going to wear for the day.
Then he came back to the hallway and paced around. How long was she going to be in there? He waited five minutes, and was just about to knock, when the bathroom door opened and Alexis emerged.
She was wearing nothing but a towel. Her long blonde hair clung to her cheeks in wet tendrils, and her face was scrubbed clean. Her skin was glowing. His gaze dropped down to the towel. It barely covered anything. The slight curve of her breasts peeked out from the material, and the bottom of the towel hit just above her knees.
She was drying her hair with another towel, and she flipped her head over, giving him a peek down the top of her towel. Her breasts looked luscious and firm, and he felt himself harden. She flipped back over, twisting the second towel around her hair.
“Hey,” she said. “Um, sorry. I didn’t know when you’d be back. You probably want to shower.”
“Yeah. We’ll have to work out some kind of schedule in the future.” And you’re going to have to stop walking around half naked. He pushed past her and into the bathroom. Or else I’m not going to be responsible for what’s going to happen.
***
Alexis watched as Reid pushed past her and into the bathroom. Her heart drummed in her chest. She should have thought about the possibility that he’d be home before she came out into the hallway dressed in just a towel! She’d tried to act like it was no big deal, but she was totally embarrassed. The towel barely covered anything.
She took a deep breath and told herself to relax. Just because some guy she’d just met saw her in a towel didn’t mean she had to get all weird about it.
Once she was safely back in her room, she dressed quickly in her yoga pants and a fresh t-shirt, and then opened her laptop. She needed to find a job. She’d been teaching nursery school part-time in Pennsylvania, but the last thing she wanted to do was go back to doing that.
It had been a good job to have while she was going to school, but she’d never really wanted to work with kids. In fact, the only reason she’d even considered it was because of Leo. Thinking of Leo made her pulse pound and her head start to spin.
Don’t think about him. Just focus on what you’re doing. Take it one step at a time.
She clicked around on monster.com, not really sure where to start. What did she want to do? How did she want to do it? There were so many different job categories–
public relations, hospitality, publishing….there was even a category for aviation.
And the requirements! She had no idea how anyone could even be a candidate for any of these jobs. They all required you to have degrees and experience and speak foreign languages.
She shut her computer and looked around the room. It was defeating, looking for a job. Suddenly, she felt claustrophobic, like she needed some fresh air. Maybe she would go out and do a little shopping. She still had her credit card. It was supposed to be for emergencies only, but didn’t this count as an emergency? She had no pants, for God’s sake.
The shower was still going, so she knew there was no way she’d run into Reid.
She grabbed the key Jack had left for her, then took the elevator down to the lobby and out onto the sidewalk.
As soon as she walked outside, she felt better. It was early enough so that the summer morning was still cool. She gulped air and raised her face to the sun.
After a moment, she looked around. The city was overwhelming. All the people and cabs and cars and honking and yelling. She didn’t really feel comfortable hailing a cab, especially since she didn’t know exactly where she was going.
She decided to stick to places that were within walking distance. There were plenty to choose from, and Alexis didn’t mind walking. In fact, she found it kind of relaxing. She’d been so tightly wound when she’d left Pennsylvania that she needed the physical release.
She headed into the first shop she saw that looked remotely interesting, and filled her arms with pants. She tried them on and picked out two pairs of jeans, a pair of black pants, and a pair of grey leggings.
“Looks like you found something you liked,” the salesgirl said, giving her a smile.
“Will that be cash or credit?”
“Credit,” Alexis said. But as she pulled out her card, she started to get slightly nervous. Was paying with a credit card dangerous? After all, the bill went to her apartment in Pennsylvania. She could change the address, of course, even get a new card, but that would take at least a few days, maybe even longer.
Don’t worry about it. You’re just being paranoid.
But when she out of the store and back onto the sidewalk, her breath was coming in short bursts, and her eyes were watering. It was hot out, she realized suddenly, and she felt like she needed a drink.
There was a lunch truck up on the corner. If she could just get there, she could buy a bottle of water or something. But the pavement was starting to curve below her feet. Why was it doing that? Why was the street moving?
She looked around for someone to help her, but everyone was moving too fast, rushing by her, bumping into her as they passed.
She tried to open her mouth, but she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t speak. Her voice was caught in her throat.
The pavement continued to move beneath her feet, and the sound of car horns echoed through her head. She tried to take another step forward, but her legs felt wobbly, like she was trying to walk on cooked spaghetti.
“Are you okay, miss?” a woman asked.
Alexis tried to nod her head. She reached for the woman’s arm, but all she felt was the material of the woman’s shirt slipping through her fingers.
And then everything went dark.
***
Reid was in a completely bullshit meeting, the first of many bullshit meetings he was going to have to sit through before they actually made the pitch to Vista Collection.
“Look,” Reid said. “We’ve come up with a pretty good idea of what they want.
Now we need to work on coming up with a tagline and concept.”
His team groaned. They were all gathered around the conference table in the middle office of the Lawson Agency. Most advertising agencies these days had open concept spaces and relaxed atmospheres. A lot of them were decorated in modern colors, with oversized, comfortable furniture and big tables instead of desks. It was supposed to foster creativity. But not the Lawson agency. Reid’s father, David Lawson, refused to redo the offices. David’s belief was that if you relaxed things even a little, your work would suffer.
“I really don’t think this is the direction that Vista Collection wants to go in,”
Richard Mueller said from his spot on Reid’s left.
“And why’s that, Richard?” Reid asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.
The last thing he wanted to do was get into it with Richard. Actually, that wasn’t completely true. He did want to get into it with Richard, wanted to yell at him and scream at him in front of everyone.
But that would be unprofessional.
“I just don’t think the client is looking for something fun and whimsical,” Richard said now. “They seem like they want the brand to be more sophisticated.”
“Except they brought up the word ‘whimsical’ about ten times in the briefing, which you would have know if you were there.” Not that it would have mattered.
Richard loved to fight about everything. He hated Reid, because Reid was so young and so successful and Richard was so old and…well, cranky.
The other people at the table exchanged nervous glances, wondering how far the two men were going to push each other.
“Look, all I’m saying is t
hat sometimes you can get hemmed into one idea,”
Richard said. “One idea that makes you blind to other possibilities.”
What the fuck was he talking about? Reid was completely open to different possibilities. He opened his mouth to defend himself, but before he could, his cell phone buzzed on the table in front of him.
He looked down. It was a 212 area code, but a number he didn’t recognize.
“I have to take this,” he said, standing up and moving out of the room. He hoped Richard Mueller thought it was some kind of important business call that didn’t include him.
“Reid Lawson,” he barked into the phone. It had better be a new client.
“Yes, hello, is this Reid Lawson?” a timid woman’s voice asked on the other end of the line.
“Hence me answering the phone Reid Lawson,” he said. It never paid to waste time being nice to someone when you could tell they had no idea what they were really calling about. He got a few calls like this a week, usually from someone who was starting some small business and wanted to inquire about advertising. What these people didn’t realize is that the average cost of a Lawson Agency advertising campaign was half a million dollars.
They’d done work for Coke, Old Navy, The Gap, and Taco Bell. They certainly weren’t the kind of agency who worked on Mom and Pop’s New Pet Store. Although they would, if Mom and Pop had the money to spend.
“Yes, well, Mr. Lawson, this is Mount Sinai Medical Center, and we have a woman here who was brought in by ambulance.”
“Who is it?” he asked. His pulse quickened and adrenaline pushed through his body. Could it be his mother? She lived in Connecticut with his father, but she’d been known to come to the city for a day of shopping. Maybe she’d fallen, maybe she’d been -
“Her name’s Alexis Castalano. We found your information in her purse.”
Shit. He rubbed his temples. “Is she okay?”
“I’m not at liberty to give that information out over the phone, sir.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’m not privy to the patient’s condition, and even if I were, I wouldn’t be at liberty to discuss that kind of thing over the phone.” The woman, who just a second ago had seemed timid, was now starting to sound slightly haughty.
“So what you’re saying is that I have to come down there.”
“You don’t have to do anything, sir. I’m just following proper hospital protocol by calling the patient’s emergency contact number.” The woman’s tone now conveyed that he’d be a total asshole if he didn’t drop everything and come down there immediately.
And it was true. Still. He was in the middle of an important meeting and he hardly knew this girl. He’d just met her a few hours ago, for fuck’s sake.
“She didn’t have anyone else’s number on her?” he tried.
“No, sir.”
“And you can’t just tell me if she’s okay or not? Without getting into specifics?”
“No.” Now the woman sounded really annoyed, like she couldn’t believe she was still having this conversation, that any sane person would have been on their way to the hospital by now.
“You know I don’t know this girl,” he said. “I just met her this morning.”
Silence.
“Okay,” he said, sighing. “I’ll be right there.”
Cha p t e r T h r e e
It took Reid’s cab fifty minutes to get to the hospital, then another ten minutes of actually wandering around before he found Alexis.
She was sitting up in one of the emergency room beds, reading a magazine.
He looked her over. There were no bandages. No scratches. No IVs or other medical instruments hooked up to her arm.
When she saw him, she shut her magazine. “Took you long enough.”
“Took me… ” he trailed off. Was she giving him attitude? For not showing up quick enough? “What the hell happened?” he asked her.
“I fell.” She shrugged. “And then they didn’t know if I had head trauma or not, so they made me wait until someone could take me home.” She rolled her eyes, like she couldn’t believe how ridiculous it was.
He pulled up the tiny stool that was against the wall and sat down. “Where’s the doctor?”
“I don’t know. She’ll probably be back in a minute. She said when you got here she would ‘brief you on my condition.’”
Reid glanced at his watch. He hoped “brief” was going to be the operative word.
“Did you just look at your watch?” Alexis asked.
“No.”
“Yes, you did.” She shook her head. “You know, I didn’t even want them to call you. But they said they had to. They said someone needed to be here with me.”
Talk about being ungrateful. Like he really wanted to leave his big meeting to come down here. Especially for a fall. They couldn’t have told him that over the phone?
That she’d fallen? It was probably just a skinned knee.
“Hello,” the doctor said, walking into the room. “I’m Dr. Snyder.” She was tall with long dark hair, and under different circumstances, Reid would have turned on the charm. But now he just wanted to get the hell out of here.
“Hi,” Reid said, nodding.
“You’re Alexis’s…?” the doctor trailed off.
“I’m her roommate,” Reid said. God, that sounded strange.
“But only for a few more days,” Alexis chimed in. “And then I’m leaving.”
“Okay.” The doctor’s eyes moved from Alexis to Reid and back again. She seemed suspicious, like she couldn’t decide what exactly it was that was going on here.
You and me both.
“So what happened?” Reid asked.
“Well, it seems as if Ms. Castalano was out walking when she had some kind of panic attack, and then fainted.”
He looked at Alexis. She was staring down at the floor now, all traces of bravado gone from her face. “You had a panic attack?” he asked. He knew about panic attacks.
He used to get them in college, right before a big test or before an interview. He’d learned how to manage them over the years, and he hadn’t had one in a couple of years.
But he remembered how horrible they were. Your throat felt like it was closing up, your heart pounded in your chest, and you felt like you were going to die.
He also knew that panic attacks didn’t just come out of nowhere. They were usually triggered by something – stress, worry, or anxiety.
“It wasn’t a panic attack,” Alexis said, and rolled her eyes. “I just got a little hot and dehydrated, that’s all.”
The doctor ignored her. “She’s going to need to be observed for the next twenty-four hours. When she went down, she hit her head and got a slight concussion. Her MRI is clear, but we need to watch her. If she starts vomiting or starts to have a headache, she needs to come back to the hospital.”
Great. Now he was going to be on baby-sitting duty. Or roommate-sitting duty.
This was worse than that time last month when Jack adopted a kitten and then disappeared for three days, leaving Reid to take care of it.
“I’m fine,” Alexis said. But her voice sounded wobbly.
“I’ll take care of her,” Reid promised the doctor. He was going to miss his meeting. But what choice did he have? Alexis Castalano, he thought, shaking his head.
I haven’t even slept with you and you’re somehow fucking up my life.
***
If you asked Alexis, this whole thing was completely ridiculous. First of all, she hadn’t had a panic attack. Panic attacks were for people who were, you know, panicking.
And she wasn’t. She’d just started feeling thirsty.
People fainted all the time from being dehydrated. She’d tried to tell Dr. Snyder that, but had the doctor listened? No. She thought she was so smart just because she had a medical degree. Then, they’d called Reid because they’d found his number in her purse! They’d gone through her things, and called him
because it was hospital policy.
Talk about an invasion of privacy.
Then he’d come down here, which was completely embarrassing.
And now, to top off the complete and utter humiliation of the whole debacle, they were making Reid take her out of the hospital in a wheelchair.
As soon as they got onto the sidewalk, she stood up.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.” They stood there, staring at each other. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say. She supposed she should thank him for leaving work and coming down to get her.
“You could at least thank me for coming down,” he said.
“Thank you for coming down.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You can go back to work now, though,” she said. “Seriously, I’m fine.”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” she said. “Seriously, I’m fine.”
“The doctor said I have to watch you. So I’m going to watch you.”
He took her hand and hailed a cab.
***
When they got back to the apartment, Alexis tried to go and lie down in her room.
But Reid wouldn’t let her.
“No way,” he said, leading her over to the couch. “You’re not lying down.”
“Are you serious?” she asked. “They said for me to rest.”
“You can rest. Just not unattended.” He walked to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of water. He set it down on the table in front of her. “Drink that.”
She opened it and took a sip. She hated that he was ordering her around.
“Now,” he said. “You should probably eat something.” He returned to the kitchen, and she could hear him poking around in the refrigerator. She didn’t know why.
