Richard lazily, slowly swept his eyes from my ankles up to my face, his gaze lingering for a minute on my chest and hips. By the time that his eyes reached mine, he reminded me of a jungle cat, a lion that had just identified its prey. And I, meanwhile, felt like a mouse, pinned by that cat's gaze.
"You're a bit old for me, doc," Richard drawled, his eyes still carefully watching mine. He was, I sensed, trying to see what sort of impact his words would have on me. "What are you, thirty-five?"
"Twenty-nine," I countered. I knew that he was trying to get under my skin, rattle me. "And I'm too old for you? You prefer girls no more than half your age, is that it?"
If my words had any effect on him, it wasn't apparent. "Easier to get them drunk and back to my place," he answered easily. "And I can always threaten to call their parents on them if they overstay their welcome. Pretty nice."
I shook my head. "That's awful to say."
"See, and you think that I'm joking," Richard said, smirking a little. "Come on, doc, let's get down to the main point. I can see that you're pretty hurting for cash, glancing around at this shithole of an office." I bristled, but he kept talking. "So here's the deal," he continued, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wallet clip stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. "You tell me how much you need, and I'll hand it over as a donation. After that, you can renew my scrip, so I can get out of here. Deal?"
With an effort, I kept a lid on my growing irritation. "No need for the money – I'll bill the VA for this," I said sweetly, smiling back at him. "And of course, I'll renew your prescription. I'd hate to think of someone as nice as you suffering and in pain."
Richard frowned a little at that – maybe he was actually smart enough to sense my sarcasm. But I reached for the prescription pad on my desk, and his expression cleared. I scribbled out what he needed, and handed it over.
"Thanks, doc," Richard said, standing up from his chair (without the need for his cane, I noted). "And now I'll be on my-"
He stopped halfway, to the door. "What the hell?" he burst out, spinning back around and shoving the slip of paper back towards me. "What's going on with this?"
I smiled back at him, still sitting. "Why don't you have a seat," I suggested, nodding back to the chair. "We're not done quite yet."
For a minute, I thought that Richard was about to literally swing a punch at me, but finally, grinding his teeth together, he dropped back down onto his chair.
"You're a bitch, doc, you know that?" he growled.
I didn't let my smile waver by one iota. "I've heard that before," I replied. "Now, why don't we talk a little more?"
Chapter Four
LINDA
*
"A real bitch, doc," Richard repeated, now glaring at me with undisguised anger in his eyes as he sank back into the chair across from mine. "That's what you are, you know that?"
"I've heard it before, yes," I allowed, trying to keep any trace of a smile off of my face. Sure, the tactic might have been a bit underhanded, but there was no denying that it had worked. Instead of storming out on me, Richard now once again sat across from me, and hopefully I could get him to talk a little bit.
He dropped the prescription that I'd written out for him down on the little table in front of us, glaring first at it, and then back up at me. "Only giving me a week's worth of pills? And no refills? What's the game, doc?"
"The game," I answered calmly, "is that I know that, if I give you a month-long, or longer, prescription, you won't come back until it's empty."
"Yeah, so?"
Richard leaned forward a little, and I tried to not feel threatened by his imposing physical presence. I'd had other addicts try and threaten me before, and I'd always stayed strong – but it was still scary, each and every time that it happened. "So," I said, not letting any trace of that fear touch my words. "Why don't we talk a little more? And when this prescription runs out in a week, you can come back and I'll give you a refill for another week – after we have another little talk, of course."
For a minute, I almost thought that Richard was going to storm out on me, reject my offering outright. But instead, he just ground his teeth together for another few seconds – and then relaxed, smiling at me.
Somehow, I didn't like the look of that smile.
"Fine," he said softly, although I sensed that he was deciding on something different than what I'd suggested. "Let's talk, doc. What do you want to talk about?"
"How about we talk about what you're up to now?" I suggested, trying to pick a more neutral topic to start. "You can tell me a little about yourself."
Richard nodded, leaning back in his chair, draping one arm over the back. "Yeah, sure," he allowed. "Where should I start? I mean, one thing's clear – even though I'm stuck here relying on you for my damn pills, I'm doing better than you in pretty much every way."
"Excuse me?" That wasn't what I'd expected.
"Oh, yeah," he went on, his lips spreading into a slow, rather cruel looking smile. "You probably haven't heard of the Stone family, but we were a big deal back when this place was growing from a single-cow town up into a full city. We made enough off of the land and estate sales that we were basically set for eternity. But we went into military sales just for the hell of it, got even richer. Hell, doc, you should see the size of my trust fund. The thing's got two commas in the total, for Christ's sake, and my brothers both have about the same amount."
Okay, so Mr. Richard Stone was rich. And he was, apparently bragging about this to me. Sure, sitting in my crappy little office, I did feel a momentary little twinge of envy, but did he really think that this was enough to get under my professionalism?
"And to be honest, I don't do much work, day to day," Richard went on, his eyes still lingering on me. "I live at our family house, as the oldest of my brothers, and pretty much just do whatever I want. Sometimes I decide on going on a vacation, just on the spur of the moment, and I'll charter a private jet to fly me out to wherever I choose. And of course, there's usually a couple young women willing to come along, too – and since they never bother to pack much in the way of clothing, it's easy to fit them on the plane."
Great. The man was an overgrown playboy. So much for that military discipline. "And I suppose," I commented, "that you're thinking that I'd be willing to pull on a bikini and join you if you offered, huh?"
As I spoke these words, it occurred to me that I had gone for quite a while since my last vacation. I knew that I owned a bikini or two, somewhere in the back of my dresser, but when had been the last time I'd put one on? Hell, I probably wouldn't even fit into one any longer, not if I wanted to look the slightest bit attractive. Too many late-night study sessions, combined with food that came solely out of a microwave.
But no need to tell Richard how long I'd been working without any sort of real vacation. No need to give him extra ammunition.
He, meanwhile, was once again obviously checking out my body. "Nah," he said after a minute, one side of his mouth twisting up in that cruel smirk. "I don't think I'd invite you along. Definitely hiding some cellulite under those oh-so-professional slacks, I'm betting. Probably got legs hairier than mine."
I tried not to show how close he'd come to hitting the mark. Just the other day, I'd been nervously turning around to check out my behind in the mirror in my bedroom, worrying that my ass seemed to droop more than I remembered. And yes, it had been a while since I'd shaved, but that wasn't something that anyone needed to know!
"Come on, doc," Richard went on, leaning forward and winking at me. "How long has it been for you?"
"Been since what?"
He rolled his eyes. "Since you won the lottery. Since you had a guy try and slip anything past you besides a drug addiction! I'm going to bet that it's been at least six months since your last date." He sat back, tapping his chin with one finger. "No, I take that back. At least eight months since your last date, at least six since anyone's asked you out."
I didn't want to think about the actual leng
th of time that I'd gone since my last date. I couldn't even remember the details – it had been an orderly, I was pretty sure. The date had started off on a bad note when he showed up at my apartment on his moped, and got worse when he expected me to hop on the overgrown scooter behind him. I had been wearing a skirt and heels, for heaven's sake!
"My dating life is none of your concern," I said primly.
Richard's smile widened. "Ah, I'm hitting close to the mark, then! What's the matter, doc, you feeling uncomfortable being in the presence of a guy who actually has sex? You want me to throw you a pity fuck, maybe bend you over that desk of yours there? I suppose that if I'm going at you from behind, if I can't see your face, I might be able to keep it up."
"That really isn't necessary." Dammit, he was getting to me. I could feel blood flowing into my cheeks, less at the thought of sex and more due to anger that he was being so impertinent. I'd been verbally harassed by former clients, but usually they weren't nearly so... eloquent about it. They tended to swing insults wildly, rather than targeting them with a surgeon's precision.
"Now I'm getting to it," Richard smirked. "You probably just prefer not to think about it, huh?"
"Not think about what?" Why was I responding to him?
"About dying," Richard answered, and I blinked at the unexpected response. "You know, alone. That's probably how you'll go, if you can't find some poor sad sack so desperate for any kind of affection that he's willing to settle for you. Ever think about it? You'll get older, and you'll cling to professional accomplishments, like being a doctor, but that's not going to keep you warm when you're alone in bed on those cold nights, will it? You'll just keep getting older, worrying about falling and breaking a hip and dying in your little apartment of the two-bedroom house that you buy in vain hope that it will attract someone in, until eventually you just stop coming out..."
"Enough!" The word cracked out of me like a whip, and I felt pain in my palms. I glanced down and realized that my hands had tightened into fists, that my fingernails were digging into the flesh of my palms.
Richard looked a little caught off-guard by my sudden outburst, and I followed up on it before he could recover. "That's enough!" I repeated, no longer bothering to hold back the venom and anger in my words. "You have no right to talk to me that way, you... you overgrown, spoiled little boy with a pill addiction!"
I clapped my hands up over my mouth, my eyes going wide as I realized what I'd just done. But it was too late for me to catch the words back. I'd spoken them out loud, already said them. I'd just insulted a client, pointed out his addiction, called him an overgrown boy! It was a huge breach of professional ethics!
But across from me, instead of looking angry, Richard instead appeared... amused? "Well, finally," he said.
I blinked. That wasn't what I'd expected. "What?"
"I was trying to see if there was any backbone in you, doc," he answered, still smiling at me – but that grin no longer looked cruel. The cat, it seemed, had just been playing with me, not actually trying to eat me. "It took some digging to find it, but sure enough, there it is."
I tried to recover any sort of control of the situation. "That was cruel," I said, my hands still shaking slightly.
"Yeah, well, I'm not a nice guy," he answered. "Overgrown, spoiled boy, right?"
"I'm sorry – I really didn't mean that-"
He held up a hand, forestalling my babble of apologies. "Look, I don't think that there's anything you can do to help me, besides filling my scrip," he said. He reached forward and picked up the one-week prescription that I'd written out for him earlier. "But hell, you're at least a little easier on the eyes than the doc at the VA, and I don't need to spend a couple of hours sitting around in a waiting room with other vets before I get seen. So yeah, I'll come back next week, let you probe me with some dumb questions about my childhood, and then collect my next week's supply of pills."
I tried to think through this. It was what I'd been after, wasn't it? This wasn't quite how I'd intended to bring it about, but the end result was all that mattered, right?
Richard was reaching back to pick up his cane, getting ready to head out, but I decided to make one last stab at figuring out something more about him, something that dipped below his confident and shallow exterior. "There is something," I guessed.
He paused, his smile vanishing as his face turned back to expressionless stone. "What are you talking about?"
I kept my eyes on him, watching his reactions closely. "Something more than the leg, something that's bothering you. You're acting like you're doing me a big favor by coming back in a week, but you wouldn't do it if it was just about pills. There's something else in there, something that you're not telling me, and you're hoping that I'll be able to figure it out and help you."
"I don't know what you're talking about, doc," Richard said, standing up. Even as he turned away from me, however, I sensed his expression shifting a little, sensed a tiny little bit of hesitation in his voice.
I didn't say anything else as I stood up as well, moved to hold the door open for him. I didn't need to say anything else. I'd hit the mark, had found a little nugget of truth buried inside his glib, falsified exterior.
At the door, Richard lingered for a moment longer, once again looking me up and down. "Let me make one recommendation for you, doc," he said.
I raised my eyebrows, trying to mentally prepare for whatever might be coming next.
I wasn't prepared, however, for what did happen – Richard reached forward and hooked his finger in the neckline of my blouse, tugging it forward and down so he could grab a quick peek inside! "Wear something a little lower cut," he said, as I gasped and my mind went momentarily blank, unable to come up with a properly outraged response. "It'll at least give me something to look at while I'm talking about my childhood."
And then, before I could respond, he was gone, out the door without looking back.
I clapped my hand up over my chest, holding my blouse against me – but a little part of my mind, awakened by the realization of how long it had truly been since my last date, couldn't help but check out Richard's tight ass in those jeans as he walked away, the broadness of his shoulders.
Not that I'd ever consider sleeping with a client, breaking my professional code of ethics in such an outrageous manner.
And besides, attractive as Richard might be, he was everything that I hated about a man in terms of personality.
Definitely not.
I closed the office door and sat down in one of the chairs, replaying the encounter in my head and trying to convince myself that I held the upper hand.
Chapter Five
RICHARD
*
I had other things to do, but I kept on finding my mind returning to that psychiatrist, Linda Bisson. Even though we'd only been in that office together for maybe half an hour, tops, she'd somehow managed to worm her way under my skin. Even as I drove towards the trendy new downtown restaurant that was my next destination, I kept finding myself gritting my teeth as I remembered how her questions probed at me, how she had tried to feel me out.
I felt, I decided, like a block of wood that she'd decided to carve. With no regard for my feelings, she'd decided to take her tools to me, to peel away my layers and dig out my core for her own enjoyment.
Then again, I considered as I pulled up to the entrance of the restaurant, steered my Jaguar into one of the open spots and tossed the keys to the waiting valet, I'd managed to give back almost as good as I got. At first, she kept up a strong facade, pretending that my little snipes didn't hit her, but I'd learned way back in Basic how to get under the skin of others, from Privates all the way up to one particularly arrogant Colonel who had totally deserved to be taken down a few pegs. It was all about finding the right pressure points.
For Dr. Linda, those pressure points turned out to be the typical ones, those that I'd guess; her loneliness, her single status, the conflict between pursuing her professional career and pursuing
a family.
"Not that I'm one to talk," I grunted to myself as I headed into the restaurant, a doorman pulling the door open for me. "Or interested in a family at all."
Inside the restaurant, I didn't have to look far to spot my two brothers, lounging at one of the center tables. Sebastian, at least, was lounging; he splayed out almost indolently over a couple chairs, his arm draped over the back and holding a flute of champagne in one hand, wearing his hair shaggy across his forehead and an arrogant smile on his face. Next to him, Teddy, my middle brother, looked even more tightly wound than usual. I couldn't see Teddy's face, but the middle Stone sibling sat so straight that I felt compelled to reach up and yank the steel rod out of his ass.
"Evening," I greeted them, dropping into the third chair at the table. "You two look like sad sacks of shit."
"That's rich, coming from you," Sebastian answered, smirking. "We thought that something horrible had happened to you; we were about to send out the search parties. You're never late to these stupid dinners, since they were your idea in the first place."
I ran my eye over his relaxed pose. "Yeah, you really look worried," I countered, and he grinned. "Anyway, my normal doctor sent me to someone else, and it took a bit longer than I expected."
"Leg still acting up?" Teddy spoke up, his eyes flicking to the limb in question. Of the three of us, I was the only one who left the military with an injury. I sensed that my brothers never quite figured out how to talk about that, and they seemed to alternate between mockery and dutiful respect.
"No more than usual," I said. Anxious to shift the topic of conversation, I turned my attention to Sebastian. "Seb, it's good to finally see you, by the way. Never would have guessed that we were both living at the same house, what with how much time you spend skulking in your room."
For Love of Valor: A Bad Boy Military Romance Page 3
