Thermal Dynamics (Nerds of Paradise Book 5)

by Merry Farmer

  He started to step away, but something in Sandy snapped. “How dare you?” she demanded, marching after him into the common area between the various occupied and unoccupied examination rooms. “How dare you use my father’s health as a way to twist the board to do your will?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Jogi moving to stand behind her. The nurses at the station in the middle of the area jerked up from their work to see what was going on.

  Richard pivoted slowly to face her, dripping with condescension. “Is that how you talk to your clients?”

  “You are not a client,” she snapped. “And I will speak to you however I want. My father’s health has nothing to do with his ability to run the bank. If you go spreading that rumor, then so help me God—”

  “The members of the bank’s board will find out about this one way or another,” Richard cut her off. “They’re free to draw their own conclusions.”

  “Then give them the right information,” Sandy kept at it. “Tell them that Dr. Levinson has my father’s case well under control. Tell them that he’ll be back on his feet and back at work in no time, better than ever.” She didn’t know if it was true. In fact, she was desperately worried that it couldn’t be true, but she wasn’t going to let Richard see that.

  Richard merely smirked. “Maybe you should have your blood pressure checked while you’re here, sweetie. You look like you’re going to have a stroke.”

  Sandy started to lunge at Richard, but Jogi held her back. “It’s okay,” Jogi said, his hand around her arm firm. “You father is going to recover, just like you said. And we already have a plan in action to stop the board from voting your dad out.”

  Richard raised one eyebrow. “Is that so?” He didn’t have the good sense to look worried.

  “It is,” Sandy answered anyhow. She focused on the pinch of Jogi’s hand around her arm, drew her strength from that, from him. It helped her to stand straighter and stare Richard down. “You aren’t going to win this one, or any other attempt at a hostile take-over of the bank either. The more you push, the more you’re going to look like a fool.”

  Her words rang in her own ears, and a tiny voice in the back of her head told her that she was the one looking like a fool. But Richard didn’t have a clever comeback. He barely managed a smirk before turning and marching out through the unit and on to whatever errand had brought him to the hospital in the first place.

  As soon as he turned a corner, the shaking started. Sandy let out a breath and sucked in another, repeated the intake, then came close to hyperventilating as she descended into panic. It was too much—the wild interlude at Lake Enchantment, the realizations she’d made about her part in everything between her and Jogi falling apart, her father, her family all being there, and everything she stood to lose if she couldn’t hold it together. But the more she fought for control, the further it slipped from her until tears were streaming down her cheeks once more.

  “It’s okay,” Jogi said, pulling her into an embrace. “You’re tough, you can handle this.”

  But she couldn’t. And it hurt. Worse still, her entire family and half of the ER was probably watching her fall apart, watching perfect, polished Sandy Templesmith descending into a broken pile of tears and snot. She could feel their judgment ripping at her already.

  Except that the judgment wasn’t coming from the outside. The sensations she felt around her were the warmth and strength of Jogi’s arms, the cool draft from the air conditioning, and the soft beep and whir of medical equipment. No one threw insults at her or told her she wasn’t good enough. That noise came from inside.

  “Don’t worry,” Jogi whispered near her ear, so close it felt as though his voice was right beside the darker ones in her head. “Your dad has the best care. We’re going to win the dance competition and show the Bonnevilles up. You can do this.”

  She was beyond words, her throat too closed up to make a squeak, but she rested her head against his and nodded. His arms looped more tightly around her.

  “You’ve got this,” he repeated.

  She nodded again, letting him hold more of her weight than she ever would have let anyone. It felt good. It felt right. Like letting him lead in the dance.

  But at the same time, it tore her apart inside. He couldn’t expect anything in return for his kindness. Not after the way she’d treated him. And the fact that he was there for her simply because he was a good person was almost more than she could take. She owed him so much, but she had no idea how to make it up to him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As it turned out, the feeling of walking on broken glass wasn’t just something pop stars sang about in catchy tunes. Sandy waltzed through the next few days—literally and figuratively—feeling as though one wrong move would slice her to painful pieces.

  “But your dad is going to be okay,” Melody asked her as she, Rita, Calliope, and Laura sat in the left field bleachers at Haskell’s baseball field on Sunday afternoon. Melody licked her way around an ice cream cone but still managed to appear full of concern.

  “The stent surgery was successful,” Rita answered in a round-about way. “Dad says he feels better already, but he’s been known to say things so we won’t worry.”

  “It’s a good thing he got to the hospital so fast,” Calliope said.

  “Yeah, the paramedics were amazing.” Rita took a bite out of her own ice cream cone and made a relieved sound.

  Sandy didn’t know how she could eat with everything that was going on. She still didn’t know how she and Jogi had made it through Friday night’s competition. It was only a day and a half ago, but she could barely remember any of it. She’d been so distracted with worry about her dad, frustration over everyone who kept trying to express their sympathy when all she wanted to do was focus, and outright anger at Richard Bonneville and his slimy attempts to take over the bank. If she thought about it, her distraction was probably the reason she and Jogi danced well enough to make the next cut. There was no way he could complain about her not letting him lead when she was barely aware that she was dancing at all.

  And now they were in the quarter finals. They were one step closer to getting everything both of them wanted. So why did she feel more despair than ever?

  “Sandy. Sandy. Hello, Sandy.”

  Sandy blinked and shook her head, snapping out of her thoughts as if she’d reached the end of her bungee cord and was yanked back. “Huh?” She glanced down the bleachers to find Rita and her friends staring at her.

  “I said that I was impressed by how well you and Jogi did on Friday night, all things considered,” Laura said.

  “Oh. Thanks.” Sandy sat straighter, rolling her shoulders and adjusting her seat in an attempt to bring herself back from the edge. She even tried to smile.

  Her friends weren’t fooled.

  “The two of you look good dancing together,” Calliope said. “You look like you belong together.”

  “Really?” Sandy shrugged and tried to school her face into a casual expression. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Oh, come on.” Laura rolled her eyes.

  “What?” Sandy challenged her. But the familiar impulse to debate and defend herself faltered before it even started. Which was the most alarming thing she’d felt in the last few upsetting days.

  Laura fixed her with a flat stare. “The cat’s out of the bag, you know. Jogi let it slip that you two dated.”

  Hearing someone else say it felt like a weight descending on her shoulders. Sandy glanced out over the field as whoever was up to bat for the Southside Salamanders hit a fly ball into left field, only a couple dozen yards in front of where they sat.

  “He told you it didn’t work out too,” she said, soft enough that she wasn’t sure her friends could hear her. In a way, she hoped they didn’t. The hollow disappointment of things not working out with Jogi was the icing on the cake of every bad thing that was closing in on her. It reminded her of how bittersweet it had been to break down in
his arms in the ER the other day, how comforting his arms had felt around her. It brought to mind the wild ecstasy of him bringing her to orgasm beside the lake. They were broken up. He could have just left her to cry on her own with everyone watching her in the ER. He could have had sex with her at the lake without a condom and she wouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop him. But no, in both cases, he’d saved her from humiliation and self-destruction when he didn’t have to.

  It took another few seconds to realize that Rita and her friends were all staring at her in silence. The game had turned exciting out on the field. The Salamanders were having a rough season, but there they were, crushing the Bonneville Bears, and not one of their group was paying the slightest bit of attention to the game. They were waiting for her—waiting for her to either burst into more pointless tears or put her big-girl panties on and do something.

  Sandy drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. It was mild as far as confessions went, but to her, even that kind of admission was terrifying. “I don’t know what to do,” she repeated. “I feel like I’ve made one wrong step after another in this whole thing with Jogi, but he keeps…keeps just being there, being a wonderful person when I…I don’t deserve it.” She glanced down at her hands.

  “Of course you deserve it.” Melody snorted. “Duh.”

  Sandy glanced warily up at her. “You don’t know what I did to him.”

  Three sets of eyebrows rose in unison, all her friends. But not Rita. Rita pressed her lips together and glanced discreetly at her ice cream. Because Rita knew the whole story. It was time for the others to hear it too.

  “I submitted Jogi’s winning photo to the National Parks Service contest without his permission,” Sandy said. “He specifically told me that he wasn’t going to enter, that he didn’t feel he was ready.”

  “He did?” Laura looked surprise.

  “You did?” Calliope asked.

  Sandy nodded. “And it wasn’t just that.” She sighed. “I wouldn’t leave him alone about his photography. I kept pushing him to do something with it.”

  “But he did do something with it,” Laura said slowly. “He put some things up online—”

  “And had them plagiarized,” Calliope added in an undertone.

  “—and he’s been trying to get a gallery show,” Laura continued.

  Sandy hadn’t thought too deeply about that. She wasn’t vain enough to chalk Jogi’s efforts up to her influence, though. And being reminded of the trouble he was having with the plagiarist didn’t make her feel any better.

  “The long and the short of it is that I was too pushy,” she said, “and that I kept hounding him even after he told me to stop. I wasn’t particularly respectful to him, and….” She sighed, lowering and shaking her head. “I didn’t appreciate him for who he was until I’d driven him away.”

  A round of sympathetic encouragement came from her friends. Rita rubbed her back with a look of sisterly solidarity that went beyond sweet platitudes.

  “I’m sure you could get him back,” Laura said, then winced. “I mean, if that’s what you want.”

  It would be far too easy for Sandy to direct her anger at Laura’s overly black-and-white view of the situation or to explain away her friend’s enthusiasm as naïve and foolish. The problem was, she wanted to believe in Laura’s version of happily ever after.

  Especially after the interlude at the lake.

  Sandy sighed. “What I want is irrelevant if I’ve already blown my chance.”

  “I don’t see how you blew your chance when Jogi was there at the hospital with all of us on Thursday,” Rita said, almost too quietly to be heard.

  Almost.

  “Jogi was at the hospital with you?” Melody sat straighter.

  Sandy felt a new wave of confessions coming. “He was.” She sat straighter and took a breath. “We were out at Lake Enchantment, practicing for the competition, when I got the call.”

  “That’s right.” Laura shifted into a faraway look. “Jogi took Thursday off.” She faced Sandy again with a smile. “You two spent the day together?”

  Sandy replied with an ironic laugh. “It wasn’t exactly a romantic rendezvous.” Except that it had definitely been heading in that direction before the call came in. Who knew where they would have ended up, if not for her dad?

  She would have ended up apologizing for the way she’d treated him all those months ago. She would have laid herself bare in more ways than one. And who knew what would have happened then.

  Who knew indeed.

  “What’s that look for?” Rita asked, her expression flickering between confusion and amusement.

  “I think it’s for me slapping myself upside the head,” Sandy admitted.

  “Oh, really?” Calliope asked, exchanging a look with Melody.

  Sandy let out a breath and thumped her hands on her knees. “I don’t like feeling vulnerable,” she said, sounding anything but vulnerable. In fact, her confidence was growing by the second. “I hate not being the one in control of things. And Jogi makes me feel out of control.”

  “But that’s a good thing, right?” Melody asked.

  “Yeah, isn’t that what love kinda is?” Calliope followed.

  “How would you know, Miss ‘I’ll only date a guy if he’s perfect’?” Melody ribbed her.

  “Hey, I’ve dated lots of guys who weren’t perfect,” Calliope defended herself, then finished by mumbling, “That’s why I broke up with them.”

  Melody smirked and elbowed her.

  “The thing is, you have a point,” Sandy told Calliope. “It’s like dancing. You’re never going to get it right if you don’t let the guy lead.”

  Rita snapped straighter. “So help me God, Sandy, if you’re suggesting that women should be subservient to men, I’m going to punch you in the face.”

  “No, no.” Sandy made a snorting sound. “God, no. I’m not saying anyone should let men lead in a relationship.”

  “Good,” Melody said, making an exuberant gesture of relief.

  “But it might be a good idea to let love lead,” Sandy went on. Her confidence shrank. “Which, I’m not gonna lie, I suck at. And it really terrifies me. And I’ll probably make a fool of myself in the process.”

  Rita blinked. “Sounds like you’re thinking of doing something.”

  Sandy took another breath, pressing a hand to her stomach. “Well, I don’t know if it’s an actual thing that I’m going to do, but it’s been too crappy of a week for me to sit by and let everything fall to pieces because I’m treading unfamiliar ground.” She slipped off the edge of the bleachers and stood.

  “So….” Rita prompted, raising a brow.

  Sandy spread her hands in a gesture of defeat that felt oddly liberating. “I’m going to go do something I should have done weeks ago.”

  “Which is?” Laura played along with the same teasing tone Rita had used.

  Sandy smiled, actually feeling happy for a chance. “I’m going to find Jogi and apologize for being a bitch.”

  “And then you’re going to jump his bone and ride him like a green-broke stallion, right?” Melody suggested.

  Sandy crossed her arms and smirked. “No, and then I’m going to ask him if he needs my help with the plagiarism thing. Ask. Not tell, not push.”

  “And then you’re going to get naked and squish with him,” Calliope laughed.

  “No.” Sandy laughed with her. “I’m going to make amends where and how I can, and then focus on winning this dance competition and saving the bank.” A burst of emotion surprised her at the end of her statement. Her dad would be so proud of her if she could set aside her own problems to help with his.

  “Well, all right then.” Rita scooted off the bleachers to give Sandy a hug. “You go, girl.”

  “Yeah,” Melody added. “You go get your nasty on with Jogi.”

  Sandy rolled her eyes and smirked at her goofy friends. Although she wasn’t entirely opposed to doing things their way.
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br />   If he knew what was good for him, Jogi would have been at Haskell’s baseball field along with his friends and everyone else in town. It was a beautiful late-summer day. There wouldn’t be many more days like it. And baseball games were always fun in Haskell. But instead of hanging out with his friends, eating food that was terrible for him, and getting a kick out of the kids running around in gangs without another care in the world, he was stretched out on his sofa at home, a video game controller in his hands, electronic explosions filling the air.

  He played on autopilot, back itching with the need to quit. He was wasting his time. Too many things needed to be done. The author who’d stolen his photograph still hadn’t replied to his repeated requests to cease and desist. Sandy’s bank was in even more trouble than it’d been in just a few days ago. The new week’s dances were going to be announced in class the next day. But most unsettling of all, he hadn’t seen Sandy since Friday night.

  And he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since Thursday morning.

  He wanted her. That much was obvious. She’d been so sensual at the lake, come so readily and completely when he touched her. What guy in his right mind wouldn’t want more of that? So why was it that when he thought back to Thursday, the thing he couldn’t forget was how brave she was to stand up to Bonneville in the middle of a crisis and how overwhelmed he’d been that she’d turned to him for comfort when her entire family was standing there?

  His unproductive thoughts were cut short by a knock at the door. It coincided with his soldier being blown to pixelated bits by demon warriors, so he tossed his controller aside and pushed himself up and over to the door. Whoever it was had better be ready for a cold reception. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with—

  Sandy was standing in the stairwell on the other side of the door. “Hi,” she said, her smile flickering between uncertainty and strength.

  “Hi.” Jogi let his shoulders drop. He cursed himself for being dressed in an old t-shirt that needed washing and gym shorts. He hadn’t bothered brushing his hair since his morning shower either.