by Caro Carson
“I don’t think anyone cares,” Diana said immediately, not wanting Lana to feel badly for a moment.
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been together.” Lana kissed Diana on the cheek and turned to hug Kendry.
Diana wondered, just for a moment, if Lana had been trying to put her at ease.
She hadn’t meant to make anyone worry about her. Just the opposite. Still, it was a nice idea, that first Marion and then Lana had cared about her feelings.
Quinn apparently wasn’t averse to pointing out the obvious when it came to his brother. “Let’s see. First week of November means you got busy around Valentine’s Day. Very nice.”
“Valentine’s Day,” Jamie agreed. “Wasn’t that the weekend you skipped out on your job to go camping? In the winter? No sane person would do that. It must have been cold in that tent.”
“You’re a pair of geniuses,” Braden said. “I couldn’t have done the math without you.”
Chapter Ten
They were supposed to go out for dinner and dancing.
During the entire hour-long drive back to Austin, Quinn had strategized their plans for the evening. Diana knew all the good DJs in town, and she checked her phone to see who was playing where that night. They agreed to stop first at Quinn’s so he could get fresh clothes, then to go to her house so she could change for a night out. Before going to any nightclubs, they’d have dinner at a café Quinn liked. It was a solid plan, agreeable to both.
They made it as far as the elevator in Quinn’s building. Again.
This time, when he carried her through the door, they only made it to the leather sofa. Afterward, they made it to the shower. Eventually, they’d made it to the phone to order some pizza, which they’d ended up eating in front of the fireplace.
“The air-conditioning is on,” Diana had protested. “It’s June.”
“You want a fire, you get a fire.”
She’d declared if they were going to do something so silly, they should do it right, and she’d turned off every light in the place. She’d even placed a throw pillow over the glowing lights that remained on the satellite box when the television was off. While the moon lingered outside his balcony, they’d eaten pizza in his living room, staring at the fire.
At the cityscape beyond his panoramic windows.
At each other.
It had been spectacularly beautiful. He’d opened a red wine that he’d been saving for a special occasion, something he’d described as spicy and floral and hard to find. She’d worn his shirt, he’d worn none, and she’d known it was yet another perfect moment with Quinn MacDowell. She’d made sure he didn’t see her tears.
The entire time, Diana had not looked at a clock. Sunday would come soon enough, and her weekend would be over.
When she woke, it was to full daylight. Sunday was here.
She rolled over to face Quinn, who was sound asleep on his stomach, his face turned away from her. He slept in the nude, warm golden skin against cool white sheets. Diana reached out to toy with a piece of his hair. It was a luxury, sheer luxury, to be able to touch him just because she felt like it. She ran her finger over his shoulder, feeling the muscle relaxed in his deep sleep, the same muscle that had flexed as he held his body over hers last night.
She’d worn him out, she thought with a smile. That was an achievement she could look back on—privately. Very privately.
I’ll look back...and remember...and miss what I had...
She let her hand trail down his body, resting her palm on the large muscle of his backside, very lightly, so she wouldn’t wake him. This was her moment to appreciate the beauty of a man. When he woke, would they have sex again? Would it start playfully, would it end hungrily?
It would end. That was the important thing.
Diana snatched her hand back, sudden fear making her heart feel like ice in her chest. She had to stop making memories now. This minute.
Someday, she would lie next to another man, maybe even the husband Quinn saw in her future. She’d watch him sleeping, and she’d remember Quinn, and she’d picture this moment in her memory. It would be hard to bear.
She’d made too many memories. It was time to go.
She’d say goodbye, though. Quinn had said yesterday that no one sneaked out after a night like they’d had. Well, they’d had another wonderful night, so she’d say goodbye before she left him here, in this well-designed, exclusive living space that fit him to a T.
She was just about to slip out of bed when his phone rang, jarringly. With a grunt, Quinn grabbed his phone from the nightstand and rolled over. She watched him open one eye to look at the screen before answering.
“MacDowell.”
A long pause followed. While he listened, he looked at her, smiled that half smile, then scrubbed his face with one hand. “Right,” he said to the caller, in a clipped tone she hadn’t heard before. “That’s a dihydropyridine available in Europe. It didn’t cause the bradycardia.”
Ah, doctor-ly stuff. She slipped out of bed quietly and put his bathrobe on as quickly as she could. He made a grab for the edge of the robe while giving medical orders to the caller in a confident, almost cocky, tone. It was sexy in a man-in-charge way, she had to admit, but she dodged his hand and headed for the bathroom in the hall, where she wouldn’t disturb his call.
She scooped up her clothes from the day before, wrinkling her nose at their wrinkled state. She’d have to leave the building in the same outfit she’d been wearing the day before. Quinn had a high-tech washer and dryer in an alcove in the hallway that could probably accomplish the same task as the local Laundromat in half the time. Her red denim shorts would have to be worn as they were, but she could wash her underwear, bra and white shirt together. Diana started the two-minute quick wash setting before bringing her purse into the bathroom.
She had her normal-sized purse with her, which meant she had a hairbrush and the disposable finger-tip toothbrushes she used at work when lunch had been too much of an Austin fiesta. She decided to use the cosmetics in her purse, too. She wanted her last impression to be as good as possible. She wanted Quinn to remember her at her best, as selfish as that was.
Sunday had come so soon.
She heard water running in the master suite. His cell phone rang again, and the indistinct rumble of his voice once more had the distinct edge of a doctor to it.
She dug her own cell phone out of her purse. Maybe her friends had missed her this weekend. Maybe she had a couple of text messages to return, an invite to a Sunday afternoon get-together that would ease her back to her regular life.
Her phone battery had died.
Look at the bright side. When you charge it, you might find a half-dozen invites.
She hoped so. She was going to need something to do this afternoon, something to distract her. There was always the animal shelter. She could make other people happy there.
She left the bathroom, transferred her clothes to the dryer and headed for the kitchen. Quinn was at the stove, stopping her heart in blue jeans and bare feet, wearing a navy blue T-shirt that hugged his chest the way she wanted to. He was cooking eggs with his cell phone wedged between his ear and shoulder, but he put the spatula down to scribble something on a notepad.
Resigned, Diana took a seat at one of his bar stools. It looked like she was going to make one more memory: a handsome man cooking breakfast for her. That was another first. Darn it.
This farewell was going to suck.
Quinn hung up his call and had placed another, dialing the numbers he’d written on the notepad, when he noticed her sitting there. He did a double take, and raised an eyebrow as he checked her out with the phone held up to his ear.
“You’re all cleaned up. Did you want to go out for breakfast?”
“No, thanks. Looks
like you’ve got it under—”
He held up his finger in the standard “one minute” gesture as whomever he’d called apparently picked up. He started rattling off information that was obviously routine for him. “MacDowell, Quinn, license M nineteen eighty-nine, patient Norma Gildart, date of birth—” He paused to read the date off his notepad. “Amlodipine ten milligrams QD number seven. No refills. Instruct patient to follow up ASAP.” He disconnected his call with one hand and lifted the skillet off the burner with the other.
“Sorry,” he said. “Brian had asked if he could transfer the answering service over to me this morning. I said yes before I knew you. He’ll pick it back up around seven.”
“Oh. Well, I was saying that it’s very nice of you to cook eggs for me.” But Quinn’s phone had started to ring when she’d started her sentence, and he gave her an apologetic smile as he took the call.
He tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder again as he opened a cabinet and took out a dinner plate, then another, then shook the eggs onto them. Diana silently got off her bar stool and found forks in the third drawer she tried. She got another apologetic smile for her effort.
She was done eating, and she was certain his eggs were cold, by the time he hung up. The lack of intimacy was welcome, in its way, considering she’d be leaving once her clothes were dry.
“What would you like to do today?” Quinn asked. “I have to be attached to this phone, but we could still go somewhere like a park, somewhere I can answer when it rings.”
It was going to be up to her, then, to declare the weekend officially over. She sighed, and doodled on her plate with her fork, and tried not to get sentimental over the kindness of being served scrambled eggs.
And then Quinn stood over her where she perched, and he kissed her, his lips warm and soft, with one hand cradling the back of her head.
She placed her palm on the soft navy cotton of his T-shirt. On his chest muscle. On his heart.
Don’t forget me.
“I have to be going,” she said. “It’s been a great weekend, but I have to be going.”
“Don’t go. The phone won’t ring this often all day. It comes in clusters.”
Diana wondered if Quinn really thought she was leaving because of a few phone calls. She slid off the bar stool, but he didn’t let go of her.
“Unless it’s the answering service, I have to answer. I can let the answering service go to voice mail, as long as I call them back within ten minutes.” He moved his hand from the back of her head slowly down, down to her lower back, where he pulled her close to him, body to body, bathrobe to jeans. Her bare toes brushed the inside arch of his foot. “It won’t be the Sunday I’d had in mind. A badly timed call can make something turn into a ten-minute quickie when I’d rather spend an hour.”
She turned her face away. He did expect her to stay for the rest of Sunday, to make love, fast or slow. She could not. Her emotions were all caught up in the sex. They had been from the first. When he whispered to her how beautiful she was, how perfect, how right, her heart kept thinking he meant her. All of her, not just her body.
“But we can make the best of it. Diana? Look at me.”
She smiled first, then turned back to him with the proper expression on her face. Friendly. No regrets. “I really have to be going. It’s Sunday, and we said we’d stay together until Sunday.”
He did not move a muscle. Not an inch. Not for an eternity.
His phone rang. He glared at it, but he answered it, and as she backed up, he glared at her, too, and caught her with a hand at her waist. The moment he hung up, he tossed the phone on the counter and put his other hand on her waist. “I hope you’re not going to hold me to that agreement. I want to see you again.”
“You do?” She tried to be cautious, but she could feel the hope expanding in her chest almost painfully.
“Yes. Without a doubt.”
She had doubts. They didn’t move in the same circles. They had no friends in common. Their incomes were hugely unequal, their level of education, as well. They hadn’t discussed their lives, where they saw themselves five years from now. Ten.
Quinn kissed her, softly at first, then with increasing intimacy, a slide of tongues that began as a slow exploration of texture, but quickly turned harder, more demanding. Her tongue answered, her body answered, and his hands gripped her waist more tightly. He lifted her onto the bar stool. Her robe fell open over her lap as his warm hand pressed her knee outward, and she felt the roughness of denim on her inner thighs as Quinn closed the space between their bodies.
“Diana, beautiful Diana, how could you doubt that I’d want to see you again? I need more of you, more of this.”
This. This, that was coming to mean so much. This, that meant more every time.
“You and me, together,” he said, raining hard, quick kisses across her cheeks, her nose. “I want to know you better, to be with you, to be a couple.”
She brought her arms over his shoulders and buried both hands in his hair, tugging his head to angle him for a deeper kiss.
The phone rang. Quinn made a sound of frustration against her mouth, then turned his head to answer while keeping her entire body pressed against his. She rained soft kisses on his throat while he barked “MacDowell” into the phone and started listening. This close, Diana could hear the caller, as well. A man’s voice, speaking in medical terms, sounded very young as he tripped over his words.
“Slow down,” Quinn ordered. He listened a few more moments. “For God’s sake, if she’s coding, then hang the hell up. If she’s not, then report this right. Give me the presenting symptoms.”
Diana eased away from Quinn, leaning back in the bar stool. Quinn turned toward the high countertop and leaned one arm on it, dropping his head and listening intently. He started outlining steps for the caller to take, Diana could tell that much, although he might as well have been speaking a foreign language. It was all Greek to her. Or Latin. Didn’t doctors speak in Latin terms?
She tried to make herself laugh, but the truth was, this was horrifying. Somewhere, a woman was in trouble, and Quinn was telling a younger doctor what to do about it. He had the caller repeat back his orders, twice, and then Quinn asked for a Dr. Gregory.
During the pause that followed, a full minute at the least, she studied Quinn. He was motionless, every muscle in his body taut with tension, listening intently. He was dealing with death, she thought, and the nausea was unexpected. She put her fingers to her lips and breathed deeply.
“Gregory. It’s Quinn. You know what I’m going to say. Who the hell is that?” He paused again, then nodded at the answer. “I agree. Get him out of there. He can’t keep a cool head to save his own life, let alone anyone else’s.”
Moments later, he hung up and set his phone down, then scrubbed both hands over his face for a moment, as if he’d rub his razor stubble away. Then he turned to Diana. “Okay. Where were we?”
She swallowed, more unsure than ever that she was the right match for this man. Would she be able to soothe that kind of tension away for him, day after day, when it affected her worse than it did him? If they were going to be a couple, she had to try.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine. That was just a first-year idiot. When doctors graduate and start working for real, you find out quickly who can hang and who can’t.”
“But...are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He looked at her closely. “I think the question is, are you okay?”
She took a breath, but it wasn’t very deep. Her chest felt tight. “I’m worried about that woman. And that poor doctor—he’s going to get fired, isn’t he? You’re acting like that call was nothing, but you were very intense a minute ago.”
He cocked his head a little, studying her, and then he began to grin. “You are the most tenderhea
rted person I’ve ever known.”
Diana felt a little insulted. A little hot inside, irritated that he’d be amused at her.
He took her hands in his and gave them a shake. “Don’t worry. That woman is going to be fine. Her condition is very treatable, and I was listening to the nurses in the background. They weren’t letting that first-year screw it up. He’s not cut out for the E.R., plain and simple. He may still be a good doctor someday. Maybe he’ll have an eagle eye for pinpoints on film and become a stellar radiologist. You never know. But it’s his job to find where he fits in. It’s my job to make sure he does no harm in the meantime, so he’s out of my hospital.”
He gave her hands a deliberate kind of shake, one that made her arms shake, too, and her shoulder muscles loosen up, all in one expert move. “I’m used to this. I’m trained for it. You’re not, so it may have seemed like a big deal to you. Trust me when I say I’m okay.”
It made sense, when he spelled it out that way. She was glad to hear that the woman would survive—and the young doctor, in a way. “You don’t see this as being a problem for us as a couple? Me being stressed out by your job?”
“No. It may never happen again. I don’t normally try to see anyone on days I have call. Of course, if you go home now, then I won’t get another call for hours. Murphy’s Law. But if you want to leave, we could see each other after seven.”
“You don’t normally see anyone when you have call? You’ve got a system for this when it comes to girlfriends?”
Quinn’s grin faded. “I’ve been a doctor for years, so yes, I’ve had girlfriends in this situation. Trying to be together on call days doesn’t work.”
“It didn’t work with them. What about with me?” Diana thought her heart would pound out of her chest. She didn’t want to know about past women. She was unique. Beautiful, perfect, right—Quinn had said so. How could she only be right for days when he wasn’t on call?
