“Did you call me a victim when you talked to him?”
Parker made a face. “Now would I do a thing like that?”
“I’m not sure. You might.”
“Is this that ‘pity party’ thing again? Because if it is, I’m not buying into it.” Parker took an exaggerated look at his watch. “And if you are, then you’ve got about five minutes to get over it. You have a two o’clock appointment with Mr. Yarborough.”
“Two o’clock? You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m very serious. Two o’clock.”
“Men! You’ve been here examining me for almost twenty minutes, and this is the first you’ve said about this person coming to see me. What the heck were you thinking?” Marlea gripped the walker at her bedside and slid one foot to the floor. A sloppy hop-shuffle brought her to the tiny hospital bathroom. “You made an appointment for me, and I look like this?” She pushed her face close to the narrow mirror above the sink and groaned. Raking numb fingers through her ponytail, she glared past herself to Parker’s reflection. “The first time I meet this amazing therapist, and I look like the loser in an ax fight. I can’t believe you did this!”
Amused, Parker crossed his arms and watched. “Why are you worried? This is a hospital, not a tearoom. He’s here to assess your condition, not take you to the prom.”
“More jokes.” Marlea rubbed at her eyes. “Last thing I need.”
“Can we get you back over here?” Parker swept an arm toward the bed.
“Why not? There’s not a whole lot more I can do in here.” She wiped her hands on a small towel and tossed it aside. “So what other surprises do I have to look forward to this afternoon?”
“If you’re going to be surly about it…” And she was, he could already see it. “I don’t think I’ll tell you, though I believe knowing might help you to better appreciate this particular therapist.”
“Why? What makes this one so special? Has he got a magic wand or something?” Marlea managed her hop-shuffle back to her bed and sat. She folded her hands in her lap and made her face attentive. “I’m all ears. You can tell me now.”
“I don’t know,” Parker began. “Perhaps it would be better if…” A light tap on the door interrupted him. The door moved slowly inward. “Oh,” he began, realizing that he was about to introduce his perfect solution. “Come in! We’ve been waiting for you.”
AJ pushed the door wider and stepped into the room.
“Marlea Kellogg, I would like to introduce you to…”
Marlea’s mouth dropped open.
“You!” she finally managed, gaping at AJ Yarborough.
Chapter 10
“You two already know each other?” Parker Reynolds reached for the foot of Marlea’s bed when he felt the earth move under his feet. His whole world shifted, and he didn’t feel very well.
“Oh, yeah.” Marlea elbowed herself higher in her bed. “Yeah, I know him. He’s the man who tripped me, the SOB who cost me everything!”
“Whoa! Lady, I just walked into the room.” AJ raised a hand and looked closely at the woman in the bed. “You don’t know anything about my parentage, and frankly, my mother would take extreme exception to your characterization of her as a…”
“You know him?” From where? Parker wondered, premonition giving him an instant headache. How could she have pulled his face out of her Swiss-cheesed memory?
“I don’t know him, but I remember him.”
“You remember him?” Parker forced himself to release his grip on the bed’s footboard.
“You remember me?” Hand still on the door, AJ was too curious to leave but unsure whether he should stay. “Where do you think you remember me from?”
“From before.” Marlea’s chest heaved with effort.
“From before what?” The doctor’s head jerked toward Marlea. “You remember him from before what?”
“Remember what?” AJ released the door.
“The park and the race! You, I’m going to remember for the rest of my natural life!”
“What race?”
“You remember being in the park, and you remember the race?” The doctor’s face froze. “And after the race?”
“Some of it, just the parts I told you about. Nothing else, until I woke up in this bed missing half my foot. But I remember him.” Marlea glared at the therapist.
“Nothing?”
“I keep telling you…” She slapped at the bed. “No, I don’t remember anything I haven’t already told you about, nothing at all.”
”Hey!” AJ’s shout got Marlea’s attention and her eyes raked his strong form. Her expression left AJ with no doubt that, given half the chance, she would gladly use her good foot on him. “What race are you two so worked up about?”
Marlea’s lips curled. “Like you don’t know!”
“I don’t know.” AJ felt compelled to defend himself, since nobody else in the room was bothering to do so.
“The Peachtree.”
“Road race?”
“Yes, you tripped me!”
“That was you?” And suddenly, the world—and her fury—made sense. AJ remembered the pretty woman with the ponytail and the endless legs. Getting tangled up with her hadn’t exactly been the high point of his day, but when he looked closely at the angry woman glaring across the room…yep, that was her. “Small world. So how are you?”
“Aside from sitting up in this hospital, I’m just fine. Thanks for asking.” Marlea couldn’t believe the question. “Seriously, how do you think I’m doing?”
AJ came closer and grinned. “You sound a little angry, to tell the truth. But since we didn’t get to exchange names earlier, I’m AJ Yarborough.” He stuck out his hand; she ignored it.
“So you’re gonna leave a brother hangin’, huh?” He dropped his hand but held his knowing grin.
“A brother ought to go someplace he’s wanted.” Marlea’s eyes hurled daggers at him.
“As you can see, our Ms. Kellogg is in rare form today,” Parker offered from the sideline. “Since you already know each other, I’m going to leave you to work out the therapy details.” He gave Marlea’s knee a pat and quickly left the room.
AJ took the doctor’s place at the foot of the bed. “I still don’t know why you’re so mad at me. You got your shirt, right?”
For only the second time since he had entered the room, she looked at him, really looked at him. “Shirt? You think that’s what this is about? A shirt?” Eyes blazing, Marlea looked ready to fly from the bed on willpower alone. “No, brother, this is about far more than a shirt. I’ve dreamed of the Olympics all my life. I can’t even tell you how much I wanted it, how hard I worked, and I was two points away from a dream, then along you came. You big-eared, big-headed, big-footed…big…big…lummox!”
“Lummox, huh? Never been called that before.”
“Whatever.” Her ponytail bobbing, she reached for a narrow book, pulled it into her lap, and studied its creamy pages. AJ cleared his throat, and she turned another page. Determined, she kept her head low, but her eyes followed him when he pulled a chair close to the bedside and sat.
Tipping his head, he managed to catch her eyes; for a long moment, they sat in uneasy silence.
“I’m not going to do this,” Marlea finally said.
“Your choice. But it would be your loss.”
Marlea closed the book. “No great loss. I’ll just do the practical thing; get myself an electric wheelchair and roll around for the rest of my life.”
AJ pulled one leg across the other and waited. She seemed determined to wait him out. “Heard you once had goals, Olympic aspirations.”
“I reevaluated.”
“Did you reevaluate your thoughts about the children who depend on you, too? I hear you’re a teacher—and damned good at it.”
“You listen to everything you hear? What’s it to you?”
“The real question is, what’s it worth to you? Even if you’re prepared to give up running, are you willing t
o give up on the good you can do, have already done, for kids who love you?”
She hesitated. “And you think you can do something about that?”
“Yeah, I do.” Her face dared him, and AJ refused to back down. “You and I have more in common than you think we do. We’ll need to talk about it one day.”
His confidence was well-chosen armor, and Marlea was tempted to take a run at it. He saw it in her face, but she didn’t do it. This time she just looked at him.
“Tell you what.” AJ fixed her with an unwavering stare. “I’ve agreed to take your case on. That means that we’re going to be together for a while, and that you and I are going to have to find a way to get you rehabilitated, so I’m going to make you a promise.”
“Oh, goody. More promises.”
AJ shook his head. “I promise that you will work with me and learn to like it. You’ve talked about a dream, a dream I cost you? Well, now you’re going to help me give that dream back to you. Before I’m through with you, Miss Lady, you will not only walk for me, but you are going to dance with me.”
“In your dreams.”
* * *
This can’t be happening.
Slipping from Marlea’s room, Parker fled, rushing down the hall as though he was being chased. Gnawing at his thumbnail, he pushed through a chattering cluster of interns. He ignored their curious glances and hurried on to his office.
Once inside, he pressed his back to the door and his teeth worked around to the cuticle of his thumb. She’s starting to remember. How long will it take before she remembers the accident? Parker passed a hand over his head and tried to calm himself. I wonder if she got a good look when…He thought about the odd little scratch Steven found when he took the car in for detailing. As a houseman, he’s always been discreet. He’ll never say anything about the damage. I pay him too well. And to keep the secret, Parker was willing to keep doing it.
But if the police ever get around to suspecting me, there can be no damage. It has to disappear…His stomach rolled and he nearly gagged. I was safe enough when Marlea awakened and remembered nothing about the accident, but then the police came along with their infernal prying and prodding. They will be back, and like water against stone, they will chip away at her mental block. They’re going to quiz and question her until they break through or crawl over the mountain that obscures her memory. That would take time, or at least I thought it would. Then AJ Yarborough walked in and jogged her memory.
Me and my bright ideas! I should have just left well enough alone. Stinging pain made Parker pull his thumb from his mouth, jarring him away from the door. Pacing, trying to breathe normally, he squeezed his thumb and watched the welling blood.
Damn! Desireé. How did I forget? She’ll know what to do, who to contact. She always knows the slick way around things. Pulling his cellphone from his pocket, he punched in her number as he walked.
She answered on the third ring, and Parker wondered if she had checked her caller ID before picking up the phone. Trying to pay me back for all the times I did it to her, he thought. It would be just like her.
Might as well get this over with. “Hello, Desireé,” he said before she could get a word out. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“I thought you might once I got your attention. Don’t think that just ’cause I wasn’t born in Buckhead and educated in private schools that you can talk your way around me.”
“That was never my intention.” What the hell was I thinking when I got involved with her? Feeling his stomach curdle, Parker made the obligatory apologies and tried not to say anything she could hold against him later. He managed, just barely, to talk his way around her palimony demands by offering a preemptive settlement. “A few thousand dollars to tide you over—just until we can sit down like civil people and come to a resolution.”
He listened to her puff and breathe while he summoned nerve. It was more than a little disconcerting to hear nothing but irate breathing over the phone. “Desireé, I called because I wanted to ask you about something else.”
“Really? Well, Parker Aaron Reynolds the Third, let me give you an answer,” she snapped. “I am not about to do no booty call with a man who thinks he can throw money at me to tide me over. You want something from me, then you can start by apologizing for tryin’ to treat me like your whore. I don’t do on-call ass for nobody!”
“Oh, Desireé, I…that was never my intention, and again, I apologize if I gave you that impression.”
“Smug as always, but I accept your apology.”
Feeling like two cents waiting for change, Parker swallowed his pride. It was a cold, hard lump. “Desireé, I have a problem that only you can help me with.”
“How can I help you, Parker?”
“Could you…would you meet me to discuss it?”
“I’m getting my nails done, but I can meet you if you want me to. Where?”
Okay, the hard part is done. Relief flushed tension from his body, and Parker realized he had been holding the phone in a vise-like grip. He loosened his fingers and smiled. “I’ll be happy to pick you up.”
Twenty minutes later, Desireé skipped down the sidewalk toward Parker’s Corniche. Without waiting for an invitation or his assistance, she flashed her crimson nails, grabbed the door, and dropped into the leather passenger’s seat.
If chivalry is dead, then Desireé killed it, Parker thought. On another day, under other circumstances, Desireé’s short, white strapless dress and red ankle-wrapped sandals might have been quite fetching. But today, she looked like one of those girls Rick James used to sing about…the kind you don’t take home to mother.
“Okay, tell me now.” She tugged at the seatbelt, made herself comfortable, then turned heavily made-up eyes on Parker. “What happened?”
Pulling into traffic, eyes straight ahead, Parker experienced a moment of something he didn’t want to call fear. If I just say it the way I rehearsed it, I’ll get through this, he promised himself. “I had a little fender-bender, and I don’t want to report it to my insurance company.”
Her eyes leaked avarice, and Parker could feel her measuring him for a payoff. “Oh, now you need me?” she grinned knowingly. “What’s in it for me?”
“Desireé, I just know that you know people, talented people. I just thought that you might know a mechanic who would like to pick up a few dollars. That’s all.”
“Don’t go getting all huffy with me,” she warned, pushing her tongue into her cheek. “Which car?”
“The Rolls.”
She hissed laughter between her teeth and scooted around in her seat until she could look into Parker’s face. “You talk like you think I’m a fool, Parker. It’s bad enough that you think I’m a whore, but I ain’t stupid. You want work done on your Rolls, you take it to a specialist. It’s more to it than you’re telling.”
“Desireé…”
“That’s okay, I don’t have to know everything.” Pushing her lips together, appraising him, she came to a decision. She pulled a small phone from her bright purse. Opening it, she kept her eyes on Parker. “I’m going to make this call for you, but just know that I will never do any jail time for you, so whatever this is, don’t ask me for anything more.”
Parker’s eyes went from traffic to Desireé and back. “I would never…”
“No, baby, and you never will.”
“Desireé, I wouldn’t have come to you if I hadn’t known that you were a woman I could trust. I came to you because…”
Holding the phone to her ear, listening, she straightened in her seat. “You came to me because you didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
He would have answered, but she raised a hand and held a low-voiced conversation he couldn’t hear. Off the phone, she grinned like the Cheshire cat and began a stream of directions. As he followed her directions through southwest Atlanta, Parker hoped he hadn’t made promises that he might have to keep. They stopped behind a pink Victorian-era house on a tree-lined street near t
he Atlanta University campus. The wizened old man who approached the Corniche looked homeless enough to make Parker cringe.
“What’s his name?”
“You don’t need to worry about that, you won’t be around long enough to be friends with him. All you’ve got to know about him is that the man is a car genius,” Desireé promised. “And you ain’t got to worry about thanking me, baby. This is just one of those little things a woman like me does for her man.”
I’ve just sold my soul to the Devil! The look in her eyes made him itch.
Standing beneath a massive oak tree, Parker watched uneasily as the ‘car genius’ bent low and walked around the car twice, finally pronouncing the custom frame dented and the paint damaged. Well, hell, Parker thought, I know that. It must have shown on his face, because the ‘car genius’ strolled over and squinted up at him.
“Rolls Royce builds a nice piece of machinery, and good thing for you, I can help you out,” the old man said, pulling at his chin. His long brown fingers were deeply embedded with grease and grime. Parker was glad he didn’t offer to shake hands.
The mechanic walked back to the Corniche and squatted next to the fender. Running an experienced hand over the damage, he paused. “Hand built, custom car like this takes a lot of special work, and that makes things tricky. You’ve got this special paint job, looks like Rolls Royce Tan—got to order that special.” Turning back to Parker, he took a moment to spit on the ground in front of him. “Give me a couple of days; I can make it look good enough to report the car stolen.”
“Stolen? Why?”
“You want it in your possession when they match it up to that girl’s car? It ain’t no great trick these days, you know.”
Parker’s pulse jigged. “What girl?”
The ‘car genius’ sucked his teeth and shook his head. “Mister, might as well tell you now, my momma ain’t raised no fool. Oh, and I got cable. I saw it on the 24-hour local news where that girl got hit back on the Fourth of July. It was a hit and run up on I-75. They say she’s gonna be all right, but the police sure would like to git hold of the one that hit her.”
Dream Runner Page 11
