by Noelle Adams
She was so surprised by the comment that she almost choked on a bite of potato. She knew he was curious about Ned—probably just because he was slightly bored, was used to knowing everything, and didn’t like anything kept from him—but she’d assumed she was the only one inspired by the table setting to think about romantic dates.
“Well?” Eric prompted when she didn’t say anything.
She reached for her glass of red wine and took a slow sip to stall. Then she answered, “He’s never yet complained about his steak.”
“So he is your boyfriend?”
“We’ve gone out some. I wouldn’t say it’s serious.”
His face relaxed slightly. “Really? Why not?”
“It takes a while to know whether you want to be serious with someone, doesn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah.” He gave her a little smile. “So he does take you on romantic dates, then?”
“We go out. He doesn’t spend a fortune on dinner, like this meal must have cost. He doesn’t have that kind of money.” She wasn’t sure why she was defending Ned to Eric. She wasn’t even very excited about Ned. He was just a nice guy who had happened to ask her out.
But it felt like Eric was trying to get the upper hand in some way, and she didn’t want to let him do it.
“What’s your dream date?” he asked, still working on his steak. It must not have been too overdone, since it was quickly disappearing.
“What do you mean?”
“Your dream date,” he repeated.
The first thing that popped into her head was him. Eric. Whether she wanted it to be that way or not, he had somehow become her dream date.
“I mean, what kind of date would make you most excited?”
“You mean a person I’d go out with?”
“No. The date itself. The most romantic date you can think of. What would it look like?”
“That’s a strange question.”
“Is it? I’ve asked a lot of women the same question, and it’s always interesting and informative to hear the answers.”
She let out a little sigh. Nice to know she was just one in a line of a lot of other women. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me.”
She gave him an annoyed look.
“Why won’t you tell me?” he asked, looking amused and interested and infuriatingly adorable. “Is it that embarrassing?”
“No, it’s not embarrassing. It’s not really that unusual, probably.” There was no reason not to tell him the truth, and he would just pester her until he got an answer. “I always used to dream of going on a romantic picnic.”
His eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Not just a regular picnic, though. It would be in the evening, and there would be candles and music and china and crystal champagne glasses. And we’d sit where we overlooked some beautiful vista. I can’t tell you how many times I imagined that date when I was younger.”
“Who were you with, in your fantasies?”
“I never really knew. The guy was always faceless.” She laughed when Eric looked surprised. “Seriously. He was always just some attractive, faceless guy. What I was daydreaming about was the experience itself and how I’d feel.”
She leaned back in her chair, exhaling slowly as the discussion conjured up so many memories. “I’d spend a long time planning out all the details. And it always ended up being very convoluted, because I’m practical like my mother, and I kept thinking of complications. What would we do about the bugs? How would we get all the dishes and glasses there without breaking? What kind of food could we have that wouldn’t end up all over our shirts?” She laughed. “Eventually, I’d get so caught up in the practicalities that the romantic feelings would vanish. I guess that’s the way it happens in real life too.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Don’t tell me you’re a secret romantic.”
“Of course not,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“So what’s your dream date?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t really matter to me, as long as it ends up in the bedroom.”
She gasped indignantly.
“What?” he asked, raising a hand in mock defense. “What did you expect? I’m a guy. You didn’t think I was nurturing daydreams about romantic picnics, did you?”
“No. I didn’t.”
They were silent for a minute. Julie was thinking about what Eric had just told her, and she was also enjoying her food.
Then Eric broke the silence by asking, “So your mom was really practical?”
“Oh, yeah.” Julie smiled, feeling a little bittersweet, thinking about her mother. “She was a mountain girl, Appalachian all the way. Practical, resilient, completely self-sufficient. There were no romantic fantasies in her life—at least, none she’d ever admit to.”
“So you took after your dad more?”
“I don’t know. I think I have some of both of them in me. That’s usually the way it works, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“What about you? Are you more like your mom or your dad?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but she could tell it wasn’t because he didn’t want to. He was really thinking about it, trying to figure out the answer. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “My dad was tough and my mom was sweet, so I guess I’m more like my dad. But I don’t really think of myself as being like my dad. I’m not sure…” His words trailed off, and he stared down at his plate.
She understood him then. At least for the moment. His memories of his father were clouded with an element of pain, and so he didn’t want to be exactly like his father.
Julie conjured up a vision of the hard, cold man Eric had alluded to a few times—one who exerted so much pressure on his boy, one who hadn’t made it clear he really loved his son—and Julie knew immediately that Eric wasn’t only like his father. He must have some of his mother in him too. He was blunt and driven, and he could be rude and unreasonable. But he wasn’t cold.
He was almost never cold.
“What are you thinking?” he demanded, breaking through her reverie.
She shook her head. There was no way in the world she could tell him what she was really thinking. “Is your mom still alive?”
“No. She died a few years after Dad. She just sort of…faded away without him.”
“It’s hard,” she said softly. “When you lose both.”
Eric met her eyes across the table, and she felt like she knew him in the flickering light of the candles. Maybe they weren’t as completely different as she’d always assumed.
—
They finished their meal mostly in silence, both of them lost in their own thoughts.
After dinner, Julie pushed the room service cart out into the hallway and Eric turned on the television in the sitting area, after settling himself on the sofa with his leg propped up on a leather ottoman.
She should probably go to her own room and give each of them their own space, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to leave him.
She sat down next to him on the couch.
He was watching a hockey game. Sports was all he ever seemed to watch. She didn’t care about hockey or any other sport, but she didn’t want to go back to her room.
“You interested in this?” he asked, sounding slightly surprised as he looked over at her.
“I don’t care. It’s as good as anything else.”
Eric shrugged and didn’t ask again.
Julie watched for a few minutes, until the motion on the rink got too confusing and she asked Eric what was happening.
He explained each play as it occurred, until she could follow the game without any trouble.
When the game was over, Eric switched over to the news. Neither one of them seemed inclined to get up or go to bed.
Julie was tired, though. At one point she actually dozed off. Fortunately, she didn’t lean over on top of Eric or anything embarrassing. Her head just lolled back again
st the cushion. She shot her eyes over to him as soon as she woke up, and she saw that he was watching her.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she lied.
He chuckled. “I can see that. Good to know you’re so good at staying awake on the job.”
He was teasing, but his words brought her quickly to her senses.
The job. Her job. She worked for him.
She really needed to remember that.
Chapter 6
Eric and Julie were supposed to leave the hotel at seven thirty the following morning, but at six forty-five Eric hadn’t yet gotten out of bed.
Julie had gotten up early and was already dressed and ready for the day. She kept lurking around Eric’s bedroom door, trying to hear noises from inside that would prove he was waking up, but she didn’t hear anything.
She’d never known him to oversleep before. Pretty soon it would be too late to leave the hotel when they’d planned. It took a long time for him to get ready for the day, since getting washed up and dressed was awkward with his broken leg.
She needed to wake him up. It had sounded like his appointment today was important. He wouldn’t want to be late. It was her job to wake him up.
She really didn’t want to do so. He was likely to be crabbier than normal on awakening, and it felt uncomfortably intimate for her to enter his bedroom while he was sleeping.
But he needed to get up.
She tapped on the door lightly and didn’t hear any response. So she knocked more loudly.
When there was still no response, she opened the door. The bedroom was dark, and she could see the distinct form of Eric’s body in the bed. Taking a deep breath, she walked into the room and went to the windows to pull open the curtains and let the morning sun shine in.
In the light, she could see his body more clearly. He lay on his back with the covers pushed down to his hips. His chest was bare and one of his arms was splayed out across the bed beside him. He was definitely asleep, and he didn’t begin to wake from the light.
On the bedside table she saw a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. Her stomach churned as she realized he must have started drinking last night after she’d gone to bed. She really hoped he hadn’t mixed the alcohol with his pain pills. He’d seemed in a decent mood when she left him at about eleven thirty. She didn’t know what could have happened in the meantime.
She cleared her throat a couple of times, but he still didn’t move. Finally, she stepped over beside the bed and reached out to lightly touch his shoulder.
She tried not to stare at his bare chest, no matter how sexy and masculine it looked. She wasn’t going to leer at his body while he was sound asleep and unaware.
He made a huffing sound and pulled his arm closer to his side, but he didn’t wake up. She took hold of his shoulder and shook it gently. “Eric? Eric, did you need to wake up by now?”
It took a minute of muttering and shifting around, but he finally opened his eyes. He stared up at her, and she saw the recognition enter his expression. “Julie?” His voice was rough and low, like he needed to clear his throat.
“Yeah. Sorry. Isn’t it time for you to wake up?”
Awareness hadn’t quite clicked in all the way, and he just blinked at her. It was such an uncharacteristic look for him—guileless, almost sweet—that she found herself smiling.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“It’s ten minutes to seven,” she said. “We need to leave in forty minutes.”
“Damn.” He pushed himself into a sitting position. Then he groaned and rubbed his head. “Why is it so late?”
“I didn’t know what time you wanted me to wake you up. Maybe I should have done it earlier.”
“No. It’s fine.” He rubbed his face with both his hands, clearly trying to wake himself up. “Fuck, I feel like shit.”
That was obviously from the half-drunk bottle of whiskey, but she didn’t mention that fact.
“I can bring you some coffee,” she suggested. “Or maybe some water.”
“Both. Thanks.”
Relieved that she’d managed this task without any difficulties—and without him yelling at her—she left the room to pour him a cup of coffee and grab a bottle of water. When she returned, he’d managed to drop his good leg over the side of the bed.
He wore only a pair of boxer briefs, and the waistband had slid very low. She saw the lean line of his waist, the tight curve of the top of his ass, a line of dark hair leading down to his groin.
She really didn’t need to see that, not when he was acting so human and unobnoxious.
He downed the cup of coffee quickly and then chugged half the water. “Okay,” he said at last. “Get the chair so I can get to the bathroom.”
She helped him into the wheelchair, which he used to cover the short distance to the bathroom. There she helped him with the crutches so he could limp into the bathroom—where, thankfully, he was capable of going to the bathroom and doing a minimal washup on his own.
“Get me something to wear, will you?” he called through the door after a couple of minutes.
“Is it business?” She still didn’t know what his meeting this morning was about, so she didn’t know what kind of clothes he would need to wear.
“No. Just grab something that’s there.”
She went over to his suitcase, which he’d set up on a luggage holder. They were only staying two days, so he hadn’t bothered to unpack.
There was only one pair of pants packed, so she grabbed the tan trousers. They were the kind that had the legs connected by zippers so they could be converted to shorts. That was very convenient to fit on over his cast, and she assumed he’d brought them on purpose because of that. She found a blue crew-neck shirt to go with them and also a pair of clean boxer briefs.
She picked them up, feeling very uncomfortable. She had no idea what she was doing here, holding Eric Vincent’s underwear.
Pushing through the feeling, she went back to the door, just in time to hear a clatter from inside the bathroom. “Damn it!”
She opened the door a crack. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. You got my clothes?”
She opened the door all the way and was treated to the sight of Eric’s bare butt. He’d obviously been trying to get his underwear off and had dropped one of the crutches in the process.
After a quick, unavoidable look at the firm muscles of his ass and his strong thighs, she dropped her eyes and leaned over to pick up the crutch, which was hard for him to manage, because he couldn’t bend his leg in the long cast.
He turned slightly away from her, so she couldn’t see the front of him—something that she greatly appreciated, since her eyes weren’t behaving very well. She gave him the crutch and set the clothes on the marble vanity.
Then, without comment, she left him alone in the bathroom again.
Thank God she didn’t have to do this for him every morning. She was definitely not cut out to be a nurse. She couldn’t seem to look at him objectively, impersonally. Whenever she saw his body, she wanted to touch it.
It was several minutes before Eric called out, “Okay.”
He looked hot and winded and pained as she helped him back into the wheelchair.
He dropped a crutch onto the floor with a scowl. “I hate those things.”
“It’s probably because you hardly ever use them. You should practice with them more, so they’re not so awkward for you.”
“No, thank you.” He ran a hand through his brown hair, like he was already exhausted from the day. “At least with this chair I can move around pretty well. With those things, I’m a helpless idiot.”
She was about to reply but thought better of it. In another week, after the first month was over, he’d be allowed to use crutches all the time, which would help him start moving around better. But this wasn’t the time to encourage him to give them more of a chance. It was almost seven thirty, and they were running late.
“I ordered room service,” she sa
id, picking up the crutches and leaning them next to the bathroom door. “Do you want something?”
“Nah.”
“You should eat something. You need to take your medication. Maybe just some toast.”
He let out a long breath—obviously frustrated—but he didn’t argue, so she went to bring him some toast and a bottle of water. He ate it in silence, his mood changing gradually from the gruff frustration of before to something deeper, darker.
Whatever this meeting was that he had this morning, he was incredibly worried about it.
She was worried for him. She’d never seen him like this before, and she was sure whatever had prompted his mood was serious.
“Is there anything else you need?” she asked softly when he’d finished eating and taken his pills.
He shook his head, running a hand over his jaw. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and it made a scratchy sound. “Nah. Let’s get going.”
She called to make sure a car was waiting for them downstairs, and then she stayed beside him as they left the suite and descended in the elevator.
He was staring at a blank spot on the wall, clearly lost in his own thoughts. So much so that she had to prompt him to start moving when the elevator reached the ground floor.
“Is everything all right?” she asked. She’d tried to keep her voice light, so she was surprised when it sounded rather hoarse.
He didn’t even look at her. “Yeah.”
“Where are we going?” She was so worried about him that she took the risk of asking the question.
He just shook his head as he wheeled through the lobby.
Julie tried not to be disappointed. They weren’t friends, after all. He had absolutely no reason to confide in her, no matter how much she wanted him to do so.
—
Julie didn’t know her way around Baltimore, so she had no idea where they were going.
She sat next to Eric in the backseat of a large, fancy, chauffeured car, one with enough room for him to fully extend his leg. Tim drove them around when they were in Charlotte, but this car and driver were hired, so the car wasn’t the one she was used to.
Eric wasn’t talking at all, which was so unlike him she got more and more nervous. Finally, they drove into the huge medical complex for Johns Hopkins, and she suddenly realized his appointment must be with a doctor. That was what he was so anxious about.
