His smile fell and he took a deep breath, looking away.
“And as much fun as it sounds to be some rich man’s side piece, I think I’ll take a pass. It was one night. It was… wonderful….” Veda breathed deep when his eyes returned to her and grew heated. “But it’s done now. Forever.”
He appeared in the midst of relenting, but instead his shoulders squared. He licked his lips, raising his eyebrows at her.
Veda backed up, tripping over her feet while pushing a runaway strand of hair behind her ear. “Now, I’ve got a patient that….” She motioned behind her and turned away from him without finishing.
She felt his gaze blazing into her back, and even though she knew she was going the wrong way she picked up her pace, choosing the long route, yet again, just to escape it.
—
Gage watched Veda go, his lips growing tight until they’d gone ghost white.
She hurried down the bustling hall with a calm gait at first, but the farther she got away from him, the faster she moved, until she was one stride away from running.
This woman was running away from him.
He frowned after her, amazed that she hadn’t kicked up a small fire on her blazing path, zigzagging through hospital personnel before disappearing around a corner.
“You’ve certainly been spending an awful lot of time in this hospital lately.”
Gage looked to his left, and felt his face collapse.
The head nurse, Latika, smirked at him from behind the welcome desk.
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “We’ve lost our chief of staff. Someone has to stand in until we find a replacement.”
Latika lowered her head, looking at him over the rims of her glasses. “Mmmhmm,” she hummed, lifting an eyebrow of her own.
Gage went to walk away, stopped in mid-retreat, and faced her once more. He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and then turned to leave again. He only made it a few strides before he’d swiveled on his heel and re-approached the welcome desk. “What exactly are you insinuating?”
Latika fought a smile, looked toward the hallway Veda had just disappeared into, and then back to him. “Cupcake, is it supposed to be a secret?”
Gage pushed away from the desk, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Stop. Stop mmmhmm-ing me.”
“Mmmmmmhmmmmmm.”
Gage turned on his heel, muttering under his breath. He walked away for real that time, not even giving Latika the satisfaction of an annoyed glare over his shoulder. Was he really so obvious? Was the fact that he’d been ditched by a woman—in her own apartment—while he stood in her kitchen cooking her breakfast like some simp that obvious? Was it painted all over his face? Could everyone in the hospital see it?
He suddenly felt like they were all staring at him. The nurses, the residents, the surgeons—laughing quietly under their breath at what a fool he’d made of himself.
He’d known it all along. Real connection, real intimacy, real love, trust, devotion couldn’t exist in his world. A part of him wondered if it existed at all.
Regardless, one thing was for certain.
She might’ve fooled him into questioning his life, his parents, and the world he’d always known. She might’ve fooled him into believing, even if only for a fleeting moment, that maybe, just maybe….
He sucked in a breath and forced his mind to stop. To leave that line of thinking behind, right now and forever.
She might’ve fooled him once, but Gage swore to himself, right then and there, that he’d never give Veda Vandyke the chance to do it twice.
—
Veda unlocked the door of her apartment later that evening, so exhausted from a long day’s work that she could’ve easily passed out right there on her welcome mat. Still, as she turned her key in the lock, a shot of adrenaline raced through her, and her fingers began to shake. Even after ditching Gage the day before, he’d still been kind enough to lock the bottom lock on his way out.
Her heart squeezed tight.
She knew before she’d even stepped inside her apartment that it wouldn’t be trashed, even though she wouldn’t put it past some men to retaliate that way. Especially when their ego had been bruised as much as she’d surely bruised Gage’s.
No, her apartment was immaculate. Every pot and pan had been scrubbed and put away. If she weren’t crazy, her counters were actually cleaner now than they had been before he’d come over.
And his scent.
It was still there.
She dropped her bag on the kitchen floor, praying the aroma would eventually dissipate. She pulled off her scrubs as she moved toward her bedroom, dropping them on the floor as she went, popping on lights.
When she made it to her room, in just her bra and panties, she stopped in her tracks.
In the middle of her bed, sheets still rumbled from their fervent activities, sat a breakfast tray. Two glasses of untouched orange juice called out to her from the doorway, and she made her way over on a slow foot, as if the tray were really a ticking time bomb.
When the rest of the tray came into her view, Veda didn’t know why but tears stung her eyes. She clapped a hand over her downturned lips as she gazed at the pancakes he’d arranged to look like a sunrise.
The pancake served as the core of the sun, and thin slices of strawberries surrounded it to make rays. He’d even found her blueberries to make eyes, and her bag of chocolate chips for the smiley face. Strips of bacon served to give the sun a body, complete with arms and legs.
He’d even taken one of the pink flowers she knew grew on the dogwood tree outside and placed one on each plate.
Veda was surprised by the whimper that left her throat, and when she tried to fight it her body only shook with more ferocity, refusing to be ignored.
She slapped the tears off her cheeks and pressed a fist into her lips, shaking her head down at the breakfast tray and speaking into the quiet air of her apartment.
“You’re a real asshole, Veda Vandyke.”
6
“You’re a real asshole, Lincoln Hill.” Vino Maretti pushed his hands on his hips, eyes full of dismay. “This is the third heavy bag you’ve destroyed in under a month.”
A smirk lifted the corner of Linc’s mouth, bare chest heaving and buckets of sweat dripping from his chin, hands still curled into tight fists. Fists that, just a moment earlier, had been annihilating the heavy bag lying at his bare feet on the bright red mat. He shrugged at Vino, owner of the largest gym in Shadow Rock, as dust and debris floated down from the ceiling where the heavy bag had been hanging. “Is it my fault you’re not willing to pay the money to have this thing installed properly?”
“Is it my fault you got suspended?” Vino countered, bending down and attempting to lift the heavy bag from the floor. A blush crept to his cheeks when he was hardly able to move a bag, with his entire body, that Linc had just demolished with two fists alone. “Why must we all suffer because you can’t control your temper?”
Acquiescing, Linc moved Vino aside with the back of his hand, bent down and wrapped the chain of the heavy bag around his hand. He dragged the bag across the floor with ease, leaning it on the wall.
Chest still heaving and gleaming with sweat, he pushed back the wisps of dark brown hair that had escaped his drenched bun.
“I’ll re-install it for you when I have time,” Linc said, unfurling the spandex wraps tied around his hands and wrists.
“How about right now? You’ve got another week before you’re back to work, so what else do you got going on? Not a damn thing, that’s what. Not a damn thing outside of tearing my gym apart.”
Linc brushed past him, his hard green eyes on the glass doors to the boxing room. “Gotta take care of something.”
Vino followed Linc’s angry eyes. When he caught sight of what Linc was looking at, he reached out and claimed the man’s arm, which was twice the size of his, stopping him.
Linc looked down at his arm, then over his shoulder at Vino.
“If you really want to find her…” The owner looked back out of the glass where Gage Blackwater and Todd Lockwood were marking each other on the weight bench. “You’ve gotta get your mind right. Don’t let the anger steal your focus.”
Linc searched his eyes, then snatched his arm away.
“Linc,” Vino begged, his shoulders collapsing in defeat when Lincoln yanked open the door and left the room without another word.
—
Veda had abandoned the Clinical Anesthesia book she’d had open on her elliptical machine ages ago, too taken by the various events unfolding before her. Across the gym, behind the glass walls of the boxing room, she’d found herself entranced by Detective Lincoln Hill, pouring sweat and looking on the verge of collapse as he demolished a punching bag. Even when he began to tremble wildly from exertion, sweat dripping from his taut body like a waterfall, he didn’t relent. He actually picked up the speed of his pummels, giving it so much heart that the heavy bag eventually came unhinged from the ceiling and crashed to the ground.
The panting and grunting from her fellow gym-goers pulled her out of her stupor, and Veda blinked back to reality.
Her gaze went to Todd, the reason she was in that gym in the first place, spotting Gage on the weight bench across the room. In the week Veda had been trailing Todd, she’d learned he came to this gym every weekend at ten on the dot, but this was the first time anyone had accompanied him. When she’d seen Gage walk in alongside Todd, and they’d locked eyes across the room, it had taken her breath away. He’d broken their gaze immediately and hadn’t looked back. Not once.
One week.
One week since they’d slept together. One week they’d been forced to endure one another at work while struggling to maintain professionalism. One week he’d been pretending she no longer existed to him. One week, and her body still responded to his scent when he’d breezed past her elliptical machine on the way in.
Veda was yanked back to the present once more when Lincoln pulled open the glass door of the boxing room. His eyes went straight to Todd as he took long strides across the room.
Todd straightened, smiled at Linc, and waved. In the weeks she’d been trailing him, Veda had come to know Todd well—his schedule, his habits, and his every tiny mannerism. She knew he would never bestow such a pleasantry as smiling and waving. Not with good-natured intention anyway.
No.
He was taunting Linc.
But why?
Veda’s eyes flew back to Linc just in time to see him curl his lip at Todd. He tightened his fists, making his biceps explode to twice their size. His ardent stride skipped a beat, and then he stopped walking completely.
For a moment, Veda was sure Linc was about to fly across the room and take Todd around the neck. His eyes said he would—they said it was seconds away—but a small Italian man appeared and took Linc’s constricted arms in a death grip, shaking him. It took a few seconds for the detective to break his disgusted gaze from Todd and look down at the man, but once he did, he allowed himself to be pulled away.
Veda watched them go, her eyes wide. A part of her throbbed to stop that elliptical and follow Linc. The fact that he clearly despised Todd, maybe even more than she did, aggravated that need to an almost unbearable level. She ached to help him. Save him, the same way he’d saved her all those years ago. But how? What would she do? What would she say?
“Hey, I’m the girl you gave mouth-to-mouth to on the beach ten years ago, remember? I was wearing a white dress that barely covered my underage, too-grown-for-her-own-good ass? Doesn’t ring a bell? C’mon, you must remember. You gave me your mother’s sober chip to help calm me down? I still have it, by the way.”
Veda poked her lips out. It didn’t sound half bad. Her finger lingered over the Stop button on the machine, but the more logical part of her brain kept her from pushing it.
If she was really going to finish what she’d come there to do, it would be foolish to befriend Linc. Even if he had saved her life, he was still a detective. If she told him who she was right before the dead bodies of all her rapists began popping up like penny candy, he would put the pieces together in seconds. Then she’d be put under arrest and thrown in prison—and she’d already decided that she would die before she went to prison.
She would, literally, have to die.
So no, Lincoln Hill could never learn who she truly was. She could never return that bronze chip the way she’d always planned. It had helped her so much over the years, and from the scene she’d just witnessed, she knew he needed it now more than she did.
She poked her lips out, wondering if she could find out where he lived and slip it in his mailbox. But no, that was out of the question too. She couldn’t alert him to her presence in any way.
“Checking out your next victim?”
Veda’s eyes shot forward, a stunned gasp coming from deep in her throat at the sound of Gage’s voice. She met his hard brown eyes, less than a foot away from her machine as he walked past, slinging his gym towel over his broad shoulder.
“He hasn’t been with a woman since his wife disappeared,” Gage said, nodding toward the path Linc had just made, where Veda had been staring. “I doubt he could handle you.”
“It’s a good thing he’s not my next victim, then.” Veda tightened her grip on the elliptical handles, still slippery from her sweaty palms. “I’m still having too much fun with the first one.”
His mouth fell open. Clearly he assumed she was speaking about him, and not the ape racing up to him from behind.
“Why are you always talking to that crazy woman?” Todd took Gage in a chokehold, whispering in his ear without whispering at all. “She’s crazy, bro. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
Gage craned his neck as Todd pulled him away, never breaking his gaze from Veda’s, his eyes filled with an emotion, a depth, that made her hold on until he and Todd disappeared around the corner.
She stopped her machine once they were gone, snatching up her water bottle, wet with icy condensation. She emptied it with a few heavy chugs.
Even as the ice water cooled her throat, it still felt dry. Her heart pounded for more of something she didn’t have to give.
How was it possible that a man who could be friends with Todd Lockwood had that kind of hold on her body?
What the hell was wrong with her?
—
“Latika, do you ever do any work in this hospital? Or am I paying you to sit on your ass all day long?” Gage smiled when a pen came flying at his head from behind the hospital welcome desk. “When’s the last time you touched a patient? How is it possible all this paperwork hasn’t been filled out when you’ve been lounging behind this desk since 5 a.m.? What the hell do you do? Honestly?”
“Boy, if you don’t get the hell out of my face—” Latika caught herself in mid-rant, motioning to him with her pointer finger. “You know what? I am not losing my job over you today. Not today, Satan.” She pretended to be focused on her computer, fighting a smile when Gage burst into quiet laughter, leaning one arm on the welcome desk while his eyes searched the lobby.
“Quiet tonight,” he said.
“Always is on holiday weekends. You might know that if you were ever here.” Latika leaned forward, cradling her chin on the back of her hand. “But since you’re here all the time now, I suppose you’re going to start learning all the little secrets that keep this place ticking. You know, since you’re here… all the time now.”
Gage tightened his lips. “The search for a new chief is taking much longer than expected—”
“Mmmhmm.”
“No matter what General Hospital scenarios you’ve dreamed up in that head of yours, I am only here to make sure my hospital runs smoothly until a new chief is hired.”
Latika looked up at him from over the rims of her glasses.
Gage looked away from her with a roll of his eyes. “You got any big
plans tonight?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Oh yeah?” He leaned on the desk with both arms, waggling his eyebrows. “Hot date? Who’s the lucky guy?”
“Denzel,” Latika answered. “Followed by a tall drink of water I like to call Jack Daniel’s.”
Gage chortled and went to respond, but when someone came up next to him at the desk, he shot them a look and the words got trapped in his throat.
Veda Vandyke came to a panting stop next to him, slamming her hands on the welcome desk. When she turned her head and caught sight of him as well, Gage held his breath, standing tall and straightening his tie. His eyes fell to the American flag designs on her nails just as he turned his head away from her, and her soft voice wafted through the air.
“Hey, Latika,” Veda breathed. “You paged me?”
Gage shot Latika a heated look, and she did a phenomenal job pretending not to see it.
Latika’s voice grew sweet and warm like peach cobbler. “Yes, sweetness. You forgot to sign off on the paperwork clearing Mr. Harrison for his endoscopy tomorrow morning.”
Gage cut a look at Latika, wondering why she never used that pleasant tone with him. He drew in a breath when Veda’s voice rang out.
“God, I’m such a mess today. A few people take off for the holiday and I guess I completely fall apart.”
“That’s okay, sweetness,” Latika said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Thanks for having my back.”
The scribble of pen on paper rang into the quiet air. From the corner of his eye, Gage saw Latika watching him. Knowing what she was looking for, he made sure to keep his gaze, and his body, turned completely away from Veda. He tried to focus on the minuscule amount of patients sitting in the waiting room, loosening his tie when it began to feel like it was choking him.
Veda still wore the same shampoo, and every time he took a deep breath the aroma sent a different memory from the night they’d spent together blasting back into his psyche. With every whiff, his breathing came shorter and his fingers trembled harder. He pictured her full lips, parted in ecstasy. The lips she’d refused to let him kiss, not even once. The supple give of her curves under his greedy fingers, curves she hadn’t allowed him to see, refusing to remove her dress. The slick warmth of her pussy hugging his dick, which had grown as stiff in that moment as it had been that night. He could still feel her velvet walls tugging him, even then.
Quiver (Revenge Book 1) Page 9
