by Penny Wylder
Even just thinking about saying it out loud, even to my best friend in the world, makes my face turn bright red, in a way that Becca of course immediately notices and comments on. “Auntie Naomi, is it really hot in here? Did you drink wine before this?”
“What? No I didn’t drink wine, I’m driving,” I complain.
She just giggles. “Well. The only time your face turns that color is when you drink wine or when it’s hot and you’re outside in the sun,” she says.
Trust kids to call you out every damn time, I guess.
I roll my eyes as I turn up the main road away from school. There’s a shortcut up ahead, one that’ll bypass the huge intersection further up the main drag, where everyone and their toddler is already waiting in the post-school traffic to make the same hard left turn I’ll need to make to get to the flower shop. So before I get stuck in that same traffic jam, I turn left sooner, down a little one lane, one-way alley. It’s the same one I take every Tuesday and Thursday, my secret passage. It spits me out on the other end, right out in the back of the flower shop, where I can park without dealing with meters on the main road, and wait until Monica finishes closing up so we can all head home for the day.
Maybe we’ll even stop and get some ice cream. That’s what I’m thinking, that’s the dumb inanity that’s on my mind, as I make the left turn up the one-way street, when from the backseat, I hear Becca let out a startled yelp.
My eyes flash ahead, and widen as I realize what I’m seeing, too slow, too late.
This street is one way in the direction I’m currently driving. So there shouldn’t be anyone coming the other way up it. But there it is, a bright yellow SUV speeding toward me up the tiny little cobbled lane, way faster than anyone ought to be driving in this tiny little municipal town so close to a school district, anyway.
Time seems to slow. In one blink, I register the person behind the wheel: a woman, I can tell that much. Dark, dyed red hair, and tortoiseshell glasses. Unless I’m much mistaken, I recognize her, although I can’t place from where. I could have sworn I’d seen her around Becca’s school before… But was she a parent? A teacher? An aide of some sort?
Below her face I see headlights, a blinding white glare.
That’s what part of my brain is processing.
The rest is panicking, searching for a turnoff somewhere. My reflexes take over and I grab the wheel and yank it hard to the left, at the same time jamming on the brake with every ounce of strength I possess. My car skids up onto two wheels, banking so hard I nearly leave the pavement. There’s grass on the side of the alley, at least. But too late, I realize there’s something else, too.
A metal utility pole. Another blink and I register that it’s one of those Caution: Children at Play signs. Then my front end collides with it, and a huge billowing cloud of white explodes from the column of my steering wheel. In the distant background, I hear the blare of a horn, the crunch of glass and metal. Then my face collides with the air bag, and I don’t hear anything else.
5
I wake up and blink, blearily, at the lights overhead. Too bright. Too much like headlights in my face.
Headlights… My head throbs, and I close my eyes again with a groan. Headlights. Why does the thought of them make me panicky? Scared?
My memories feel like they’re made of rubber, covered in liquid. Slippery and hard to catch hold of. Every time I grasp at one, it slides out of my understanding. I open my eyes again, and this time the lights seem a little less intense.
“—coming out of it. Tell her friend.” A voice. Male. Deep and baritone. It sounds familiar, although I can’t quite place why.
I can feel myself frown. I turn my head and squint down at my body. There’s an IV in my arm, connected to some wires and a monitor next to my face. I stare at it, more confused than afraid or concerned. Why would someone put me on an IV? I’m fine.
The voice returns again. “Ms. Jordan. Can you hear me?” Still familiar, but something about it is wrong.
He knows me, I think. He shouldn’t be talking to me like this. So informal, so polite. I lick my lips, trying to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Not Ms. Jordan,” I say, but my voice is rough and dry, and it scratches my throat, makes me cough. Someone presses a glass of water to my lips, and for a moment, I pause to drink it, savoring the cool, refreshing gulps.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, softer now, closer. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
It’s a little easier to talk now that I’ve had a drink. “Call me Naomi,” I say.
“Naomi,” he repeats, and my eyes fly open at that, because all at once, I can place his voice, when he says my name like that.
Sure enough, there he is. Angel—no, not Angel, Jason, he told me his real name at last. He’s sitting next to me, and he’s peering down at me, his brow knit in obvious concern. In one hand he’s holding a glass of water, one that he must have just fed to me, I realize belatedly. For some reason, this makes me blush.
But it takes me a second to realize the more obvious reason I ought to be confused right now. Because Jason—my one-night stand, my dirty, filthy escort I found in a bathroom stall of all places, and summoned to my hotel room for a single night of unforgettable sex… He’s wearing a white lab coat right now. A lab coat with the name Dr. Robinson pinned to it on an incredibly official-looking name tag. He even has a stethoscope around his neck, though he’s not using it right now. He’s has a clipboard across his lap, which he likewise seems to have forgotten as he stares at me, assessing.
“How do you feel?” he asks again, voice still pitched low. He reaches up to feel around my temples. I wince, and he stops with a frown, and picks up the clipboard to write something on it.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I lower my voice to a whisper. “And why are you dressed like that?” A sudden thought hits me. I remember how I met him, what he does for a living—or, for fun? I don’t know. “Is this some sort of… role play or something?”
His eyes flash back to mine, and for the first time since I awoke a few moments ago, he cracks what could almost pass for a smile. “I was going to ask how much you remember, Naomi. But I guess you at least recall last night.”
My head is still throbbing, but I try to prop myself up higher in bed. He gently yet firmly presses me back down against the hospital bed—a hospital, I realize. That’s where I am. Why? “I need to get up,” I protest.
“What you need is more rest,” he says. “Especially before we finish checking you out. There’s no physical injury that we can assess yet, but you did take a blow to the head—”
“What are you talking about?” I protest. “And why are you here? You aren’t a doctor.”
His eyebrows shoot skyward at that. “Last I checked, I passed all the boards and my residency with flying colors. But by all means, Ms. Jordan, continue to inform me who I am, since you clearly know me so well.”
“I just meant…” My face colors. “I thought that…”
His amused smirk is back. “I’ll leave you to rest a bit more, Naomi, before we start to question you about how you’re feeling. And about the accident.”
The accident? I think about that for a second. Then it hits me, all at once, with almost as much force as the airbag did in the car, and I sit bolt upright, my heart racing. The accident. The car, the one-way street, that woman I thought I recognized speeding in the wrong direction… I remember my head hitting the airbag, and— “Becca,” I gasp, barely able to breathe through the panic that seizes me then.
This time, Jason moves faster than I can. He grabs both of my shoulders, pins me still beneath him on the bed, before I can even so much as sit upright. “She’s fine, Naomi.” His hands slide down my arms when he sees my eyes latch onto him. From the calm, easy expression on his face, I know he’s telling me the truth. “She’s fine, she wasn’t injured at all, not even so much as a scratch,” he promises me. “The worst part for her was being worried about you, in fact.” He manages a grin
. “She kept demanding we let her in to see you. Her mom is out there in the waiting room practically restraining her by the waist.”
I smile, too, finally. That does sound like Becca. “Okay. As long as she’s okay.” I sink back against the bed.
“I take it you remember everything that happened before you wound up here, then? The accident?” He’s still looking at me with concern, though his voice remains even and steady. Professional.
Yet he reaches out for half a second, as though he’s going to take my hand, before he remembers where he is and schools himself, dropping his own hand back into his lap instead. On the bed, my fingers twitch, resisting the urge to reach for him in turn. “Yes. Everything. Although, I remember last night and this morning in particularly good detail.” My gaze catches his, finally, and he doesn’t look away. “I don’t understand. When I found your number where I did, I thought…” I shake my head. “I mean, I thought you were a, an…”
He smirks. “What, an escort?”
I shrug, well aware my face is burning, bright red again. “Maybe? I don’t know!”
He laughs, long and loud for a second. “Well, you clearly see I’m not.”
I tilt my head, considering him. “I’m still not entirely convinced this isn’t some kind of elaborate trap. Is this supposed to turn me on or something, the doctor outfit?”
“Does it?” He arches a brow. “I didn’t realize that playing doctor was one of your kinks, Naomi.”
Now I’m really blushing. “I never said it was.”
“I’ll have to add this to the list,” he says, joking.
“Are you keeping a list of what turns me on?” I arch a brow, grinning.
“Seems like it might come in handy,” he replies evenly.
“Assuming there’s going to be a round two already, are you, then?”
“Aren’t you?” He smirks. “Or are you less interested in me now that you know I have a respectable job and career, and I’m not just some dirty man you found in a bathroom stall to dominate you for a night?”
“I… that’s not…” I press my lips together for a second. “You’re the one who came to my hotel room. Not to mention, when it came to the kinky stuff, you started it—”
“Eating out your ass, you mean?”
“I’m—I didn’t…”
But he laughs, seemingly amused by how easily he’s able to make my blushes worse. “Don’t worry, Naomi. There’s far more than that I’d like to do to you.” His gaze practically sears me now, he’s staring so intently. His eyes wander down the length of my body, and I find myself doing the same, noticing the bulge at his crotch, visible even under the layer of his lab coat.
Damn. Okay, maybe I am into the whole doctor thing. Because he looks hot as hell right now in that outfit, and I would sure let him examine me…
But— “When you’re all healed up, and I’m assured that there’s no lasting damage from this accident, either physical or mental,” he adds, and my fantasy pops like a bubble.
“I feel fine,” I say. I shift in bed. “A little sore in the shoulder and the forehead…”
“The seatbelt torqued your shoulder a little,” he replies, leaning over to feel along my shoulder. Even that simple touch sends flames all throughout my body, and I want nothing more than to grab his wrist and pull him down toward me. Kiss me, I want to shout. I swallow the urge with difficulty as he continues talking. “The bump on your forehead is from the airbag itself. As long as you aren’t concussed, which we should be able to ascertain soon, then—”
“Naomi!” Monica bursts into the room in a flurry, with Becca hard on her heels.
“Auntie Naomi! They said you were asleep and I couldn’t see you.” Becca’s head appears at the foot of my bed.
I glance sideways at Jason as he leans away from my bedside, as though covering up the fact that he was just touching me. Even though it had been entirely proper and within the bounds of giving me medical care. He’d only been checking on my shoulder…
Still, my skin tingles where his hand had been.
“Don’t worry, Becca, I’m just fine,” I reassure her, even as my eyes trail after Jason. He flashes me a wink before he starts to back out of the room, but Monica stops him halfway to the door.
“Doctor?” Her eyes dart from him to me and back again. “I had a couple of questions.”
Oh shit. Did she guess about me and him? But I shake that wild theory out of my mind. How could she possibly guess? Besides, there’s nothing much to know.
Besides how you met. You summoned a random stranger to your hotel room for sex, the same night you signed your divorce papers…
Knowing Monica, and how worried she’s been about me throughout this divorce—not to mention how hard she tried to talk me out of marrying my ex so soon into dating him, before all of this—I don’t doubt that if she knew where I met Dr. Robinson before, she’d give us both one of her famous tongue lashings, so painful it could debilitate your ego for weeks.
As it was, she was only turning her superpower on Jason at the moment. “How is she? What do we need to know about her care? Is she in any danger at this point; what about a concussion?”
Jason blinks at her, then me, then back to her for a second, before he starts to answer her questions slowly and methodically, working backward from reassuring her that as far as they could tell, I was fine. Not even a bone broken, he says. Then he launches into a lengthy explanation of how they’re relatively certain I don’t have a concussion or any lasting injuries, and that they’ll need to hold me for a couple more hours to be sure, and that once he releases me, he’ll need me to remain on bed rest.
Monica asks more questions than I even would have thought of, but I’m grateful she’s here. Clearly, I’m still not quite in my right mind, especially if my first concern waking up after a crash like that was how soon can I get my sexy doctor back into bed with me?
But I’m not sure I can blame the fantasies on the head injury. I seem to have had these already, and they don’t seem likely to go away anytime soon. Not now that I’ve finally realized how good sex can be with someone who has just as dirty a mind as mine.
Finally, I manage to get a word in edgewise through Monica’s flurry of questions. “How is Becca though, really?” I look down at the girl in question, who’s tugging on my hand for my attention, eager to show me some new drawing she’s made in the waiting room.
“Me? I’m not the one who fainted, silly,” Becca says.
Monica perches on the end of my bed. “She’s right, Naomi. She’s just fine. It’s you we’re worried about.” She bites her lip, and in that moment, a rush of guilt hits me.
“I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I should have taken better care of Becca. I should’ve been more careful—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Monica interrupts me sternly. “Apparently a neighbor who lives on the street where you crashed saw everything and called 9-1-1 for you right away. She says some other driver was speeding in the wrong direction, and you swerved to avoid a collision.”
I grimace. “But I should have swerved in the other direction. I didn’t mean to crash; I could have hurt Becca—”
“You didn’t,” Monica insists, and takes hold of my hand, gripping just tightly enough that I squeeze her fingers back weakly. “Naomi. You need to think more about yourself sometimes, okay? Just work on feeling better right now. That’s what you need to focus on.”
I can feel myself nodding, even as Monica stands to kiss me on the forehead.
“Whoever was driving in the other car, we’ll find them and sue the crap out of them,” she promises me.
I laugh weakly. In the back of my mind, I can still see her face. Where do I know her from? I pushed it away. “I don’t want to sue,” I protest. “I’m fine, and I have car insurance. It’ll all be covered.”
“That’s not the point,” Monica pipes up, with a frustrated sigh.
I wave her off. “It’s my decision, and I don’t want to get embroiled in s
ome lawsuit. Okay? I’m thinking about myself.” I try on a dazzling smile. “Just like you said.”
She lets out another, longer sigh, and rolls her eyes, but afterward, she relents, nodding, just once. “Fine. It is up to you, after all.” She touches my head again, briefly. “When can we head out of here, doc?”
“In a few minutes,” Jason says, eyes still fixed on me. They’ve barely left me at all, even after Monica came in, even while he was talking to her. “I’d just like to speak to the patient alone for a moment.”
Monica collects Becca—amid protests about wanting to stay with her auntie longer—though not before she catches my eye and mouths over Jason’s shoulder, where he can’t see her. Hottie Alert. I grin and roll my eyes at her. Then Becca races ahead of her into the hall, and Monica reaches for the door to leave.
“As I was saying, you’ll need plenty of bed rest when you get home today,” Jason is saying, oblivious to the chaos happening over his shoulder.
“Maybe you’ll join me,” I say with a sly smile, and realize, too late, that Monica is still in the room. I only notice because she freezes right beside the door and turns toward me with her mouth ajar. It takes a second for me to realize, belatedly, that I never say anything like that, I never hit on anyone so obviously, or say what I want that clearly.
My face turns, if possible, even brighter red than it already was.
“Sorry,” I blurt. “Er… pain meds…”
But Jason is just laughing, even as Monica, also grinning, slips the rest of the way out the door and yanks it shut behind her. The moment the door closes behind us, Jason arches an eyebrow at me. “Do you always hit on your medical professionals?”
“Only when I’ve booty called them the night before,” I respond, arching my own brow right back at him.
His grin widens. “So I assume I wouldn’t be out of line if I asked you on a second date, then.”
