by Radclyffe
“Are there really such things as gourmet doughnuts?” Grady asked.
“Wait until you taste one and you’ll know.” Blaise glanced over at Grady and their eyes caught and held.
The air left Grady’s lungs, as if a tornado had swept out of nowhere and ripped the insides out of everything it touched. Blaise was beautiful. And sexy. And totally in control. Grady still couldn’t figure out if Blaise even liked her or not. Patience. Yeah, right. Not her strong suit.
Blaise broke their eye contact and eased around a pickup that stopped to back in to the curb in front of the feed store.
Grady found her breath, but her stomach still simmered from the connection. She hadn’t been so turned on from just sitting next to a woman in forever. “Actually, they all sound great. I’ll choose one, and you can choose one of the other places some other time.”
“Maybe we should take it one meal at a time,” Blaise said.
Grady recognized that line. She’d used it herself when she’d wanted to make it clear—nicely, but definitely—that she wasn’t considering a next time. But she didn’t think it was a line. Blaise wasn’t the type. She said what she meant. Grady put on the brakes, as much as she was capable of doing when she wanted to be hitting the gas. “Okay, I can wait until you change your mind. A while.”
Blaise snorted and turned her attention back to the road. Grady McClure was as smooth as they came and was coming on to her, that much was clear. Grady also enjoyed the game, and that was not something Blaise wanted to join in on. She wasn’t a player, not in relationships, at least. She hadn’t had a chance to play in the bedroom in such a long time that she had a feeling she’d be a little rusty. But that was of no consequence because Grady McClure and the bedroom were two things that were never going to meet. And if she was totally honest with herself, which she really tried to be, she was enjoying Grady’s interest. Women had come on to her before, and she’d enjoyed the interest as anyone would, but this was different. Grady’s interest was intense, so intense it was tangible, and unrelenting. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy it on some level. And knowing that she recognized her susceptibility to a little sexual interest was enough to ease her discomfort. She would never willingly walk into the wrong situation again.
“The café it is, then,” Blaise said lightly. She had this situation in hand. No worries.
“My treat,” Grady said.
Blaise shook her head. “No, I’ll pay my own way.”
“Because?”
Blaise glanced over at her. “Because I want to be very clear about what this is, and what it isn’t.”
“What is it?” Grady asked, the softness in her voice and the openness in her expression so profound, Blaise was momentarily speechless. Grady seemed almost vulnerable for a moment, as if Blaise held all the power to decide what—if anything—was happening between them. Grady showed a side of herself that Blaise didn’t expect to be there. One she didn’t want to be there. One she didn’t want to be blinded—or blindsided—by.
Blaise kept her eyes on the road. “Not a date.”
“Okay,” Grady said, and added after a minute, “so does that mean there could be a date—in that you date women?”
Blaise continued to stare straight ahead. “Unknown but unlikely and yes.”
“Wait—let me sort that out.” Grady inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Blaise was saying no date right now, but women were on her dance card. One hurdle over. “So could I ask the next obvious question?”
“No, I don’t have a partner or spouse,” Blaise said.
“Well, that’s a good place to—”
Blaise glanced at her. “What about you?”
Grady held up both hands. “Me? Nope. No spouse, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend, or pets.”
Blaise laughed.
Grady silently applauded. Score another point.
“I’m not sure where pets come into it,” Blaise said, “but I suppose you ought to know. I have cats.”
Grady clutched her chest. “Oh no, not cats. Not man’s worst friend. Not those independent little buggers who do pretty much whatever they please and expect you to feed them anyways.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Cats, plural?”
“Two to be exact, foundlings.”
“Meaning they found you.”
Blaise’s attention was on the road again as they crawled another block and waited for sixty more pickups and SUVs to park, but her smile was obvious and Grady felt as if she just scored a home run.
“I know what you mean about cats claiming homes when they feel like it, but in this case, Taylor found them in a cardboard box behind the school.”
Grady shook her head. “Oh, man. What is wrong with people sometimes?”
“I don’t know. I’ll never understand it. A person might not be an animal person, but to do something like that…”
“So there were only two?”
“Oh no,” Blaise said with a laugh. “There were six, but I put my foot down and told her she could keep two if she found homes for everyone else.”
“And how many parents of her friends gave you a phone call to complain about their new additions?”
“Believe it or not, she only had to hit up Sean—did you meet him? He’s one of the nurses in the ER?”
“No, not yet.”
“You’ll like him. He’s great. He took two. And one of the maintenance guys who was there when Taylor found the kittens asked her about them the next day and took the other two.”
“That’s great.”
“So why no pets…” Blaise said. “There. A spot. Hold on.”
She zoomed around yet another truck waiting for someone else to pull out and put on her blinker.
“What are they doing at this place,” Grady said as she straight-armed the dash, “giving away food?”
“On weekend days, they make doughnuts. Cream-filled and apple cider sugar. There’ll be a line out the door in another five minutes.”
“Good, I like doughnuts.”
Blaise pulled over to the curb half a block away from the storefront restaurant with a sign that said Bakery and Café above the door.
“But not cats?”
“I’m a dog person,” Grady said, “and until recently I lived in an apartment. That plus my schedule…there’s no way I could even keep fish.”
“I know what you mean. Cats look like they’re independent, but they really are upset if you leave them alone too long.” Blaise shut off the engine. “I’m not really sure how I feel about someone who isn’t a cat person, though.”
“I can acquire the taste,” Grady said instantly. She enjoyed the banter, and she particularly enjoyed making Blaise smile. She’d had to work hard to get every little tidbit of info, but she’d been smart enough to avoid asking about Taylor, even though she wondered. Was there a Taylor’s Daddy in the picture or some other ex somewhere, or had Blaise wanted a child and chosen to do it as a single mom? Having a kid said so much about a person, but Blaise shut down any conversation about her daughter in a flash. She was protective, and Grady respected that. So she’d wait. She’d be doing a lot of waiting where Blaise was concerned—waiting to judge her interest, waiting to gain her trust, waiting for a date. Waiting was not one of her strong points.
Blaise was a lot more of a challenge than she usually entertained with women. She rarely had the time or the energy to put in the effort to work up to a date. She dated casually, had sex casually, not as often as most people seemed to think, because she didn’t have a long-term to offer. She was a transient, geographically and maybe physically too. Long-term meant opening up, and that wasn’t something she’d grown up doing. Quite the opposite. Her family was big on appearance and perception to the outside world, but internally even bigger on competition. Her father and brother had a big head start in the competition area, but at least she had them to thank for surgery. She might have chosen surgery to level the playing field, but she’d never regretted it. S
he was good at it, it fulfilled her, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. But she’d had to learn to cover her disappointment when she never quite caught up to either of them, and they let her know it, since being hurt or disappointed was a sign of weakness. And she had to hide her sadness knowing her mother was disappointed in her. Despite looking like she’d fit in with her mother’s set, she never had. She’d always been more interested in having one of the girls than being one of them. While it wasn’t outwardly acceptable to be anti-queer, her mother would’ve far preferred she’d chosen male partners, and reminded her of that fact often. So often, she’d been finding excuses to avoid the West Coast for years.
“Still hungry?” Blaise murmured.
Grady started. Hell, she’d been drifting. Maybe she was more tired than she thought. She straightened and got back in the game. “Hey, yes, totally.”
“Good, because I’m starving.”
Blaise climbed out of the truck, and Grady jumped out her side. She was hungrier than she’d realized just a few seconds ago and, looking at Blaise, realized it wasn’t all about breakfast.
Chapter Seven
The Bakery and Café was housed in a renovated bank on the corner of Main and a narrow residential street. The white clapboard and occasional brick homes that dated back to the eighteen hundreds all featured wraparound porches and big yards. Nothing at all like the sprawling modern glass and concrete edifices perched on the hillsides in Bel Air. Grady could actually see herself living in some of these places—if she ever wanted a house, that is. Houses suggested something permanent, though, and she’d been living an itinerant lifestyle moving from one training program to another for years. Settling down wasn’t a picture she could easily conjure.
The café occupied a single room that had once been the bank lobby, with fifteen-foot-high ceilings, tall narrow floor-to-ceiling windows on the street sides, a counter in the back that led to the kitchen, and a unique alcove connecting to the restrooms through what had previously been the bank vault. The large reinforced brass-plated door stood open, and its interior held shelves where the deposit boxes had once been. Now the vault showcased items from local craftspeople, along with T-shirts and the occasional mug. Hanging Edison lights and several fans that turned lazily pierced the original tin ceiling at intervals, and the place smelled like cinnamon and sugar and was packed with people of all ages seated at long tables. Half a dozen others circled looking for seats.
“Wow,” Grady murmured as they joined the line leading up to the counter to place orders. “This must be where every one of the passengers in those cars we were following was headed.”
“Most of them,” Blaise said. “I don’t usually come at this time on Saturday mornings, so it’s a treat.”
“It is,” Grady said, thinking about the doughnuts, but imagining Blaise with sugar dappled on her upper lip and how that might taste if she kissed it away. Heat rushed up from her center and spread through her chest, and she tugged at the collar of her T-shirt. “Hot in here.”
Blaise glanced at her, one blond brow arching. “It’s a bakery, and there are probably fifty people in this room. I’m sure that’s above the occupancy code.”
“You’re right, but I don’t think it’s the heat from them I’m feeling.”
With a shake of her head and a frown, but with a smile that belied her irritation, Blaise stepped up to the counter. “Two blackberry filled, please, and two eggs scrambled. Plus coffee.”
The middle-aged guy with his gray hair pulled back and tied at the nape of his neck with a leather thong glanced at Grady. “What are you having?”
“I’ll have the same, but add the breakfast sausage.”
“You got it.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper and turned to push it through the pass-through to the kitchen. “Help yourself to the coffee. Cups on the sideboard and refills are free.”
“Thanks, Harold.”
“No problem, Blaise.” His gaze lingered on Grady for a moment, as if categorizing her in some way, and then he turned his attention to the next customer in line.
“I think we can grab those two seats at the end of the middle table,” Blaise said as an elderly couple rose and began to collect their dishware.
“Yeah—no one seems to be waiting for them.” Everyone ate family-style, it seemed, but at least at the end of the long table, they’d have a tiny bit of privacy. Grady followed Blaise over to the red-checked-oilcloth covered table, and once they’d claimed their spots, asked, “Can I get you coffee?”
“That’d be great. Black with—”
“Cream and one blue packet,” Grady finished.
“How exactly did you know that?”
“I watched you pour one in the break room last night.”
“You’re disturbingly observant.”
“Some people might consider that a plus.”
Blaise leaned back in her chair and blew a small breath as she rolled her eyes. “Please. Go. Hunt and gather coffee.”
Laughing, Grady threaded her way through the myriad of tables and chairs to a cabinet along the side wall that held coffee urns and cups. She filled two mugs, added the necessaries, and carefully carried them back. She’d never given much thought—as in none at all—to getting coffee for someone before, but she felt downright pleased at the moment, as if the act signaled to anyone watching that she was with Blaise. As in with with. She mentally threw a bucket of cold water over her head. Reality check. Like procuring a simple cup of coffee was all it would take.
“Here you go,” Grady said, passing Blaise her mug as she sat opposite her.
“Thank you,” Blaise said and cradled the mug. “I definitely need this.”
Grady blew on her coffee and took a tentative sip. A bold French roast. “Yep. Pretty perfect. Clever of them to offer free refills too.”
“It’s one of those little things that people remember. That makes them feel special.”
Grady tried to come up with the name of the last person who’d made her feel special, or one she’d tried to make feel that way, and couldn’t. She didn’t mind the first so much, but she wasn’t proud of the second. Hell, some of those women she’d slept with and hadn’t given them much more attention than passing conversation. True, they’d all professed, just like her, to have no interest in anything beyond mutual, casual pleasure, but that wasn’t the point. She still should have tried. Sensing Blaise watching and waiting, she went for neutral ground. Passing conversation. “Are you coming back later with the kids?”
“They’ll probably be ready for more lunch-type food. We’ll try the diner.”
“I heard you say you’re not working tonight,” Grady said. “Off the weekend?”
“No, I’m on tomorrow night. You?”
“Free until Monday. Sort of.” Grady shrugged. She’d rather be at the hospital with something to occupy her mind than sitting around in her not yet furnished one-bedroom apartment with nothing to do except…think about having nothing to do. “I think I’m second call tomorrow, but I’ll have to check the email from Flann. It’s kind of a loose schedule, and I pretty much got the idea I should be available if needed.”
Blaise said, “Probably not what you’re used to. I don’t think any of the Rivers docs are ever really not on call. They’re always popping in and out.”
“I suppose that has something to do with everyone calling the hospital the Rivers.”
“Well, you know the story, don’t you?”
“Vaguely,” Grady said. “Flann never really talked much about it, more than to say she wasn’t the only doc in the family. I understood that a lot of her family was in medicine and everyone pretty much worked here.”
“Yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement.” Blaise laughed. “When Flann says her family works here, she means all her family for a hundred years or more. The hospital was founded by the Rivers family, and there’s always been a Rivers to head the staff. The hospital and the family are kind of the same thing.”
“A medic
al legacy,” Grady said quietly, thinking about her own family history. Flann’s story couldn’t be more different from hers. There was nothing that bound her family together—if anything, their shared profession had kept them apart—a never ending source of pressure, and bars that kept getting higher and higher to surpass. “Couldn’t be easy, living in the shadow of that kind of past.”
“I guess that might be true,” Blaise said, “though I never got that sense from any of the Riverses I know. For them, being part of the hospital is more a question of loyalty and responsibility.”
Blaise was quiet for a moment, and Grady forced a smile. She wasn’t used to women studying her, and she wasn’t sure what she was revealing. Not that that mattered now. Her past was just that—past. She’d worked her ass off to survive her residency, and now she had the job she wanted in a new place, where she didn’t have to live in anyone’s shadow. She was her own person, and that was all she’d ever wanted. She cleared her throat. “I take it Flann or Harper will be the next chief of staff, then.”
“Oh, that will be Harper,” Blaise said. “It’s always been going to be Harper. She’s got the temperament for it.”
Grady laughed. “You mean Flann’s not diplomatic enough?”
“Yes, but not a criticism. That’s part of what makes her so good,” Blaise said with a shake of her head and a secret kind of a smile that had Grady bristling for some reason. “Flann and Harper are competitive, but they’re so close in age, I guess that’s to be expected. Flann has never seen a game she didn’t want to win, though, and that’s why I want her operating on me or mine if the need ever comes.”
“I know what you mean,” Grady said. “It was tough, the residency program, and Flann always seemed to effortlessly be the best.”
“I’m not surprised—she’s always been that way. Harper is the quiet and intense one, and Flann is the showy, confident one. They’re both really good. I remember in high school…” Blaise flushed and grew silent.