by Radclyffe
Blaise doctored her coffee. “Thanks.”
“Come on, let’s take them out back.”
Blaise followed Abby outside and eased into the wooden Adirondack chair with a sigh. The back deck faced southeast, and the morning sun draped over her like a soothing hand, dispelling some of the ache in her tired body. She couldn’t remember if she’d had a chance to sit down all night, which likely meant she hadn’t. “This is nice.”
“Long night?”
“Mm. Busy. It feels good to sit and talk.”
“I know. We never get a chance to do much of either, especially with you on nights and me day shift half the time.”
“Well, luckily, you work nights half the time too. Even when you’re not on call.”
Abby laughed. “I know. But it doesn’t leave any time for real talking.”
“It’s true.”
“So, since we’re talking, Flann mentioned she ran into you and Grady McClure at the bakery this morning.”
Trust Abby to get to the point. Blaise wasn’t surprised or offended to have been the subject of casual discussion. That was the way of life in a small community like theirs. Just about anything was a fair topic for conversation. “Yes. I ran into her this morning just as she was finishing up with Mr. Hopkins. We ended up going to breakfast.”
“Hm.” Abby telegraphed more than words as she stretched her feet out onto a wicker ottoman.
“Mr. Hopkins is doing well,” Blaise said, steering the conversation away from Grady, and breakfast, and Abby’s unspoken comment. Maybe she didn’t want all that much conversation just yet—not when she hadn’t had time to process her jumbled feelings about Grady and her own out of character behavior yet.
“I know, Flann called the ICU for a rundown on the patients this morning, and they gave her report. McClure did all right last night?”
“As far as I saw, yes. And the OR nurses seemed to like her.”
“Well, that’s a ringing endorsement. How about you?”
“Sorry?”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. When’s the last time you went to breakfast with anyone besides me since I’ve known you?”
“Well, that’s only been a few months.”
“Okay, before then.”
“Well, Taylor and I—”
“Our children do not count.”
“Mari and I go out fairly often,” Blaise said archly.
“Uh-huh. Mari. Who’s totally taken.”
“Well, for all I know, Grady could be taken too,” Blaise said just a bit grumpily. “And it wasn’t like that. So it doesn’t matter.”
“Did you ask her?”
“About what?”
“If she was taken?”
“She isn’t. She said so.”
“Aha. So the two of you were doing the first-date talk.”
“No,” Blaise said emphatically. “Quite the opposite. We were doing the not-a-date talk.”
“Who started that?”
Blaise studied her coffee.
“Not your type?” Abby asked quietly.
“Very much not my type,” Blaise said.
“You know, matchmaking is not one of my interests,” Abby said. “But I admit to natural curiosity and all that. What’s your type?”
“If I actually knew,” Blaise said, hoping not to sound bitter, “I’d probably be able to tell you. But not Grady McClure. Someone…steady and ordinary…and humble.”
Abby laughed out loud. “Oh boy. You’re in the wrong place to meet people like that. Between the flight crews, the first responders, and the ER staff you’re pretty much surrounded by not-ordinary and not-humble.”
Abby was still chuckling when Blaise said decidedly grumpily, “I never said I was looking.”
“Fair enough. But just the same, you’re right. That’s definitely not McClure, at least from what I could see from our brief acquaintance.”
“Exactly.” Blaise should have felt vindicated since Abby agreed, but the memory of Grady’s thumb brushing over her lip popped up out of nowhere and her breath caught. A distracting wave of warmth rose in her middle and settled deeper. Ordinary, steady women did not take such confident license. Even if Grady had given her a chance to avoid the touch, which she hadn’t done, had she. And her emotions happily tangled themselves back into a jumble all over again.
“But she’s not bad looking,” Abby said offhandedly.
“Talk about understatement,” Blaise muttered.
Abby’s eyes glinted. “So you think she’s hot?”
“Hot? Are we teenagers now?”
“Well, I think she’s hot.”
“Oh, really?”
Abby shrugged. “Well, I might have, ten years ago and pre-Flann. But I can certainly appreciate she is attractive.”
“What do you know about her?” Blaise asked quietly.
Abby set her cup down on the arm of the chair. “Serious question?”
Blaise nodded.
“Honestly, not all that much. I know that Flann was a few years ahead of her during residency. McClure was the best of her year and, according to Flann, one of the best she’s seen period. Flann never really talked very much about Grady’s personal life, but I gathered McClure could’ve gone anywhere and decided to come here. It’s a bit of a mystery to me, but Flann doesn’t seem bothered by it.”
“You think she’s using this position as a stepping-stone to something else, then,” Blaise said, unaccountably disappointed at the thought that Grady would only be around a short while. Yet another very good reason to keep her distance.
“I don’t know. It sort of seems unlikely. If she could’ve gone anywhere else, she wouldn’t need to come here first. So I am inclined to go along with Flann and accept that this is what she wanted, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s lifestyle. Not everyone wants bright lights, big city.”
“No,” Blaise said, thinking about what she’d once thought she wanted. “Not everyone does.”
“So why did you go to breakfast with her?”
Blaise met Abby’s gaze. “I wish I knew.”
“When you find out, I want to be the second one to know.”
Blaise laughed, and her confusion eased. Abby had a way of making anything feel possible. “Swear.”
“So, tonight. You’re coming, right?”
“Oh my God, everyone is talking about this. I’ll try, okay?”
“Just picking up the kids, anyhow. Just come a little earlier. You know you won’t be sorry.”
Maybe she should, just a little sorry now that she hadn’t offered Grady that ride. And a lot more relieved that she hadn’t. What she needed was a little time to find her balance around her, and a bit of distance was just the prescription for that.
Chapter Nine
Grady woke in the midafternoon, naked beneath the plain white sheet beside an open window. Sunlight cut a swath across the bed, warming her arm where it rested outside the covers. Someone was mowing a lawn, and the scent of fresh cut grass drifted in on a lazy breeze. She turned on her side and stared outside. She should probably put up a shade or blinds, or something, but she liked the light. And the air. A huge old maple tree obscured part of her view of the adjacent house, so the next-door neighbors might not be able to see into her bedroom even if they wanted to. It was weird, looking out her window directly at the window of someone else’s house just yards away, and sometimes hearing their voices coming through open windows or wafting up from front porches where they sat and talked. Nothing at all like an apartment building in the city, where dozens of people lived in even closer proximity than here, but where she might not recognize her closest neighbor in the elevator.
She’d been in the village just a couple of days, long enough to look at the list of places the Realtor Flann had put her in touch with had to show her. That had taken all of an hour. She’d decided on the first place that wasn’t on Main Street because she knew it wouldn’t matter where she lived, as long as it wasn’t too far from the hospital. The next d
ay she’d unpacked her few boxes and trunks and walked around, at loose ends. Once she’d gone to work, everything had settled into place. Until Blaise. Now everything was completely unsettled, in a way she liked.
Grady stretched, pulled an arm behind her head, and stared at the ceiling. Her gaze was slightly unfocused, but the image was perfectly clear. Blaise Richelieu, sitting across from her in the bakery, surrounded by townspeople, on an ordinary Saturday morning that had to be one of the most memorable of her life. She couldn’t recall a time when every word resonated in the air, shimmering like a precious jewel that she wanted to capture and keep hidden, to take out and enjoy again and again. Grady laughed out loud. Talk about flight of imagination.
She was losing her mind. Blaise had definitely derailed her sanity.
The stirring in her belly was pleasant and anything but imaginary, and the thrumming slightly lower, even more so. She hadn’t had sex in quite a while, but the way her pulse surged and her body clenched wasn’t just physical hunger for a familiar release. This time the anticipation of pleasure held a promise of something more. The thrill of the unknown was enough to have her hand moving lower, coming to rest between her thighs, exploring the wanting that was so familiar and yet so much more intense this time. She closed her eyes as her thighs tightened, but when Blaise’s face flickered behind her closed lids, she gently pushed the image away. She didn’t want an orgasm with a phantom woman where Blaise was concerned. If and when, she wanted to feel her everywhere. She concentrated instead on the rising pressure and the pounding urgency beneath her fingers and, with a sharp intake of breath and a brief groan between gritted teeth, she came hard and fast.
Blowing out a breath, she rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. She had no doubt where her arousal originated. Blaise had struck a chord in her the instant she’d seen her, and that had only grown the more they’d bantered and teased and tentatively explored. Blaise was beautiful, true, and Grady enjoyed looking at her, liked the confident, graceful way she moved, and got lost in her eyes when they sparkled with amusement or flared hotter when she was annoyed. That attraction still simmered in her belly and added to the pleasure she’d just experienced—hormones and whatever other subtle chemistries were ignited by some individuals and not others. But what drew her even deeper and kept her entranced was what lay hidden beneath Blaise’s cool, almost serene gaze. She was so controlled that she was barely touchable. And oh, how that made Grady want to touch. Her clit twinged again just thinking about it.
She chuckled. She hadn’t been so on edge, so forthrightly horny, since she was a teenager. She had a little more restraint now than she’d had then, but if she didn’t want to spend the rest of the afternoon fantasizing, she had to move. She tossed the sheet aside, grabbed clean jeans from a stack on the dresser along with a short sleeve navy polo, and carried them into the bathroom for a shower. Ten minutes later she was dressed with nowhere to go.
One thing she didn’t plan on doing was spending the rest of the day in her apartment, so out was the only answer. As she hit the sidewalk, she realized she was hungry. She ambled to the intersection of her block and Main and turned right in the direction of the hospital. The place was like a homing beacon, and she the pigeon. She might travel out of sight, but she’d always come home. After walking along a row of adjoining three- and four-story buildings that had once been homes but had been converted into storefronts at street level, she crossed to a place called Clark’s that advertised pizza, subs, and burgers in the window. The food was either good or all there was available, since the booths along the walls and tables in the center of the large room were packed, mostly with teenagers.
She ordered two slices at the counter and carried them, along with a bottle of water, to a table only slightly smeared with marinara sauce and settled back to enjoy her late lunch. The door opened and three kids came in, a boy and two girls. Grady watched them idly as they jostled their way up to the counter to order. She paused midbite as they turned back, searching for seats, her focus captured by one of the girls—the taller of the two who’d just come in, a blonde with blue eyes, flawless honey-gold complexion, and a natural confidence that was evident just from the way she scanned the room, her gaze passing over Grady as she pointed to a free table opposite her.
Embarrassed for no good reason, and not wanting to be caught staring, Grady averted her gaze. Something had drawn her attention, though, and she sensed she was missing something she should have recognized. Since they were clambering around a table three feet away, she could hardly avoid seeing them out of the corner of her eye. The niggling feeling didn’t go away, and she couldn’t put her finger on just what caused it. Annoying. And strange.
“Hey, Taylor,” the boy said as the trio pulled out chairs, his voice that in-between baritone and cracking tenor a lot of boys developed in their midteens, “didn’t your mom take you guys out to eat earlier?”
“Sure,” the blonde said, “but that was hours ago. And I only had pancakes. I’m starving.”
“Not a news flash!” The other girl, athletic-looking with riotous reddish blond waves and ice blue eyes, laughed and poked Taylor good-naturedly “You’re always starving.”
“So where’s the crime?” Taylor swiped a piece of pizza off a paper plate and took a bite. “Where are we meeting up for the game?”
As the trio ate and chatted about the game and the after-party and the maybe after-after-party if they got lucky, Grady finished her pizza and gathered up the paper plates and napkins to carry to the trash. Taylor. Couldn’t be anyone other than Blaise’s daughter. She looked like Blaise. That must’ve been what struck Grady as so familiar.
Mystery solved, Grady hit the sidewalk and started toward the hospital without even really thinking about it. She wasn’t on call, but that didn’t matter. She knew she’d always be welcome there. Traffic on a late Saturday afternoon was still pretty brisk, the day pleasantly warm, and she was feeling energized. She strode west on Main and turned up the side street that ended in the winding, tree shrouded approach road to the hospital. Already the trip seemed familiar and evoked a sense of belonging she hadn’t felt in Baltimore despite having lived there for six years. Maybe that was because this place was her choice, a place where she could be herself, free from expectations and the reputation for being untrustworthy in the dating arena she’d somehow garnered after an assistant vice president at Shock Trauma had read a lot more into a few encounters than she’d ever intended.
She’d never realized how much she wanted that blank slate, until she’d come here and walked in to discover no one knew her. Well, Flann did, but even then, their relationship was based on real experience. When she’d been a young resident, Flann had been a fellow, which in the hierarchy of things was second to godliness. Grady’d learned from her, not just in the operating room, but in dealing with other residents and patients. She’d had some catching up to do, maybe still did, but she was a match for Flann in confidence and, she’d heard it said, in arrogance too. Funny how being compared to Flann never bothered her, maybe because she respected her so much. If she could be as good as Flann in the OR, she’d be happy. As to the rest of the mostly good-natured comparisons, she didn’t really worry too much about her standing in the bedroom department. She never had any particular difficulties there, although in the last couple of years, those activities had fallen off.
Not that she was a monk or anything. She had moments of loneliness and stress and sheer physical need, and there’d been encounters. Short-lived and pleasant and forgotten—not because they never mattered, but because they left no lasting impressions. She was very, very careful that mutual expectations were clear before things went too far.
Lasting impressions. She wasn’t even sure what those would’ve looked like, not until that morning. Blaise Richelieu had left a lasting impression without even trying. Maybe despite not trying. A smile, a rare bit of laughter, a gaze that cut through every shield Grady had. And when Grady’d touched her? Unforgettable. Fo
r just the merest second, she’d touched her, and she could feel the warmth and softness of her still. She’d wanted to kiss her.
Something to think about. Or maybe best not to think too much at all. She’d usually done all right following her instincts. And her instincts all shouted Blaise’s name.
She rounded the last bend in the road and the hospital rose up before her, a magnificent edifice that must’ve been palatial a hundred and twenty-five years ago. Massive brick façade, two-story-tall white colonnades flanking the entrance, two wings curving out from the main building. The hospital perched atop the mountain, high above the community that created and sustained it, and to which it gave back purpose and security.
Grady took a moment just to absorb its grandeur. There weren’t many like it left in the entire country. Rural hospitals were falling by the dozens every month, in the changing world of medicine where cost mattered more sometimes than care. Flann had assured her that was not going to be the case with the Rivers. They’d weathered the change and, rather than give up their heritage and their mission, they’d brought in Presley Worth, the CEO and representative of an enormous medical conglomerate, against the wishes of many in the hospital who feared that Presley would destroy the heart of their community. What she had done was just the opposite. She had revitalized the medical center, bringing in new affiliations with surrounding hospitals and medical professionals, building the new ER-Trauma wing, securing appropriation for residencies, medevac capabilities, and new staff. The Rivers was a first-class primary care center now, and as Grady walked through the ER doors, she could see herself there as part of it.
A big shouldered, sandy-haired guy in plain green scrubs looked up as she strolled down to the nurses’ station. His name tag read Emery D’Angelo, RN. She held out her hand. “Hi. Dr. Grady McClure. I’m new here.”
“I know who you are. You took care of Mr. Hopkins last night. Good save.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I had plenty of help. I was just about to go upstairs to see him. Thought I’d stop in and see if you had anything going down here.” She glanced over her shoulder at the board. Pretty full, and the halls bustled with staff—nurses, techs, PAs, and residents hustling in and out of cubicles and wheeling patients in chairs or on stretchers to the elevators. “Looks busy.”