Conditional Offer: Stewart Realty, Book Five

by Crowe, Liz

  Then he heard it. The call that changed everything.

  He grabbed the handset, barked out a few questions, willing himself to remain calm. This simply was not happening. It couldn’t be. Not now.

  He paged the transplant team on autopilot. The paramedics had called in the horrific car accident quickly enough for Craig to tell them to keep him breathing. That he was a potential donor. Trying to like hell to hold it together, he grabbed his phone and called the one guy he trusted to help him relay the news. Jack answered, his voice gruff and angry.

  “What the fuck is going on, Doc?”

  Craig opened his mouth, and the words “Blake is dead but …” were about to pass his lips when Jack stopped him.

  “Can you come up here?” Jack muttered over what sounded like a shriek of dismay nearby. Craig squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them when he heard the ambulance pull up.

  “I have to stay. He’s, um, his ambulance just got here. The transplant team is on its way. They will need signatures. Are his parents….”

  “No, they left. Why is…oh shit. What happened?”

  “It’s Blake. He was in a car accident. I’m keeping him alive long enough to…”

  Craig forced his voice to remain calm. “Call your in-laws, Jack. I can get Sara to sign the order required to take his lungs but Beth and Matthew need to get back here now.”

  Suzanne’s dreams had the odd, floating, half-awake quality she remembered from her days in medical school. The sound of a familiar female voicing yelling “no” over and over made her eyes snap open. She jumped up, trying to sort out who was screaming. Her eyes saw, but couldn’t take it in at first. Jack cradled his wife as she sat on the floor against the wall, shaking her head, screaming the word no, over and over again. Nurses rushed at her but Jack held them off and got Sara to her feet, holding her close and whispering in her ear. The look of utter agony on the woman’s tear stained face sent a bolt of terror through Suzanne’s chest.

  The elevator dinged open.

  Craig. Thank God.

  She ran to him, but he held her off, looking around for someone else. There were three somber-looking doctors with him, holding a file and a pen. He swallowed, finally looked at her. Fear flared in Suzanne's chest.

  “Rob? Is he…?”

  But Craig shook his head and zeroed in on Sara. Suzanne watched as if from a million miles away. He spoke words that made her heart nearly stop, then turned her entire body into a block of ice.

  Blake. Dear God. How could it be? It was supposed to be Rob.

  Sara could barely hold the pen she was shaking so much, but Jack helped her sign something on a clipboard before she collapsed back to the floor. He stood, as nurses moved in with needles, and guided Sara to an empty room. Her old friend looked up and met her eyes, shook his head and turned away.

  Lila emerged from Rob’s room, rubbing her face. The cadre of doctors moved towards her. She started backing away. Jack took Lila’s arm and said something Suzanne couldn’t hear. Her hearing seemed off, buzzy, as if shutting down in denial of what had happened. Jack led Lila back into Rob’s room. Suzanne sank into a chair, and let the reality wash over her like a tidal wave.

  A hand dropped on her shoulder. She looked up and the sight of Craig’s deep brown eyes broke something loose in her. She choked out a sob, and he held her close. The sounds of the hospital rolled around them as they stood, clutching each other. She felt fury build in her, anger at all the people around them who were still alive. Because the one man loved by so many was dead in the flash of chrome and screech of tires.

  Craig gripped her arms and held her away from him. She tried to catch a breath, focus on his words. Finally they coalesced, lighting a flame in her brain. “God damn you, Suzanne. Marry me. Please. I can’t lose you.”

  She gasped, tore herself out his arms. His eyes were dark, his shoulders hunched. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Us. You and me. Together. I’m sick of playing this stupid game with you. We are happy together. I need you to admit it. I need you.” He looked positively frantic.

  She stared at him as the sounds of abject agony hit her ears. Sara was still crying as she fought the sedative they’d given her. Then she saw Lila and Jack. The woman’s eyes were haunted. Jack touched Suzanne’s shoulder unaware of the intimate moment he’d interrupted.

  “We’re going down…to see him.” Lila slumped against him. He held onto her and looked at Craig. “They’re moving Rob to the OR. And he’s out anyway. So she wanted to…Christ.” Jack’s voice broke.

  Lila gripped her arm, startling her. “Do you want to come with us?”

  Suzanne stared at her, unwilling to acknowledge what, exactly, the woman was asking of her. Her teeth chattered. Craig grabbed her before she slid to the floor.

  “You don’t have to,” he whispered in her ear, but she pulled away, still furious with him, and at herself, for being such a cold bitch in the face of his obvious earnest emotional reaction to the horrible moment. He stepped back, his face closing down.

  A small voice told her this was it. She’d pushed him away one time too many. But she turned to Lila, held the woman up on her other side.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Jack shot her a grateful look. She took a breath. Together they headed to the operating room where Blake’s lungs were being removed. Lila’s face was a rictus of horror and disbelief. But when Suzanne saw him, saw his face, nearly unrecognizable from the accident her heart calmed.

  The organ harvest team finished and nodded to their small group. She put her hand on his face. “Good bye,” she said brushing his hair back. She put her lips to his cheek, then felt Jack’s hand on her arm pulling her away. She didn’t remember much after that.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Eighteen Months Later

  Suzanne stared dully at the spreadsheets in front of her. Heard and smelled the brewery functioning all around. Her head pounded from lack of sleep. Her hands shook as she tried to focus.

  It was no use.

  She pushed back from the desk, spent yet more energy dispelling Blake from her memory banks. Evan walked into the back office, reaming someone out on the phone, but her vision was dim, like it had been for months. The air had gone out of her since Blake’s accident. Not because the man was hers to lose, but because on that day, she’d driven a nail into the coffin of her own relationship with Craig.

  She barely registered it when Evan dropped into a chair opposite her huge metal desk and ended his call. She’d been ignoring everyone for a while anyway. The entire place had gone into a state of shock that morning when the news hit about their one-time young brewer dying in a car accident.

  Suzanne’s eyes burned, the ubiquitous tears threatening once again. She put her head on her arms, rested them the desk and wished for the thousandth time that she’d said more to him that last day.

  She jumped a mile when Evan touched her arm. “Hey.” He seemed to want to say more. But didn’t.

  “You look like shit,” she muttered, taking in the dark circles under his eyes, the exhaustion etched into the lines on his face.

  He shrugged. “The girls are supposedly having a growth spurt. Up all night, eating all the time. You know.”

  She stared at him, her brain registering that he assumed she would know. She looked away, realizing that he hadn’t meant anything by it. Craig was right. She had to stop being so sensitive. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Craig. Dear God she missed him.

  She fiddled with her phone avoiding Evan’s gaze. She scrolled back through a recent text conversation they’d shared, essentially an information exchange about Sara and Jack’s collective frame of mind a year after the tragedy.

  “She seems ok.” Craig written when she had asked.

  “He doesn’t.” She was sincerely worried about her friend. He seemed to have withdrawn from everyone. Focused on his stupid soccer project, she knew. Otherwise, absent but for his physical presence.

&
nbsp; “Yeah. I know. She’s sort of in denial, I think. Not really dealing with it other than helping everyone else. A departure for her.”

  “Well, maybe that’s his problem,” she’d written. “He’s used to being the strong one. If she doesn’t need him to be or is in denial about it. Then he may feel …” She’d stopped unsure what to say and hit send.

  She stared at the words, willing the man back to her, but realizing her final rejection of him had been just that—final. She had no one to blame but herself for the result.

  He was so infernally logical and calm. His wild, nearly irrational proposal that terrible day had scared her, but she’d sleepwalked through the next couple of weeks and never answered him. Together they observed the excruciating aftermath. Saw Rob a day after he woke and got the news. Then relived the whole thing all over again with him. It had been a gut-churning exercise for everyone concerned.

  She sighed, kept reading the conversation, happy at least to have these written words of his.

  “He feels useless,” Craig had said. “And a guy like Jack can’t feel that way without taking action. I guess his action in this case is to back away from her. Let her handle it however she will.”

  “But surely with the baby. He must love having him around.” Suzanne had forced herself to type that out.

  “Sara thinks he’s having some kind of freak-out relative to having a son. Because his father was such a shit, or something.”

  “Well, Gordon Senior was a shit. Damn. Poor guy.”

  “Yeah. Poor all of them.” He’d written. Then, about a second later these words had popped up on her screen in the little blue chat bubble: “Poor me. Poor us.”

  She’d been truly taken aback by that. Hadn’t known how to respond.

  Later that night he’d sought her out on Skype. She cursed herself for leaving the thing live, but smiled in spite of herself at his message. “You didn’t like my pity party?”

  She answered quickly, hoping to sound brisk and matter of fact. “Well, I know how I must have sounded. Point taken.”

  His response was swift. “Good. About the point, I mean.”

  “Yeah. Is there anything else? I need to get to bed.”

  She stared at the blinky “Craig is writing” message. Wishing she had the intestinal fortitude to just cut the man off. To let him go. But she couldn’t. His answer made her face split into a huge grin. “So. What are you wearing?”

  “Are you flirting with me?” She’d typed, unsuccessfully holding back the longing that rose. Memories of his extraordinary talents at pleasing her made her breathless.

  “I was sort of hoping to cut straight to the phone sex.”

  “Well, forget that.”

  “You’re crueler than I thought.”

  She bit her lip, tried to decide how to respond. He pre-empted her. “Sara is a mess, actually. I talked to her today. How’s Jack, really?”

  She frowned, made her brain flip a switch from horny enough to actually have phone sex to contemplating her friend’s rapidly deteriorating home life.

  “Worse, I’m willing to bet. He was at the bar last night. Drunk off his ass. I had to pour him into a Lyft home, making all sorts of threatening noises about not jeopardizing what he had. About not falling back into his bad habits.”

  “He won’t cheat on her.” Suzanne was startled when Craig wrote this.

  “Is that a question or a statement?” she typed out quickly.

  “A statement. She isn’t worried about that. Believe it or not.”

  “I believe it. They’ve reached common ground on the trust thing, I think. But this other thing he’s doing. Withdrawing from her and the kids. That’s worse at this point.” She sighed, remembering her friend’s harsh laughter, his unwillingness to really talk to her the other night.

  “So. What are you wearing?”

  She laughed and responded. “Wow. That was fast.”

  “Sorry. Well?”

  “We don’t need to be doing this Craig.”

  “What? Flirting? Why not? I mean, it’s innocent. We know it’s not going anywhere.”

  Her heart sank. “Well, in that case, I have on dirty sweat pants, a too-big tee shirt and my hair hasn’t been washed for two days.”

  “Oh baby. You know how to make me hard.”

  “Shut up. I’m going to bed.” But she didn’t want to. She wanted more than anything to keep talking. She forced herself not to pick up the phone and call him, let his low, lovely, singer’s voice fill her ears.

  “Tell me more about how nasty you look. I love it.”

  She grinned, her fingers hovering over the keys. She typed, “I love you,” and hit send. She wished it back inside of half a second. She white knuckled her own hands for a solid five minutes. Then six, seven and almost eight more minutes passed before he answered.

  “Well, you know how I feel about you. I told you enough.”

  “Yes. I do.” Tears blurred her vision. “Is it too late? Can I take it all back?”

  The response was immediate, and final.

  “Good night my lovely ginger girl. Sleep tight.”

  His Skype icon blinked out and was dark.

  Craig sat straight up, his reflexes honed after years of medical school, internships and residencies to function at a fairly high level from a dead sleep. The dark room wouldn’t reveal what noise had caused him to wake.

  He put his hand down, automatically reaching for Suzanne. When he found a distinctly female form beside him, his brain clicked in, causing buckets of guilt and remorse to pour over his psyche.

  No, it wasn't Suzanne. Not the woman he wanted.

  Lynn stirred, rolled over and tugged him back down. Her sleepy exhalations and warm naked presence made his body go on autopilot. Anger shut out logic. Bright, blinding fury at himself for pulling this innocent, perfectly nice woman into the middle of his mess, misleading her into thinking their near constant fuck sessions meant anything more to him than that.

  He kissed her with a ferocity born of frustration, and dove into her body with an enthusiasm he hoped would dispel his memories of Suzanne—her intense gaze, sleek auburn hair, and her infernal stubborn insistence that she was too damaged for him.

  His brain fuzzed over. Lynn’s welcoming body soothed him, but even as he came, her near operatic climax deafening him, he whispered Suzanne’s name.

  Later, he sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and staring into the middle distance. When Lynn wandered in, fresh from a shower, she didn’t say anything. Just filled her travel mug and leaned on the sink. As if in slow motion he rose and pulled her to him. He sighed and held her close. She didn’t move. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Don’t go.”

  She pulled away, smiled at him, her eyes resigned as she tugged her long black hair into a pony tail. “Gotta go save some lives.”

  Craig felt like the worst kind of shithead. He’d made an idiot of himself begging Suzanne to marry him. She’d rejected him, of course. For the last time, he’d resolved. If something as bad as losing such an important member of their odd, yet close-knit circle, didn’t make her realize they owed it to themselves to be together—to be happy—well, then, screw her.

  So he had.

  Well, he’d screwed Lynn. That very night.

  A lot.

  He closed his eyes. Lynn claimed she understood. That she wanted nothing more from him than what he was giving her. But he refused to be That Guy. He felt terrible about his own inability to stop channeling his grief over the loss of Suzanne by continuously diving between his colleague’s thighs.

  “Craig,” She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. Then slid into the seat across from him, perched there as if about to launch into the atmosphere—like she always did. “I think that we should, um, cool it a while.”

  He looked away from her, the yawning empty nights without her to distract him from his misery a terrifying concept. He reached out and grabbed her hand, words falling from his lips he knew he’d regret. “No. I don’
t want to cool it. I want…I need you. Move in with me.”

  She bit her lip. A single tear slid down her cheek. “Craig. You don’t want me. I know it. You know it. It’s not fair. So, I’m gonna go.”

  He watched her, paralyzed, helpless as she grabbed the few items of clothing she’d managed to leave lying around in the past few months and opened the condo door. She stopped, looked back at him once, her face a mask of sympathy tinged with real unhappiness.

  “I’m sorry, Lynn. Really,” he blurted out, started to stand and yank her back. But something made him stop. He realized it was her eyes. They were hard, firm, and set.

  “I know you are. I’m sorry, too. But, I can’t live like this. I love you. And you … don’t. So, I’m going. Don’t call me. Please.”

  And like that, she was gone.

  His vision darkened. Fury boiled in him. A wholly unwelcome and unfamiliar need to punch something made him clench his fists. His heart pounded. For a split second he thought he might be having a heart attack. He sat, clasped his hands together in front of him and forced himself to be calm.

  It took nearly an hour for him to get his head around a single concept— he would never be happy. Could never quite seem to get the timing right, or the woman right, or the combination of the two at the same time.

  Suzanne had been right about a lot of things, but all the accusations about him wanting or deserving a family, of wanting to be a father had been dead wrong. He honestly didn’t care. But he’d given up convincing her of that. Now, it would seem, he’d ruined yet another potential relationship by not letting go of the previous one. He put his head down, the cool glass tabletop easing the heat in his face.

  His phone buzzed with a text. Suzanne’s name popped up but he grabbed the damn thing and heaved it against the tile backsplash, making a fairly satisfying mess before realizing that he’d left the phone he used to communicate with the busy Michigan emergency department in the glove box of his truck.

  “Fuck!”

  He yelled it again, then again for good measure as he hit the elevator button and went down to the cavernous parking garage to retrieve it. Bracing himself on the wood handles all the way down, and berating himself for be a sap, a pushover, and a dumbass the entire way.