I opened the door ready to make a break for the NICU when he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back into the stairwell. This caused me to laugh harder, but my laughter faded as he cornered me and with his hands on the wall on either side of my head, looked down into my eyes. His gaze intensified and he lowered his face to mine. I leaned forward, only our mingling breath separating us, when footsteps echoed through the stairwell. James blinked and looked in the direction of the sound, the spell broken. I ducked under his arm and pranced through the door.
Stacy stood from the rocking chair and moved to Dylan’s incubator as I walked into the NICU. “You ready?” I asked, watching her get Dylan settled in for the night.
“Yup. Goodnight, little guy,” she crooned to her sleeping boy.
“See you later, Stacy,” James said stepping into the NICU behind me and heading for his office. “You didn’t get out of anything, San Antonio. Just so you know. Paybacks…” he called to me over his shoulder. “I’ll check with Andy and call you.”
“Sounds good,” I giggled. “Oh, and James…”
“Yeah?” he asked turning back slightly, his eyebrow raised in question.
“Zeke’s got nothing on you.”
Chapter 20
James
“Lookin’ good, Doctor,” Sophie smiled and gave a small tug on the front of my polo shirt as she walked past me to my car. I reached around her for the handle and she leaned close and sniffed. “Smell good too,” she murmured.
I smiled and brought my hand to the small of her back and pressed her to my side for a quick hug. I leaned down and whispered, “You were checking me out.” Then I planted a soft kiss on her cheek to let her know I was teasing and released her to get into the car. What was it about this woman that I couldn’t get enough of her?
I watched her watch me walk around the front of the car and chuckled. “No I wasn’t,” she responded with a sniff as I shut my door and started the car. She made a show of wiping at something nonexistent on her capris and then eyed me critically as she said, “I was making sure you cleaned up after our run. I’m starving and don’t want to get kicked out of the restaurant for your poor hygiene.”
“You were totally checking me out.” I grinned at her quickly before returning my eyes to the road and pulling away from her brother’s house.
“How could anyone not…”she muttered under her breath and looked out the side window.
“What was that?” I leaned sideways toward her, eyes still on the road.
“I said, you have a bit of snot…” She reached her hand up and brushed her nose.
I laughed out loud and said, “It’s okay. I heard you. But then I’m just as guilty because you are looking good too.” I reached over and laced my fingers through hers. She squeezed my hand and sighed, settling back in the seat to enjoy the scenery.
Sophie
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep my gaze from ending up on James again. I could watch him all night. Seriously, how did I get lucky enough to be with him tonight? There are thousands of beautiful girls in the Portland area and he’s with me. Every time I say goodbye, I think he can’t be as hot the next time as I remember. Then I see him again and he looks even better. Either he gets better looking every time, or my memory is really poor. I’d better get it together.
“You’re getting a little shaggy.” I reached over and ran my fingers through the hair at the base of his neck that had begun to curl. His hands stilled on the steering wheel and I laughed as he shivered.
“If a haircut from you promises to be anything like last time…” He looked over and waggled his eyebrows at me.
“I’m pretty busy,” I hedged. “I was going to suggest you go to Chinatown to get it done this time.”
“Uh, uh. I told you there is no going back.” I kept my hand at the base of his neck and played with his little curls. What a shame to get rid of them.
James turned the volume up on the radio and I sang along. After a few minutes, I paused my singing by asking, “What would you say if I told you that the buzzing sound a house fly makes is in the key of F?”
“I’d say I absolutely believe it. But only if there are bees present.” James grinned at me. “Get it? Honey bees... And B flat is in the F major scale.”
“Pretty quick, doctor,” I laughed. “How did you know that? Do you play an instrument? Or perhaps you’ve heard that one before.”
James shrugged and reached out to change the radio station. “What about this song? Do you know it?”
“Yup,” I smiled and sang along. “Hey,” I protested when he switched stations in the middle of my grand finale.
“Let’s try this one,” he said.
I sang a few lines of the new song before he switched stations again. After the fourth station, I asked, “What gives? I’m beginning to think you are trying to tell me something about my lilting voice.”
He reached to turn the volume down. “Is there a song out there you don’t know?” he asked. “I’ve tried 80’s, oldies, country, rock, pop…You know everything. I thought a Texas gal like you would be hard core country,” he twanged, startling a laugh out of me.
“I try to be well rounded.” I sniffed snobbishly with my nose in the air. “You give it a try.”
“You don’t want to hear me sing,” he protested.
“I really do. You can’t be that bad.”
“I can be and I am.”
“No. Come on. Here’s a good one.” I leaned forward and turned up the volume. “Belt it out. Let me hear you.”
He started out soft and hesitant, but then his voice rose in volume as he gained confidence. He was no Clint Black or Tim Mcgraw, but he could carry a tune and had a nice, soothing voice. I could stand to listen to him again, but lest he get a big head…
“Howwwwroooo,” I raised my chin and howled. His voice immediately cut out and he blushed. So cute. I grinned and howled again.
He reached back and removed my hand from his hair and held it over my mouth. I howled louder through my fingers. He pushed my hand harder against my mouth. My muffled laughter erupted and I forced my hand away.
“I’m just kidding,” I promised. “Not too shabby for a city boy. You are pretty good, actually.” I leaned over and smacked a kiss on his cheek. “And a really good sport. Thank you.” I put my hand back at the nape of his neck and continued playing with his hair.
“I’m glad we are meeting up with Andy and Adri. I can’t believe Adri is leaving in two days. It’s been so nice to have her here. I didn’t realize how much I missed her.”
“Speaking of leaving…Dylan is doing so well. What’s the plan when he goes home and you aren’t needed around the clock like you have been? Is Texas calling your name?” He tried to sound nonchalant, but I sensed an underlying seriousness in his tone.
“Trevor, Stacy, and I have actually talked about that. I’ll stay for at least a couple weeks after he comes home so they can all adjust to a new addition. Especially Jeran. We’ll play it by ear from there. I can’t stay indefinitely. I need to get back and open my clinic.”
“Yeah,” James agreed softly, eyes trained on the road.
I didn’t want him to agree though. I wanted him to latch onto the unspoken idea that had been floating around in my mind lately about setting up a clinic here. I wanted him to tell me he didn’t want me to go. I wanted him to tell me he was falling in love with me like I was with him. But if he wasn’t feeling that way, he obviously wouldn’t say all those things. I suppressed a sigh. What I wanted and what I got were two different things entirely.
We were both quiet the rest of the drive to the restaurant. I took in the slightly run down exterior of the Thai restaurant as James walked around the car to open my door. He took my hand as we walked through the parking lot and into the building, but my mood felt subdued and a little melancholy. James guided us past the hostess desk and lifted our joined hands to point to a table toward the back where Andy and Adri sat, their heads together, studying a menu. They lo
oked very cozy. I looked at James with a raised brow.
“Which one of them is going to be the saddest when she leaves?” James leaned close and whispered as we approached the table.
I knew he was talking about Andy and Adri, but I couldn’t help thinking it applied to us as well. Apparently, it would be me who was the sadder of the two when I left, but I didn’t want to spoil one of the last nights of Adri’s visit, so I put on a smile and said brightly, “Hey guys. See anything good?”
“She means besides each other,” James teased.
I held up a hand for a high five. That was a good one. We laughed as Andy and Adri exchanged embarrassed grins. James pulled a chair out for me and scooted his closer to mine as he sat down.
“We ordered an appetizer and waters all around,” Andy informed us. “The waiter will be back in a few to take our order.” Adri handed us some extra menus and went back to the one she and Andy had been studying before we arrived.
“How was the gym?” I asked them.
“Really good,” Adri smiled as Andy simultaneously scowled and grunted something unintelligible.
James and I exchanged a glance and I said, “I’m not getting a unanimous ‘really good’ out of that response.”
“Oh, Andy…” Adri waved her hand in an offhand manner and rolled her eyes. “He’s mad ‘cause he thinks a couple of the guys were hitting on me.”
“That’s because they were and you encouraged it.” Andy interjected, annoyed.
“I didn’t encourage it. I was flattered, but I could only see you,” she told him and squeezed his muscular arm.
Andy sat back and folded his arms across his strong chest. A satisfied smile stretched across his handsome face. Oh brother. I looked at James and smiled when I caught his eye roll. Exactly what I was thinking.
James
“You guys up for a little walk around the town?” I asked as the waiter returned with my card.
“Yeah, James wants to show you where he’s getting his hair cut next week,” Sophie told Adri and Andy with her mischievous grin.
I raised an eyebrow and shook my finger at her. This made her laugh and I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe I’d take her to Tillamook this weekend. She’d need a pick me up after Adri left, right?
“Sure. We could go. I don’t really care about your barber, but Adri did want to see what all the hype is,” Andy said taking Adri’s hand and standing from the table.
I lace my fingers with Sophie’s and led her out of the restaurant. We turned right and Andy and Adri followed behind.
“Thanks for the food,” Sophie smiled up at me. I ran my thumb across the back of her hand. Man, I could kiss those smiling lips. Instead I asked, “You have plans this weekend?”
“Potty training a disinterested two year old, watching PBS reruns with said two year old, and a few loads of laundry. You have a better offer?”
I glanced back to see Adri pull Andy to a stop in front of a little shop and peer in the window. I leaned in and pressed my lips to the side of her head and whispered, “Come with me to Tillamook?”
She pulled back a little and looked into my eyes. A smile hovered around the corners of her delicious mouth and she shrugged. “I guess I could do that. But it remains to be seen whether or not it’s a better offer.”
I chuckled and pulled her in for a hug. Just as I felt her arms tighten around my waist, Andy called, “OK, you two, enough PDA. We just ate.” I smothered a sigh and took Sophie’s hand again.
Sophie
I flopped down on my bed and hugged a pillow to my chest, sitting crossed legged. “So, you and Andy looked pretty cozy tonight.”
“He’s been a great diversion.” A diversion? Wait. Did I detect a slight wistfulness in her tone?
“I’ll never understand you. You find all these great guys and they all want you, but you won’t settle.”
“You don’t know that Andy wants me. And that’s just it. I’d be settling.”
“That’s not what I meant by settling. You and Andy, though… you are like two peas in a pod.”
“Can you say hundreds of mile apart?” she enunciated the last few words. “We haven’t even had enough time together to find out real stuff about each other. He’s hot, likes to work out, and tolerates Thai food.”
“What more do you need to know?” I teased then paused. “It doesn’t have to be hundreds of miles. If you want it bad enough, you could compromise.”
“Yeah, and what’s the compromise you and James have worked out? ‘Cause you are totally into him. I’ve never seen you like this…not even with the ‘nearly married him’ guy.”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “We were talking about it on the way to the restaurant tonight and he had the perfect opportunity to ask me to stay, but didn’t. Maybe he doesn’t feel the same-”
“Whatever,” she interrupted. “I saw that look he gave you over the pad beef broccoli. Or was it over the mango rice?”
I rolled my eyes. “What look?”
“That look that said he’d sample you if you had been on the menu.”
“Knock it off,” I blushed and threw the pillow at her.
She tossed the pillow back and sighed. “There’s something there, I’ll give you that,” she admitted about Andy. “We’ll see.” When she lifted a shoulder in a shrug, I nearly rolled my eyes again. How could she be so blasé about the whole thing? It drove me crazy. Or maybe it was just my inability to control my own situation that was driving me crazy.
“He asked me to go to Tillamook with him next weekend,” I confided, almost keeping the stupid grin hidden.
“Cheese… Now that’s romantic,” Adri laughed.
“His parents live there,” I told her dramatically.
Her eyes got big and she smiled. “I told you…” she laughed. “So, you’re going, right?”
“Yeah. I’m scared to death, but yeah.”
“Keep the trivia under control and you’ve got it made. He’ll be proposing before Christmas.”
“I won’t even be here that long, crazy girl.”
“But if you charm the parents, they’ll nag and nag about grand babies and he’ll come around.”
“Great, so he’d just be marrying me to get his parents off his back.”
“No, that would just be a bonus.” She laughed as I hit her with the pillow again.
James
The door flew open as I raised my hand to knock. "Hey," Sophie grinned up at me.
"You ready to go?" I asked with an answering grin.
"Need you ask? I've been ready for hours. I didn't even go to sleep last night."
"She hasn't been up for that long," Adri muttered. "But pretty close," she added under her breath as she brushed past us, waving at Andy as she walked to James' car. "Can we go already?" she called over her shoulder. "All this cheeriness is disgusting this early in the morning."
Sophie's grin widened as she watched Adri go, an affectionate look on her face. She closed the door and grabbed my hand, dragging me down the steps to the sidewalk. "She's not much of a morning person, if you couldn't tell." Then, "You can sleep on the way," she called to Adri. "Andy would be happy to lend a shoulder, I'm sure."
"What beach are we going to?" Adri asked a few minutes into the drive.
"Cannon Beach," Sophie eagerly told her. "It's the one I told you about with Haystack Rock."
"Oh, yeah. Is that the one where that nurse, what's his name, wanted to carry you off into the sunset?" Adri giggled and Andy guffawed from the back seat.
I saw Sophie glance quickly at me from the corner of my eye. I schooled my expression and kept my eyes on the road.
"No," Sophie said. "It's the one with the most perfect sand dollars." She leaned over and kissed my cheek. Zeke who? I wondered smugly.
"It is a two hundred thirty-five foot rock in the ocean. There are like five other rocks in Oregon called Haystack Rock also, but this one has other rocks surrounding it called Needles." Sophie was just getting started. "It's th
e rock that is on the movie The Goonies."
"You sound like a travel brochure. Tell me something I can't read about," Adri told her impatiently.
"I've got something for you that you can't read about." Andy told her. "Well, maybe only in the newspaper or on a police report." I met Andy's eyes in the rear view mirror and laughed. "Back in high school, we wanted to impress the ladies with our unmatched strength and climbing abilities-"
"So not much has changed since then?" Adri asked, biting the inside of her cheek to control a smile.
Andy grinned and flexed his biceps. Adri gave in to the grin and so did I when I saw Sophie's eye roll.
"We decided we'd climb the monolith and repel or jump off. Whichever people wanted. So we skipped school and drove down one afternoon. We didn't really need it to climb, but we had all our climbing gear, our suits were on, and the chicks were plentiful."
Sophie grunted in disgust and I reached over to squeeze her hand. "Just let him go with it. You know you want to hear how we got our juvie record."
I glanced at Andy in the mirror again. "Go on," I told him.
"The girls were all squealing and, 'Oh, we are going to get in so much trouble.' Pssh. We just rolled our eyes at them and told them to prepare to be amazed. I was all strapped in and ready to ascend. They were speechless until one of them pointed to a cop strolling toward us across the beach."
Adri's eyes were huge saucers. "What happened?"
"The cop couldn't get to us without getting his highly polished black boots wet, so he yelled to us about citations and ditching school. He hung around for a while. We knew we shouldn't be trying to climb it anyway, so we packed our stuff and left. Kind of anticlimactic, I know, but we were raised to be law abiding citizens."
I snorted. "Not to mention the fact that your father was running for mayor that year and the police record wouldn't look good for his campaign. They have a group there now that educates the public, answers questions, that sort of thing. People still try to climb it today, but mostly people want to preserve the beauty of it. I guess some chunks fall off it from time to time."
Matters of the Heart Page 17