by Rhavensfyre
“I’m going to give you something for pain and some antibiotics, just in case. I’d follow up with your Primary Care Physician in about two weeks to have those taken out.” Dr. Stone continued with the standard litany, including reasons to return to the Emergency Room and then asked Dani to sign a form saying she understood all of the above.
“Dr. Stone? I’m sorry if I was a difficult patient,” Dani apologized as she jumped off the table.
“Veronica, remember?” Dr. Stone smiled and handed the nurse her clipboard. “Don’t worry about it, Dani, we’re used to it here. No one is at their best when they’re hurt.
“Thanks, uh, Veronica.” Dani’s brow furrowed as she stumbled over the unfamiliar name.
“Do you need a note so you can take time off?”
“No. I am pretty sure I won’t fire myself.” Dani managed a tired smile. She was feeling a little woozy from the pain and blood loss. All she could think about was getting out of the hospital and going home.
“Well, if you need anything here is my number.” Veronica handed Dani her business card along with the two prescriptions she had written up. “In case you think of anything else you might want to ask me.”
Dani took the scripts but gave her the card back. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“You never know, you might develop a fever tonight.” Her carefully chosen words carrying a subtle double entendre that was lost on her patient but not on Allyse. A sharp spike of anger shot through Allyse, threatening to boil over inside the cold room. Seriously, was the woman actually flirting with Dani right in front of her?
“I’ll be with her tonight. I doubt we’ll need you,” Allyse replied coolly, staring down the overly bold woman. She stepped forward and slipped her arm through Dani’s.
“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t know that you were…” The doctor didn’t finish her sentence. She took a step back, recovering her professional demeanor as effectively as someone tripping and pretending they just almost didn’t fall, all cool and collected and ignoring the red flames of embarrassment coloring their cheeks. “I am glad you will have someone at home to help you with that hand tonight.”
Allyse couldn’t contain a smug twist of her lips, thrilled to be the one to set the good doctor back on the straight and narrow. She was talented and obviously good at what she did, Allyse couldn’t deny that. She had sutured Dani’s hand quickly and painlessly. Perhaps the flirting was her way of trying to distract her patient? Perhaps she would believe that if she hadn’t pressed Dani to take a business card with her number scribbled on the back.
“Can we go home now?” Dani asked.
“Yes, home sounds good.”
***
Allyse was fuming. How dare Dr. Stone. Correction, she thought, Veronica, flirt with Dani like she wasn't even standing there? As soon as they cleared the hospital parking, she exploded, letting her anger get the best of her.
“I can’t believe she was flirting with you!” she exclaimed as she pulled out into traffic a bit aggressively, the tires squealing in protest as she took the corner at a hard angle.
“Who?”
“Your doctor. She was flirting with you!” Allyse shifted the Mustang into the next gear. The tendons in her wrist screamed at her to let go. She was grasping the stick shift so hard her knuckles had bled white from the tension. She had wanted to throttle the woman with her bare hands right there in the ER and evidently her hands weren’t ready to let that potential action go just yet.
“She was?” Dani twisted in her seat to look behind her even though there was nothing to see. The hospital was already a good distance away.
“Yes. Why? Do you want me to take you back so you can get her number?” Allyse practically snarled, then clamped her jaw around her tongue. I’m being such a bitch. Why do I care?
“No, I just didn’t know.” Dani gave her an odd look. “I have no interest in her.”
The confusion in Dani’s voice hit home more than any angry retort, even though she deserved one. Allyse knew she sounded possessive, jealous even. Heat flamed across her cheeks, she had no right to either. She had heard people describing being embarrassed all the way down to their bones, now she knew what they meant. Her embarrassment didn’t keep her mouth from digging her deeper into a hole when she heard herself ask “Not interested because she’s a woman?”
“No. Just not my type.”
“I’m going to throttle Erick,” Allyse muttered under her breath. For someone who bragged like a proud papa every chance he got, there was no way in hell he could claim he simply forgot to tell her this important little tidbit of information.
“What did you say?”
“Sorry. I asked how you didn’t know.” Allyse fumbled around a quick lie. “She was blatantly flirting with you.”
“I can never pick up on that kind of thing. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t date,” Dani said, sounding both amused and resigned. She pulled herself out of her boneless slouch and threw her good hand up in the air with a frustrated growl. “Why can’t someone just say hey, want to go out? Or—hey, I like you. It’s direct and to the point.”
“Very true. So you like directness?” Allyse asked, turning a left at the next light. Driving gave her a good excuse not to look at Dani while they were talking. That was probably a good thing. The playful banter was just that, playful. She doubted she could have pulled it off if they had been looking at each other. The temptation to get lost in those golden brown eyes was too great.
“Yes.”
“I’ll remember that,” Allyse promised, a pleased smile playing double duty across her features. She had found the pharmacy without the cloyingly sweet voice of the GPS interrupting their conversation.
“Why, are you going to ask me out?” Dani joked, shifting in her seat to awkwardly disengage her seatbelt with her good hand.
“I didn’t say that. But if I did, what would you say?” Allyse heard herself ask. What the hell? She had just sent the woman to the hospital because of her stupidity and now she was practically asking her out for a date. It was like she had no control over what was coming out of her mouth.
Dani was having trouble with the seat belt, so Allyse reached over and clicked her free, then jumped out to open the passenger door. Allyse blinked rapidly and tried to keep her jaw from dropping when Dani answered her as she unfolded her lean body out of the leather seat to slide past her.
“Ask me sometime and we’ll find out,” Dani answered, grinning jauntily at the shocked expression on the other woman’s face. She may not always catch when someone was flirting with her, but once she got the hint she knew how to play the game. She hadn’t looked twice at Dr. Stone, but there was a certain guest staying at her house that she had noticed—and now she knew Allyse had noticed her, too. It almost made it worth getting hurt to find that out. Maybe not the trip to the hospital, perhaps, but the stitches? Definitely.
Chapter Seven
The trip through the pharmacy was quick. Dani refused to fill the pain killer script she had been given. She only wanted the antibiotics.
“Why didn’t you get the pain killers?”
“I wasn't paying attention at the hospital and I’m allergic to what she gave me. It’s not a big deal, I can handle it.” Dani threw some bandages and gauze into her shopping cart, then headed for the check out.
Dani felt like a zombie and less alive, just going through the motions and barely aware of her surroundings. She felt sluggish and heavy, shuffling behind the cart and leaning half her weight on it just to stay upright. She didn’t even protest when Allyse paid for everything. Her wallet was in her back pocket and she really didn’t want to have to deal with fishing it out.
They stepped out of the pharmacy and into brutally bright sunlight that made the harsh fluorescent lighting seem dim in comparison. When she squinted against the harsh rays, her eyelids seemed to think it was a good time to sleep and she had a wicked hard time encouraging them to remain open long enough to get to the car. She was sure she c
ould hear her couch calling to her, an upholstered siren singing the virtues of overstuffed cushions and a fluffy pillow. A huge, jaw cracking yawn followed, confirming her original thought. Yup. The couch is definitely calling my name.
***
“Dani? Wake up, sweetheart.”
“What? Huh?” Dani bolted awake, then clutched her wrist when she leaned on her bad hand to sit upright. “Ouch! Dammit all to hell.”
“Are you okay?” Allyse asked. She didn’t flinch at Dani’s language but her eyes widened a bit.
“Yeah,” Dani said, rubbing her neck. She had a horrible kink in it. “Jeez, I fell asleep hard.” What did she call me? She couldn’t remember. Her head was still sleep fuzzy and her wrist felt like someone was violently strumming the tendons on it like a bass guitar. She rubbed her face with her good hand and tried to get the blood moving, but that didn’t help any. She couldn’t recall anything between the time she awkwardly curled up in the passenger seat, her temple pressed against the cool glass window, and the pain shooting through her arm when she tried to pull herself up.
“I don’t blame you. It’s been a rough day,” Allyse patted the Mustang’s dashboard before she killed the engine. “I was okay. Getting back was a lot easier, and I had Ms. GPS here to help me.”
Dani didn’t think she had ever been happier to see her own front door than she did today. She even managed to get out of the Mustang on her own this time, even though it took the talent of a seasoned contortionist to get herself out of the seatbelt and out of the bucket seat. She weaved a little once she straightened up, but she managed not to wobble too horribly. The nap must have helped. She didn’t feel like she was riding a tilt-a-whirl at the carnival anymore but she was still dead tired. She made it as far as the living room then gave up and flopped down on the couch. Her boots came off only because she was able to use her toes to loosen the heel and wiggle out of them. Once she was settled down on the couch with a stuffed pillow behind her head, Dani was content with stretching out there and continuing her nap.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you earlier. You need to call Erick.” Allyse’s voice pulled Dani back out of the fog she had drifted into.
“Why?” she asked. A soft whine made her peek out from under the forearm she had flung over her eyes. Allyse was standing over her with a glass of ice water in her hand and a guilty expression in her eyes. Callie laid her head on Dani's thigh and gazed up at her with round liquid brown eyes that always reminded her of a seal pup, then nuzzled her hand until she managed to push her head under Dani’s palm. Doggy eyebrows waggled at her in a pretty good imitation of human worry and she automatically buried her fingers in the soft fur.
“I called him while you were at the hospital. I didn’t want him to worry,” Allyse said, only now realizing that Dani may not appreciate her interference.
Dani didn’t say a thing at first. She went completely still except for a small muscle that jumped and tensed along her jaw. Allyse heard her teeth click then grind together under the pressure. She tensed and waited for the inevitable explosion but it never came. Dani sighed in resignation and the tension in the room just melted away. Another switch flipped in an instant.
“Can you get my phone, it’s in my front pocket?” Dani asked.
Her phone was shoved deep down inside her front pocket on the same side as her injury. Even if she wanted to try and dig for it, the enthusiastic amount of gauze engulfing her hand would have been paramount to trying to thread a Q-tip through a needle head. She unsnapped the top button and hitched her hip up to loosen the pocket as much as possible and eyeballed Allyse defiantly. “You’re going to have to get it for me.”
Allyse hesitated then nodded, licking her lips nervously before sitting down next to her. Slim fingers slid along her thigh. With only the thin fabric of her pocket lining between them, those hesitant fingers also skimmed along the edge of her underwear. Dani almost gasped at the sudden spark of arousal that etched invisible lines of fire along her thigh. She hadn’t been touched by a woman that intimately in a long time. A low moan escaped her lips, and she shifted her position, trying to snuff out that flame before it burst into a full blown inferno. Allyse jumped and pulled her hand away as if burned by the same fire.
Concerned eyes met hers. “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
Dani wanted to laugh. She lied instead. “No, you didn’t. I forgot about my hand again, that’s all.”
Allyse fished the phone out, trying to ignore the overly hormonal and somewhat adolescent sounding voice inside her head that was jumping up and down and gleefully screaming that she was literally in Dani's pants. It wasn’t easy to ignore that voice, not when she suddenly developed a bad case of fumble fingers and the darn thing kept slipping away from her. She just had to hope that Dani wouldn’t notice how much her hands trembled when she handed it over.
“Thanks,” Dani said, hitting the speed dial.
“No problem,” Allyse murmured.
“Hey, Erick.” Dani braced herself for the lecture she assumed was heading her way.
“Do you need me to come out there?” he asked, jumping into the conversation right away without even a polite hello. Any points he might have earned for being worried were promptly lost along with Dani’s temper when he kept pushing.
“No. I’m okay. Really, there’s nothing you can do here anyway.” It was the truth. She was safe and there wasn’t any permanent damage. He wasn’t hearing any of that though. He was on a roll and wasn’t listening to her anymore.
“I’ve warned you before. That horse is too dangerous for you to work with.” He didn’t have to say which horse, as they both knew who he was talking about. Polo.
“It wasn't his fault. It was just a bad morning. Let it go.”
“You need to get rid of him before he kills you.” Dani winced at the sharpness in Erick’s voice. Even as thin as it sounded through the speaker, it still hurt her ears. All of the stress of the day, the trip to the hospital, everything…it all rolled up on itself and turned into a tight, hot ball of emotional overload.
“The hell you say!” Dani yelled into the phone. She sat up so violently she scared Callie. The collie skittered away with a startled yip. “I’ve spent all this time gaining his trust. I will not pass him on to someone else. I won’t risk him getting abused again because he’s not ready.”
“Be reasonable, Dani. I won’t have the last of my family getting killed for a stupid horse.”
“You have no right to tell me what I do or don’t do with any of the horses, you are not Jay.” White hot anger turned into cold fury. She seethed inside with the pain of old wounds that had never healed properly.
“Here, give me the phone.” Allyse uncurled Dani’s fingers from the phone before gently cupping Dani’s cheek and compelling her to look at her. Her heart skipped a beat, then sped up when Dani allowed the casual touch. “Breathe.”
Dani closed her eyes, then nodded stiffly. “I’m not getting rid of Polo.”
“I know. Why don’t you get some fresh air? Let me talk to him for a minute.”
Dani did what she asked. Allyse waited until she disappeared into the other room and then stopped Erick’s rant with a word.
“Enough,” she said. The cold tone was something he was intimately familiar with. She used it often enough in his presence, and usually after someone overstepped themselves. He might rant and rave at his niece but he wasn’t going to throw a temper tantrum around her—not even over the phone.
“I’m sorry, Allyse. If you want to come back to New York, I’ll head out right away and stay with her.”
“What are you talking about? Why would I leave?”
“Well, you’re supposed to be relaxing, not taking care of my niece.”
“It’s not an inconvenience, Erick.” Allyse tried to curb her irritation. He thought he was being so smooth, acting like the reasonable one. No wonder Dani went ballistic on him.
Dani walked back in the room, almost on cue. Allyse wanted h
er to hear this. Her words were directed at Erick but the message was for Dani. “You might have been the one to suggest coming here, but unless Dani tells me to leave, I plan on staying.” And if she asks me to leave after this, I’ll look doubly the fool.
Dani reached for her phone but Allyse waited for Dani to mouth “I’ll behave” before handing it back to her with a stern look.
“Erick, I appreciate you worrying, I really do. But I’m fine. Stay there. Don’t worry. I won’t impose on Allyse, okay?” Much to her surprise, he caved in rather easily and the conversation wound down into something closer to what she considered normal between them.
“I’m sorry I yelled. You know I worry about you and don’t want to see you get hurt.” Erick sounded genuinely contrite. “I love you Dani-girl.”
“I know. Listen, I have to go. It’s been a long day.” She hung up and sat there for a minute, worrying the pad of her thumb with her teeth and trying to process everything that had just happened. That had to have been the strangest conversation she had ever had with Erick, and Allyse had added to that strangeness. He had backpedaled awful quickly after she took the phone and spoke with him privately. Dani had a sneaking suspicion she had just gotten a partial glimpse of the Allyse she had always heard about—the formidable executive—not the woman. Allyse deserved an apology for having to play referee.
“Sorry about that, Allyse.”
“He just worries about you. You really are all he has left.”
“But he has his life in the city,” Dani grumbled, letting old wounds resurface. Why can’t I just leave them in the past where they belong?
Maybe it was because Erick had gotten all parent like in trying to convince her to get rid of Polo—and why she felt the need to remind him that he wasn’t her real uncle. Jay was. Erick’s absence when she needed him most had taken away his right to talk to her like that. As much as she looked forward to his infrequent visits, she couldn’t forgive him for choosing New York over Jay, or her.