Bailey had to grin. She honestly didn’t care what anyone thought about her, but hearing Grandpa J say that she was a big shot had her heart expanding.
“That may be, but Dr. Rossum’s dance partner was unable to attend and unfortunately participation stipulates that you must be part of a couple.”
“That doesn’t make a lick of sense, young lady.”
“Those are the rules.” Sierra held her ground.
“Dad, there you are!” Grace Hunter, Grandpa J’s daughter-in-law called out as she walked past the double doors of the ballroom. She smiled and waved at Bailey before continuing. “Mike’s been looking for you. There’s someone he wanted you to meet.”
Grandpa J glanced over to Bailey.
“Thanks for your help. I’m fine,” Bailey assured him.
“Okay, but if a partner’s what you need, you come find me. My dance card is wide open,” he added with a wink.
“Thanks.” Bailey watched as the epitome of what a good man was walked back across the lobby to Grace.
Just as she was about to launch into another campaign as to why she had to be permitted to participate in the fundraiser she heard a noise behind her. The second the sound hit her ears, the hairs on her arm stood on end. Her breath hitched as she slowly turned on her heel and saw Josh in his white T-shirt, bomber jacket, and jeans that were faded in all the right places. It had been so dark when he’d picked her up, she hadn’t noticed the five o’clock shadow covering his square jaw. She hadn’t been able to fully appreciate just how damn handsome he was.
She’d seen him around town several times, but it was always from a distance. At the wedding they’d walked in together, but he’d been so hell-bent on freezing her out that she’d ignored him out of basic pride. It might seem silly that she’d been home for six years, been in a wedding with him, and had not truly looked at him…but that’s exactly what’d happened.
Now, as he stood in front of her, up close and personal, she was overwhelmed by the man he’d grown into. His body was no longer lean and athletic, now his frame was larger, chiseled, and all-male. His blue eyes still stood out beneath a bed of dark lashes that seemed wasted on someone with a penis. And then there was his panty-melting, perfect mouth. Josh had a laundry list of amazing qualities, but his lips ranked the highest in her estimation. She wasn’t sure if it was the proportions, with his lower lip slightly larger than the top, or the shape of his cupid’s bow, or if it was the deep raspberry color that made them so delicious, but whatever it was, her mouth watered as her gaze ran over them.
He lifted his arm and held out her bag.
He’d saved her.
Again.
* * *
A punch in the gut. That’s what seeing Bailey look at him like he was her hero did to him. And not just any hero, a superhero. That look used to make him believe that he was Superman. She made him feel like he had superpowers and could rescue her, fix anything, and protect her.
Growing up, his cousin Brian used to tease Josh that he wore a cape under his hoodie and was always looking for any opportunity to fly in and save the day when it came to Bailey. And he was right.
The first time he’d seen that look in her eye, it had been totally undeserved, which made it even more addicting. They’d been “dating,” which, at twelve meant walking to school together, holding hands, and kissing, for three weeks. They were walking home when a flash storm hit. He’d quickly covered her head with his backpack and led her beneath a tiny overhang that sheltered her from the elements.
While the rain poured down around him, falling on his shoulders and back, he lifted his arms to shield her. The look in her big, brown eyes as she stared up at him had been heartbreakingly tender and sweet.
“Thank you,” she’d said with a sincerity that made him want to be the person that was reflected in her eyes.
That was it. From that moment on, he’d been chasing that same expression, that same pure, unadulterated appreciation and awe.
Now, as they stood in the lobby of the country club, she was looking at him exactly the way he’d always wanted her to. Except now it didn’t mean anything to him.
“Here.” He handed her the purse.
“Thank you.” Tender vulnerability shone in her milk-chocolate gaze before she turned back to the woman that she didn’t seem too happy with. Reaching into her bag she pulled out a piece of paper. “Here’s my ticket and here’s my ID.”
Josh turned to leave but only made it two steps when he heard the woman’s response.
“Great.” The woman’s response was patronizing at best. “To register you to participate in the event I still need your partner.”
“I told you, he couldn’t make it. But I’m here. I can dance.”
“Not without a partner.”
“If this is an ethical issue, I told you, he didn’t raise the funds. I obtained over fifty thousand dollars in pledges—”
“This is a couples dance-a-thon. Regardless of who obtained your pledges, you can’t dance alone. You must have a partner.”
“Are there any singles signed up that I can partner with?”
“No.”
“Where am I supposed to find a partner?”
He could hear that Bailey was about to lose it and just like the feeling that he’d gotten when he’d seen Buford on the side of the road, he knew that this was not going to end well. For him.
“Have you tried Craigslist?” The young woman answered with feigned sincerity.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Josh had never subscribed to that philosophy, but he was now living proof that it was correct.
If he’d had even an ounce of self-preservation he’d have run from the building the second he returned her purse, or better yet, not been in the situation to begin with because he wouldn’t have pulled over earlier. But he had and instead of taking off now, he found himself making an about-face.
“I’ll do it.”
Bailey’s head spun toward him and she stared at him in complete shock.
He stared back at her with what he hoped was his best poker face. He willed himself not to reveal that his heart was racing a million miles an hour, or that his palms were sweaty, or that he wanted to throw up at the thought of holding her in his arms.
Her head began to shake back and forth slowly and she lifted her hands in mock surrender. “No. Josh, you don’t have to—”
Harper’s Crossing was a small town, and as much as he tried to ignore all things Bailey Rossum, word on the street was that she’d collected the lion’s share of the pledges for the yearly fundraiser. If she was disqualified, the hospital would suffer. “Can you get the pledges if you don’t dance?”
“I can figure something out,” Bailey responded.
“No,” The young woman in all black holding an iPad countered.
Bailey’s nostrils flared at the woman’s response. “I’ll see if someone who’s here will partner with me. Really, you don’t have to do this.”
No shit, but he was going to and her arguing with him about it wasn’t making it any easier. He turned toward the woman with the iPad. “Is there anyone here not partnered up?”
“Nope.” iPad holder confirmed pointedly toward Bailey.
“What do I have to do to sign up?”
“Josh.” Bailey reached out to touch his arm, but he moved it away before she made contact.
It might seem ridiculous since he’d just agreed to twenty-four hours of contact with her, but that was on his terms. He didn’t need her touching him on hers.
“Just read and sign this.” The woman handed the device to him and Josh scanned the liability form as she explained the rules and assigned them a team number. Using the digital pen attached, he signed his name and handed it back to her.
She glanced down at it and then began typing.
After a few moments of the three of them standing there in silence, the young lady lifted her head, and her eyes widened at them both. “Is there something else I can h
elp you with?”
“That’s it? We’re all good?” Bailey voiced the same questions he’d had.
“Yes,” the girl answered as if they were both total idiots.
Which, considering his actions, that might not be an unreasonable assessment.
Chapter 5
Bailey stood and stared at herself in the mirror. She barely recognized the person she saw. Questions began to populate in her mind like pop-up ads.
Who is this woman?
When did I get so many tiny lines around my eyes and a deep crease in my forehead?
Why didn’t I make the time to pluck my eyebrows?
Do I always have a perma-frown?
Around the hospital she’d heard herself referred to as having RBF, resting bitch face. It had never bothered her. She was a surgeon. She was there to save lives. And not just any lives. The lives of infants and children. She wasn’t there to win a popularity contest.
Not that she thought her facial expression was solely responsible for the unflattering nickname. She had no doubt that her blunt personality was certainly part of it. And that didn’t bother her one bit, either. It had taken her years to live down the nicknames that she’d acquired in medical school: Dr. Barbie. Dr. Pinup. And her personal least favorite, Dr. Double Ds. Her cup size was F but there was no way that she was going to correct anyone.
The point was, she’d been underestimated her entire life. People judged her book by her cover. Having blonde hair and huge boobs didn’t exactly scream that she’d joined Mensa when she was fourteen. Her appearance had always been more of a nuisance than an asset.
But still…when had she stopped looking like herself? When had she stopped taking care of herself?
The door to the bathroom opened and Bailey snapped out of her identity crisis and began washing her hands.
“You made it!” Becca Sloan-Scott, one of Bailey’s oldest friends, and a resident at HCC, announced as she stepped up to the sink beside her. “You look beautiful!”
“So do you!” With dark hair, fair skin, and ruby red lips, Becca had always reminded Bailey of a fairytale princess. So, it was fitting when she was with Brian on the reality show Fairytale Love. Tonight was no exception, she wore a gown that could’ve easily been worn by Cinderella to the ball.
“I have to admit, it’s nice getting out of scrubs sometimes.” Becca pulled out her lipstick and began applying it.
Bailey nodded and decided to check her purse for some lipstick of her own as the automatic water shut off. For some reason, knowing that she’d be face to face with Josh for the next twenty-four hours was making her very conscious of how she looked. And smelled. She’d already popped two mints.
“I was getting worried that you got called in,” Becca voiced her concern as she ran the tube across her lips.
“I had some car trouble.”
Becca’s face softened and her eyes filled with genuine compassion and Bailey knew that she must’ve heard about the loss of baby Ramsey. “Did you take Buford out?” Her friend knew that whenever Bailey had a bad day, she went for a ride in her grandpa’s truck.
“Yeah.”
Bailey turned to dry her hands when she saw Becca pointing to her leg in the mirror. “You have some kind of smudge. It looks like…grease…”
She twisted to look in the mirror and saw that in the middle of her calf was a dark spot. “It’s probably from the motorcycle,” she said as she wiped it off.
“Motorcycle?” Becca’s forehead creased. “I didn’t know Peter rode.”
“He doesn’t.” Peter on a motorcycle was a comical thought. Some men, men like Josh, were born to ride. And some men were not. Peter was firmly in the not category.
Becca pulled a blush brush out of her purse and lifted it to her cheek. “Then what motorcycle were you….”
“Josh’s.” Bailey’s eyes cut to see what her friend’s reaction to that news would be.
Becca was one of the few people in Bailey’s life that knew the whole, sordid story of her and Josh. Well, not the whole story, but even Josh didn’t know the whole story.
“Josh’s?” Becca froze mid-blush stroke. “As in Josh Scott, Josh’s?”
“He picked me up when I was walking down Firefly Road.”
“What happened to Peter?”
“He flaked.”
“Again?” Becca’s face scrunched.
“Yeah. He had to stay home with his wife.”
“His wife?!” Becca repeated.
“Because she’s pregnant,” Bailey stated flatly.
When there was no response, Bailey glanced over at her friend and saw that her jaw was hanging open.
“What the…?!” her friend finally exclaimed.
“Exactly.”
“So are you still going to dance?”
“Yep.”
“With whom?”
“Josh.”
“Wait…what?” Her friend shook her head in confusion. “Is this another wedding party scena—”
“No,” Bailey cut her friend off. Last year, when Becca got married, Bailey had asked if she could be paired with Josh. She’d done it as a final attempt to make some sort of amends, but he’d completely iced her out. The entire weekend he didn’t say one word to her. Not. One. Word. She’d sworn Becca to secrecy that it had been her that had requested that they walk together. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. He picked me up when I was walking, then I forgot my purse in the back of his bike, he came in to return it when the check-in chick was making my life difficult and he offered.”
“He did?!” Becca looked as surprised as Bailey felt.
It hadn’t been a shock that Josh had insisted on giving her a ride. But this was a whole different ballgame. They were going to be cheek to cheek, swaying back and forth together, for twenty-four hours.
“Wow.” Her friend let out a slow breath.
Yep. That about summed it up.
An announcement interrupted the soft jazz that was playing over the speakers in the bathroom. “Five-minute warning, dancers. Time to make your way to the dance floor.”
Bailey looked at herself once more in the mirror. She looked…tired. And her hair was a mess. Between the wind and the helmet, it had not fared well.
Josh always liked your hair up, a small voice sounded in the back of her mind.
No. She shut that voice down as she rummaged through her purse. This was not about Josh. This was about looking presentable. So what if he’d always loved her hair up? Who cared if his favorite place to kiss her was at the base of her neck? This was purely motivated out of comfort. Not by what Josh liked. At least, that’s what she was telling herself as she began gathering her hair to pull it up.
“Hair up, huh?” The amusement in Becca’s voice made Bailey blush. Becca remembered. Why wouldn’t she? Bailey used to tell her friend that when she wore her hair in a ponytail, Josh would sneak kisses and nips at her neck. She’d called it the vampire effect.
“Yep.”
“You trying to get Josh to go all Twilight on you?” She wagged her brows.
“I’m going to be dancing for the next twenty-four hours in a floor-length gown, the last thing I need is my hair in my face.”
“Riiiight.” Becca clearly wasn’t buying it, but she let it go. As they made their way out of the bathroom she asked, “As much as I love getting out of scrubs, whose bright idea was it to have this be a black-tie dance-a-thon?”
“I know,” Bailey chuckled. “Why couldn’t it be a sweats dance-a-thon?”
Secretly, though, she was happy Josh had seen her in her gown. They’d never gotten to go to a formal dance, and the teenager in her was living out her prom fantasy…but she wasn’t about to share that with Becca. Or with Josh. She was used to keeping things to herself, this was no different.
* * *
“I see you dressed up for the occasion.”
Josh’s cousin Brian slapped him on the shoulder as he stepped up to the bar beside him.
He didn’t
respond. It wasn’t that he was trying to be a dick. He just wasn’t sure if he could speak. He was too busy being in denial over the events that had unfolded this evening. He still hadn’t recovered from his ride with Bailey, and now he’d just signed up to spend the next twenty-four hours with her. Dancing with her. Touching her. Smelling her. Feeling her.
It was more than his brain could process at that moment. He was living smack dab in the middle of a nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from. Or maybe it was his wildest dream…he wasn’t clear on that either.
“Seriously. What are you doing here, man?” Brian asked. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”
Josh didn’t belong at this penguin-suit party. And as his cousin had pointed out, he definitely stuck out in his jeans, T-shirt, and work boots.
“I didn’t expect to be here,” Josh stated flatly.
He and Brian had been close growing up. And as adults, they were even closer. After Brian’s dad had a heart attack a few years back, Josh had stepped in to run his Uncle Frank’s auto repair shop. His uncle had owned and operated it for over forty years and it wasn’t something his uncle or Brian trusted with just anyone.
He could feel Brian’s stare boring into the side of his face, but he ignored it. He was too busy shoring up the emotional blockades he’d built over the years. Bailey wasn’t just an ex. She wasn’t just the one that got away. She wasn’t even just his soulmate. She was his soul. Their relationship might’ve been a distraction for her, but it had been everything to him.
“Come on, the suspense is killing me,” his cousin joked as he elbowed him.
“I’m going to dance.” Josh kept his response short and sweet.
“With who?”
“Bailey.”
“Bailey who?” Brian asked.
Josh didn’t respond.
“Wait…Bailey, Bailey? Your Bailey?”
She wasn’t his Bailey anymore. It turned out, she never really was.
Josh answered with a nod.
“How did that happen?”
Josh lifted his shot to his lips, downed it, and turned toward the dance floor. “Her date flaked.”
Just One Night - Josh & Bailey (Crossroads Book 13) Page 4