With a confidence that was impossible to fake, she sauntered to the crossing and with a flick of her wrist turned the traffic light from green to red. Four lanes of traffic screeched to a halt as they slammed on their brakes to keep from running the light. She didn’t even break her stride as she stepped onto the road and headed for the hospital.
Drew stood a distance away from Becca’s desk, watching her do the menial tasks of her job. He’d been careful to ensure that she hadn’t seen him approach, and then spent five minutes watching her and wondering what she’d wanted to say when he’d rushed away, after she’d caught him spying. Truthfully, he didn’t want to ask because he suspected she was just going to try to apologize for what he’d overheard and then try to justify her actions by gushing about that other bastard. Drew knew he didn’t have the patience to deal with that sort of utterance. Not today; not while the hurt was still so raw.
Part of him—the pimply teen part who’d spent years watching Becca from the back of the classroom—refused to give up hope though. It was willing to take all of the sensible thoughts hostage and secure them tightly, to do anything to keep hope alive. That part played dirty, whispering words to encourage Drew to continue to pursue Becca. He would have said it was an almost supernaturally driven desire, if he had believed in such rubbish.
Internally, he slapped himself. He wasn’t completely delusional; he knew that wasn’t a possibility. Even if it was, he wasn’t sure he wanted it. She’d hurt him. There was nothing to say she wouldn’t do it again.
He watched as she worked, recognizing all the little ticks he’d always thought were so cute. She twirled the ends of the curls in her ponytail, stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth when she concentrated, and danced her fingers across the desk as she read her screen. The small movements reminded him of the quiet moments she’d shared with him while they were dating, when he’d stop by her desk randomly during the day and they’d flirt and share secretive, innocent touches. When she’d pass him little love notes and he’d make carnal promises about the way their night would progress.
Did he really deserve to be her second choice?
The answer was overwhelmingly clear to him, and yet there he was staring at Becca as if he had no choice in the matter.
While Becca was Drew’s entire focus, her concentration was elsewhere. If she noticed the weight of his gaze, she didn’t let it show. She didn't turn in his direction and offer a shy smile like she used to. Neither did she hide behind the ledge of the desk to block herself from his view. Instead, she just sat staring straight ahead at her monitor as her fingers moved over the keyboard. He might as well have been on the other side of the hospital. It was further evidence of how little he had actually meant to her.
Was I ever more than just a distraction?
He thought back over their disagreements and the issues that seemed to have cropped up time and again over the last few weeks. He wondered whether maybe he’d pushed when he should have backed off. Surely Becca was able to understand that all he’d wanted was for her to find her dreams and follow them, and that he was poised ready and willing to do whatever was necessary to support her.
It was just unthinkable for him to allow her to accept mediocrity when she could have had brilliant. He wanted a perfect life for her. It was what he expected of himself, and it was natural he’d want the same for her—more so with his mother's words echoing in his head.
“Find yourself a girl as smart as you are and treat her as your equal. A trophy will tarnish as the years go on, and she'll just end up resenting you for restricting her to such a life.”
He’d been certain Becca was that girl, and he hadn’t wanted to allow her to relegate herself into the trophy-wife role the way she’d seemed ready to during their time together.
True, his mother’s words had been about his father’s treatment of her before the divorce, but they had affected Drew nonetheless. He’d been told the story of her lost career and witnessed her misery first-hand.
Long ago, fresh out of college, his mother had been given the chance to follow her dreams into fashion and help cofound a magazine, but she’d passed on the opportunity in order to be with his father. She’d given up every other career goal when Drew was born.
By the time Drew was fourteen, his mother’s friend was a multi-millionaire heading up a magazine so popular that most new designers would have given their eye teeth to score a feature. After receiving a fresh offer to work at the magazine, in a lowly role barely above that of a paid intern, his mother decided that giving up her dreams once was more than enough. She’d packed everything of hers and Drew’s and they’d shipped off to Orange County without his father.
After learning of her shattered dreams and feeling the bitter sting of resentment she harbored toward him and his father, Drew had sworn to do anything he needed to help his mother achieve her goals, even as he pursued his own. By the time he’d moved back to Flint, she had finally made editor-in-chief—the position that could have been hers almost thirty years earlier if circumstances were different. He vowed never to let anyone he loved make the same sacrifices his mother had.
Becca would never have had to make such a gesture if he had anything to do with it. He would have worshipped her and supported every sensible dream and desire she’d had.
He wondered whether he should try to articulate those issues better for her. Maybe that would change things and they could have another chance at a happily ever after. She may have thought she had feelings for that bastard, Evan, simply because Drew had pushed too hard, too fast. It was possible that with his insistence and guidance, he’d forced her away rather than drawing her closer. He’d tried to explain it before, of course, but somehow his words always became tangled on his tongue and came out wrong. They always left his mouth harsher than he desired, providing a spark to the fire that burned within Becca.
He planned to march over to Becca and tell her everything that was on his mind as soon as her shift finished. When she walked past him toward the staff room though, her gaze met his for a fraction of a second before she looked away again. In that brief glimpse, he saw pity and regret—not the love he deserved.
There was no “misunderstanding” about it. He knew that deep inside. She wanted someone else, and the thought was enough to burn Drew alive.
What was the point in trying to explain anything when she’d already made up her mind?
Amity still couldn’t understand how her boneheaded brother could have made such a monumental error. Instead of releasing the cupid from servitude with a blessing to pursue his love, Michael had led him to believe that he was duty bound to pair her—to pair this Rebecca—with someone else, with the good doctor that she had to help.
Not only that, Michael had known this cupid had revealed his true nature to his charge and done nothing to rectify the situation.
Amity had no doubt it was all to do with Heaven’s “hands-off” policy. Let those on Earth guide themselves with minimal interference. She rolled her eyes. Sure, it was fine for Heaven to put a cupid in the path of two random souls, but God forbid you actually give that cupid any concrete instructions or a guidebook.
She realized her brother probably assumed that her constant presence in the mind of everyone on Earth was enough to have helped lead the cupid to the truth. If he had, then he’d significantly overestimated what her influence actually did. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d made that sort of mistake either. Sometimes she wondered whether any of her brothers actually knew her, or anything about the humans in their care.
With each new millennia that passed, it became more apparent that the angels simply didn’t understand what she was and wasn’t capable of. The same could be said for their views on humanity. She’d seen the darker elements of human nature, parts which her brothers preferred to gloss over. Some of those aspects fascinated her, but they were also a large part of the reason she’d spent so much time away from everything, and why she buried her true self beneat
h designer clothing and expensive cars.
Her step faltered as the truth of that thought echoed throughout her body. Sometimes knowing every truth, being unable to fool herself for even a minute, just sucked. She took a deep breath as she pushed aside her many issues. Her brothers cared about her, she knew they did. It was just that they didn’t get her. No one ever had. She doubted anyone ever would. Maybe the sad truth was that no one ever truly understood anyone else in the universe. That those who claimed they’d met their soul mate were just lucky to have found the one person who understood them slightly better than all the other suckers out there.
Never mind, she thought dismissively, stopping the train of thought in its tracks and not allowing her depression to grow strong enough to make her disappear before she’d done what she’d come to do. There was, after all, no point in dwelling on her brothers’ failure to grasp who she was, or her exasperation with the world at large. Instead, she’d rather focus on finding out just how badly Michael’s inaction had damaged this special case.
If Michael was right, if this Drew fellow she’d been assigned to had in fact been in the direct line of fire of a cupid’s mistaken match, the fallout could be potentially catastrophic. Didn’t she know that truth all too well? Painfully well. She shook off the doubt and took a deep breath. Once she was certain her assured, confident façade was firmly back in place, she stepped through automatic glass doors to start her first mission in fifty years.
Chapter Four
Drew was still arguing with himself—his pride battling hard against the part of him that wanted to chase after Becca—when the glass doors opened with a swish. Striding into the building with a purposeful gait was a gorgeous woman who could have easily walked into the hospital straight off the streets of Orange County. She reminded him of being back home with his mom. Of proper Hollywood money, wrapped from head to toe in designer wear. Although Drew couldn’t instantly name the brands, he definitely recognized the signs that the clothes weren’t from the local discount stores.
Before long, Drew was ready to put the blonde from his mind. After his first glance, he’d figured he had her pegged. She was just like all the other plastic fantastics he'd known once upon a time. Sure, they were good for a few nights of distraction, but they didn't turn his eye, or his heart, the way Becca had. In fact, most of the girls who looked like her, at least most of the ones he'd encountered, rarely had the intellect to hold a meaningful conversation. Any who could hold their own in a witty dialogue were usually career driven and after something just as casual as he’d wanted himself.
He turned away to go back to his vital task of stalking after Becca while she collected her personal items from the staff room. He was midway through a fresh internal debate over whether or not to talk to her when something compelled him to look at the new arrival again. It was almost as if an enormous, invisible hand had grabbed his head, swiveled it in her direction, and refused to let him look away again.
He watched as she walked up to the desk Becca had vacated not long ago. While he was forced to watch her, he realized that she wasn't quite like all the other blonde Barbies he'd seen and dated on the West Coast. The platinum hair that spilled down her back was almost pristinely white, barely a hint of yellow color shone through at all. It was so pale that it could only be bleached, yet she had no dark roots clawing their way out of her scalp as if desperate to force her to resubmit to her natural color. Rather, it appeared that the stripped-out white was natural. The fact that her eyebrows were only a few shades darker, made Drew think perhaps it was.
The new arrival leaned against the counter with a casual stance and looked Kylie, the person now occupying the reception desk, squarely in the eye with a confidence that was rare. Drew would have considered this new sight sexy had his heart not just been crushed underneath the heel of Becca’s boot.
The way the blonde stood as she chatted with Kylie left Drew with a clear and unobstructed view of her body. He took full advantage and assessed her with an admiring gaze; figuring he might as well considering the odd compulsion to stare at her. Maybe if he took in every feature, he could learn more about why she held him captive. There had to be something his mind had noticed to pin him in place so, but it wasn’t being helpful by offering up what exactly that might be.
Her breasts were barely tucked into her singlet top, which she wore despite the nip of winter that was beginning to invade the air. Her cleavage didn't exactly spill over the top of the material, the way it usually did on those beautiful phonies back in California. Instead, the lipstick pink material neatly framed her perfectly formed chest, allowing her to straddle the thin line between sexy and demure.
Her jean-clad legs were shapely and long, rising up to what Drew was certain would be a pert ass if she just twisted a little more to the left to give him a better view.
The overall effect was a little unsettling, in that it made Drew forget Becca’s existence for a precious few seconds as his blood flowed south at a rapid rate. The blonde laughed at something Kylie said. The action caused her chest to rise and fall in time with the melodic sound of her giggle, which was enough to stop Drew’s breath momentarily. His mouth dried out and he had to lower the clipboard in his hands to cover the prominent bulge rising in his trousers.
With his eyes drawn to her so completely, it was impossible for him not to notice the natural bounce to her breasts and the fact that they lacked the artificial roundness that always seemed to accompany a boob job. Either her perfect chest was completely natural or her surgeon was fantastic.
As she spoke to Kylie, he noted that while the stranger's lips were pouty, they didn't appear plumped up. She didn't have the fake, stunned look of someone injected with far too much Botox. In fact, she was so perfect it was almost unnerving. Like she'd stepped out of the photo-shopped pages of his mother’s fashion magazine. The sort of person who just didn’t exist in real life—except she was right there in front of him . . . living.
She turned toward him, her cornflower-blue irises levelled at him as if he was exactly the person she was looking for. Then she smiled. Her soft pink lips parted slightly to show a row of pristine, white teeth. As if her grin was a signal to release the hold over him, Drew finally felt like he could breathe and move on his own again. It didn’t mean he could go anywhere in a hurry though, not until his blood had flowed back out of his favorite body part and resumed its normal pumping routine.
Embarrassed to be caught staring, he averted his eyes before lifting the patient chart back up in front of him—hoping that the situation downstairs wasn’t too noticeable as long as he didn’t move—and pretending it was the most fascinating read ever. He didn’t dare look up again, or even breathe, until she’d walked past him. Relieved to have not been caught and confronted about his obvious staring—he supposed she was probably used to it—he lifted his eyes from the chart again, only to meet Becca’s gaze.
He hadn’t heard her approach, but she must have followed in the blonde’s wake. The pity and compassion in the depth of her eyes was too much for him to bear. He wanted to turn and walk away. He didn’t need her to feel sorry for him. Even though ten minutes earlier, he’d wanted nothing more than to have her talk to him, he didn’t want it like this. It wasn’t enough for him to have her attention, he needed her love. There was nothing more that he wanted in that moment than for her to look at him the way she had done in the first few weeks after they first started dating.
Back then, lust and desire filled her eyes. Every time her gaze wandered in his direction, she had looked at him like he was the only man in the world. The man she wanted more than anything else, not like he was some pathetic stray puppy.
When she opened her mouth to say something, he narrowed his eyes at her to let her know her sympathy was misplaced before turning and stalking away without listening to whatever lies she wanted to spin.
Amity had to admit that the good doctor was pretty cute. She also noted he thought of himself as Drew, not Andrew. It seemed he
r own name wasn’t the only one Michael butchered.. She hadn’t been able to study him in great detail as she’d spoken to the receptionist, but her sojourn at the registration desk had given him a chance to study her. She’d made sure of it. Even now, after she’d released him from her hold, Amity could still feel the way his gaze had prickled along her skin. As he’d watched her, she’d traced her grace around the edges of his mind and had gleaned some basic details about the girl— Becca, as Drew knew her—whom he was pining for.
She just wished she’d been on the scene just a few minutes earlier, so she could have had a chance to witness the interaction between the cupid’s intended love and the one who’d suffered from the cupid’s misfired arrow. The hurt echoing off Drew in the moments before Amity walked into the hospital was still a palpable presence in her mind. She felt the truth of it echo through her limbs, just as it had rocked through Drew’s body.
Having experienced the depth of Drew’s grief and love, Amity wondered whether it was even possible for the cupid to love the girl trapped in the middle of a Heavenly shit storm more than the doctor did. That question drove her need to learn more, which was probably exactly, what Michael expected to happen. Damn her curiosity and desire to learn the truth. She still wasn’t sure exactly what fallout her brother had been concerned about or why they’d wanted her on the scene. She had thought that paying the cupid a visit might help her to work it out. Except, she couldn’t do that.
Technically, Michael warned her not to interfere there—hadn’t even given her names or any clues to go off in order to locate the wayward bow-boy. Despite that, she hadn’t thought it would be too difficult to find out more; there were markers she could look for after all, but Michael had been very explicit when he’d told her to stay away. He’d mentioned something about the delicate balance of the universe being at stake, and Heaven’s promise still needing to play out between the cupid and his lover. Michael had even gone so far as to warn Amity that her involvement with that couple might shift the plan entirely.
All Amity Allows (Fall for You Book 2) Page 4