“You’re missing the point. He can be whoever you want him to be. When the clock strikes twelve or whatever hour it is when he feels he’s schmoozed enough, he can go back to being himself again.”
“Ah,” Lee murmured, smiling as she let herself get into the fantasy. “But before that happens, we’ll have transformed her into this alluring creature who... what? Captivates him? Bends him to her will?”
Dana gave a sage nod. “Bending his will works.”
“I see.” Lee’s eyes sparkled. “So, she’ll have him on his knees begging at her feet while he offers her champagne in her crystal slipper.”
“Now you’ve got it.”
“And feeding her caviar with a silver spoon by a fountain in the moonlight with a ginger-scented breeze bringing strains of Strauss from the orchestra inside.”
“Exactly.”
“And when he offers his hand for a dance, she finds the champagne has gone to her head and he lifts her in his arms to cradle her against his chest. And with the music playing and her resistance shot, he proceeds to steal her breath with his kisses.”
Lee was clearly waiting for an indication she was still on the right track. But Dana was suddenly silent. So was Katie. Neither moved a muscle as they stared at the prettybut-decidedly-unassuming woman staring back at them.
“I was just trying to get into the spirit of things,” Lee defended.
“You were doing just fine, too.” Dana, intrigued, quietly encouraged her. “Keep going.”
“That’s okay,” Katie interjected. “You really don’t have to.”
“Why not? She’s finally getting into this. Go on, Lee. What happens after the stealing-her-breath part?”
“Nothing,” Katie replied, though “nothing” wasn’t what had happened at all. After stealing her breath, the “prince” had backed her down her hall while systematically removing her clothing. He’d also reduced her to a mass of quivering nerve endings, which somehow resulted in her hesitating only slightly before she’d unzipped his pants.
“He does nothing,” she hastily repeated, turning away to hoist the heavy skirt past her white socks. “Now, what kind of fool—shoes, I mean. What kind of shoes,” she repeated, “do I wear with this? Can I get away with my black leather slings?”
For a moment, the only sound in the dressing room was the rustle of Lee’s rumpled uniform as she slowly rose to stand beside Dana. Turning away had accomplished nothing. All Katie had done was face the mirror, which gave her friends an excellent view of the consternation shadowing her face. Reflected back in the features of a striking blonde and a slightly frayed-looking brunette was both confusion and concern.
“Hey.” Dana touched her shoulder, sympathy heavy in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Yeah,” Lee agreed, giving Katie’s too-emphatic reaction priority over her little lapse into fantasyland. “What’s going on?”
Katie shook her head. It wasn’t like her to get rattled so easily. And it certainly wasn’t like her to rain on a parade. Her friends were just letting their hair down after a day in the trenches. She’d had no business taking the good-natured banter so seriously.
“PMS?” she offered, wondering precisely when she’d lost her sense of perspective.
“Ah,” Lee murmured knowingly.
“That would explain it,” Dana agreed. “Try exercise. It works wonders.”
“Or herb teas,” Lee suggested. “If you don’t have a list of what to use, I’ll give you one. Very soothing.”
Contrite, Katie smiled. “Thanks, guys.”
Smiling back, Dana spread her hands. “What are friends for?”
The question made Katie feel like a fraud. There was precious little she hadn’t shared over the years with these two wonderful women. But her consternation over Mike wasn’t something she could bring up without getting into the reason she was such a mental mess to begin with—and that wasn’t something she was willing to mention at all. Dana would want details. Lee would think her a traitor. Beyond that, what had happened between her and Mike needed to stay between the two of them, if for no other reason than they were both trying to get past it. It was only a matter of time before she would stop being reminded of how shamelessly she’d responded to him every time she saw him. In time, too, her body would stop craving his touch. She didn’t know if her rationale made any sense or not, but if she couldn’t make sense of how she felt to herself, she had no hope of explaining it to anyone else.
Unfortunately, the one person she could have talked with to straighten it all out was also the same person she wanted to talk about. Seeing no earthly way to separate the two, she sought less complicated ground.
“Friends are for turning me into Cinderella.” She glanced down at the white socks poking from under the deep hem and wiggled her toes. “Come on, you guys,” she coaxed, making it sound as if she were simply anxious to get on with her transformation, rather than desperate to change the subject. “Shoes?”
By the time her friends declared her properly outfitted and accessorized and they’d headed home after annihilating a pizza, the evening was shot. They hadn’t shopped only for Katie. Dana bought a going-away present for a neighbor who was moving, and Lee purchased a slinky red teddy. They’d also looked for something for Katie to give her dad for his birthday next month, but he was nearly impossible to buy for and they’d come up with zip. Since her mom hadn’t been any help in the idea department so far, Katie was taking suggestions from everyone.
Dana had suggested that she ask Mike since he would know exactly what to get him.
That was true enough and, normally, he was exactly who Katie would have turned to. She wouldn’t have even hesitated. Mike would know of some obscure book or odd little collectible that even her mom, the woman who had been married to the man for thirty-three years, probably wouldn’t have known to consider. But she couldn’t just pick up the phone and call Mike anymore. There were no conversations, quick or otherwise, that didn’t leave her painfully aware of the strain in their relationship.
On the surface, their interaction at the hospital seemed quite normal. To anyone watching them, anyway. During rounds, Mike’s professional manner was the same as always—efficient, pleasant, precise. He even greeted her with the same casual smile he offered everyone else, when he wasn’t preoccupied. But to Katie, it was apparent that he weighed his words when they spoke, much as she had found herself doing with him. And the spontaneity that had once allowed them to spend a moment talking about whatever the other was up to was completely missing. Their former ease with each other had taken a hike. Gone the way of the dodo. Vanished. Valiant as their efforts were to pretend that what had happened didn’t matter, they were miserably ineffective. She hated the guarded way she felt. More than anything, she hated that he so clearly felt the same way.
He wouldn’t even touch her.
She’d never realized before how often or how casually Mike used to initiate physical contact. Now, every time he’d reach toward her to get her attention, he would deliberately check his motion, curling his fingers to stuff his hand in the pocket of his lab coat or his jacket or his slacks. As for the way he used to drape his arm companionably over her shoulders to walk her to the elevator or her car, that behavior was history. But what she missed most was the habit he’d developed in the past few months of nudging her hair back from her cheek.
She had never let herself believe there was any significance to the gesture beyond brotherly affection. Yet, being deprived of his touch had become as significant to her as being deprived of his friendship. And even though they continued to work together surprisingly well, their friendship was definitely suffering. When a week passed and he’d yet to ask for her help with his presentation, she bit the proverbial bullet and brought it up herself after he’d written orders one morning.
“I posted your memo about the end of your drug study,” she said, coming up beside him at the nurses’ station. “It was nice of you to thank the nurses for their help.”
“I couldn’t have done it without them. Or you,” he added, pocketing his pen. “I know it was a lot of extra work.”
“You have all the data you need, then?”
“Enough to form a conclusion.” His smile deceptively easy, he handed her the chart he’d just closed. “How’s the new computer program working out?”
He wasn’t all that interested in the computer. She was sure of it. All he wanted to do was change the subject, and because there were a half a dozen other people within earshot, Katie simply said, “Not,” and turned her attention to the orders he’d left for his patient. Even if they had been alone, a circumstance he seemed to be avoiding, there wasn’t much she could say anyway. She’d given him the perfect opportunity to ask for her help. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he didn’t want it.
He still wanted her to go to the Heart Ball, though. He reminded her of it a moment later, and again, two days before the event. It was almost as if he was afraid she’d forget.
As if she could.
The date was marked prominently on her calendar, and she was quite aware of just which day fell where. By the Saturday morning of the ball, it had been exactly thirtyone days since she’d last drawn the little witch’s hat on her calendar that marked the first day of her period. The people in Greenwich could practically set their to-the-nth-of-a-second, international time clock by her cycle. She was that regular. Normally. And no matter how she counted, she was three days late.
The delay could be caused by fatigue. It could be nerves. After all, heaven knew her nerves had had their little neurons tested, frayed and stretched considerably over the past three weeks. And she was on birth control, she reminded herself. Maybe she was just coming down with something. Again.
The knot in her stomach doubled at the thought. The fact that she’d had something in the first place—the sore throat that had dragged her down during the week from hell last month—could be the problem. She’d been on an antibiotic, and certain antibiotics rendered birth control pills ineffective.
But they’d only done it once, she mentally argued, pacing between her closet and the bathroom while she got ready for work. Pulling on her uniform, Spike trotting faithfully at her heels, she also reminded herself that that particular argument held about as much water as the brass colander on her kitchen counter. How many young girls had she talked with at the free clinic who’d only had sex once—or so they’d claimed—and were now hugely pregnant?
She whipped her wildly curling hair into a scrunchee at her nape. Wondering how she was ever going to tame it for tonight, she added mousse to the mental list of items she needed to pick up on her way home this afternoon—and told herself it was way too soon to panic. She had been pretty upset lately and when she got upset her system did get a little out of whack. She’d skipped an entire period the month she’d taken her nursing boards. Stress could do that. So just because there was a possibility she could be pregnant didn’t mean she was. The fact that she was a couple of days late meant nothing. It was rather like watching a pot, waiting for it to boil. Her period would start if she’d just stop worrying about it.
Still, just to be sure, she added pregnancy test to the list. After all, she was stopping at the drugstore, anyway. If she left work at the exact moment her shift ended, she could make her stop and be home by four-thirty. That would give her exactly two hours to take the test to put her mind at ease, shower, and transform herself into something resembling a vision.
The plan was sound. It was her timing that was off.
She left work right on time, but it took longer at the drugstore than she’d thought it would because she decided to go to one she didn’t usually frequent so she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew. Then, since the store stocked three brands of home pregnancy tests, she had to read them all because she wanted the one that would give her the fastest, most accurate results. Even with those little delays, she figured she could have accomplished everything on time—if Spike hadn’t decided he’d been ignored just a little too much lately and unearthed the four-foot fern atop her bookcase. He’d dragged it, rootball and all, over her pale beige carpet and stuffed it under her bed. By the time she had what she could salvage of the listless plant recovering in a milk carton atop her fireplace mantel—the one place Spike couldn’t leap on—and the mess vacuumed up, she’d was left with sixty-two minutes to perform a miracle.
Mike was there in sixty-one.
She seemed harried.
That was Mike’s first impression when Katie opened the door and stepped back to hustle Spike onto the sofa so the cat wouldn’t make for the pine tree out front. His second thought, as he watched her clip on a long, dangling pearl earring and open the closet for her coat, was that she looked exquisite.
“I’m almost ready,” she said, pulling her long, burgundy raincoat from a hanger. “I can put my lipstick on in the car.”
He reached for the coat. “Slow down.”
“I don’t want to make you late.”
“You won’t.” His appreciative glance moved from the soft curls cascading from the pearl clips that held her hair up and away from her flushed face, past the dangling earrings, and skimmed the satiny expanse of shoulders and arms. Her skin looked as soft as the midnight black velvet clinging faithfully to her high breasts, narrow waist and enticing swell of her hips. The gown was classic, elegant. And Katie filled it out in a way that nearly made his mouth water. “How long can it take to put on lipstick?”
“With liner? About thirty seconds.”
“I think we can spare that. Go.”
He took her coat when she handed it to him and watched her hurry down the short hall, his glance roving shamelessly over bare skin and the rich-looking fabric that reached from the middle of her back to the floor. He was so accustomed to seeing her in scrubs or a sweater and leggings, that he’d forgotten how stunning she could be. Or had he even known? he wondered. He’d seen her dressed up on any number of occasions over the years. It was just that none of them had been since he’d moved back to Honeygrove.
Or maybe, he thought, turning away when she disappeared though the bedroom door he’d backed her through three weeks ago, he was just looking at her differently now. And seeing far more than he once had.
Preferring to avoid the thoughts complicating his life, he turned to face a bedraggled plant in a milk carton on the mantel.
“That’s interesting,” he murmured, when the rustle of heavy fabric caught his attention. “New art?”
Preoccupied, still rushing, confusion shifted through her dark eyes. Clutching a small, beaded bag, she reached to take her coat, and finally noticed where he was looking. “Oh, that. That’s why I’m running late. Spike decided to rearrange the bookcase.”
“Were you ignoring him again?”
For the first time since he’d arrived, she didn’t simply brush a glance past his shoulders or his chin. The faint smile curving her lush, rose-tinted mouth was fleeting, but there was enough of that soft expression in her eyes for him to feel the connection that had been missing the past few weeks. Insignificant as the subject was, he’d immediately suspected why her cat had decided to punish her. And without words she’d confessed to the transgression. There was something nice about being that attuned to someone.
He hadn’t realized how often they communicated in that once comfortable, companionable way. At least, he hadn’t until communication between them had become so strained. Before, they could speak without words. Now, they were so busy not talking about the thing that loomed as large as an elephant between them that when they spoke, they actually said very little that mattered.
“I’m ready.” Since it was apparent he wasn’t going to simply hand over her coat, she turned to let him help her on with it. “I hope I haven’t forgotten anything.”
A shining strand of hair spiraled from her nape. He didn’t know if it had escaped the clip holding up the rest of her hair, or if she’d left it down on purpose. But he lifted
her coat over her shoulders, then untucked the intriguing lock to keep it from being crushed.
“I can’t imagine what else you’d need. You look great.”
He didn’t know if she was surprised by the flattery or not. With her back to him, he was aware only of the way she’d tensed when he’d slipped his finger under her collar to rescue the curl. Or maybe it was the weight of his hand on her shoulder that had made her go still.
Dropping his hand, he let the other slide from her shoulder.
“Thank you.”
Her hesitant thanks could have been for the compliment, or for letting her go. Had they not been on the way out the door, he might have asked her to get more specific. But discretion truly was the better part of valor and now was not the time to rock their boat. It was more like a leaky canoe, anyway. An extremely narrow one in rough water. The only thing that had kept it from tipping so far was their tacit agreement to ignore what had happened. As they hurried out to his car a few moments later, then spent the fifteen-minute drive in a stimulating conversation about the weather and the road construction they encountered, he knew that wasn’t going to be possible much longer.
The grand ballroom of the Westridge Country Club was an enormous space lined with gilded mirrors, hung with massive chandeliers and set with round tables sporting red linens, white china and sparkling stemmed crystal. The Heart Ball was considered one of the main social and charitable events of the season, which meant the women—mostly wives or girlfriends of the various doctors, lawyers and corporate types in attendance, if not doctors, lawyers and corporate types themselves—were all properly gowned and coiffed. There were black gowns, of course, and every jewel-tone imaginable. But with the heart theme, many of the women had opted for shimmering red taffeta or satin. Even a few of the men sported red ties and cummerbunds with their tuxedos.
From House Calls To Husband Page 11