Prima Donna

by Drewry, Laura

  And she’d blushed a lot. Damn, she was cute.

  “How do you think that feels?” Jayne asked, jarring him back. “Her whole life is up in the air right now, so to say she’s feeling a little vulnerable is probably a bit of an understatement. The last thing she needs is you running full-court press on her right now. Got it?”

  She stood toe to toe with him, jabbing her finger into his chest with each word.

  “He gets it.” Nick wrapped his arm around Jayne’s shoulders and gently pulled her back a few steps. “It’s late, we’re all tired, and it’d probably be better if we talked about this tomorrow. Let’s go back to bed.”

  They were halfway across the kitchen when Jayne sighed and shook her head. “So help me, Nick, if he hurts her—”

  “He won’t.” Nick shot Carter a pointed look, kissed the top of Jayne’s head, and steered her around the corner.

  Carter could have called her back, could have told her that this hookup wasn’t his fault. Regan was the one who turned that kiss into something more, she was the one who told him to close the door, and she was the one who dragged him into her bedroom. Not that he was complaining.

  Instead, he stood right where Jayne had left him, leaning against the counter, his entire body sapped of adrenaline. He should have known she had him pegged all these years; that out of everyone, she’d be the one to figure him out.

  All those weeks in the hospital, there’d been three people next to him: his mom, who cried her eyes out every time the doctors hooked him up to a new chemical cocktail because she knew it meant days of watching her son puke it all back up. Nick, who brought magazines and doughnut holes and talked about everything except the fact they were spending day after long day in the oncology ward. And Jayne.

  While everyone else had bent over backward to make his life easier, she’d never put up with his pity parties, no matter how much he thought he deserved one. Instead, she’d forced him to suck it up and use every last bit of energy he could muster into getting better. He’d spent most of that year hating her, and he hadn’t been shy about telling her, either, but she’d shown up every day and pissed him off enough that he had no choice but to fight back.

  She’d put up with a lot of shit from him, but she’d also helped save his sorry life, so as far as he was concerned, she’d earned the right to rip him a new one once in a while.

  He poured himself another tall glass of water and had chugged almost all of it when Jayne scuffed back into the kitchen, her hands fisted around the ends of her belt. She stopped a couple feet away, the fire still burning in her eyes, but not nearly the inferno as before.

  “I’m sorry I called you an asshole. I didn’t mean it, I’m just mad.”

  Before Carter could open his mouth, she threw her arms around him and huffed out a tired breath.

  “Why can’t you just let yourself be happy?”

  “I am happy.” He barely had time to give her a quick squeeze before she pulled back and looked up at him with one of her you’re-so-full-of-shit looks. Carter pointed to his mouth, forced up in a wide toothy grin, and spoke through gritted teeth. “See? Happy.”

  “Liar.” With a low grunt, she turned around and shuffled back to her bedroom, leaving him staring after her. Carter waited until she closed the door behind her, then he let out a long, soft whistle. In all the years he’d known her, Jayne shied away from any kind of outward affection. The only person she ever willingly hugged was Nick—and that had started only this past summer—so what the hell would possess her to hug Carter when she was so mad at him?

  The new year must have tipped the world a little off its axis or something.

  Lying in bed a while later, he folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Regan’s taste, a heady weird mix of toothpaste, beer, and deep-fried mozzarella sticks lingered on his lips and made him grin into the dark quiet of the room. There weren’t many girls who chugged beer from a bottle or ate as much fried cheese as she did. Most of the girls he’d been with sipped pink martinis and nibbled carrot sticks. And her scent—some kind of light honey-vanilla combination, barely noticeable—almost drove him crazy trying to inhale enough of it.

  More than anything, it was her eyes. A green so soft, so distracting, it would have been easy to stop right there and not look deeper, to not notice the wariness that lurked behind her smirks. She put up a hell of a front, no question, because everyone at the party seemed to believe her when she said she was fine, but that wariness reflected what Carter’d known for a long time: it was easier to let people believe you were fine than it was to admit how freakin’ scared you were.

  He pressed his fists against his eyes and exhaled slowly.

  If he tried hard enough, maybe he could pretend not to recognize that look and everything would go on as it usually did. Except there wasn’t anything usual about Regan; not in the way she looked, moved, spoke, or smiled. She’d all but told Carter he looked like shit and she hadn’t thought twice about kicking him out of her bed when she was done with him. He liked that. He liked it a lot.

  God he was messed up.

  By the time Carter got out of his long cold shower the next morning, Jayne had a huge stack of blueberry pancakes waiting for him. He was risking her wrath, but before she moved away, he dared to lean in and kiss her cheek in what he hoped she’d take as both a thank-you and a peace offering.

  The last time he’d kissed her cheek—Christmas Day for crying out loud—she’d shoved him so hard, he’d cracked his funny bone against the door frame. This time she glared for a second, then shook her head slowly, but before she turned away, the tension in her face eased a little.

  “So what’s the plan for today?” Nick asked over a mouthful of pancakes.

  “I have to meet Rossick and Jules at the clinic this morning.” Carter winked his thanks when Jayne handed him a steaming cup of coffee. “And then…I’m, uh, not sure yet.”

  He offered a half grin, but Jayne didn’t smile back. She unplugged the griddle, stood it on end in the sink, and sighed, but before she could launch into her next lecture, Carter stopped her with a raised hand, then pointed at his mouth.

  In yet another move that was so unlike her, she gave in and let him swallow without ripping into him.

  “I’m just going to swing by her shop and say hi. Maybe buy her a coffee if she’s up for it. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  Jayne’s forehead puckered slightly. “I thought she was done down there.”

  Carter nodded over the rim of his mug. “She is, but the guy’s coming to pick up the chairs and stuff.”

  “She told me the guy was picking all that up tomorrow.” Jayne’s sigh was heavy and long, her words slow and pointed. “I shit you not, Carter, if you hurt her, I will personally rip out your heart and feed it to Duke.”

  “Jeez, Jay,” he sputtered. “D’you kiss my cousin with that mouth?”

  “Not in the last couple of minutes.” Nick’s whine was immediately rewarded with a quick peck on the cheek, but when she went to step back, he grabbed her, pulled her down on his lap, and kissed her properly.

  Jayne came up blushing, but in a much better mood. No matter how tense it might be between Carter and Jayne at the moment, it was hard not to smile at her when she was with Nick. Carter had known his whole life they belonged together, but it took them twenty-five years to figure it out, and now that they had, they weren’t about to waste another second on anything but being happy.

  “Wow. Well…anyway.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, shifted on Nick’s lap, and tugged on his arms until he wrapped them around her tight. “I know you’re going to do whatever you want, as usual, but please don’t make her life any more complicated than it already is. Just be nice to her.”

  “Trust me, Jay, I plan on being very nice to her.” He and Nick grinned, but Jayne just sighed and watched him finish off his pancakes.

  Truth be told, as incredible it had been between them, he’d learned three things about Regan last n
ight: she was serious about him not sleeping over, she had a sweet spot where her neck curved into her shoulder, and she wasn’t the least bit interested in taking it any further than last night with him.

  He’d never had a chick kick his ass to the curb like that, so he had no idea why it made him smile, but it did.

  He waited around the house for a while, then rode downtown to meet Rossick and Julia. They’d already arrived and were squaring off in the empty waiting room when he found them. Julia, decked out in navy sweatpants, matching tank top, and zipped hoodie, stood with her hands fisted on her hips, staring defiantly up at Rossick.

  “I already called dibs.” Charlie Rossick towered over her by at least half a foot, but as usual, Jules didn’t back down an inch.

  “Dibs? What are you—eight? Whatever happened to ladies first?”

  “Screw that,” he snorted. “You wanted equal rights, you got ’em, and I called dibs.”

  “And so it begins.” Carter closed the door behind him and moved over to kiss Julia’s cheek. “Happy New Year. What are we fighting over now?”

  “Office space.”

  “Hey, man.” Carter shook Rossick’s hand and grinned. “You know there are four offices and only two of you, right? Do we need to get some paper and go over the math again?”

  The space they’d bought was almost perfect; a small reception area vee’d into two separate hallways, and each hallway housed two large offices and attached exam rooms. Each office was about the same size, and each had been freshly painted, so the only reason they were fighting over them was because messing with each other was standard operating procedure with them.

  “This one”—Rossick led them down the south hall to the office in question—“has the best view.”

  “The best view?” Carter repeated. “And that’s important because you’re going to spend a lot of time staring out the window?”

  “Standard shotgun rules,” Rossick laughed. “I was in sight of the room and I called it.”

  “Shotgun rules?” Jules snorted. “Really?”

  Carter grinned at both of them. “Looks like there’s only one way to settle this.”

  He waited for Jules to argue, but she just rolled her eyes and set her right fist in her left palm.

  “Best of three.”

  Rossick won it in two.

  “Damn it.” Jules tried not to smile, but failed miserably as she turned to Carter. “Do I need to fight you for the one at the other end?”

  “It’s your building, Jules, you can do whatever you want.”

  “I know, but we’re still kind of hoping you’ll change your mind and partner up with us.” She raised a hopeful look at Rossick, who nodded.

  “It doesn’t feel right doing this without you.”

  “You’re not doing it without me,” Carter said. “You’re just doing it without my name on the mortgage.”

  The three of them stood staring at one another for a few seconds before Rossick chuckled.

  “What if I gave you this office? Would that get you to sign on permanently?”

  “Tempting,” he laughed, “but no.”

  “We’ll get you eventually,” Jules said. “But moving on to the good news/bad news, what do you want first?”

  “No brainer,” Rossick answered. “Always go with the good news first.”

  Carter was already nodding. “Always.”

  “Tracy’s all set to start Monday. She’ll come in and get herself organized, familiarize herself with the layout and what-all, so she’ll be all set when we open on Tuesday.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “Amanda quit.”

  “What? She can’t quit!” Rossick gaped. “What happened to giving us two weeks’ notice?”

  “If she’d actually started working, I guess two weeks would have been appropriate, but she wasn’t supposed to start until Monday, so…”

  “What the hell are we supposed to do now? Can Tracy do it?”

  “She’s a nurse, not a receptionist,” Jules said. “I’m sure she can help out a little, but she’s not going to have time to do much more than her own job, and we really need her focused on the patients in the office, not running around answering phones and organizing files. Besides, we need someone who can transcribe patient files into the computer, and Tracy doesn’t type.”

  “Shit.” Rossick folded his arms over his chest and slumped back against the wall. “So what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Jules sighed. “I guess we’ll have to have another look at the other women we interviewed; maybe one of them is still available.”

  “Right,” he snorted. “Which one? The one who was so nervous she cried through the whole interview, the one who said she’d need Fridays off as well as all of March and half of June, or the one who just got released from Rockwood?”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t hire her to start with,” Carter chuckled. “I mean, come on, so she embezzled a couple hundred grand from her last employer…big deal.”

  “That’s not even funny, man.”

  Jules thought it was, but the second Rossick turned to look at her, she threw her hands in the air. “What else can we do? Do you want to cancel your appointments so you can run the front office? ’Cause I sure as hell don’t.”

  “I, uh…” Carter rubbed his hands over his face and sighed, regret starting to pool in his gut even before he finished his sentence. “I know someone who might be interested. At least temporarily.”

  It would give her something to show the bank and it would keep her out of a blue-vested retail job at least for a while. It could work. Or it could be a complete and total disaster; he didn’t know her well enough to be sure. Too late, he’d already opened his mouth.

  “Who?” Jules and Rossick said in stereo.

  “A friend of Jayne’s. I doubt she has any medical experience, but she ran her own business for seven or eight years, so she knows how to get things done.”

  “Does she type?” Jules asked.

  “Who doesn’t?” he asked, then surrendered a half nod. “Besides Tracy, I mean. Want me to tell her to swing by?”

  “Sure, tomorrow would be great if she can make it. Now let’s get going; we have to go look at the apartment, remember?”

  “How ’bout you guys go check out the apartment and I’ll go find us a receptionist?” When Jules started to argue, Carter stopped her. “Oh, come on. I trust you. If you guys like it, it’ll be fine, just tell me where to redirect my mail.”

  Rossick shook his head slowly, pushing away from the window frame. “I still don’t understand why you keep living with us when you could live at your cousin’s for free.”

  “You trying to get rid of me?” The three of them had shared a tiny two-bedroom apartment in Vancouver since the first year of med school and it had worked great. Jules kept them on track and made sure the bills were paid on time, and since none of them had ever had a significant other for any amount of time, there’d never been problems with too many people in their already-cramped apartment.

  When they decided to open a practice in Newport Ridge, it only made sense to move up here, so Jules had done her thing and found them a new place in one of the buildings at the end of town.

  “Besides,” Carter shrugged, “Nick and Jayne just got married. They don’t want me hanging around being the third wheel all the time.”

  His friend’s mouth twitched slightly. “Grab a drink tonight?”

  “Can’t.” Carter rubbed his ear and shrugged. “New Year’s dinner at Nick’s folks’ place. You guys want to come over?”

  “We, uh…” Rossick looked to Jules for help, but she just smiled up at him, all innocence. “Is that Ben guy going to be there?”

  “Probably.” Carter snorted quietly. “He is their son-in-law.”

  “Yeah…maybe we’ll just head back into Vancouver.”

  “Whatever, man. More food for me.” Carter grabbed his helmet, shot Jules a wink, and headed down the hall. “Let me know how it
goes with the apartment.”

  “Forget the apartment,” Rossick called after him. “Let us know if we have a receptionist or if we need to call in the ex-con!”

  Carter swung the door closed behind him and hustled out to his bike. Being New Year’s Day, most of Main Street was deserted, but Regan’s car and a battered U-Haul were parked in front of her shop. Carter wheeled his bike into an empty spot a few stalls away from her car and sat watching for a few seconds before he set the kickstand and climbed off.

  A guy in a gray work shirt and matching cargo pants locked the back door of the truck and passed an envelope to Regan, who smiled and nodded, but any idiot could see that smile was as genuine as a three-dollar bill.

  Carter hung his helmet on the handlebar, then sauntered over to where she stood in front of the glass door, shivering in her way-too-big green sweatshirt as she watched the truck pull away.

  “Hey.” She wrapped her arms over her stomach, pressed her lips together, and blinked up at him. No mistake about it, the guard was down and she was fighting like hell to get it back up. “What’re you doing here?”

  “There’s someth—you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m f—” She snapped her mouth closed, took a second to breathe, then tried again. When her mouth opened and closed two more times without uttering a sound, Carter pushed the door open and ushered her inside. She covered her mouth with one hand and held up the other, palm out. “Give me a minute.”

  Without a backward glance, she bolted to the back of the salon and disappeared into the bathroom, her long ponytail bobbing against her back as she moved. Carter stood inside the door with his hands stuffed in his pockets, staring at the compact empty space. The guy in the truck really did take everything; the sinks, the chairs, the shelves. Hell, even the mirrors were gone.

  It seemed smaller with everything gone but for some reason the void was huge. What was he supposed to do now? Offering her a new job so soon after her own business closed seemed wrong, sort of like he wasn’t giving her time to…what? To grieve?

  Maybe he should call Jayne. This was definitely one of those chicks-needed situations where they could cry and eat ice cream and do each other’s nails or whatever it was they did. It was definitely not something a guy was good at.