“I died four hours ago,” Angie said.
Jared stood quietly, as if taking in the scene. “You guys are a great team. I’m impressed. It’s been an honor working with you.”
“Same here, Doc,” Vincent said, with a starry-eyed glance.
Kasey nodded and smiled, aware Jared hadn’t thrown one single tantrum all day, like so many other doctors she’d worked with were inclined to do. No high drama. No added stress. Just noses to the grindstone, and their little community clinic had turned out to be one mean medical machine.
“Thanks for agreeing to my big idea,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” His gaze met and held hers captive. She was the first to look away.
While Angie tidied up her desk and Vincent put his extra supplies away, Jared approached Kasey in the office. “There’s only one thing I’m disappointed about today.”
She cocked her head, furrowing her brow. What could he possibly be disappointed about? They’d seen a hundred and twenty-five patients! “You didn’t get to see a gunshot wound? Oh, wait, let me guess, you were hoping for a stabbing.”
He shook his head and smiled. “It’s too late to take you out to dinner.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you, but I’d fall asleep in my salad if you did.”
“So I was right about your bedtime, then.”
“Don’t get cocky on me, Doc.” She grinned.
His gaze languished on her, and a tentative smile creased his lips. “Then we’ll have to take a rain-check for when you’re more alert.”
“That’s not necessary, Dr. Finch. Really.”
“Jared,” he said. “Call me Jared. Let’s not take any steps backward, okay?” He took off his doctor’s coat and put on his suede jacket, then gathered up his computer case and threw it over his shoulder. “You need a ride home?”
“Angie’s dropping me off. Thanks, though.”
“I could use a ride to the T,” Vincent said, appearing at the door, his normally perfect hair limp and falling in his eyes.
“Sure,” Jared said to Vincent, before he turned his attention back to Kasey. “I have the weekend with my kids, but name a day next week. I owe you dinner.”
“Really, Jared, it isn’t necessary.”
He sat in front of her, took her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles. “Kasey, look at me.”
She did and could barely take the effect of his solid blue gaze on her, let alone his touch. Spontaneous tingles popped up in unspeakable places.
“I want to. I really want to.” He waited sufficiently long for his message to sink in, then released her hand and looked at Vincent. “Are you ready to go?”
Vincent nodded, jaw dropped over what had just transpired. Behind Jared’s back, Vincent made eye contact with Kasey and gave her the thumbs-up sign. She wasn’t sure if it was on his behalf for finagling a ride with the hot doc, or hers for getting that invitation for dinner. She shook her head. Jared really did feel sorry for her. She’d have to face the fact.
On his way to the door, Jared looked over his shoulder, another quick yet intense glance. It knocked Kasey in the chest like a mini fireworks blast, and left her staring at her desk, trying to catch her breath. Truth was he scared her.
She wondered what in the world “I want to. I really want to.” meant. Did the guy get off feeling sorry for sick girls or was he really interested in her? Yet how could he be considering what her future might hold? And why should she be interested in him other than because he was so damn gorgeous?
Since she was looking at a fifty-fifty chance in one area of her life, maybe she should start gambling with other aspects too. After all, to play it safe she’d come up with plan B—keep everything superficial. Don’t get involved. Take what she could from each day, and enjoy it.
All the possibilities left her mind reeling, with an excited tickle under her skin, and a definite promise to herself to find out what Jared’s true intentions were.
All she had to do was pick a day.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE clinic felt like a ghost town the next morning, with only a handful of clients wandering in for various ailments. It was a good thing too, as Kasey was dragging from yesterday’s manic pace. So were Vincent and Angie, Vincent being more quiet than usual and Angie with less of a scowl and making fewer snide remarks.
Later over lunch with Vincent in a hole-in-the-wall café three doors down, Kasey broached the topic still haunting her mind.
“V., can you go to an appointment with me on Saturday morning?”
“Are you finally getting highlights in your hair, and you want my guidance?” he said, eyes wide with excitement before taking a huge bite of his overstuffed sandwich.
Kasey loved his sense of humor and how he always managed to make her laugh, sometimes even when he wasn’t trying to. “No, nerd ball, I’ve got a special test I need to take and I want you there with me.”
All his attention settled on her face. “Is there something I should know?”
“I wanted to tell you on Friday night, but things got waylaid.” Kasey gave him every single detail of her circumstances, noticing his eyes soften and well up by the time she’d finished. “So, I’d really like to have some back-up when I go for the test.”
“Of course I’ll be there, honey. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. What time?” He got up, walked behind where she was sitting, leaned over and gave her a hug, his smooth cheek next to hers. He always smelled so good. “This Huntington’s business is not going to happen to you. I won’t let it. Do you hear me?”
Now she cried, too. She turned and they hugged closer. “Thanks, buddy.”
“You bet.”
Later, when they walked back to the clinic holding hands, she thought all a person really needed in the world was one good friend, and at the moment she held his hand tight.
Friday turned into another zoo day at the clinic, with patients arriving in groups. The weekend always brought in more folks—those warding off early illness, those making sure their pain medication would stretch through two more days, or those finally finding the time to get to the clinic about something that had been bothering them for weeks.
As the end of the day grew closer, Saturday’s lab appointment loomed ahead, and a knot in the pit of Kasey’s stomach wound tighter and tighter. She sat hunched over her desk, trying to convert pounds into kilograms and multiplying that by the dose of liquid antibiotics her pediatric patient in room four would need. Her brain as fuzzy as old cheese, she decided to use a calculator, and turned to walk to the cupboard.
Jared stood before her in faded jeans and a form-fitting pale blue sweater with the sleeves pushed up his forearms, which made his eyes so blue they were almost impossible to look at.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, just short of a gasp.
“I’m on my way out of town, decided to take a quick detour.” He scratched his jaw. “Wanted to make sure everything was still a go for tomorrow.”
“Yes. Vincent’s going with me. I’ll be at the lab in plenty of time.” She forced a glance into his eyes, blinked and looked away as the nerve endings in her chest came alive. “Thanks again.”
“Good.” He didn’t seem ready to leave, hands in his back pockets, glancing at his sports shoes and back at her. “You never got back to me.”
Got back to him? She’d thought about him a dozen times since Tuesday. Remembering his almost-smile in between patients and how he’d gobbled down his burger on the run that night just like the rest of them. She’d used her index finger at the corner of her own mouth to let him know he’d had mustard there just before he’d entered a patient room. He’d gratefully licked it away while turning the doorknob, and she’d diverted her eyes because the sight of his tongue had thrown her for a loop. He’d gotten her the lab appointment, had said it was professional courtesy—to the tune of a thousand dollars: she’d researched the cost the next day—and offered her a ride home, and her impression of him had definitely changed for th
e better, but…
“You were supposed to tell me which day we can do dinner, remember?” His low and sexy voice rumbled through her already heightened nerve-endings, even if he was being pretty persistent.
The thought of Jared asking her to dinner had seemed so absurd that after he’d asked her she’d swept it to the back of her mind and tried to forget about it. “Oh!” She leveled him with her stare. “You were just kidding, right?”
“Would I be here if I was kidding?”
By the look in his eyes, he wasn’t fooling around. He wanted to take her to dinner and the thought of spending an entire evening with him, alone, made her palms tingle. After an awkward beginning, she’d survived Friday night at the bar and the coffee café with him, but this felt different. They’d broken the ice working side by side on Tuesday. He felt more familiar now, plus he knew her big secret.
She swallowed. “Well, in that case, Wednesday?”
“How about Monday? I just got scheduled for an evening Botox clinic on Wednesday that I have to participate in. And Tuesday is back to school night with the kids.”
“Right.” The thought of stone-faced Jared sticking needles into middle-aged women’s faces for an entire evening brought some comic relief, though not nearly enough to help her relax.
Monday was so close. She’d need time to build up her defenses, to talk herself out of how gorgeous she found Jared, even if he was too darned serious and, when she thought about it, far too forward. She’d need time to ward off the selfconsciousness of being an ordinary girl hanging out with a man who helped people look like movie stars. Every time he looked at her, the way he was doing right now, she wondered how far short of the mark she fell in his eyes.
He snapped his fingers. “So how about it?” he said.
She zipped out of her trance. “Dinner?”
“That’s what I had in mind. Would you prefer dessert?” Something playful danced through his impatient gaze, sending her even more off balance.
She dropped her head. “Jared, I just don’t get why—”
“I want to. Would you do me a favor and just say yes? Otherwise I’m gonna be late to get my kids.” He looked at his watch.
Flustered and still off kilter, she laughed, and it helped. She unfisted her hand. “Okay. Sure. Thanks for asking. Wouldn’t want to upset your ego.” She half rolled her eyes, either an obvious sign of insecurity or a pure juvenile reaction, she wasn’t sure which. The man had a way of mixing her up with a mere glance.
He approached and cupped her arm, giving it a squeeze. “Good luck tomorrow. I’ll make you drink enough Monday night to forget all about waiting for the results. Deal?”
Frozen by the feel of his firm grasp, she found it hard to squeak out an answer. “Deal.”
When she finally lifted her gaze, his look delved into her eyes, and more tiny zings of excitement zipped through her. This. Had. To stop.
He smiled. A real smile, not his usual tense excuse for one, and it was friendly, sexy and devious all at once. Way too devious. Kasey wasn’t sure if her eyelids fluttered as his warmth rushed into her or if she drooled or what, because once again he’d stunned her to the spot.
“See you then,” he said, letting go of her arm and walking off.
“Yeah, see you…” How the heck would she survive being around him if he dared look at her like that again?
*
On Saturday morning, Vincent sat in on the pre-test genetic counseling and Kasey was glad. Even though she’d studied genetics in science courses, her anxiety level kept her from taking in even one single sentence of information.
The clean, sterile-looking lab, with long white counters and stools, seemed more out of a movie set than a working lab. Behind swing doors with porthole windows she saw the functioning side of the department, with several people in white jackets bustling about, conducting various tests and other functions at their work stations.
After giving a speech about the autosomal dominant inheritance pattern, her fifty percent chance of inheriting it and drawing out a basic graph of stick figures indicating the four parent possibilities and the two child outcomes, the small, dried-apple-faced lab counselor, looked sympathetically through bifocals towards Kasey.
“We’ll go ahead and make an appointment for you to see a neurologist, since it can take a few weeks to get a slot. In the meantime, I want you make a list to bring with you of any symptoms you may be experiencing, even if they don’t seem related to the disease.” He reached into his breast pocket. “Also, you can call this number to make an appointment with a therapist for extra support.”
He handed her the business card, then several pieces of paper. “First, fill out this questionnaire, and then we’ll draw the blood.”
Vincent put his arm around her shoulder while she filled in her key personal information. He offered input when she balked at some of the questions.
“They want to know your recent life stress changes, so mention the main one—your father dropping this bombshell on you!”
“Oh, right,” she said, her hand clammy and minutely trembling. She thought it might be due more to clutching the pen too tightly than early symptoms for Huntington’s, yet she decided to include it on the questionnaire. Hand tremors. “Will you come with me to the neurologist appointment?”
“Of course!”
Having her best friend with her made the nerve-racking experience a bit more tolerable, but her heart thumped in her chest as if she’d taken the stairs instead of the elevator up all five floors. She’d grown up independent and strong, a conscious effort to be the exact opposite of her mother, yet under these circumstances she felt anything but confident.
After the paperwork, she was escorted to the blood draw table. Closing her eyes tight, she didn’t watch when the lab tech tightened the tourniquet and took the blood sample. The only thing she could think about was how her entire future rested on this single vial of blood, and whether or not it contained a copy of the defective gene inherited from her father. A man she’d never even known. She hung and shook her head.
Light perspiration beaded above her lip, and the lab tech looked a little startled, as if she’d gone white or something. He reached into his pocket for an ammonia ampoule.
“I’m fine,” she said, pulse pounding in her ears. “I didn’t even feel the needle.”
She took three deep breaths, clutched Vincent’s hand, waited several seconds before she stood, then left the building, refusing to drag her feet, determined to enjoy the rest of her day. What was the alternative, go home and pull her bedcovers over her head?
With an appointment with a neurologist in one hand and a tentative follow-up lab appointment in one month to discuss the results in the other, and with Vincent by her side, she pushed through the large glass doors and out onto the loud and busy boulevard.
“Let’s have lunch,” she said, not feeling the least bit hungry. “My treat.”
What her future would bring couldn’t be stopped, and she wasn’t really sure she wanted to find out, but she could make the rest of the day as pleasant as possible. It was, by far, her best option.
Just before closing on Monday night, Jared arrived at the community clinic through the back door looking gorgeous but distracted. His hair looked as if he’d run his fingers through it more than a few times. Kasey sat at her desk, typing the finishing touches on some nurse’s notes. He approached with a grim, preoccupied expression instead of a friendly greeting.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She swiveled around to face him head on. “You look sick or something. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
With still no evidence of a smile, he sent a sharp look her way. “We made plans, I’m here, let’s go.”
Let’s go? He sure knew how to make a girl feel special. “What makes you think I want to be stuck with a sourpuss like you for dinner?”
“We’ll talk. Come on, grab your purse.”
“No.”
Surprised,
as if he’d never been refused before, he lifted a brow and quit fiddling with his car keys. “No?”
She swiveled her chair back toward the desk. “You can’t come in here with that attitude and expect me to jump at the chance of spending an hour with you.”
“Two hours for dinner, at least.” Her retort had bounced off his armor. “Now, come on, let’s go.”
“Not even five minutes. No way. I’m not a masochist.” Secretly she’d been looking forward all day to seeing Jared tonight, but now she wasn’t sure about spending the evening with him in this mood.
“I need to get out of here.” He walked up to where she was sitting, took her wrist in his hand, turned and headed for the door. Refusing to stand, she let him pull the office chair on wheels a few feet across the floor. It felt silly, he looked ridiculous, and she needed to take charge or be humiliated. Was that his thing? To treat women like office furniture, to be moved at will, as he saw fit?
Rather than make an even bigger scene, since Vincent and Angie had already stopped what they were doing to watch, Kasey skidded her feet on the floor as brakes, stood, made a big deal about needing to grab her purse from her desk four feet away, and followed him. She’d put an end to their so-called date the minute they hit the street.
He glanced over his shoulder, this time with a grateful look, and there it was, the hint of pain in his eyes. She’d seen it the very first day they’d met, and again at the bar when he’d mentioned his kids. Obviously something was going on, and he wasn’t capable of talking about it right now. A twinge of compassion, though against her better judgment, changed her decision to stick it out with him.
“See you guys tomorrow,” she said as he tugged her impatiently towards the door.
“Have fun, kids,” Vincent said, in an obvious attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
“Yeah, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Angie said in her monotone voice and with the usual pained expression.
Jared ignored both of them.
“Will do,” Kasey said, tossing them a perplexed glance.
When they got to the car, Jared glanced at her feet. “Are those shoes okay for walking?”
Dr. Tall, Dark...and Dangerous? Page 6