One story caught her eye: “Conjoined Twins Await Delicate Surgery”. As she read the story about the twins joined at the head, the article mentioned the children were at the general hospital, where a world-renowned on-staff neurosurgeon had performed a similar surgery several years before.
“Kasey?” A Hollywood pop-goth styled young woman approached. Her edgy multilayered hairdo, including stair-step bangs, and make-up resembling a raccoon, fascinated Kasey. “Arturo is ready for you.”
As Kasey followed the click-clicking of the assistant’s black stiletto boots toward Arturo’s station, Kasey promised she wouldn’t get talked into any strange new haircut. Classic was what she had in mind, and if she explained herself well enough, classic was what Arturo should deliver.
Two and a half hours later, Kasey left the hair salon with new lift in her step, probably due to the significantly lighter pocketbook. With hair cut to her shoulders, brilliantly shaped and styled but with just enough edge to stand out, she held her head high, even touching up her usual lip gloss to add to the look. She checked her cellphone to see if anyone had called and kicked herself for hoping Jared might have. No such luck.
As she walked further down the trendy street, she passed a particularly well—
manicured spring garden in front and a brightly lit bay window on the first floor. There, on display, was a leopard-patterned sleeveless dress with a Mandarin collar, straight skirt, and a wide black belt. It snagged her attention and held it. Wow, would she dare wear something like that, so different than her usual practical style? She stood beside the pink and white impatiens and spent all of three seconds making her decision.
Her new “why not” attitude was taking hold. If she wasn’t careful, she could get used to living like there was no tomorrow. After pushing through the door of the boutique-sized store, she asked for her size in the dress, and then smiled on her way into the fitting room. If Jared had the good sense to call her in the next day or two, she’d model the outfit for him then, if he was lucky, she’d help him remove it.
Wednesday’s bat vaccination appointment went similarly to the first, with the exception of Janie being more apprehensive and needing to be bribed into going inside the examination room. Vincent played tic-tac-toe with her while Kasey prepared the shot. Just as she finished with the injection, Angie told her she had a call. Without giving the call a thought, she returned to her desk and answered.
“Hey, good lookin’, how’ve you been?”
“Jared.” A pleasant burst of tiny flappy things behind her breastbone made her smile. She couldn’t let him know what he did to her. “Long time no hear from,” she said in a more modulated tone. She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder as she shuffled through a pile of messages on her desk, trying to sound businesslike and not to let the migrating nest of jitters in her tummy take over.
“You miss me?”
It sounded like he was smiling. Give him the upper hand? No way would she admit exactly how much she’d missed him since last week. “Maybe.”
“Good. Can I take you to dinner tonight?”
She thought of her new dress and how much he’d like it, how he’d give her that lean and hungry look after feasting his eyes on her. Plus the fact that she really wanted to see him. “That would be nice.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Sounds good. See you then.” For once he’d called first. Actually asked her out on a date. She hung up, dinner deal all ironed out, beaming.
Of course Vincent caught her with the goofy smile. “Uh-huh,” he said, nodding his head as if he were a sleuth solving a case.
*
At five p.m. Jared finished the rhinoplasty consultation on the fifteen-year-old boy and headed back to his shared office to type up his notes. Wesley Rheingold met him in the corridor.
“I’ve got some breaking news,” he said. “The conjoined twins have been deemed stable enough to undergo surgery and Elwood Fairchild is ready to go.”
Dr. Fairchild was the world renowned neurosurgeon who had performed one of the very first conjoined-at-the-head twin surgeries in the United States several years back.
“Fantastic. Any chance I can observe some of the surgery?” Thinking it would be tomorrow before anything got under way.
“Observe? No, my good man. One of the scheduled assisting surgeons is sick and contagious with flu. So I’ve gone one step further and made you part of team two, plastic surgery. Once Fairchild has completed the head, brain, and great vessels separation, each twin will have their own team to reconstruct their scalps and foreheads. We need all the manpower we can get, and I’ve watched you work. You’ll be a great addition. We’ll work in shifts, as this surgery will take anywhere from eighteen to thirty-six hours. Are you willing to help?”
“How can I refuse?” Just thinking about the major opportunity gave Jared goose-bumps. He’d never dreamed of being a part of something like this, something great and life—
altering. “Of course I want to!”
“Great. Then grab your stuff, it’s time to scrub in.”
Jared jumped at the chance to make history. With all thoughts focused on the twins and the surgery, he followed Dr. Rheingold down the hall toward the OR. Totally stoked, as he’d said back home in California when he’d been a teenager. Then it hit him: he needed to let Kasey know he couldn’t make their date tonight. He rushed to keep in pace with his colleague as he fished out his cellphone. Deep in the heart of the solidly built hospital there wasn’t a signal. He grimaced, knowing he’d have a lot of explaining to do to Kasey later, but opportunity and history called, and he followed Dr. Rheingold into the OR.
*
Kasey checked her watch for the third time. It was now nine o’clock. Jared’s cell went directly to voicemail. She shook her head. All dressed up and with no one to see her, she felt foolish. And angry.
To hell with it.
To hell with him!
She picked up her rock musician video guitar and switched on the TV monitor with plans to get lost with her second-favorite pastime after making love with Jared, playing lead fake guitar in seventies rock classics.
It felt far too familiar to be left dangling by a man without the common courtesy of a call. With her last break-up, her boyfriend had taken off with another woman and had gotten in touch with Kasey as an afterthought three weeks later. She’d never allow that feeling again. Not if she could help it. Smack in the middle of a Pink Floyd classic, things got blurry and she started missing notes, which knocked her expert status back toward novice. She gave up, sliding the strap for the mock guitar from her shoulder and turning off the game.
She marched down the hall, took off her new dress and put on a baggy T-shirt and flannel PJ bottoms. She didn’t have time for this any more. Her last boyfriend had called her clingy and insecure. Well, she’d never give a man the chance to say that about her again. As far as she was concerned, Jared Finch had just severed the non-existent strings of their superficial relationship.
*
Thirty-six hours after the opening incision, two sedated and separated toddlers lay in their own cribs, each whole. The team of two dozen neuro and plastic surgeons, and nearly as many OR nurses, all equal parts exhausted and elated, congratulated themselves on a job well done.
With the monitoring equipment, heart and breathing machines pushed aside in an
obstacle-course manner, discarded sheets and blankets cast off in piles, overflowing hampers, and bloodied basins and surgical instruments filling the stainless-steel sinks, the OR looked like a war zone.
Jared rubbed his neck and checked his watch. It was five a.m. Friday morning. There was only one person he wanted to talk to. The surgery had been a game changer, to use Kasey’s term. It had revived his love of the intricate, helpful, healing art of surgery. Yes, he’d understood what cosmetic procedures could do for patients, but it didn’t put the fire in his belly like this type of surgery did. The experience had convinced him to change
his plastic surgery focus from strictly cosmetic to a more intense specialty, pediatric repair. Kasey had figured out he wasn’t really happy with his chosen course before he’d even admitted it to himself. He couldn’t wait to share the news with her.
Kasey!
He’d stood her up, would have to face her certain disdain, yet he still wanted to see her. He strode toward the doctors’ lounge for a quick shower, after which he planned to head over to her house to see her before she left for work. If he was lucky, he’d be early enough and she’d still be in bed.
*
Kasey came out of a deep sleep and heard what sounded like ice cubes clinking in a glass. She shook her head, listened, and heard it again. Was it raining? Or hailing? That didn’t make sense. The sound came in spurts. What the heck was going on?
“Kasey!” She heard a muffled version of her name from outside the window. “Kasey!” This time it was more like a strained whisper.
More ice tinkling.
She sat bolt upright, pushing her hair out of her eyes, and leaned toward the window near the bed. Lifting the blind, she peeked beneath. Jared! In the bushes under her bedroom window, he stood looking disheveled and super-tired. Had he been on a binge for two days? More importantly, what was he doing here now?
He saw her and waved, pointed to his chest, then to the other side of her house. The door. “Let me in,” he mouthed.
Was he crazy? Stand her up on Wednesday night without the courtesy of a call, no word the next day, then show up at her house at stupid o’clock on Friday and expect to be let in?
Oh, gosh, he was bending to grab more pebbles. She tapped on the window and waved her hands back and forth in the international sign for “Enough. Please stop that”.
He pointed toward the back door again, looking earnest. Oh, hell. She dropped the blind and scrubbed her face, walking—more like stumbling as if half-asleep, which she was—to the kitchen entrance. It was six o’clock, and there he was, standing on the steps, sports jacket open and shirt tails hanging beneath, his hair finger-combed at best. There were deep, dark circles beneath his eyes, like the sign of a madman, yet the blue velvet shone through the thick outline of his lashes as if a beacon. She had to be crazy to let him in. Yet she wanted to.
Once she’d punched in the release code on the alarm system she opened the door.
He burst through, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, face animated. “You won’t believe what I’ve been doing the last two days.”
In no mood to play guessing games, she gave him Ms. Daisy’s favorite cat-eye glare. “Were you in jail for public drunkenness?” Her deadpan reply fell flat. “Because that’s what you look like.”
He bent his head, chin to chest, looking at himself. “Sorry.” Suddenly distracted by her, he gave a probing gaze from head to fuzzy slippers, then back to her face. “Your hair’s longer on one side than the other.”
She screwed up her face. “It’s supposed to be that way. Now, are you going to tell me where you’ve been the last two days or are we going to discuss my latest hair fashion?”
He leaned one elbow on her countertop. “I was part of the conjoined twins surgery! You know, the little girls who’ve been plastered all over the news the last six weeks? Them!”
She’d heard of them, joined at the forehead, sharing part of each other’s brain.
“I was on one of the plastic surgery teams,” he said, standing tall.
“Wait a second. I’m not awake yet. You were what?”
“I got to be part of the team of surgeons. It was fantastic.” He practically danced around the room while telling her about his good fortune. “I haven’t slept in two days, but I’m high as a kite about this. I finally figured out what I want to do with my plastic surgery fellowship. Sure, I was committed to be the best cosmetic surgeon I could be, making people look their best, giving them a new lease on life…but something kept nagging at me, that maybe this wasn’t what I really wanted or needed to do. You noticed that, too, didn’t you? It didn’t grab me by the soul and say, hey, this is what you were made for, but this type of surgery sure as hell did. It was like a huge breakthrough, and—” He stopped long enough to take her all in again. “It was my game changer, and you’re the first person I wanted to tell.”
He let her stare at him, a long, sober stare as she digested the significance of that remark. In return, he grinned at her, waiting.
“I’m the first person you wanted to tell?”
He nodded, stepping closer. She backed up, leaving no room between her and the kitchen sink. He’d finished a cut-and-dried monologue on professional fulfillment, changing from cosmetic leaning to a reconstructive slant, and he’d still somehow managed to break into her heart and do a different kind of repair. The kind of game change that helped a girl, this girl, open up to new and exciting possibilities. She couldn’t dare let him know what was running through her mind.
“But you stood me up Wednesday night. You didn’t even call.”
He shook his head, his eyes begging for understanding. “No, no, no. I was at work, getting ready to leave for our date, when they grabbed me. Well, Dr. Rheingold grabbed me at the last minute. I tried to call but couldn’t get a signal. Time was of the essence. It wasn’t like I could run outside and make the call first.”
“Really?”
“Honestly. If I could’ve, I would’ve.”
This was either the biggest and best excuse she’d ever heard for being stood up, or Jared really meant it. She didn’t live with her head under a rock. She’d read the newspaper headlines yesterday about the dramatic surgery in progress. He looked totally sincere, and since his life-changing soliloquy had touched her so deeply, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Are you freaking pulling my leg, or are you serious about all of this life-changing stuff?”
“Serious as a heart attack.” It really was obvious. Of course he was telling the truth. Of course he’d made a major decision about the direction of his career. He’d even used her term, a game changer. Of course he’d wanted to tell her first. All she had to do was look into his captivating blue eyes to know that.
He opened his arms to welcome her in. It seemed like the right thing to do—come on, the guy was practically a hero—so she stepped into his embrace, immediately amazed by how right he felt. And how great—solid chest, heat radiating from beneath his shirt, all lean muscle and strength.
“So what are you waiting for? Tell me all about the surgery.”
“Put on some coffee and I will.” She could tell he didn’t want to let go, but he did.
Jared watched Kasey move purposefully around the kitchen, opening a cupboard here and a drawer there as she gathered the coffee, a filter, and two mugs. She wore a slinky wraparound daisy yellow robe that tied at the waist and accentuated her curves, and he thought he might like to see her in it on a regular basis. The thought made his mouth go dry. “May I have a drink of water?”
“Of course, help yourself to anything,” she said, filling the coffee maker with water.
He moved behind her and put his free hand on her hip as he filled his glass with the other and drank from the tap water. Damn she felt fantastic. “You realize that’s a loaded invitation.”
Help himself to anything.
She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. He put down his glass, lifted her hair and kissed the side of her neck. “For the record, I like the new uneven look. Makes me want to put my fingers in your hair and mess it all up.”
She held perfectly still as he placed light kisses up and down her long neck, as her silken skin beneath his lips rose in tiny bumps. He wrapped his arms around her center and pulled her close to his arousal, then nuzzled her ear with his nose, wanting nothing more than to plant himself inside her. Drained from two days without sleep, yet still mightily turned on by Kasey, he asked the question front and center in his mind.
“Will you go back to bed with me?” he said, his voice raspy with desire.
Her head came up, her sho
ulders back. He felt her inhale and her spine go board stiff. Disappointed by the change in body language, he waited for a rejection. But he was being honest, as honest as it got. He wanted her, with all his heart. Her denying him would hurt to the core.
How bold could he be and still expect results? Could he blame her for kicking him out of her kitchen? He’d stood her up, shown up at the crack of dawn, and now wanted to take her to bed. He held his breath, preparing for the worst.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Jared made long, slow love to Kasey, and if she wasn’t careful she’d interpret it as committed lover sex. Through his fingers and lips he’d told a tale of deep attraction, admiration, and wonder. His thighs and pelvis followed up with bold, uninhibited desire on a mission for satisfaction. As always, her body responded to each touch, slowly building tension, sometimes unbearably so, and longing for release, fighting for it with every fiber in her body. Though he seemed to have read her mind on so many levels, he hadn’t been afraid to ask what she’d wanted, meeting whatever need she’d had—Do you want me to touch you there? Like this? Is that good?—until he’d brought her to the limit and she’d shuddered beneath him.
No man could make love like this without caring. Could he? With his head above hers, his eyes probing deeply into hers, his heated, hooded look went beyond sex—it spoke of connection and broken-down barriers. Intimacy. Of that she was certain.
It sent shivers through her, and she saw the satisfaction on his face when he noticed as she delved into those inviting blue eyes and soon got lost in the sensations.
Her release was so strong it opened a gate she’d been guarding with all her heart. With each spasm of climax tears welled in her eyes. Stripped down to the rawest of feelings, through Jared’s meticulous lovemaking, Kasey couldn’t control her crying.
“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” He rolled off her and came back up on his elbow.
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