Chemistry of Desire

by Melanie Schuster

  “The bath was perfect. Everything was perfect. You’re pretty perfect, as a matter of fact.”

  “You are so wrong about that I can’t even begin to describe it.”

  “Then don’t.” She was so tired that she knew she’d be asleep any second. Todd sounded equally spent, but they couldn’t seem to stop talking.

  “If I was to give you another gift, what would you say?”

  That woke her up. Her eyes grew wide and she was about to answer when the sound he couldn’t ignore broke the silence. He cursed but answered the phone.

  “What? When? Who else? Okay, on my way.” He looked disappointed but also calm and alert. She had started thinking of this as his poker face.

  “I couldn’t say no. They’re airlifting victims from a massive pileup. I gotta go, baby.”

  “I understand, Todd. Completely.”

  “I’m glad you do,” he murmured. “By the way, I’m pretty sure we made a baby tonight.” He kissed her hard and laughed gently at the look on her face.

  He was gone in minutes and she was suddenly wide-awake.

  She was tired, but it was a wonderful, relaxed feeling, even though Todd’s warped sense of humor was a bit much. He’d been kidding about making a baby, but it wasn’t cute. Well, it was kind of cute, but still… She decided to tidy everything up, starting with the bedroom. When she looked in her roomy leather bag she smiled, because her thoughtful sister had sneaked in a sweater, heavy leggings and a pair of flats. Happy she wouldn’t have to put on the dress again, she got to work.

  She took the sheets off and laundered them in the kitchen. The place had everything, including a stacked front-loading washer and dryer. Every single thing that was out of place was washed, polished and put away, mostly the dishes from dinner. There wasn’t much to do in any part of the loft, really. Emily just polished up everything so it would look pristine when Todd got back. While she was putting the freshly dried sheets on the bed, she turned on the small flat-screen in the bedroom. It was on CNN, and a special report was airing about the horrendous freeway crash that had occurred earlier. This was the reason Todd had to leave, even though he wasn’t supposed to be on call.

  Emily was engrossed and saddened as she watched the newscast. A semi had crossed a median and crashed into a chartered bus carrying high school students going to perform at a college football game. Several cars were also involved, resulting in five dead on the scene and many more injured. Most of them had been airlifted to Chicago, to Todd’s hospital. The news reporter actually said that their chances were measurably better because of the outstanding trauma unit headed by Dr. Todd Wainwright. The footage shown was grim, at best. To see all the flashing lights, bloodstains on the freeway surface and crushed and blackened cars was terrible, just soul-crushing. If it hurt her to look at it, how could he just wade into the middle of it and do what he did? Emily felt humble in the extreme.

  She had done triage work after Katrina; she’d been to Haiti and other scenes of disaster, but not as a first responder and certainly not as a surgeon. It was weeks after Katrina and the Haiti floods when she arrived to help out. What she did was act as relief for the doctors and nurses who’d been doing the real work. Looking at the television screen really reminded her of what a difficult career he’d chosen. She was proud of him, but even more displeased with herself.

  He’d done everything he could think of to please her on her birthday. He was by far the kindest, most thoughtful man she’d ever known, and he was man enough to admit when he’d made a mistake. He had owned up to everything he’d done wrong in their relationship, and he’d asked for a chance to make it up to her.

  But she didn’t do the same for him. She hadn’t leveled with him; she hadn’t shown him any honesty at all. She really was a piece of work, and now she was a sniveling coward, to boot. For someone who never cried, she was sure making up for an arid past with plenty of waterworks.

  She couldn’t continue to futz around the loft, and she would have felt like the biggest louse in the world if she just kept sitting there blowing her nose. So she did the only thing she could think of. She called a cab and left.

  Todd felt at least a year older when he finally left the E.R. He couldn’t remember what time he’d gotten there, and he wasn’t sure what time it was now. The only thing that registered with him was each patient he had treated. He was still in scrubs; he’d changed them many times that day and gone through a lot of surgical gowns. Normally he changed, but it wasn’t on the top of his list right now. He stopped by the main desk before leaving, which was a break in his usual exit trajectory. Normally he went straight out the back. If he had, he would have missed the most welcome sight in the world. Emily was waiting for him, sitting on a bench near the door.

  “Emmie, what are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you. Let’s go home.”

  “That sounds wonderful, baby.”

  Chapter 18

  After her day at the hospital, Emily was pretty drained herself. She had introduced herself to the hospital administrator and showed her credentials. “I know I can’t do patient care because of the liability, but if there’s anything else I can do to help, I’m at your service.”

  She had kept busy all day, sitting with frantic families and letting them use her cell phone, relaying messages, getting them food or coffee or soda, and doing whatever else would be helpful in a situation like this one. She never mentioned Todd’s name, because she wanted to protect his privacy. It wasn’t anybody’s business why she was in Chicago, so she just kept it quiet. But by the time she got Todd home, in a hot shower and in bed, she was ready to drop. After he was sound asleep, she left for the second time that day, but she did leave him a note.

  She was back at Ayanna’s house, and while she really wanted to lie down, her mother and sister and even her brother-in-law were cooking. The next day was Thanksgiving and there was a lot of cooking to do, even though they were going to be eating at Nick and Dakota’s. She put on jeans and a T-shirt and got to work. Johnny was making rolls, a special recipe which no one could duplicate because he didn’t measure anything with utensils. He simply used his hands. They were the best darned rolls anybody ever tasted, and Emily was trying to learn his secret.

  Her mother was stirring up a red velvet cake and asked, “Emily, honey, do you want to make a carrot cake?”

  “Mommy, you know I need to stay in my lane. I’m still cooking with the decimal system, and that’s not on the list. I can make pie. Will that do?”

  “Go for it, girl.”

  For someone who claimed she didn’t cook, Emily contributed a lot to the feast. She made sweet potato pies, apple pies, peach cobbler and cranberry-orange relish. She also made two different kinds of potato salad, coleslaw, sweet potato casserole and a very fancy gelatin salad. Emily worked tirelessly and cheerfully, taking dish after dish downstairs to the other kitchen. Ayanna’s basement had included a full kitchen, which came in very handy during the holidays or just for any entertaining. But after her tenth or twelfth trip, even a superwoman like Emily got too tired to move. After her last trip to the kitchen she closed the refrigerator and went over to a doublewide chaise longue, where she promptly fell asleep.

  The steady hum of people talking was gradually waking her, but she didn’t want to give in to consciousness. She willed her eyes to stay closed and focused on a pleasant hum near her cheek.

  When Todd woke up, he wasn’t pleased to find himself alone in the loft. Even though Emily had left him a loving note, he wasn’t satisfied. He got dressed and went to remedy the situation post-haste. Lucie and Ayanna were surprised to see him, but Johnny wasn’t.

  “Looking for your lady? She’s here, somewhere,” he drawled.

  Lucie looked puzzled for a moment, trying to remember where Emily might be. “She might be downstairs. She was putting things away, I think.”

  And sure enough there she was sound asleep, showing no signs of waking up. Todd couldn’t bear to try, because he knew how
tired she was. He sat down on the side of the chaise and stared at her for a long time. He slid in next to her so her head went onto his shoulder, and he kissed her forehead gently. Lucie sat on an adjacent love seat and watched them quietly, until Todd spoke to her.

  “I got called in to the E.R. because of that interstate pileup. You heard about it? I was there for about twelve hours, starting at four a.m. And when I got ready to leave, she was waiting for me. Can you believe that?”

  “Of course I can, she’s my daughter. She’s a very giving person, even though she doesn’t acknowledge it.”

  “She was working the whole time she was there, Lucie. She was running here and there and helping anybody who needed anything, and she never told anybody she knew me. I called to check on a patient, and one of the charge nurses told me about it. She saw us leaving together and she figured that we had a relationship, so she filled me in on it. She thought Emily was just amazing. Which she is.”

  “She is. She’s a very unique and special person. I always wished we were closer,” Lucie confessed. “We’re a lot closer now, but when she was little, she was a daddy’s girl, through and through. She was so different from her sisters, and sometimes it made her life difficult.”

  Todd frowned. “Like how?”

  “She was so tall and shapely that people didn’t believe she was mine. Ayanna and I are both small, as was her oldest sister, Attiya, and Emily was tall and athletic. Attiya and Ayanna were known for being good dancers and cheerleaders. When Emily was a baby they dressed her up like a cheerleader and took her to all the games. She was their little mascot,” Lucie smiled. “Then she shot up and she was much taller than the other girls her age, taller than everyone in the house except her daddy. People acted like she was a giraffe or something. They just assumed she was clumsy or unfeminine. I once had to cuss out a teacher over my baby girl.”

  “Go ’head, Lucie. What had she done to Emily?”

  “She wouldn’t let her try out for the dance team. The heifer told her to her little face that she wasn’t suited for it, even though she could dance circles around those children. She didn’t even tell me! If her little friends Sherri and Alexis hadn’t clued me in, I still wouldn’t know.”

  “That’s crazy. First of all that a teacher would be so cruel to a child, and second is the fact that Emily can dance her ass off.”

  Todd tried to apologize for the slight profanity, but Lucie waved him off. “I said much worse, believe me. It was cruel and it was a lie because she really can dance! Her sisters taught her and she could outdo them in everything by the time she was three. I think the teacher was trying to get next to me because she never got over the crush she had on my husband, the evil heifer. I will never forgive her for hurting my child. Emily was so hurt it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. From then on she was a total tomboy. She didn’t think she was pretty enough or feminine enough to be like her sisters, so she stuck to her daddy like glue and learned how to shoot and hunt and gut fish and camp and all those things. I never could get close to her again, not really.”

  It was plain that the memory still bothered Lucie. “Why do you think that was?” Todd asked with an empathetic expression.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about the tragedy in our family. My oldest daughter was murdered by her ex-husband, and it just about destroyed us all,” Lucie said sadly. “Emily’s the youngest by several years, and it hit her so hard. She was so scared and so heartbroken, and I was almost useless. I was helping Ayanna take custody of Attiya’s sons, Alex and Cameron, which is what was in her will. Poor Emily just stayed even closer to my husband. And less than two years later, he died suddenly. Well, then Emily just shut herself off. She lived to study and learn and nothing else. She put everything she had into academics. In a way, she’s never left school. It’s her safety zone, her haven. She’s come out of her shell a lot in the past few years, she really has. She’s like a different person.”

  Todd looked thoughtful after Lucie’s words. “It’s strange, but she’s always been the same to me. When I first saw her at Ayanna’s wedding, I thought she was adorable because she looked so bored and so damned smart.” He pulled out his BlackBerry and scrolled the pictures, holding it out to Lucie. There was a series of pictures of Emily looking bored with her arms crossed, another with her looking downright grumpy and still another with her sitting with Alex and Cameron wearing a genuine smile on her face. “See? I’ve had those pictures with me ever since. Emily was tall, pretty and had the mind of a rocket scientist. That’s my kinda woman.”

  “I could tell,” Lucie said dryly. “I know what a man in love looks like.”

  He laughed. “See, that’s where she gets it from. You’re very astute, Lucie.”

  “And you know this,” she said pertly.

  “You know I’m going to marry your daughter, don’t you?”

  “Yes, dear, I do.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that. I think I’m supposed to ask your permission or something.”

  Lucie laughed. “Oh, really? You think Emily would appreciate you asking for her hand? I thought you knew her better than that.”

  “That’s true. She’d probably split my skull if I tried it. I haven’t asked her yet, but the ring is burning the proverbial hole in my pocket.”

  Lucie tried to look innocent as she asked, “Do you have it with you?”

  “Nobody sees it before Emily. Nice try, but no sale.”

  Lucie pouted and snapped her fingers. “Shoot. What a way to treat your future MIL.”

  “Don’t hold it against me, Mom.”

  The sound of their laughter drew Ayanna to the lower level.

  “What’s so funny?” After Lucie whispered the answer to her, she started giggling too, and Emily woke up.

  She stretched a little and smiled at Todd, then remembered where she was. Her mother was seated on the adjacent love seat and her sister was there, too. Emily looked totally puzzled.

  “Did I miss something?”

  Chapter 19

  No one was surprised when Todd made it clear he wasn’t leaving the house without Emily. Ayanna even packed her things in a big leather satchel. Lucie gave her a peck on the cheek and a breezy wave. “See you in the morning, sweetie.”

  Emily didn’t protest his plan, because she wanted to be with him more than anything. She was happy to see the loft again, because it might be the last time. She was trying to be happy and upbeat, but it wasn’t easy. She’d been asleep during the bulk of their conversation, but she was almost wide-awake when he started talking to Lucie about marrying her. She had panicked then and she was still as nervous as a cat. Sooner or later he was going to ask her the question that she didn’t think she could answer.

  To avoid it, she took a long shower by herself. She didn’t even have to make an excuse to Todd, since he was busy with something else, thank God. After she showered, she dried her body with halfhearted enjoyment at the pleasurable blow-drying sensation. Wrapped in Todd’s navy robe, she was perched on the side of the bed, smoothing body cream into her skin, when the moment she was dreading came. Todd came into the bedroom with a very loving expression on his handsome face.

  “I can help you with that,” he offered. She scooted back until she was in the center of the bed and he sat across from her so her legs were draped over his lap. He took over the task of rubbing the scented cream into her legs, starting with her feet. He gave a great massage, and he talked to her as he soothed the tension away.

  “Emily, when I left Hilton Head and told you we’d made a mistake, that we were a mistake, I was trying to explain that I felt bad about the way I’d treated you because I rushed you into bed without getting to know you the way I should have. I hadn’t taken the time to take you places, buy you expensive gifts, talk to you for hours on end, rub your feet and cook your dinner, none of those things. I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you again. Not naked in the shower, although that was nice. I mean when
I woke up and you were telling the police I was a sneak thief or whatever. I lost my heart right there and then to your raggedy shorts, the shampoo in your hair and you.”

  He took a small velvet box out of his pocket and put it in her lap. “I hope you know that when you marry me I will spend the rest of our lives doing all the things I didn’t do the first time so that this time it will last forever.”

  “Todd, I love you so much it makes me crazy. You’re the most wonderful man I’ve ever known. But I can’t marry you, not like this.”

  Todd stopped rubbing her legs and changed position so that he was resting on the pillows at the head of the bed and she was cradled against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her while she dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of his robe. “Not like what, baby?”

  It took her a long time to explain it, but she did her best. “I was mad at you, because you broke my heart. When you said it was a big mistake, it just crushed me, but I wasn’t going to admit that to you. So I decided to get a new look and be so sexy and exciting you’d be really dazzled. But you weren’t, or at least that’s what you said, so I was really pissed. And then I saw you hugged up with some wild woman, kissing her right out in the street after you acted like I was a painted woman, and that’s when I decided to get you good.”

  “A wild woman?”

  “Yes, some woman with crotch-high boots and a fur coat and all that stuff. After you had told me I looked cheap or whatever. Who was that woman, anyway?”

  “That was my friend Cecily, who had just told me she was moving back to Omaha because she was tired of being a video model. We dated for about three weeks before she decided that her heart and other body parts belonged to the NBA. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Emily mumbled. “But I didn’t know this at the time, so I was still out to get you.”

  Todd was still completely calm and relaxed. “How were you going to do this, sweetheart?” He brushed her hair out of her eyes and kissed her cheek.