“It’s my karma.” She sighed. “I was clearly a horrible criminal in another life to deserve this.”
Despite the death glares he knew she was capable of, at the moment she didn’t look capable of taking on a bunny. “Oh, yeah. You were Jack the Ripper.”
“What would you know?” She frowned at him.
“All right. Have it your way. You’re a former serial killer.”
“I didn’t say I was a serial killer, you did.” Now she looked offended.
Jake tried not to laugh.
“This isn’t funny,” she told him.
“No, it isn’t.” He schooled his mouth into a sober expression.
“Stupid ice.”
“You should sue it,” Jake said. “Though I think a jury might have a hard time sympathizing when they get a look at your footwear.”
She looked down, too. “Do you have a problem with my boots?”
Not unless he considered the fact that he’d always had a thing for a woman in sexy boots a problem. But what guy didn’t? Surely she’d known that when she bought them. “I should go see where the doctor is,” he said, but she talked over him, so he didn’t think she heard.
“Because these boots are amazing. Cate Blanchett once asked me where I got them. Okay, I can tell by your expression you have no idea what a big deal that is.”
“I know she’s an Oscar-winning actress—”
“Who has incredible style. And she wanted these boots.” She raised her eyebrows at him as if that was supposed to mean something.
“So you and Cate agree on boots.”
“We do.”
“Right.” He glanced at the still-closed door. The nurse had said the doctor would be with them shortly. Did that mean ten minutes? Fifteen? Sixty? “I should go and see where the doctor is,” he repeated, thinking that the sooner they knew exactly what they were dealing with, the sooner he could figure out his next step.
“Figures. You get bested by me and you run away.”
Jake stopped reaching for the doorknob. “I’m not running away.” He didn’t run away, the move to Vancouver excluded. But that had been more looking for a fresh start, which just wasn’t possible in Toronto. And she hadn’t bested him.
“That’s not what it looks like to me.”
Jake frowned. Deciding he didn’t like the direction his life was taking and doing something about it was not running away. No matter what it might look like to someone on the outside. But he didn’t feel like arguing about it, so he changed the subject. “Afraid to be alone?”
“Of course not. I was just thinking about what would happen if the doctor came and you weren’t here.”
Though she was doing her best to put on a tough-girl sneer, Jake noticed the fingers of her good hand were clutching the arm of the wheelchair. “You’re going to be fine,” he told her. “You don’t need me here to explain what happened. I wasn’t even there.”
She didn’t look wowed by his logic and her fingers didn’t loosen their death grip. “But you spoke to the nurse. Really, we should stick together until the doctor has seen me.”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about.” Jake tried to make his tone calm and soothing.
“I’m not nervous.”
“No?”
“No. There’s nothing to be nervous about.” She parroted his words back to him, but she was still white-knuckling the wheelchair. “And no reason to be afraid of hospitals. My mother works in one.”
He didn’t know who she was trying to convince, but it wasn’t working. “So then you don’t care if I stay?”
She blinked and did her best to seem nonchalant. “Do what you want.” But he could see her peeking at him from beneath her lashes and there was still that matter of the death grip.
She wanted him to stay. No, she needed him. The thought was oddly pleasing. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had relied on him. Not his job title, not his name, not what he could do for them. Just him.
He pulled up the rolling stool and lowered himself onto it. “I’ll stay.”
The pinched lines around her mouth disappeared and her fingers loosened. “Okay.”
During the next round of not talking, Jake discovered that the room was home to three boxes of tissue, one box of latex gloves, a hoard of shiny, pointed instruments and one copy of Time from March 2004. Very cutting-edge.
“Jake? Have you ever broken anything?”
He turned toward her, happy to have something to discuss besides the tension in the room. He and Ava had been at odds but pretending not to be all day. It was weird to feel that sliding away, and he wasn’t sure where they were headed next. “Fell off the roof when I was ten and broke my arm. Wrecked my knee playing beach soccer in university, but that was ligament damage.”
“I’ve never broken anything.” Ava chewed on her lip. “Do you think I’ll need X-rays?”
He glanced at her swollen wrist. “Yes.” He saw the fingers on her good hand flinch. Time to change the subject. “So what does your mom do at the hospital?”
“She’s an administrator.” Ava blew hair out of her eyes. Jake watched the blond strands drift down to frame her heart-shaped face. Seriously, evil glares aside, she was like apple pie and vanilla ice cream in human form. “She wanted me to be a surgeon.”
“And?” He pulled his thoughts away from how much he liked the traditional American dessert.
“Ew.” She wrinkled her nose. “Blood and guts? No, thanks.”
He leaned back against the wall again and braced his feet against the floor to prevent the stool from skidding away. “I thought you said you weren’t afraid of hospitals.”
“I’m not. I’m afraid of the blood and guts in them.”
Jake laughed and was pleased when a small smile drifted across her lips, too. “Makes sense.”
“Try explaining that to my mother.” She chewed on her lips again. “Do you think I’m going to need surgery?”
He studied her for a second, wondering what she wanted him to say. “You looking for truth or reassurance?”
“I guess that answers that,” she said. Her eyes flicked to her wrist, which Jake thought was very likely to find itself under a surgeon’s knife. “I’ve never had surgery before. Have you?”
He nodded, feeling this was safer ground. She might not be freezing him out anymore, but he wasn’t really sure how to treat her. Were they coworkers? Acquaintances? Congenial only under penalty of death or a broken bone? “I had surgery on my knee.” He tapped the offending area. “It wasn’t so bad. The drugs were good.”
“Great. So I’ll be too doped up to think about the blood and guts.”
“Exactly.” He smiled and when she smiled back, Jake felt a surge of desire that wasn’t congenial in the least.
CHAPTER SIX
OH, GOD. WHY WAS SHE so wishy-washy? Wasn’t it only days, no, hours earlier that Ava had been convinced that Jake was the devil incarnate? Or, at least, trouble in blue jeans?
He’d given her job to Tommy, who couldn’t host his way out of a paper bag. Who was barely into his mid-twenties. And now, after one kind gesture, she was ready to forgive him?
Brandon was right. She was lame. The minute a man came to her rescue, he was suddenly her white knight.
She tried to work up some righteous anger, maybe figure out a few biting comebacks so they’d be on hand when she needed them. She got nothing.
Ava sniffed. Apparently, she’d lef
t them back on that icy sidewalk along with her dignity.
Jake sat across from her in the private room she’d been checked into post–X-ray. She would have liked to go back to the hotel for the night, but the doctor and nurse had insisted she remain on-site until after her surgery, which was scheduled first thing tomorrow morning. She guessed they were afraid she would oversleep and miss it. As if she was likely to sleep a wink. Her stomach rolled every time she thought about the surgery.
Realistically, she knew there was little to be nervous about. She wasn’t even going under general anesthetic, but the idea that a surgeon was going to cut open her skin, exposing the bones and muscle underneath, made her feel sick. So she decided to focus on something else. Like why Jake was still hanging around her private room instead of going back to the comfort of the hotel.
“Seriously, you don’t have to stay,” she told him for what felt like the bazillionth time. She tried to forget how she’d practically begged him to stay with her earlier. That had been the fear talking, and the astringent smell of the exam room. She was better now. “I’ll be okay on my own.”
“I don’t mind.” He smiled at her and went back to typing on his laptop.
That smile. Ava felt heat flash through her system and blamed it on the hospital’s furnace. Why was it so hot in here anyway? Did they think she had hypothermia as well as a busted wrist?
“But you have work to do. Obviously.” She pointed to the computer on his lap. “And so do I.” She had her laptop sitting beside her on the bed, still powered down, but it was only a matter of time.
“I can work here.”
That so wasn’t the point. The point was that she wasn’t sure how to feel about him, and having him in the same room while she tried to figure it out was just impossible.
She watched as he bent his head and returned to his work. When she’d asked if he minded getting her some things from the hotel, she’d expected him to drop off a bag and then beat it out of here. Instead, he’d brought his own laptop along with hers, and parked himself in the large chair that sat in the corner of the room. A chair that could, according to the nurse, be turned into a bed for an overnight stay.
But that wasn’t an issue, right? Surely he wasn’t going to stay all night?
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m okay. You’ll be more comfortable at the hotel. You should go.”
“Ava, it’s fine.” He tilted down the screen of his computer. “It’s natural to be nervous before surgery.”
“I’m not nervous.” A total lie. But she was pretty sure that she’d feel a lot calmer on her own. Not that his presence was the only thing sending her into fits, but it wasn’t exactly putting her at ease, either. “I just think you’d be better off back at the hotel.”
And not watching her every move with those solemn gray eyes.
He turned them on her now, coupling them with a smile that made her knees quiver. Good thing she was sitting down. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why do you keep going on about it?”
She blinked. “I’m not. I’m just saying that the hotel is a lot nicer than the hospital.” She pinned him with a look. “Or are you one of those weirdos who gets off on sick people? What’s that called? Baron Munchausen syndrome?”
“I thought that was a movie?”
She rolled her eyes at his pleased-with-himself snicker, but couldn’t help the surge of excitement that maybe she’d met another lover of all ’80s culture. She refrained from asking, not sure if she wanted to have anything in common with Jake. She had good reason to love the cheesiness of the decade. Those movies with their happy endings and girls who overcame obstacles of unpopularity and bad hair had kept her company during the long hours her mother spent first finishing her degree and then working her way up the ladder at the hospital. But Jake might just be weird. That or he’d think she was weird for asking.
“Fine,” she told him, busying herself by dragging her laptop over and turning it on. “Stay.” If he wanted to hang around all night and wake up with a sore neck and an aching back, it wasn’t her problem. And she wasn’t giving him any sympathy.
After checking her email and finding nothing that required her immediate attention, she sent a note to Brandon, letting him know that she was fine and to ignore her voice mail. Then she wrote a quick update for her blog. Since she was having surgery in the morning, and would likely be out of commission until the afternoon, she needed to let her readers know that gossip from the festival was coming, it was just going to be slightly delayed.
She should probably call her mother, too. Ava glanced at the clock in the corner of the computer screen. It was only a little past ten, but Barbara would already be in bed. She liked to read for an hour, watch the eleven o’clock news and then go directly to sleep. Ava never called her after ten unless it was an emergency.
She debated with herself and decided this wasn’t an emergency. Not really. She was in the hospital and scheduled for surgery. What could her mom do from Vancouver anyway?
Well, besides demand to know the surgeon’s name, education, residence program and success rate. And that was before Barbara got into the rehabilitation aspect. Which physiotherapist Ava should see and how much work it was going to be to ensure that there weren’t any lasting effects.
Ava sighed. After everything that had already happened today, it would be too exhausting to deal with. And the doctor had told her to try to take it easy and get as much rest as possible. So really, she was just following doctor’s orders.
“You okay?”
She blinked and looked up to find Jake watching her again. “You mean, aside from the broken wrist?” Her cheeks felt warm under his gaze. Stupid furnace.
“I can call the nurse.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just my mother.”
He lowered the laptop screen and focused on her. “Threatening to fly down and feed you her homemade chicken noodle soup?” The edges of his mouth curled up.
Ava found herself smiling back and not just because the idea of Barbara Christensen slaving over a stove when she could buy a perfectly good chicken noodle soup from a restaurant was hilarious. “You have obviously never met my mother. She’s more the hands-off type.”
Discomfort flashed across his face.
“Oh, no.” Ava was quick to correct his misconception. “She’s very loving. She’s just not the do-it-yourself type.” Barbara ordered food in, sent laundry out and had a weekly maid to handle the household chores. “She doesn’t cook, but she’ll probably have my physio scheduled and therapist booked before we even get back.”
“I guess she’s got some connections.”
“A few.” Which got Ava thinking—no, make that panicking—about tomorrow again. How was she going to sleep at all?
“Hey...” His voice curled around her even from across the room. “It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”
“Easy for you to say.” He wasn’t the one who was going to be wheeled into the O.R. at some ungodly hour of the morning. And though she might try to fool herself into thinking otherwise, Ava knew that the surgery wouldn’t be pain free, nor would there be puppies and rainbows. “I don’t like pain,” she told him.
She’d been the kid who used to scream when the neighborhood bullies cut earthworms in half. Funny that her mother had ever thought she might have a shot at making it in the medical field.
But she didn’t want to talk
about that or anything health related. “What about your mom? Is she the homemade-chicken-noodle-soup type?”
Jake nodded. Ava wondered if he knew his eyes softened when he thought about his mom. It was sweet. “Definitely. She has a huge vegetable garden. When I was growing up, she tried to stick zucchini in everything.” He frowned at the memory. “I still don’t like zucchini.”
Some of the nerves tightening her chest eased. “More a beer-and-pizza guy?”
“Is there any comparison?”
“Wine and cheese.”
He shook his head. “Only if you’re trying to impress someone.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “So you’re telling me you’re against wine and cheese? I don’t think we can be friends, then.”
“I’m not against them. You need cheese for the pizza.”
She smiled, felt the temperature in the room ratchet up when he smiled back. Seriously, were the hospital staff cannibals in disguise and trying to roast her like chicken? She took a sip from the water glass on her bedside table. “I know I said it earlier, but thanks for being so great about all this. I realize it’s a hassle.”
“It’s not a hassle. Accidents happen.”
He was watching her with that little half smile that should probably be outlawed. “Well, I wasn’t very gracious about the whole promotion thing.” That might go down as the understatement of the century. She barreled on, not wanting to delve into her rude behavior. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d decided not to pick up my call tonight.”
“I wouldn’t have done that.”
“Well...” She trailed off. She should probably look somewhere else. Check out the hem of the hospital blanket or study her nail beds, but she couldn’t pull her eyes from his.
“Are we okay?” he asked.
If the fantasies running through her head were any indication, they were more than okay, but Ava only shrugged. “I think so.”
That Weekend... Page 7