by Mindy Klasky
“You aren’t going back to the city, are you?” She sounded shocked. “He’ll want to see you in the morning!”
“No, no,” I reassured her, and waved at the bank of gray leatherette chairs. “I’ll just grab a nap here.”
“Those don’t look very comfortable.” A frown returned to Amy’s face, settling into a crease between her eyebrows.
“Amy, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” I made my voice as strong as I dared. I didn’t want her to think anything was amiss. Even so, my overprotective big sister cast a doubtful glance at Teel. Before she could voice concerns I really didn’t want to hear, I prompted her. “Go on, Ame. Justin is probably wondering where you are this very minute.”
It probably wasn’t fair for me to prey on her maternal solicitude. But with Teel beside me, I didn’t feel like playing fairly at all. Amy turned on her heel and started to walk away, but she only got a half dozen steps before she whirled back.
“Do you have any more raspberries?”
Raspberries. What raspberries? Oh, the raspberries that Timothy had given me.
Right before he had kissed me, on Eighth Avenue. Not ten hours ago.
So there I was, kissed by two different men, when I had sworn off guys forever. When I’d vowed to live my life, strong and independent, under the rigors of my Master Plan for well over a year. Another fifteen months without the complication of any Y chromosomes.
“Um, no,” I said to Amy, trying to hide my confusion. “That’s all Timothy gave me.”
My perceptive big sister frowned at me, and I could just imagine the difficult questions she was getting ready to ask. I preempted her by glancing toward the elevators. “Go,” I said. “You have to let Justin know what Derek said. He’s waiting for you.”
At last, Amy focused on the maternal task at hand, hurrying off to my nephew’s hospital room. I waited until the elevator doors had closed behind her before I returned my attention to the genie at my side.
“What was that all about?” I asked, forcing myself to keep my voice even. It took the better part of my actor’s training to drown the breathiness in my tone as I looked at his leading-man-handsome face.
Teel sounded eminently reasonable as he said, “Justin is probably hungry. He’s up way past his bedtime, and the raspberries would have helped him settle down.”
“I wasn’t talking about fruit.”
“I know.” That smirk would have been infuriating on most faces. On this incarnation of Teel, though, it made me want to raise a finger to the cleft in his chin. It made me want to test the wiriness of his hair. It made me want to measure my hands against his, to feel the strength of his muscles and bones as his fingers closed around my wrists.
I sighed and forced myself back to sanity. I was exhausted. That had to be why I was thinking such irresponsible thoughts about my genie. “Amy was right,” I said, determined to deal with the ordinary details of life in the real world. The non-magical world. The world that I had lived in, every day, for twenty-five years. Without a genie at my side. I cleared my throat and went on. “Those chairs do look uncomfortable.”
“Who said you have to spend the rest of the night in a chair?” He arched an eyebrow, and there was no mistaking the sly invitation behind his words.
I’d always wanted to be able to arch a single eyebrow. A skill like that would have served me well on any stage in the country. Instead of responding with clinical curiosity, though, I felt a red-hot flush kindle in my cheeks. “Teel, stop it. This is all happening so fast.”
“Nothing has to happen that you don’t want to happen.” There was that doctor tone, again, that calm, logical timbre that made me melt just a little more. “I’m only suggesting that we go someplace else for the few hours left tonight.”
“Go where?”
“As a senior resident, I have dibs on the sixth floor on-call room.”
“Senior resident?” Despite the tension sparking between us, I grinned. When my genie took on a role, he didn’t do things by half measures.
He shrugged and dosed me with another one of those flawless smiles. “I thought someone might get suspicious if I became the chief of staff.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
I also let Teel guide me toward the elevator. He must have scouted out the on-call room after he’d made his rounds, during the long hours when Amy and I had waited for Dr. Finley to report on Justin’s surgery. I tried not to think about what Teel’s research meant, tried not to focus on who else he’d considered inviting to join him in his sexy-doctor bachelor pad.
I assumed he was a bachelor.
I stopped breathing and cast a quick glance at his hand. No wedding ring in sight. No pale shadow of a band recently removed. At least, not by this incarnation.
By the time Teel marched me down the darkened hall of patients’ rooms, my body had begun to remind me that it was almost three in the morning. My head seemed reluctant to keep up with the rest of me; I felt like I was floating a couple of inches above the black-and-white tile floor. I took a deep breath, thinking that would clear my thoughts, but the increased oxygen only made my fingers tingle.
Tingle, and not in a good way. Not in the way that Teel had evoked with his devilish grin and his not-so-subtle suggestions. And that kiss.
Tingled, instead, like I was going to collapse right there, in the corridor.
I caught my lower lip between my teeth, exasperated with my body’s shortcomings. Annoyed. But also—if I was going to be totally honest with myself—a little bit relieved.
I was finding it all too easy to slip into my old boyfriend-collecting ways. All too easy to let myself become fascinated with Dr. Teel, pulled into the orbit of his magnetism, just as I had been with every single guy I’d ever dated. This was why Amy had invented the Master Plan. This was exactly the type of situation I was supposed to avoid as I got over Sam. As I figured out whatever was next in my dating life.
As Teel quietly shut the door of the on-call room behind us, I made a valiant—but ultimately unsuccessful effort—to keep from yawning. “I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed, only to lose myself in another mammoth yawn.
He shrugged. “I have that effect on women.” His eyes sparkled in the overhead fluorescent lights.
“No—”
He shook his head, cutting short my protest. Sitting on the bed, he patted the mattress firmly. I joined him, but I suddenly felt as awkward as a high school freshman on her first date. Um, more so, given that most high school freshmen weren’t in a bedroom on said first date.
“I—” I started to explain, started to justify, started to protest my own confused feelings.
“Hush,” he said, leaning over to pull off my shoes. “Lay down.” He stretched toward the foot of the bed, then shook out an institutional blue blanket. “Relax,” he whispered, and he reached across me to flip off the light switch.
In the sudden dark, he curled up beside me. I felt the length of his body, warm and comforting and somehow familiar. I was almost asleep when his arm settled around my waist. My eyes were closed as he breathed into my ear, “Now, what about that fourth wish?”
I stiffened immediately.
Was that what this was all about? Was Teel only interested in me so that I would make my fourth wish? Had he staged this entire seduction scene so that I’d do his bidding?
“Get out of here!” I said.
“But—” he protested. I felt him shift by my side, and I realized he was going to switch on the overhead light. All of a sudden, I imagined his tattoo glimmering in the fluorescent gleam. Those flames had pulled me, twisted me, turned me into something I didn’t want to be. They’d almost made me forget the value of the Master Plan.
“No!” I said. “Don’t turn on the light!”
“Erin,” Teel said, and his voice rumbled with deep concern. Fake concern. Concern manufactured completely for his own benefit.
“Please,” I said, sifting some of my true exhaustion into the words, adding a no
te of real pleading. “Just let me go to sleep. We can talk about it in the morning.”
I could feel the tension in his body, still stretched out beside mine. I knew that he wanted to say something else, that he wanted to protest. I was certain that if we talked, he would wear down my resolve, smooth it away. “Please,” I said again, forcing every last ounce of will into my voice.
And he took pity on me. Or else I fell asleep before he could turn on the light, before he could lure me back into his sphere of influence with the flames around his wrist. Somehow, I had escaped my genie’s concerted effort at seduction and, at long last, I slept.
By morning, he was gone.
I lay on the strange mattress, staring up at a ceiling that I could barely make out in the crack of light that peeped beneath the door. What had happened the night before? Had Teel stolen every vestige of my free will with his tattoo?
I rolled my head on the flat pillow. It wasn’t that simple.
Sure, Teel had done something with his magic. He had heightened thoughts that I already had, increased the confused emotions that churned just beneath my heart. But I had been attracted to him in his doctor guise, separate and apart from the compulsion of his ink. I’d been drawn to him well before he shot his cuff, before he snared me with those tongues of red and gold, with the shimmering black outline around the flames. That was just the way I was. The way I thought. The way I felt around attractive, available guys.
I’d told myself the night before that I had to back off, had to stay away. I really did believe in the promise that I’d made to Amy. I really did think that the Plan would make me happier, in the long run, and I was prepared to see it through—plant, fish and cat.
But now? In the light of day? After a few hours of much-needed sleep?
It was pretty clear to me that Teel stood outside the parameters of the Master Plan. I had enjoyed kissing him. I might even have enjoyed more, if he hadn’t ruined the mood by pushing for my fourth wish.
I should be allowed to play with Teel, to have a little fun. He wasn’t a guy that was bad for me, like so many of my past boyfriends. I wasn’t changing my entire life to be like him, rearranging what was important to me to stay with him forever. I knew that Teel was going to leave me behind as soon as I made my fourth and final wish. I was absolutely certain that we couldn’t have anything permanent.
Our strange relationship made him safe. A whole lot safer than any human man I might find myself attracted to. A little fling with Teel could fortify me to get through the remaining months of the Master Plan. My genie could sort of be like methadone, a treatment for the dangerous heroin addiction of my disastrous love life, while I perfected the Master Plan of leaving my habit behind forever.
Sighing, I climbed out of the bed. I remonstrated with myself when I started to pick up the pillow that Teel had used. There was no reason to hold it close. No reason to breathe deeply, to see if I could catch a hint of his scent on the cotton. What would it prove if I could? What did it matter? Neither Teel nor I was serious about a relationship.
I tugged the sheets up to the top of the mattress and plumped both pillows. I didn’t know what the proper drill was—did doctors change the linens when they left the on-call room? I shrugged. I’d only used the bed for a few hours. No one was going to die if they came in contact with my sheets.
No one was going to die….
The casual phrase flung my thoughts toward Justin, toward his brush with disaster. Barely taking time to make sure the hallway was clear before I ducked outside, I hurried downstairs to the hospital’s main visitor desk. In short order, I was directed to a room on the pediatric floor.
I heard Amy laughing before I walked through the door. I could tell that she was forcing herself into Mommy mode, pushing herself to set the limits that she believed were proper. “Justin, that is enough playing around. I want to see you eat every bite of those pancakes—I got that extra syrup just for you. You can tell Dr. Teel more about Soldierman after you finish eating.”
Dr. Teel. My heart started pounding so hard that I was grateful I was in a hospital. They could revive me if I collapsed on the floor, couldn’t they?
But that was absurd. Teel didn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t emotionally wrapped up in him.
I pasted a beauty-pageant smile across my lips and sailed over the threshold. “Justin!” I cried, leaning in for a sticky maple kiss.
“Aunt Erin!” My nephew seemed none the worse for his hospital wear. The arm that had been broken twelve hours before was busy pushing pancakes around on a plate, avoiding raising a forkful to his lips. His once-sprained ankle peeked out from beneath a skimpy hospital gown, pink and slender and unbruised. Justin beamed at me as if he sat on top of an island, surrounded by an ocean of playthings—plastic toys, an entire box of crayons, a snowbank of papers covered with drawings.
Teel had been as good as his word.
My genie was leaning against the railing on the far side of Justin’s bed. He looked as suavely handsome as he had the night before—ravishing blue eyes, impossibly long lashes, wiry salt-and-pepper hair. A smile crooked his lips, as if he were daring me to say something, but I couldn’t quite figure out which words to string together, here, in front of my eagle-eyed older sister. Not when I wasn’t sure if I wanted to throttle him or throw myself at him. Not when I was furious at how he’d tried to seduce me, and at the same time grateful that he’d saved Justin. Not when I was still working out the details of how the Master Plan applied to Teel. Or didn’t, as the case very well might be.
Amy said, “Erin, where have you been? I was getting worried!”
Relieved to be spared an immediate comment to the stunning doctor across from me, I made a face at my sister. “You worry too much. I fell asleep in the waiting room.” I saw skepticism blossom on Amy’s face, so I added, “Outside the Dermatology wing. They’ve got a couple of couches there, and the room was totally deserted last night.”
I was a little surprised—and grateful—to find how easily the lie came to my lips. Even if I had told Amy that Teel had found me a quiet room, I was sure she would hear something in my voice, some trace of the internal balancing I’d been working on since I’d woken up alone that morning. Now wasn’t the time to fight about the Master Plan, about who was—and wasn’t—included in it. Not here, with Justin bouncing in his eagerness to be freed from his hospital bed, with Teel looking on in bemusement.
Amy reached out a hand to smooth my nephew’s cowlick. “Sit still,” she admonished her son. “No jumping in bed.” And then she said to me, “Dr. Teel stopped by to see how Justin was doing.”
My genie spared an easy smile for all of us. “Actually,” he said, “just Teel is fine.”
“Teel,” I said, nodding as if I were processing that information for the first time. Keeping up the charade, I asked him, “How is Justin this morning?”
“Fine,” my genie said, raising his own hand to ruffle Justin’s hair, undoing any maternal grooming that Amy might have accomplished. “His energy level is obviously quite high. His vitals are all strong.”
My sister beamed. “And when can we get out of here?”
Teel shook his head with a professional frown. “We want to keep Justin under observation for a little while longer. Of course, we’re pleased any time a patient turns around as rapidly as this young man has done, but the neurologists will want another scan this afternoon. Just to make sure everything is going as well as it obviously seems to be.”
A frustrated frown darkened Amy’s face, painting circles beneath her eyes. I realized that she was exhausted. I might have stolen a few hours of sleep curled up next to an exploitative medical-genius Adonis, but my sister had spent the entire night beside her son’s bed, riding a wave of exhilaration at his recovery, even as her adrenaline chewed up more and more of her already-stretched reserves. “Amy,” I said. “He’s fine. It’s just a precaution.”
Her lips trembled a little as she sparked a smile for Justin’s benefit. �
�Of course,” she managed.
Teel gave us both a searching glance. “Why don’t you two get something to eat? The hospital cafeteria doesn’t have the best food, but you look like you could use something.”
Amy answered with a mother’s immediate concern. “Oh, no, I couldn’t leave Justin.”
Teel smiled easily. “I’ll stay here. Justin and I can talk to each other. You know. Man talk. And he can finish his breakfast.” Justin had perked up at the notion of private time with Dr. Teel, but he ended up frowning at his syrupy plate.
Amy glanced at me, as if she were asking my opinion. I was still a little upset with my genie for attempting to manipulate me into making my fourth wish, but my concerns didn’t have anything to do with Justin. My nephew would be perfectly safe with Teel. And my genie just might get him to eat a few bites of pancakes. Besides, Amy looked like she might crumple into a pile of sweaty clothes at my feet if she didn’t get some sustenance into herself soon. “Come on, Ame. They’ll be fine.”
She made one last attempt to divert Teel. “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be? Rounds or something?”
Again, he graced us with that all-encompassing smile. “No one’s going to come looking for me,” Teel said.
Well, that was for sure. No one official even knew that Teel existed. I waited for Amy to fret another minute, and then she admonished Justin to be good before we finally headed toward the cafeteria.
I hadn’t realized how much my sister needed to talk. She needed to tell someone about how frightened she had been. She needed to say how much she hated hospitals—had, ever since our parents died. How she couldn’t stand being solely responsible for Justin’s welfare. How she despised Derek’s hitch in the army, even if it meant so much to him, even if he was a hero. How she couldn’t wait for her husband to get home, so that Justin wouldn’t feel the need to test quite so much, to explore quite as much as he did. How she couldn’t believe that Justin had survived his fall—from the roof of the house!—without even a scratch. How she’d been so frightened…