Countdown to a Kiss

by Mara Jacobs

  So, maybe he could think of her as more than a sister.

  He cleared his throat. “Good. Yes. Keep it like that until we get to the hospital.” He cleared his throat again. “Just like that.”

  Oh, there was no way she was going to put her foot down.

  Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately, since she really was in a lot of pain—the hospital was on the same side of town as the Club and the ride didn’t last for long. As they pulled into the drive, Lewis brought the car to a stop.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, seeing the tilt of his head.

  “If I should drop you at the entrance, then go park. Or, if I should park and carry you in.”

  “Well…” She did like being in his arms.

  “If I drop you off, what? They’ll have somebody there to hold you up? Put you in a wheelchair or something? But what if they don’t? What? You’re going to do your flamingo dance while I find a parking spot? But if I park first, the—”

  “Lewis, park,” she said and he turned into the parking lot and tried to find a spot. When he started doing “what ifs”, he could go on for hours. Normally she loved how his mind worked and could follow right along with him—a fact which scared her in its own way—but her ankle was now twice its normal size.

  And she really did like being in his arms.

  She could hear the wind howling as he pulled into a spot and cut the engine. She wished she’d opted for being dropped off, flamingo dance and all. Well, crap. The wind was going to totally kill her killer hair.

  She handed Lewis his jacket, but he shook his head. “You keep it. Wrap yourself tight, it’s really cold out now.”

  She started to burrow deeper into his jacket, loving that it smelled just like Lewis.

  “Wait. Let me,” he said and took the jacket from her. “Bend down a little.” She followed his instructions and was encased in darkness as he draped the coat over her head and around her arms. She felt him slide his hands under her butt and knees. His hands stilled for a moment, and she was certain she felt the tiniest of squeezes. Then, ever so gently, she was being lifted into his arms.

  She was bummed she couldn’t look up into his face as he carried her across the lot, but very happy he’d thought to protect her hair.

  And so unlike Lewis to have realized not getting her hair wrecked by the wind would matter to her.

  The wind whipped against them and he picked up his pace. She heard the whoosh of doors opening and then blessed heat as they entered the emergency room. Two sets of footsteps approached.

  “What’ve we got? Burn victim? Car crash?” A young, male voice said, with almost with joyful anticipation.

  Darcy uncovered herself just as Lewis said, “Sprained ankle.” Yep, it was definite disappointment in the guy’s eyes.

  “Put her over there. We’ll get to you.” He turned and walked away, his white coat—that kid was old enough to be a doctor?—flapping against his legs.

  “Come on, honey, follow me,” a nurse who’d been standing with the retreating doctor said to them as she led the way to a row of plastic chairs and a registration desk area. She was short, squat and black, with her hair cropped close to her head. Of indeterminate age, she looked like she had just stepped out of Central Casting for any medical show as the tough, no-nonsense, seen-it-all, take-no-crap nurse.

  Darcy was relieved. Those nurses were the ones who really ran the show, at least on TV. She’d be in good hands with this one.

  “Y’all take a seat and I’ll bring you your paperwork.” The nurse motioned to the row of empty chairs and moved on to the desk area. “It shouldn’t take too long to get to you, it’s pretty quiet right now. The real craziness won’t be ‘til later.” She looked at Darcy and shook her head. “Lord, we’ll see some idiots tonight, that’s for sure.”

  “Really?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she answered as she gathered up forms on a clipboard from behind the desk. “New Year’s Eve is one of the busiest nights in an ER. Even in a town the size of Henderson.” She looked up at them. “Boy, sit that girl down. She can’t be filling out paperwork wrapped up in your arms.” She mumbled something under her breath that Darcy thought was something like “Not that they’re not fine arms,” but Lewis didn’t hear her. He was looking at the rows of empty chairs, his head tilted.

  “Lewis, sit,” Darcy said, and he did, with her settling in his lap. And what a lovely lap it was, his thighs firm and strong beneath her. She kept one arm looped around his shoulder, her meager—but highlighted in the magic dress—breasts pressed to his chest.

  She looked up at him and froze. It was Lewis, of course, her Lewis, but with a look on his face she’d never seen before. And she knew all his looks.

  “You’re all…windblown,” she said. Her voice, unsure at his look, came out as a whisper.

  “You’re all…all…”

  “Yes?”

  “Soft. And warm,” he said, then shifted in the hard plastic chair, causing Darcy to settle deeper into him.

  “Here, take your jacket back,” she started to remove the warm tent, but he squeezed her, stopping her movement. And her breath.

  “No, you keep it. Stay warm. You could be going into shock or something.”

  She was in Lewis’s arms, pressed against his strong body, his white dress shirt crisp against his wiry but definitely muscular frame. “Shock. Yes, you’re right,” she replied.

  He started to loosen his hold on her, and she looped her arm tighter around his neck to help him move her to her own chair. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “I’ve got you.” He cradled her closer.

  She was never one to play the helpless female card. She didn’t even know what that card looked like, but she burrowed even tighter into him. “Okay.” She brushed her hand against his collar feeling both the cotton of his shirt and his smooth, glossy hair.

  The nurse came back to them brandishing a clipboard filled with forms. “Don’t suppose you got an insurance card in that itty bitty purse of yours?”

  Darcy held up the beaded bag she’d completely forgotten about, its cord thankfully wrapped around her wrist or who knows where it would have ended up when she fell. “Lipstick, perfume and hairspray.”

  “Hmmph. Well, at least you’ve got the important stuff covered,” she said, but there was no censure in her voice. In fact, she almost cracked a smile.

  “I do have insurance. I know the company and all that, but not, like, the member number or anything,” Darcy told her.

  “Fill out what you can. We’ll get the rest squared away later.”

  “Thanks…”

  “Georgie.”

  “Georgie. I’m Darcy, this is Lewis.”

  “Nice to meet y’all. Now fill out those forms,” she nodded at the clipboard then went back to the desk area.

  Darcy hated to admit it, but she couldn’t use her right hand to fill out the forms while it was still looped around Lewis’s neck. “I guess you should put me in a chair of my own,” she reluctantly said.

  “Right. Sure,” he answered, then carefully stood and gently swung her around to sit in the chair that had been next to theirs. “Can you keep it up?” he asked, looking at her ankle then the hard chairs, which were separated by a metal bar. The formed plastic was obviously made for people to face forward. She tried turning to her side so she could put her bum ankle up on the seat next to her, but the hard ridge dug into her butt.

  “That’s not going to work. It’ll be okay for the time it’ll take before they can see me.”

  Lewis went down on one knee before her. How many times had she imagined that in her life…minus the overwhelming stench of antiseptic, of course. “I don’t know, Munchkin, it’s really huge.”

  “Darcy. Is it really ugly looking?” she asked, hoping he could be un-Lewis like for just one moment.

  “Yes. God, it’s hideous. Swollen twice its size and—what? What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, Lewis…nothing.” She shook her head and looked at him. She couldn’t
not touch him, her funny, brilliant, socially clueless, Lewis. Her hand brushed his hair away from his face. Expensive cut or no, his locks always had a mind of their own. Her hand lingered, sliding down his cheek. She finally pulled her hand away and watched as his head tilted.

  Good. Let him think about that.

  Chapter Five

  That was odd. Munchkin touching him that way. Lewis filed it away, knowing he could easily be pulled into a vortex when trying to figure out what a woman was saying or doing or meaning. Basically, any kind of communication with a woman that wasn’t computer coding related could throw him.

  It wasn’t like he was a virgin or anything. He’d even had a couple of semi-girlfriends along the way. But he’d always felt as if he were underwater when they were sending signals. He could tell they were communicating with him, but the message was muted and unintelligible.

  Granted, he didn’t try very hard with any of them, immersed as he was in getting his company to the level it had become. And knowing that in the end, none of them were Grace Devine.

  He’d never felt anything like that with Darcy before. Had never needed to decipher her meaning. But she’d never gently stroked his cheek before either.

  Oh, wait. Yes, she had, that one time when he and Brooks had gotten really scraped up scaling a chain link fence they had no business climbing. She’d stroked his cheek then as Ellen Bennett sprayed Bactine on his scrapes. She’d brushed his hair out of his eyes, too. So, could he deduce that it was her Florence Nightingale mode when she touched him like that?

  But no, she was the one hurt now, not him.

  Right. Her ankle. He looked around for something that Darcy could rest her leg on while sitting in the hard-as-hell chair. Everything was bolted down. What kind of people would steal chairs and tables from a hospital emergency room? He didn’t really want to know.

  He lifted her leg and rested it on his knee. “This will have to do for now.”

  “Um…but...”

  “It’s okay. Just fill out your forms.” She nodded and took the pen that was attached by chain to the clipboard (another thing fastened down!) and started to write. Her hair fell forward and she tucked the right side behind her ear, something she’d been doing ever since Lewis had known her. Even when she wore her hair in a ponytail, as she had for most of their lives, strands would inevitably come loose and she’d push them behind her ear. It was a movement as familiar to Lewis as his own name and he felt a rush of…nostalgia? Tenderness? Something that made him feel instead of think.

  How unusual.

  He stopped staring at her hair and studied her face, which now sported another look that conjured up more emotions in him that he didn’t understand. She was biting her lower lip, something she always did when concentrating. He’d seen that look a thousand times, but he’d never really noticed her lips before. Never noticed how plump and full they were. How when she bit the lower lip it became even redder.

  And tempting.

  He nearly fell over with that crazy thought. He righted himself just in time. Darcy glanced up at him, but he looked away and she returned to her forms. His eyes were just about to stray back to her mouth when the whoosh of the outside doors caught his attention. In stumbled four college-age kids, two boys and two girls, arm in arm, seemingly holding each other up.

  Lewis quickly looked them over, trying to figure out which one was hurt. No blood on any of them, no discernible limp, no—

  “Bluuuurgh,” one of the boys bellowed as he vomited all over himself and the floor. Darcy’s head popped up, taking in the group just as one of the girls followed suit and blew chunks, out-spewing her pal by a good three feet of splatter.

  “Oh God,” Darcy whispered and gagged.

  “Don’t look. Keep your head down,” Lewis told her and she followed his suggestion, but her shoulders lurched when the third kid erupted.

  Nurse Georgie was out from behind the desk area, a bucket in one hand, a large pink plastic container in the other, moving much more quickly than Lewis would have thought her able. “Dear Lord, please tell me none of you drove here,” she said as she put the bucket down in front of the fourth one just in time.

  “We’re not drunk,” said the first boy who had puked. “It must be food….” He couldn’t finish, but Georgie had shoved the bedpan into his hands so at least when he hurled this time, it wasn’t all over the floor.

  She turned back to Lewis and Darcy. “Take her into room number three. I’ll be with you when I get some help with these four.”

  Lewis was about to ask questions when another one of the kids erupted, so he swept Darcy into his arms—clipboard, jacket and all—skirted the group of kids as widely as he could, and moved down the hallway to the well-marked rooms. Darcy opened the door to Room Three for him and they stepped in. He quickly shut the door behind them with his foot. You could still hear the horrible retching, but not quite so loudly. And at least they didn’t have to see—or smell—it anymore.

  He placed her on the examination table, which was more of a gurney with wheels and its side rails in the down position. He turned and studied the door. It was wider than most, so that you could easily wheel out the bed. This set-up was better than most emergency rooms he’d seen on TV where there were only the thin curtains that separated patients. He turned back to Darcy, who seemed to still be holding back an eruption of her own. “Munchkin? You all right? That was pretty gross out there. I mean, my God, who’d have thought those kids could even hold that—”

  “Stop,” she said firmly. And he did. “I think I’m a sympathy spewer. Whenever I see it, I just…” Her shoulders, exposed and creamy pale next to the black of her dress, lurched forward and Lewis quickly found the wastebasket and brought it to her. She pulled back from the brink and waved the basket away. “I think I’m okay. At least I can’t see it anymore.” As if on cue, another loud gagging sound came from the outer area. “Dear God, why did I leave my phone at home? At least I could have put some music on, and my earbuds in.”

  Lewis pulled out his phone, turned the volume as high as possible, and put the music rotation on shuffle. He set it down next Darcy’s hip brushing the full curve as he did. “No earbuds, but it should help.”

  She patted his hand. “Thanks, Lewis. Thank you for everything.”

  “No problem,” he said. And really, it wasn’t. He still had plenty of time before midnight.

  “So, Lewis…”

  “Yes?”

  “What did that gorgeous man from the FBI want with you?”

  He stiffened, not sure it was from the reminder of the FBI, or from Darcy thinking the man who had been with Grace was gorgeous.

  “Um…well…I’m not entirely sure. It could be…”

  “Lewis, spill.”

  And he did. “The NSA…” At her blank look, he clarified. “They’re the guys who create and break code.”

  “Like, computer code, or secret code?”

  “Both. But mostly secret code. The thing is, secret codes can be embedded into computer codes, gaming codes in particular. They’ve been trying to interview me. One appointment I completely forgot about.”

  Darcy shrugged, not surprised. She knew him pretty well.

  “The other appointment? Well, we’d just acquired three new games through a company we hadn’t dealt with before. We usually do pretty thorough checks on the designers, basically looking for infringements on other designs, that type of thing. We don’t usually buy from outside sources because we have so many great designers on our own staff. But these games were so great, we wanted them.” Darcy sat up a bit straighter at that and he wondered if her ankle had begun to hurt more. “You okay?” he asked.

  Nodding, she replied, “Go on. The games were so good, you just had to have them…”

  “Right. They all passed our usual code checks. We were just about to do clearance on the designers, when we heard PlayStation was sniffing around, so we bought them. Fast.”

  “So, you never knew who actually designed t
hem, just the development company they worked for.”

  “Right. And not too long after that sale, I got a call from the NSA wanting to set up a meeting.”

  “That could just be coincidence.” She shifted on the bed. Assuming she was in pain, he reached behind her, grabbed a pillow, gently lifted her ballooned ankle, and slid the pillow underneath. “There’s probably nothing in those games that would set off the NSA.”

  “Yeah, it could be. But the timing is suspect.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just meet with them. They probably want to just pick your brain.”

  He sighed. He’d thought of that, of course. But for some reason, the buying of games before he’d thoroughly checked them—and their designers—out seemed a little easier to face than the idea of being some guinea pig for a government agency.

  “Yeah. I know. Doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to avoid it with this guy Ramos in town. Still, I’d like to put them off a little longer. At least until I can do the due diligence I should have done with those games in the first place. It was just sloppy, and if I hadn’t been so eager to beat a competitor, none of this would be happening.”

  “It’s not the games. At least not the three new ones you bought.”

  He looked at her, his head tilted. “Huh?”

  “What was the name of the development company you bought the games from?”

  “Pegasus. They’re fairly new, and I don’t think they have that many designers, but they’ve developed a few awesome—” Darcy had turned her clipboard around and nudged it into his gut. “What?”

  “Look under ‘Employer’,” she said, nudging the board at him again.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose, took the clipboard from her and scanned the form. “Pegasus? Not the same Pegasus?” She nodded, her shimmery hair swinging. His mind followed the movement for a moment until Darcy softly but firmly said, “Lewis, focus,” which brought him back to the form. “Under position it says video game designer.” She nodded again.