I Wanna Sext You Up

by Evie Claire

  Lorie: The camp *really* needs the money and your parents seem to be sparing no expense

  Liza: LOL. Mom has planned this day since I was born…

  Lorie: #MarthaStewartOfSocialCircle

  The wedding would be epic, the likes of which her tiny town had never seen. It might even be fabulous enough to eclipse Lorie’s own homecoming. Her stomach flipped again. Maybe she should put out some feelers.

  Lorie: What are you doing October 21? Would James allow you to be my wingman at my best friend’s wedding?

  Quinn: That’s his absolute favorite movie—Rupert Everett —so maybe. I’ll check.

  Lorie smiled at Quinn’s text. Yes, Rupert was yummy in that one. But wasn’t he always? She was still appreciating Quinn’s quick wit and pulling her lunch back across the café table when another text zoomed in.

  Quinn: Exactly what did you do to Dr. Sherazi and can you teach me?

  Choking on a forkful she’d just put in her mouth, she spit it out and pushed the salad all the way across the table. Uncrossing her legs, she leaned into her phone and had the biggest oh shit moment of her career. Did Saam tell someone? Has our secret gotten out?

  Lorie: Ummm…what?

  Quinn: Everybody’s talking about it. You haven’t heard the rumors?

  Lorie’s hands went slick, she dropped the phone onto the table, and took her head in her hands—her clammy palms going all icy as the blood drained from her. Despite the summer heat, cold chills raced the length of her. Fuck. Two seconds later her phone started vibrating wildly. She moved only her pinkies from her line of vision and peered down, already fearing what she was about to see.

  Kate: Congrats, new girl! I don’t know how you did it, but you did!

  Allen: Every newly diagnosed diabetic patient sent home with a Lampalin Rx? I’m buying you the biggest bottle of wine I can find. What do you drink?

  Wait, what? Her teammates were blowing up her phone, but not with the news she expected. What was going on? She replied to Quinn.

  Lorie: Exactly what did Sherazi do?

  Quinn: Rewrote protocols at the Children’s Hospital. Every new patient is sent home with a Lampalin prescription upon discharge. Lampalin’s biggest formulary win ever—possibly even on a national level. All thanks to YOU!

  Holy shit. Lorie dropped her phone, covering her mouth as she thought. A quick calculation. A few numbers rounded. The math wasn’t exact but it was close enough. And if what her team members were saying was true, Saam had just put them through the sales stratosphere.

  Kate: We’re going to Jamaica, mon! #TopSalesAward #PresidentsSalesCircle #RookieOfTheYear #LorieKicksAss

  Allen: Drinks on me…I mean Durden

  Quinn sent a meme of a little girl dancing like Queen Bey.

  Okay, she needed to think. This was all brand new. She hadn’t seen Saam in weeks, and he’d never mentioned putting Lampalin on formulary at the hospital. Was this some sort of twisted mind game he was playing with her to get her back for ending things? A way to make her eternally indebted to him? Or had he finally seen the benefits of Lampalin?

  Before thinking better of it, she gripped her phone in both hands and fired off another text.

  Lorie: I guess a HUGE thank-you is in order.

  Lorie: I’m still shocked. How did this happen?

  Immediately, his answer came back.

  Saam: Lampalin @ CH? You earned it the hard way.

  Saam: Didn’t you?

  Chills, nerves, clammy hands. Her body went through the ringer once more, backward this time. Her brain was overloaded, unable to process where the lines of professional and personal drama intersected at that particular moment. She’d assumed she and Saam parted on amicable terms. He had implied as much in the coffee shop. Hell, he hadn’t even turned around as he walked away.

  She had purposefully stayed away from him. Her emotions were still too fresh to see Saam. She had assumed he might need time, too. But where she was trying to patch up her wound, had the doctor allowed his to fester? Because, reading a text like that, it was all she could see.

  She’d earned it? Bullshit. She’d never breathed one word to Saam about making formulary changes at the Children’s Hospital. What happened in hospitals wasn’t her responsibility, it was Kate’s and Allen’s. While they all worked together as a team, Kate and Allen took point on hospital formularies, just like she took point on research and development affiliates.

  Lorie sat frozen—stewing, staring at her phone, thinking through every possibility he could have meant. Reading the text over and over, its words grew snarkier with each pass she made. A tiny little devil perched on her shoulder leaned in and whispered in her ear—There’s only one way you earned anything.

  It didn’t take long for the tiny thought to become a truth. Why else would Saam text something like that? Something as vaguely insinuating as she’d earned it? The hard way?

  Frustration and anger curled out of her in a low hiss. Saam was not an angel in this situation. He’d pursued her at Camp Sunshine when she had tried to stay away. He was also the one putting patients on her drug. She calmed herself, narrowed her eyes, and composed a reply.

  Lorie: Don’t trip on your halo, Dr. Sherazi.

  He would have to be blind to miss the sarcasm dripping from her words. Each one as snarky as his. Without thinking twice about it, she hit the little blue arrow and the message was sent.

  Worked for it, my ass.

  Chapter 24

  Saam

  “Ink.” He breathed into the phone the moment Amal picked up.

  “What?”

  “I got an ink stain on my shirt. How do I get that out?” It wasn’t a total lie. He had a dark blue smudge on the cuff of his button-down. Using old school fountain pens when your mind was on everything except work had a way of making that happen. Now, he was obsessing over cleaning it to keep his mind off other things. Things that didn’t have answers. The stain, he reasoned, was a problem he could solve.

  “Oh, um, put some rubbing alcohol on it and then wash as usual. Where are you?” Amal asked, obviously hearing the background noise of rush hour traffic over his shoulder.

  “Going to grab dinner.” Walking down the street, phone in one hand, his briefcase in the other, he was headed to a smoothie shop a few blocks down instead of the solitude of his apartment. Anything but that.

  “What’s up, baby brother? You didn’t call about the ink.” There she was, doing that damned twin thing again. Though if he’d ever been happier over her twin-telepathy he couldn’t remember.

  He sighed heavily—something he was doing way too often lately—and hugged the outer wall of a passing building so he didn’t have to focus on dodging foot traffic.

  “I found my funding,” Saam offered, peering down at a large manila envelope protruding from his briefcase’s outer pocket.

  “Saam! That’s huge!” Amal gasped at the good news. “From where, I didn’t even know—”

  “Durden Pharmaceuticals.”

  Amal was silent. Thinking. But silently so.

  “Wait, you did mention this. Isn’t that the company that drug rep…Lorie works for?”

  “The very same.”

  “You told me you guys talked, but then never mentioned it again. What happened there?”

  “Umm…nothing, really.” He was such a liar. Things had definitely happened there. But he was clueless as to what the latest turn of events meant.

  Don’t trip on your halo, Dr. Sherazi. He’d committed the text she’d sent earlier that day to memory. Every single word. Analyzed and then re-examined it until it had made him a crazy man.

  The Children’s Hospital formulary change made perfect sense in his mind, especially after Lorie had mentioned how beneficial Lampalin’s ease of administration could be for young patients. She’d convinced him. That was he
r job, right?

  So, why was her response so damn snide?

  “Okay…” Amal changed her tone, annoyed by his vagueness but allowing it. “Does this funding complicate things?”

  “Yes.” That much he knew without question or hesitation.

  His suggestions for protocol changes had been unanimously accepted two weeks ago and slated for implementation in the coming weeks. Today, he was offered a grant for over one hundred thousand dollars. From the very same company whose drugs he had just placed on formulary. While nothing inappropriate had happened, even he could see it wouldn’t pass the sniff test.

  Lorie’s involvement took it to a whole other level.

  “I literally opened the envelope an hour ago. Lorie may not even know about it. I have to accept before it’s announced.” If he could even accept—because this could seriously put his professional reputation into question. Saam pulled the envelope out of the pocket far enough to read the return address. The letter was coming from Pennsylvania—a fact that put a temporary hold on the Lorie part of the problem.

  “Come back to Jacksonville. You’ve got your funding now. You did it. Dad could help you find office space at Hopkins. Then he would be nothing more than a…real estate agent.”

  “I like Atlanta.”

  “Jacksonville is home.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do. Put all this behind you. Start fresh. Jacksonville isn’t so bad. You’ll like living here as an adult.”

  “That’s not it…” Saam sighed again, stopping at a crosswalk and glancing over at the runners working out their frustrations in Freedom Park. A run, he thought. That was what he needed to clear his mind.

  Skipping over the small detail of him actually agreeing to move back, Amal continued to talk. Saam continued to stare. Into the park. Down the running paths. Across the grassy knolls where kids played and parents lounged.

  God, the human brain was a mystical beast. Because even then, as he scanned the park, he swore he saw her. A tall blonde jogged down one of the paths. But that was just impossible. Right? She lived near a different park. Miles away. And while Atlanta’s parks were connected by a single trail it was still miles that separated them. Who would run that far?

  He looked closer, leaning in the direction of the runner, eyes squinted like it afforded a better view. A trim jogger, long blond ponytail swishing behind her. Neon hot pink running shorts you couldn’t miss. No way it was her. Couldn’t be. Could it?

  Just to be sure, he removed his sunglasses and went back for further inspection. Zeroing in on the hot pink shorts, he watched the runner stop, pick up a ball, and hand it to a group of kids. When the runner flashed a toothy grin that made his mind explode at the possibility, there was nothing but her.

  “Amal, I gotta go.” He shoved his phone in his pocket despite her protests.

  Before he thought better of what he was doing, his feet were running, too.

  Across three lanes of traffic and into the park.

  “Lorie!” he called out, his slick leather soles slapping the pavement, arms pumping like his heart’s continued beating depended on it. And maybe it did. Because she had the profoundest effect on him. One that made normal daily functioning difficult. It was her that was driving him absolutely mad. Her that made the life he had started carving out for himself mean less and less every day.

  “Lorie!” he yelled again. People were staring now. But he didn’t care. Seeing the white earbuds pushed deeply in her ears, he knew onlookers would keep on staring. If he was going to have any shot at talking to her, he was going to have to catch her. Quite literally. In dress shoes, no less. And a pair of khakis.

  Calling on everything he had, he sprinted, hard and fast, every ounce of soccer skill he had ever possessed coming out as he ran. Until he reached her. And pulling up beside her, caught her attention.

  She stopped in her tracks. Wide-eyed. Staring. Not comprehending what was happening at first. Her feet were still moving at a slow jog, but with her attention on him, she didn’t notice the small sidewalk elevation. Catching the tip of her sneaker on the ridge, she tripped, and being so preoccupied with her staring, couldn’t possibly catch herself.

  He threw himself in her direction, arms outstretched, hoping to break her fall.

  Her own chest heaving from exercise, her eyes flew from him to their growing crowd, back to him again. She still couldn’t process what was happening. From a loosened earbud, Hamilton’s main theme thumped into the pocket of air between them.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, dropping his briefcase and taking her shoulders to steady her in case she needed it.

  “Miss, are you okay?” Another female jogger approached, clearly fearing Saam’s advances were unwanted.

  “Yes, yes. I’m fine.” She waved the concerned fellow runner off. “I know him. He just surprised me.” Lorie explained it away with a toothy grin that could reassure anyone of anything. Saam had never hated her smile. Until that moment. Smiling for a stranger’s benefit through her own shock only confirmed how deeply her need to please others ran.

  “I’m a doctor,” Saam added, to wave off any offers of assistance.

  “She’s fine. Y’all can stop staring.” The other jogger informed the gathered crowd and took off down the trail. The crowd of ten or so, including the kids who were indebted to Lorie for saving their ball, slowly filed away and it was just them. In the sunshine. In the warmth of the summer afternoon. And good god, she had never been more beautiful to him. Until she winced and grabbed her ankle.

  “Ouch!” she said through gritted teeth. “I think I rolled my ankle.”

  Chapter 25

  Lorie

  His apartment was sparse. Clearly lacking a woman’s touch.

  She liked that. Why she didn’t know. But she liked it. A lot.

  Almost as much as she liked the feel of his hands on her. Examining the ankle she’d tweaked when she’d recoiled from his earlier, wholly unexpected touch in the park. Though recoiled wasn’t at all the right word. It implied she didn’t like the way it felt.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  The thought had crept into her brain and slipped into her conscious thoughts at least twenty times in the last ten minutes. But reason wasn’t the reason she had agreed to come.

  “Stop…” Lorie pushed his hands off her ankle, bringing the foot into her lap and crossing it over her thigh. Damn, it was cold in his apartment. Perspiration still clung to her body—a mix of physical exertion and nerves. Running five miles to forget the cluster fuck of one’s life worked up a whole lotta sweat.

  Saam’s head jerked up, and he pushed away from where he’d squatted to examine her injury, sitting on a cluttered coffee table.

  “It’s a nasty sprain. I should bandage it.” Saam was all business, looking at her ankle instead of her. Only her injury wasn’t the business she needed to cover before his hands lit up her body like a firework.

  “What did you mean, sending a text like that?” Lorie rubbed her foot, pushing harder at the tender spots, hoping it would help in case she needed to make a quick getaway. “I earned it? The hard way?” Her eyes narrowed at the memory. “If you wanted me to feel like a slut, congratulations, you did.”

  “What?” Saam jumped to his feet, wildly shaking his head, splayed hands coming up to his sides like he was under arrest. “Lorie, no. God, no. I have never thought of you like that. Never would. What are you talking about?”

  “Your text was quite possibly the most insulting thing I’ve ever received.” Lorie scooted away from him. Farther down the leather couch, crossing her arms over rebellious nipples.

  Saam reached for his phone in his back pocket. Pulling it out, his fingers flying over the screen. He paused, obviously rereading what he’d sent her. Then he looked up, eyes searching for meaning, his face blank, shoulders shrugging.

>   “What’s wrong with what I sent?” His remorse was palpable, the radiant color draining out of his eyes, turning them into two navy pools. She knew what that meant. She’d seen it before, when other emotions stirred his soul.

  “You implied I earned your business the hard way.” Lorie uncrossed her arms to use air quotes around the two phrases that stuck in her brain the most. “I’m not sure if you’re familiar with modern slang terminology but using those phrases together to describe something a woman has done typically insinuates she’s used sex to do it. So how did you think it would make me feel? Getting a text like that? From you?” Lorie looked away, unable to bear the little-lost-boy, sad-puppy-dog look coming her way at present. “Especially after what happened.” Okay, so his reaction wasn’t what she expected. There was more remorse than gloating going on. But still. He should know better. And if he didn’t, he certainly would from now on.

  Saam slowly slid his phone in his back pocket, crossed his arms, and rocked back on his heels.

  “Or…” He fixed her in a challenging gaze. “I could simply be acknowledging hard work.” When his brows quirked up in a way that implied it should be obvious, her stomach disappeared. Had her emotions kept her from seeing another possibility? “I was put in charge of updating diabetic patient protocols at the Children’s Hospital. Believe it or not, I listen to you. I trust you. Your brain is just as attractive as your body, and some of our conversations stuck.” Saam rubbed a hand up his neck stubble, jaw clenching. “The hospital was sending newly diagnosed patients home with a bottle of insulin and a bag of needles, because it was cost-effective. I researched it. Seventy percent of those patients were back within a week because they couldn’t get their dosing correct. Lampalin has the ability to fix that problem and help a lot of kids.”

  He paused, pacing, his arms still crossed, his eyes still down. Lorie readjusted herself on the couch. A tiny bit of guilt over how harsh her reaction had been made her stomach muscles twitch. He liked my brain, too?

  “I’m not an easy person. Maybe not even a pleasant one. I own that. I’m introverted. I’m socially awkward. I’m your polar opposite. That turns a lot of people off.” Saam was looking out his window now. Over an impressive view of Freedom Park. “You didn’t give up. You went further than any sales rep ever has. Because you believe in your product and you believe in helping people. It shows. I heard you. I respect you. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”