by Natalie Ann
“What am I supposed to let slip?”
“I’ve told her I don’t date doctors. I said you mentioned you don’t date hospital employees. So we can let her believe this is a ‘friends with benefits’ situation.” More silence on his end. “Benefits being we are each other’s dates if we need it. I might need a date at some point,” she rushed out to say.
“Oh.”
He sounded disappointed that she clarified that. Maybe she was too. “What do you say?”
“I think it sounds interesting. You’re helping me out with my family and I can return the favor for you when you need it. Maybe everyone will get off my back now.”
“Will they if they know it’s a friends with benefits situation? I mean that is what I want Cori to know. She can think it’s more in terms of benefits if she wants. She’s always talking about how everyone should have more fun so I think I’ll point that out to her.”
He started to laugh. “Though I’d wish there were more truth than fibbing to your statement, I can get on board with it.”
He definitely had to be attracted to her. Her body was starting to sweat and it had nothing to do with the hot bath she’d exited a few minutes ago. She got up and went to the kitchen and poured herself another half glass of wine hoping to help her sleep tonight after this phone call.
“Then it’s a date on Saturday. Do you want to meet somewhere?”
“If it’s a date I should pick you up, don’t you think?” he asked.
“You can do that. I’ll text you my address. Anything else I need to know before Saturday?”
“Not that I can think of. You can call me if you’ve got any questions though.”
“I’ll do that if something comes to me.”
“Thanks, Sierra.”
“No…thank you. I can’t wait to see Cori’s face.”
8
Serious Trouble
When the doorbell rang, Sierra rushed to open it, then stopped herself.
This wasn’t a date. Not like a normal one might be.
Nope, this was a favor. That’s what she was reminding herself.
Then why did she want to wipe the drool from her face when she opened the door and saw Grey standing there in dark jeans, sneakers, and a black Columbia jacket? “Are you a skier?”
“What? No, why do you ask?”
Bummer. She’d bet he’d look pretty awesome gliding down the mountain swishing in and out, his knees bent, his thighs flexing. Oh man, she was in some serious trouble for agreeing to this.
“You’ve got on a pretty pricey ski jacket.”
“It’s lightweight and warm and gets the job done. You look nice.”
She glanced down at her burgundy skinny jeans, gray and burgundy patterned shirt, and gray ankle boots. “Thanks. I didn’t think it called for anything fancy, but more than sweats and a hoodie.”
“You’d probably be totally fine in that outfit too.”
She laughed at his smile and wink. “But it wouldn’t give that great of an impression on your family that I’m meeting and trying to convince that we are an item.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just showing up with you is enough. They don’t need to be convinced of anything else.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of those words but figured it wasn’t worth asking. “Are we ready to go? You didn’t tell me where your brother lived.”
“He lives in Latham. Not too far from here.”
“And where do you live?”
“Colonie,” he said. “I guess you should know those things. We know each other’s professions and you know my family’s names and what my siblings do.”
“I don’t know your parents’ names and what they do,” she said.
“Tom and Ellen Baxter. My father is an engineer and my mother is a manager for a health care provider in the area.”
“Sounds like the classic American family.”
He snorted and held his hand out while she put her jacket on and grabbed her purse. She followed him to his car and shouldn’t have been surprised it was a black SUV that didn’t scream flash. Nothing about Grey was flashy or completely out there.
Even when he was walking around the hospital, he had an air of confidence to him, success in his job, but not arrogance in his personality. If she hadn’t had such a crappy time last year at work she would have completely asked him out. She would have thanked Cori for introducing them.
“If you mean middle class that works hard to achieve success, then yes.”
His parents had good jobs but not good enough to put four kids through college. Not medical school, law school, and a Masters for teaching. She was assuming Jake went straight into the service after high school and all of his school would have been paid for that way.
“A lot like my family then,” she said.
“So on the drive fill me in. Then you can quiz me when we get there to make sure I don’t mess up.”
She smiled. “If you mess up we can blame it on the fact we are too into each other to worry about little details like our families.”
“I like how you think. So your family?”
“My father’s name is Brian and he’s married to my stepmother Beth. He’s an electrician and Beth is a teacher’s aid. My mother’s name is Aileen and she’s married to Alan. Notice that my father is B’s and my mother is A’s?”
He snorted. “Cute.”
“I always thought so but no one else laughs. Anyway, my mother is a nurse too, but at an oncology facility.”
“Tough job there, being a chemo nurse.”
“It is, but she has the personality for it. Alan is retired from the State. He was a toll collector for years.”
“Wow, I don’t think I know anyone who does that job. Or did it. I’m so used to just driving through with my E-ZPass.”
“Which is why he’s retired. They’ve cut a lot of jobs over the years and he took his retirement the minute he could so someone younger could keep his job.”
“That was nice of him,” he said.
She had good examples of right and wrong, good and bad behavior, in her life. “He’s a nice guy. So is Beth. I get along with both of my stepparents. Actually, the four of them get along pretty well. Not like they hang out or anything, but my parents have been divorced for about fifteen years. There were no hard feelings. Guess they just grew apart, or so they say. I was a teen and though it hurt, they made the transition as easy as possible.”
“So siblings?” he asked. They were well on their way. “We’ve got Brian and Beth, the electrician and teacher’s aid. Aileen and Alan, the chemo nurse and retired toll booth collector.”
“Boy, you’re smart. Bet you breezed through medical school.”
“Not quite. Long hours, gallons of coffee, and very little social life. That’s what it takes.”
She’d heard that enough from other doctors. “Siblings. My sister, Lily, is thirty-three, three years older than me. I’m thirty, by the way. Guess we should know that too.”
“Thirty-five,” he said back. Cori was right, a few years younger than Jack.
“Lily is single though wishing she weren’t. She’s a math teacher in the middle school back in Buffalo. My brother, Adam, is twenty-eight, also single and does web-design.”
“I can remember that easy enough. Should I quiz you on my family?”
She heard the humor in his voice. “What do I get if I score a hundred?”
“What do you want?”
This time there was a bit of huskiness to his voice and the cold winter air was not felt one bit in her body right now. It had nothing to do with the heated seats either. “Some food,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
“There will be food there. No worries. Colt would have had it catered. He’s not much of a cook, but he likes to put on a good party.”
“That works just fine. So your parents are Tom and Ellen, siblings Colt, Jake, and Alexa. Colt’s a lawyer, Jake a medevac pilot, Alexa a teacher. Jake dates Rachel, the rest are single.”
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nbsp; “Very good.”
They pulled in front of what she assumed was Colt’s house. There were several cars in the road already. The area was nice, lots of houses that looked the same style. Colonial. She’d guess that Colt’s house was probably twenty to thirty years old, but nicely maintained.
“Are there going to be a lot of people here tonight?” she asked.
“Not sure. My family is all here already though.”
“And that is all that matters.”
“We don’t have to stay long. If you want to leave early, just let me know. Give me a sign or something.”
She laughed. “Do I get to pick this sign?”
They were walking in the front door. “Sure, I’m smart enough to figure it out.”
It wasn’t one minute before a young woman was rushing toward them. By the looks of her, Sierra was guessing this was Alexa Baxter. “Damn, you weren’t pulling my leg. I thought for sure you’d show up empty handed and make some excuse for a missing date.”
Grey snorted. “Alexa, this is Sierra Stone. Sierra, my sister, Alexa.”
Sierra put her hand out and shook. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.” She slipped her arm around Grey’s waist, felt him inch closer after he’d stiffened. “It’s great to meet the family all at once.”
“Oh,” Alexa said. “I thought you’d only been on one date.”
“We have, but sometimes you just click in that time.”
“Happy now?” Grey asked his sister.
“Yeah. Come on, my mom wants to meet you,” Alexa said, taking her hand and pulling her away. She turned back and looked at Grey and he just shrugged his shoulders. She supposed she had it coming for playing up the fact she and Grey were closer than just one date.
“So you’re the woman that Grey didn’t want to tell us about,” his mother, Ellen, said. “So nice to meet you. I’m glad Grey is getting out there and dating again. Or at least bringing someone around for us to meet. Aren’t you just a little thing.”
She’d never thought she was that small before, but she guessed she was compared to Grey’s six-foot-one-inch frame.
“Thanks, I think.”
“I’ll shift you over to my brothers or my mother will grab your hand and not let go until she’s found pictures of Grey as a baby on her phone that she uploaded years ago as a way to torture us.”
“It might be a little early for that,” she said. Holy cow, what was she missing here? Grey had told his family it was only one date, but they were acting like she was some savior or something. She suspected she knew why Alexa thought he’d made her up. If his family treated every woman he met like this, then he might never want to bring anyone around.
She’d hate to think Grey was pushed around by his family, but either way, she was going to do everything she could to get them to ease off of him.
“I’m Colt,” Grey’s brother said. “I won’t harass you like my sister and mother do. Happy to meet you and glad you came by.”
That was pleasant enough at least and then Colt took off to greet someone else that came in the door. There were close to twenty people here and though it wasn’t cramped it was still a lot of noise.
“This is our last brother, Jake, and his girlfriend, Rachel.”
“Nice to meet you both,” Sierra said.
“How did you two meet?” Rachel asked.
Crap, they hadn’t talked about this. She decided to go with the truth. “I’m a nurse at Albany Med and I was getting lunch with Cori Reynolds. Grey happened to be eating with Jack Reynolds in the cafe when we saw them and went over. The rest is history.”
“That is nice. Jake and I work there too. Did you know that? I’m a headhunter,” Rachel said, “and I recruited Jake.”
“I did hear that story. He’s a medevac pilot that just started the first of the year.”
“Do you know what our parents do?” Alexa asked.
If she found the question odd, she didn’t let on. “Your father is an engineer, your mother works for a health care provider.”
“Okay. How about Colt and me?”
Grey moved over and handed her a glass of wine. Red and she damn well needed it. She took it and said, “Thanks.” Put the glass to her lips, her arm around Grey’s waist and said, “Colt is a lawyer, and you’re an elementary school teacher that wants to set my boyfriend up with a recently divorced coworker.”
Alexa started to laugh. “Damn, I like you. So you two met at a lunch,” Alexa said to Grey.
“We did.”
“Just that one date?” Alexa asked.
Sierra put her head on his chest and smiled. “And lots of talking, but he’s busy with work and you know how it goes.”
“What do you think of Paradise?” Alexa asked, grinning.
“Paradise?” Sierra asked, wondering what the hell she was missing.
“Sierra hasn’t been to my house yet and since she’s only lived in this area for a year, she isn’t aware of Paradise Place.” He turned to her. “That is the name of the development I live in. Alexa thinks it’s funny to say that to everyone. It’s like she thinks I live on some Caribbean island.”
“With weather like this, I kind of wish you did.”
He dropped his head down and kissed her on the forehead. A sweet and romantic move there. Man, everyone was buying what they were selling, she could see it now. “We could escape there now if you want.”
“I might take you up on that later, but right now, I was promised food.”
“And we know you wanted to eat, so let’s get a plate.
9
Imaginary Girlfriend
This was going better than Grey could have even imagined. Who would have thought his sister would be such a little pest about this?
Nah, he knew. She’d always been like this. Alexa thought she knew the best for everyone and made sure she shared that opinion. They humored her when maybe they should have put their foot down.
Once they were in the kitchen at the island, Grey grabbed a plate and started to fill it with food at random. Colt always did have good taste when it came to entertaining. “Hope there is enough here that you like.”
Sierra was loading her plate up too and he was trying not to laugh. “I eat just about anything.”
“I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you were hungry.”
She turned and grinned at him, some twinkle in her eyes that made him want to drop down and give her a kiss. He had nothing to lose so he did it.
The brief taste of her was intoxicating and made him want to gorge some, but knew not to push his luck. “What was that for?”
It was better than her asking what the hell he thought he was doing. But she started this with the touchy feely around his family. She hadn’t even flinched over the kiss on the forehead either.
He leaned down close to her ear, whispered, “We are being watched.” Yeah, he felt the shiver in her body.
She turned her head and inched closer, then bumped her elbow with his, sending him a smile that made his heart race enough to ask her to go back to his place so he could show her what paradise really felt like. Talk about a cocky statement and probably why she felt the way she did about doctors.
“Well then, you should have just said that. Are we sitting anywhere to eat, or standing?” she asked.
“Why don’t we go downstairs and I’ll show you what this party is for. There is more seating down there and my guess a lot more people.”
“Does Colt entertain often?” she asked.
“Not like this. Maybe a few times a year he has the guys over for a game or something. This might be the first ‘party’ I’ve known he’s had.”
They moved to the back of the house where the stairs to the lower level were and went down. “This is beautiful and screams bachelor. How come Alexa isn’t on his case?”
“She has been in the past, but Colt just ended a relationship about six months ago so she is giving him a break.”
“He ended it?” she asked.
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“Long story and it’s not the best place for it.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t pry,” she said, finding an empty chair big enough for the two of them and sitting down. She placed her plate on her lap and patted the seat next to her.
“It’s fine.”
“So what is going on with your family?” she asked quietly. “I’m torn between them treating me like you’re a widower and I’m the first person you’ve dated since, or you’re a virgin.”
He started to cough on the sandwich he’d taken a bite of. “Neither.”
She picked up her fork and took a healthy bite of the baked ziti, then looked at him and grinned. There was a dab of sauce on the side of her lip, so he reached up and wiped it off with his thumb. “Thanks. This is great.”
“So you aren’t too overwhelmed with it all? You know, second date and meeting the family and all?”
“Well, when you click you just click,” she said, winking at him. She was way too good at this game and he was wondering what he was getting himself into.
But then he remembered her reaction to his kiss. That wasn’t pretend by any means.
“There you are,” Jake said, coming over and sitting across from them. “Is Alexa giving you a hard time?”
“You know how she is,” he said.
“Well, you have been known to say you are dating someone and then come alone. I think we all expected it. No disrespect to you, Sierra. I’m thrilled Grey didn’t have another imaginary girlfriend.”
“Ass,” he said to his brother. He wanted to get up and start shoving him until they were wrestling on the floor like they did as kids, but he was a professional now. Of course his ex-Nightstalker brother could thoroughly wipe his butt on the floor. No need to embarrass himself in front of his date.
“I know what you’re thinking and if you try it we’ll both get in trouble. Not just by Mom but Colt because we’d end up breaking something and he put a lot of money into this rehab.”
“What are you two talking about?” Sierra asked. “You wouldn’t start fighting, would you?”
“Maybe,” Jake said. “It wouldn’t be the first. I may be the youngest boy, but I’m the toughest and they know it.”