Forever Sheltered (23 page)

“What’s the deal with your father?” he asked. “He took a paternity test with his own wife’s child.”

“You’d best stay out of that one,” I said.

Duffrey held up his hands. “Works for me. I don’t tangle with the personal lives of men on the medical board.”

“He won’t appreciate my leave of absence.”

“You going over my head on this? With Dad?” His voice was a challenge.

Of course I wouldn’t. I would do everything I could to make sure my father didn’t even know. But Duffrey could sweat it out for all I cared.

I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

The office doors were a blur as I headed through the halls. Damn it to hell. I’d only been at this godforsaken place for two months. A four-week leave! At least I hadn’t been escorted off the premises like Tina.

Tina. I wanted her with a fierceness I had no intention of denying.

I tore through the corridors. She would see me. I would make her.

Chapter 41: Tina

Darion looked like he was ready to blow his stack when he stormed into my room. I was cleaning markers with antibacterial wipes. This was my longest break in the day, lunch and a prep period.

“Come with me.” He took my arm and pulled me to standing.

I resisted, jerking free of him. “What has gotten into you?”

“I just tanked my career. Will you come with me already?” He stalked to the door, then turned to see if I was coming.

I refused to follow. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m out. Four-week leave of absence.” He yanked the door open. “Will you come?”

I glanced around. Everything was mostly ready for my next session. “I only have an hour.”

“That’s enough for me.”

I followed him down the hall. He was walking a hundred miles an hour, shucking his lab coat as he went.

“You going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Not here.”

We took the elevator down. Darion stood angry and silent, glowering at the numbers as if he could make them move faster.

I relented a little and reached for his hand, squeezing it. He held on to it, and even when the doors opened, didn’t let go. This surprised me, but I didn’t pull away.

We headed toward the exit, and I realized nobody cared about us. We were just two people in regular clothes heading for the parking garage, like any visitors.

When we got in his car, he didn’t start it right away. He turned to me, and pulled me in close, hanging on to me across the console.

I had a million questions, but I let them go for the moment. His grip on the back of my neck was intense. He definitely was not the stoic guy I was used to seeing in the halls.

“Did you just want to talk here?” I asked.

He pulled back. “No, we’ll go somewhere.” He started the car.

“You want lunch?” I asked.

“Are you hungry?”

“Not particularly.”

He backed out of the spot and we left the garage, flying down the side street. After a couple turns, I knew where he was headed.

The cliff.

Torrey Pines was different in broad daylight than it had been just before sunset. The scrubby bald landscape seemed bleak. A cold front had blown in the day before, so it was considerably colder. I should have grabbed a jacket.

We picked our way along the path to the cliff, Darion leading. The winter day was bright and clear. When we reached the edge, the Pacific spread out in blinding white blue, the waves sparkling like they were newly sprinkled with pixie dust.

It was still magical to me. I looked down at the narrow strip of beach that edged the water, taking in more details for my painting. In the light of day, the drop seemed more treacherous. You could see every outcropping, every sharp rock.

Darion plunked down, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge like he was considering a jump. That seemed too close to me, as the dirt was crumbly on the rocks. I pictured Albert’s painting of this scene, the ground dropping away below the oblivious circus.

But I sat next to him anyway. The danger of it made my belly buzz. We were completely alone. Between it being Monday and the frigid wind, no one was in the park. Nobody walked the beach below either.

We were the only people as far as either of us could see in any direction.

Darion stared out at the water for a while. I waited for him to talk. Maybe now he would say all the things I’d asked about yesterday. Maybe it was tied to what happened today.

“Cynthia is my sister,” he said finally.

Suddenly everything made sense. Her mom was his mom. He was taking care of her now that she was gone. And he couldn’t lose her too. God. How difficult.

I moved closer and laid my head on his shoulder. “Is she doing okay?”

“Fantastic, actually. Everything is going perfectly with the new drug.”

“But —”

“I lied to the hospital. Scrubbed any family references from her records before they were transferred here.”

“Why?” I shivered, and he drew me against his body, blocking the wind.

“It has to do with my mother. How she was cared for. And the mistakes the last hospital made with Cynthia. She lost a kidney because of them.”

God, no wonder he lied. “You wanted to be in control.”

“I changed my whole career path, my whole life, so that I could.”

I let my hands wander along the path of his ribs, although I couldn’t feel them for the muscle. “And now it was all for nothing.”

“Maybe not. If this drug works, and it looks like it is, I can discharge her. Well, Clements can.”

“And try it all again somewhere else?”

He sighed. “No. Hopefully have a normal life.”

“They didn’t fire you, though, right?”

“No. Just put me on leave. But that’s a big deal.”

“It’s four weeks to spend with your sister. No long shifts. No work stress. That’s a win.”

He lifted my face up to his. “How do you do that? Make everything seem like it was supposed to happen exactly as it did?”

I choked out a short laugh. “Don’t be calling me Little Miss Sunshine. I’m all about the doom and gloom. It’s just obvious this time. Cynthia is better. You got busted. Now you can have a normal life for a bit.”

He pulled me onto his lap. This had become a familiar place.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I should have.”

Yes, he should have, I thought. But I said, “I’m just the girl you were banging in Surgical Suite B.”

“You’re the only thing I’ve looked forward to for a long time.”

His hand moved along the sweater, feeling the curves of my body. I wasn’t cold anymore.

“I should have had dinner with you yesterday,” I said. “We wasted a day.”

“And a night,” he added.

His mouth came down to reach mine, just a whisper of a kiss.
 

I responded, but upped the ante, my tongue on his lips. He deepened the kiss, and now we were crazy, falling into it.

I shifted over on him, and bits of dirt fell off the end of the cliff to the beach below.

“Maybe we should move back a little,” I said.

But he didn’t let me, lifting me so that I straddled him like I had on the beach. He pulled the skirt out from between us so that it settled around our bodies like a cloud.

His hands went beneath the sweater. When he reached my breasts, he groaned against my mouth. “Your lack of bras drives me insane.”

His thumbs on the nipples sent sparks flying through me. Outdoors. Public park. Broad daylight.

He was my kind of boy.

Darion reached beneath the skirt and tugged on my panties. “Should I just tear them off again?” he asked.

“I’m too poor to keep buying underwear,” I said. “And you’re temporarily unemployed.”

He fingered the slender strap. “I think lingerie is the perfect use of my trust fund,” he said. And with that, he snapped the waistband.

Before I could even chastise him for ruining another pair, his fingers were inside me, and my mind was erased. My forehead dropped to his shoulder. God, he had this figured out.

His breath puffed warm against my ear. “I didn’t bring a condom,” he said.

I reached for his belt buckle. “I think we dispensed with those in that cabana.”

He sucked in when the cold air hit his newly exposed skin, but I didn’t leave him that way for long. I slid over him, reveling in the feel of each inch entering my body.

The wind blew his hair around, but mine was neatly tied in pigtails. His hands moved to my hips and lifted me up and down.

I was lost. Occasional pebbles rolled off the cliff and fell to the rocks below. The sky was bright white, and between breaths I could hear the waves crashing against the shore.

I’d never done anything quite like this. But the doctor was already familiar, and he knew me too. When I started to tighten around him, he increased the pace, moving me over him. I clutched his shoulders, thighs working, driving me up and down. There was no stopping this, and I cried out against his neck, the orgasm blasting through me like a tidal wave.

He gripped me tightly around the hips and held me steady as he pulsed up into me, hot and wet.

I started giggling immediately.

He started laughing too, even as he said, “You can give a guy a complex this way.”

“Oh…it’s not…that,” I said, gasping. “I’m just trying to picture myself later, no panties, trying to manage art therapy, after…this…stickiness.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. I think I have some duct tape in the trunk.”

I smacked his shoulder. “You’re going to make me duct-tape panties?”

“No! I mean to fix the strap I broke.”

“So, panties
mended
with duct tape.”

“You’d rather leak on the floor?”

I pressed my cheek into his. “Oh my God, we somehow went from new lovers to crazy old couple in four days.”

He gathered his arms around me and held me close. “Perfect. I want to be a crazy old couple with you.”

“With duct-tape panties.”

“Exactly.”

And that was how I ended up teaching the rest of the day with silver duct tape up my skirt.

Chapter 42: Darion

I sat in the parking garage a solid half-hour after Tina went back into the hospital, wondering what to say to Cynthia. I needed to do it sooner rather than later, before Clements came in and introduced himself as her new doctor.

My phone beeped. A message from Angela.

Who is this new doctor? Where are you?

Too late.

Just go with it. I’ll explain later. Buzz me when he’s gone.

I’d let them talk for a moment, then I’d go up as a random visitor. I had no idea who knew what had happened. Clements, obviously. Whatever nurse was on shift with Cynthia. The charge nurse, surely.

My patient load was too big to dump on Clements, no matter what Duffrey said. It would be split between other oncologists. I thought of Harriet. I wouldn’t be there when she got discharged from ICU. Hell, I wouldn’t even be able to log in to check on her.

Cars passed behind me, other doctors coming in for rounds. The hospital routine would go on. But unlike in the main wards, the subspecialty clinic had fewer workers, so patients were used to getting to know their caregivers.

I had to let it go. I’d done this thing.

Maybe Duffrey could be swayed. I hadn’t even argued my case.

I could involve my father.

My phone buzzed. Another message from Angela.

All clear.

Nobody paid much attention to my stroll through the ward, as if without my white lab coat I wasn’t anybody anymore.

I opened Cynthia’s door.

Marlena, the nurse friend of Tina, was inside, removing the IV. I froze up for a second, then forced myself to relax. “No more platelets?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Dr. Clements said her numbers were good,” Angela said. “I wrote them down.” She glanced at the nurse. “In case you wanted to see them.”

“I saw them this morning.”

Marlena cut her eyes at me, then away.

Cynthia waited patiently for her to take it all away. “Almost time for art!” she said. “And I don’t have to take the pole!”

I sat on the end of the bed. “That’s great!” I could see the question in her eyes about the new doctor, but she knew not to say anything in front of the hospital nurse. I guess if there was one good thing about the new arrangement, she wouldn’t have to lie or cover for us anymore.

When Marlena finally left, Cynthia and Angela started talking at the same time. “What happened? Who is that doctor? Where have you been?”

I said that I was officially on vacation.

“Can we go to Disneyland?” Cynthia asked. “It’s really close!”

Why the hell not? “Let’s see how your second treatment goes,” I told her. “Then, yeah. Let’s go to Disneyland.”

“Can Tina come too?”

I tilted my head, watching Cynthia. “What makes you think Tina would come?”

“Because she likes you.”

I froze. “How do you know that?”

Cynthia picked up the image I had drawn of Tina as a princess in front of a castle. “It’s right here.” She pointed to Tina’s face. “Anybody can see it.”

She was right.

~*´`*~

I waited by the curb in front of the hospital for Tina to come out at the end of the day. It felt strange to not be inside, working until late, fighting exhaustion. I hadn’t been this free since undergrad. Cynthia and I had spent the whole day making Brother Pix.

Tina popped out through the glass entrance, immediately spotting my car. When she opened the door, the winter air came with her, fresh and cool. She leaned over to kiss me lightly, like it was an everyday thing for me to pick her up from work.

I could get used to this.

“I have a kept man,” she said. “I think I should keep you tied to the bed to await my pleasure.”

I dropped the car into gear. “I think I like this new lifestyle.”

I didn’t know what she’d think of where I lived.

When we moved to San Diego, I was more or less in crisis mode with Cynthia, her stem cell transplant having failed and then her kidney removed. Since my father was familiar with San Diego and I didn’t have the time or energy to look around, I let him choose a place.

Of course, he completely neglected Cynthia’s needs, as he refused to acknowledge her existence, and we ended up in a high-rise with no place for her to play. I’d made up for it with jaunts to Torrey Pines and the beach.