Not Quite Forever (Not Quite series) (5 page)

When it became apparent the power wasn’t going to come back up, Monica suggested they return to their room.

The hotel didn’t appear to have any power problems, but it did seem the volume on the main floor had dulled to a low roar.

“Holy cow!” Mary hummed as she stepped into the suite. “This is your room?”

Monica tossed her purse on the coffee table and crossed to the kitchen. The main room was nearly a thousand square feet, complete with a kitchen, dining room for ten, living room, piano, and foyer. Three bedrooms splintered off from the space, giving full panoramic views of the city. The penthouse was built for a family. Glen took one of the two additional rooms in the top floor apartment. Walt’s room was down the hall and half the size. Still, a penthouse suite wasn’t something he would ever spring for and yet couldn’t say no to when talking with the Morrisons.

“I told my sister we didn’t need this,” Monica said with a sigh.

“It’s bigger than my condo,” Mary exclaimed.

Dakota adjusted quickly. “It’s very nice.”

Trent moved to the massive window and opened the blinds. Outside, rain started to spray against the glass. Trent shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

Walt moved to his friend’s side, looked at the ominous rain-filled clouds. “Looks bad.”

“I lived through my share of storms in Jamaica.”

“You think this is one of them?”

He shrugged. “The path of the storms don’t often veer off course by too many miles. They do pick up strength, however.”

“Honey?” Monica called from across the room.

Trent turned toward her.

“Want another drink?”

He waved her off. “I’m good.”

A denial of a drink this early in the evening made Walt pause. He’d taken care of many disasters after they’d happened, but hadn’t been a huge part of one while it was occurring. The second earthquake in Jamaica was as close as he came.

Walt was about to ask Trent if he thought the weather was going to get worse as a gust of wind and pelting rain slapped the window.

“Looks nasty out there.” Dakota walked up behind them.

“Weather like this seldom leaves behind anything good.”

“I suppose you’d know that better than most,” she told Walt. “How long have you volunteered with Borderless Doctors?”

“Little over five years.”

“You love it.” It wasn’t a question, simply an observation from someone he hardly knew.

“Restores my faith in humanity. There are people out there suffering and are willing to take any help they can get. People who’ve lost everything and want to help others simply because they have it better than the guy in the bed next to them. Those of us that go to do what we can, do it for the basic humanity of life.”

Dakota leaned against the large window and sighed. “And there are people like you willing to risk their own safety
to
help. That makes you a hero, Dr. Eddy.”

He snorted, was thankful he didn’t have a drink in his hand or he’d feel the burn of the alcohol in his nose.

“You laugh,” she said. “You know I’m right.”

“I get on a plane and fly to crazy places and do what I do. That doesn’t make me a hero.”

She lowered her gaze to her shoes before slowly lifting it back to his. “I’m the writer, Doctor. A hero is anyone willing to give of themselves without anything in return.”

His smile fell. “I get plenty in return.” The smiles of his patients, the knowledge he made a difference. It was why he went into emergency medicine.

Noise from the television filled the room and they both turned to see a crew of Florida weathermen and -women covering the storm.

“The tropical depression has now been upgraded to a tropical storm and is spinning off Cuba and picking up speed.” The reporter on the news stood against pelting rain, the effect of drops slapping against his otherwise perfect face, dramatic enough for the evening news.

“A tropical storm isn’t as bad as a hurricane, right?” Mary asked.

“Just shy of a hurricane,” Trent told her. “Makes a difference in smaller countries, but aren’t that dramatic here. Unless they linger and cause unexpected flooding.”

“Or power outages?” Dakota asked.

Monica moved beside her, placed a drink in her hand. “The hotel is prepared for this kind of thing.”

“As much as they can be,” Dakota said. “Anything past the what . . . the eighth floor . . . won’t have water if the power goes out. It takes power to pump water.”

Intrigued, Walt wondered if Dakota’s statistic was correct.

“You’ve been watching way too much of that prepper show, Dakota.”

“It’s either a fact, or it isn’t. Bottom line, here on the twenty-eighth floor, or us on the seventeenth . . . we won’t have water if the power goes down.”

Walt considered himself an observer in life. He watched, listened, and made executive decisions when the time came. Preparing for anything other than long stints at work wasn’t part of his life. If the storm got worse, those in the room could just leave if they needed to. Helped to have a couple of pilots with access to private helicopters and airplanes. Sure, he could add Dakota and Mary to that exiting mix, but what about the others in the hotel?

“We have drinking water and enough food to last awhile in the fridge,” Monica told them.

“And flushing the toilet?” Dakota wasn’t letting this go.

Walt found himself smiling.

Monica’s face fell into a frown. “I didn’t think of that.”

Dakota lifted her glass to Monica. “Fill the tub now. Worse case, you drain it in the morning.”

Glen looked over his shoulder. “That’s not a bad idea, Dakota.”

Rain continued to pound the massive windows in the suite, Monica disappeared toward the bathroom, and the sound of running water filled the room.

Chapter Four

The water in the tub was drained the next morning and the tropical storm didn’t manifest into anything. The power flickered once, forcing Dakota and Mary to take the stairs back down to their room sometime after one in the morning. Their new friends, Monica and Trent, suggested they stay in their suite, but with a room only a few flights down, they decided to take the walk.

A slight edge of discontent sat under Dakota’s skin as she made her way through the early hours of the next day. She hadn’t managed much of a conversation with Walt outside of a joint one with their small party the night before.

When she found him standing outside the room where she finished her morning class, a smile met her lips and her heart skipped. Today he was dressed in a casual pair of pants and a simple pullover shirt, no suit, no sleek shoes, and no briefcase.

“Hi.”

“Hey. Flying home today?” she asked, knowing perfectly well he wasn’t scheduled to leave for two days.

“Flying, but not home.”

Dakota forced the smile to stay on her lips. “Excuse me?”

“The storm,” he tilted his head to the side as if the entire weather event stood next to him. “It’s a . . . it provided an opportunity to take a few of us off to triage some of the islands in the Keys.”

She blinked, twice. “You’re leaving?”

“Trent is flying us down. We’ll probably fly back to the West Coast from there.”

A twinge stuck somewhere between her brain and her lungs and caught. “Oh.”

“I, ah, thought I’d say good-bye before I left.”

His gaze met hers and held.

At a loss for words, Dakota sputtered. “The islands? Are they . . . is there anything serious going on there?”

Walt shook his head. “I doubt it. A good training exercise. Something we can use since we have a couple of pilots and plenty of experienced staff with us.”

“It’s what you do . . . right?”

“Yeah. I thought . . .”

He let his words die off and she thought right along with him. Thought maybe they’d have an opportunity to get to know each other a little better before they both returned to their normal lives.

Dakota reached over to the table outside her room, found several copies of her latest book sitting there. From her bag, she grabbed a pen and opened up the cover.

She handed him the book and offered a smile. “My schedule is more flexible than yours, Doc.”

He glanced at the book she shoved in his hands.

She heard his phone buzz in his pocket. To his credit, he didn’t acknowledge it. Just stared at her. The heat in his eyes registered and made some of the confidence inside her sizzle and lean toward him.

His phone buzzed again. “They’re meeting me . . .” He pointed toward the sky.

“On the roof?”

“Right.”

“Then you should probably go.”

Only, he didn’t move. People walked around them in their rush to get to a class, to move to their next event.

“Walter.” She used his full name and he blinked. “Read the book. Call me.”

He tapped the paperback in his palm and finally broke away. “Right. OK.” He stepped back.

The ball, as they say, was in his court. If he wanted to get in touch with her when he returned to LA, he now had her number. There wasn’t anything else she could say outside of good-bye and that didn’t feel right.

Dakota hiked her bag higher on her shoulder and took a step back.

“Safe flight home, Dakota.”

“You, too, Doc.”

“Walt,” he corrected with a laugh.

She backed away a couple of steps. “Walter . . . is that Walt the Second or the Third?”

He moved away, both of them speaking through the bodies swarming around them.

“The Third. How did you know?”

She laughed. “A hunch. Was Grandpa a doctor?”

When Walt opened his mouth to answer, she lifted a hand and stopped him. “Tell me later,” she told him. “Enjoy the Keys, Dr. Eddy. I hear they’re beautiful this time of year.”

With that, she turned and left him standing there.

Dragging, with his eyes straining to stay open, Walt finished his last verbal dictation for the night. Outside light was pouring in from the ambulance bay. Already the morning was heating up. The California sun’s only redeeming quality was the fact that it was dry. Still, anything in the triple digits meant more accidents, more assaults, more chaos. After three long graveyard shifts following his trip to Florida, Walt was ready for a night off. A night of uninterrupted sleep sounded like heaven.

Walt finished his dictation, hung up the phone, and signed off his charts.

“Walt?” the day shift clerk, Nancy, called out as he started toward the doctor’s room where he left his keys.

“Yeah?”

“You have a call on 2748.”

He lifted a hand in acknowledgment and moved to the private room where he could at least hold his tired head in his hands while he finished any last-minute conversations for the day.

He sat on the unused bed in the private room and clicked into the call. “Dr. Eddy.”

“You sound just like your father when you answer the phone.”

He loved his mother, but her timing couldn’t be worse. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, you have that
I’m tired and you’ve called at the wrong time
voice.” JoAnne Eddy was a doctor’s wife. She knew all about late shifts and the need to sleep.

“I did just finish three nights in a row, Mom. What’s up?”

“I knew you’d turn off your phone so I called you at work.”

Walt closed his eyes. “You could leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

His mother sighed. He envisioned her oversprayed hair and perfect makeup. “You know how much I hate playing phone tag. The mother is the last to get a call back. I thought I was a good mother . . . one that deserved more attention from her only son.”

Walt was too tired to listen to the guilt trip. “Mom. I’m tired. It was a busy night. You wouldn’t want me to fall asleep on my drive home . . .” He’d learned how to place guilt trips from the best.

“Oh, that’s just mean. But I’ll get to the point. Your father’s birthday celebration is in two weeks. You’re still coming, right? There hasn’t been some silly outbreak of pig flu somewhere that is dragging you away, is there?”

Pig flu?
This disgust for how he spent his free time was always a breath away when speaking to his parents. Giving his services away for free somehow mocked them and every dime it took to put him through medical school.

“I’m still coming.”

His mom waited a beat. “Are you bringing someone?”

What he wouldn’t do to stop the flow of questions he knew were coming. The image of Dakota, and a passage in her book that he’d read from beginning to end, popped into his head. He really needed to call her. Let her know he was back in town. Maybe she’d have some choice words to stop his parents from their constant questions.

The woman did have a way with words.

“No.”

“You hesitated.”

“I didn’t hesitate. I’m coming alone.”

“Who is she?”

He yawned. “There’s no one.”

“You hesitated again.”

“I yawned. I’ll see you in two weeks.” He glanced at his watch.
After eight already?
The traffic was going to suck.

“You promise?”

“Unless the big one hits and airplanes don’t fly.”

“Don’t say that,” she chastised. “You know how much I hate you living in that godforsaken place as it is. Colorado has its faults, but we don’t have big earthquakes.”

Yes, but you’re both there
, he wanted to say but didn’t.

“Good-bye, Mom.”

By the time he walked into his apartment, he was more awake than when he’d left the hospital. Between the traffic and the bright sun, his head decided sleep could wait a little longer.

He tossed his keys and his wallet in a bowl by the door and headed to the kitchen. A big bowl of cereal and a glass of milk would give him the right amount of fuel to help him sleep. Or so he hoped. Even a few hours would make the evening better.

His fridge was a void wasteland. The milk was fresh but nearly empty. A few beers and a head of wilted lettuce would keep him from starvation if the big one hit.

Why had his mother placed that image into his brain? Walt didn’t worry about things like that. Truth was, if the big one rocked the southland, he’d be in the ER for days. Food would have to come by way of the cafeteria.

He leaned against the counter as he poured sickening-sweet cereal into a bowl. His eyes landed on Dakota’s book sitting on the counter. He’d already dog-eared a few pages. Admittedly, one passage was filled with steam and attraction . . . the others, however, were witty passages or ones that made him question her personal past.

He was attracted. So much so she found a way into his mind daily since he left her in Miami. No one woman took that kind of space in his mind since Vivian. Even now, years after . . . Vivian’s name in his mind brought up images of their time together.

He didn’t want to do that again. Life was fragile, painfully so. Who knew that better than an emergency doctor who watched people lose their battle with life on a daily basis?

Then he’d read Dakota’s book. Two people from different lives, different histories . . . both having issues that most would never experience nor understand. Their physical attraction was off the charts.

Walt knew that was probably some of his attraction. How could a woman who wrote words so explicit and emotionally compelling be anything but a passionate wonderland under her Lakers cap and sarcastic exterior?

He needed to know a little more about her before he let the wonder of the woman he knew as Dakota, author of sensual romance novels, walk out of his life.

Walt opened the book and picked up his phone.

She answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Dakota.” Her voice had a sleepy quality to it. It brought to mind early mornings and long evenings.

He cradled the phone in his hand and played with the cardboard on his empty cereal box.

“Dr. Eddy. I was wondering if you’d call.”

“Wondering or hoping?”

“Eweh . . . such a leading question. Does the woman say with a breathy tone . . . Oh, Doctor, I’ve just been pining for your call.
’ 
” The slight Southern accent he’d heard after a drink licked the edges of her voice. “Or does the woman say in a noncommittal tone . . . ‘Doctor who? I forgot all about you.
’ 
”

“Do you always play out scenes in your head?”

“You read my book . . . you tell me.”

“How do you know I read your book?”

Dakota laughed and something inside him sprouted. “Because it’s a long-ass flight from Miami to LA. How did the Keys hold up?”

“Fine. Minor damage, few problems with the local hospitals.”

“Anticlimactic and not worthy of the fuel to fly there.”

He laughed. “Have you been talking with Trent and Glen?”

“No. But that’s something I’d guess they’d say.”

“You’d be right.”

“I’m an observer of people, Doc. Something I think you and I have in common.”

Walt gave up playing with the box and poured milk into the bowl. “You’re going to have to forgive me. I’m in need of food and can’t seem to end this conversation before I shovel it in my mouth.”

“Ah, honesty. Very admirable. Have you been at work all night?”

“I have.” He went on to tell her about the last three nights, some of the never-ending sagas that became his patients’ lives. He shoveled in a few bites when she offered a comment.

“I’m taking notes,” she told him.

“Untold stories of the ER?”

“No, that’s been done. I’m going with the jaded doc angle. Character profile. I’m using you, Doctor, fair warning.”

“Ah, honesty. Very admirable.” His words mimicked hers and her laugh crawled up his spine again.

“My schedule is stupid,” he told her.

“My schedule is flexible.”

He pushed his unfinished bowl of cereal aside, pulled her book in front of him. “Have any of your stories started with two people simply dating?”

“No. Actually, there’s usually chaos and drama.”

“Dating is too simple?”

“You might say that.”

He would.