Prima Donna (7 page)

“Wow. Well…
anyway
.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, shifted on Nick’s lap, and tugged on his arms until he wrapped them around her tight. “I know you’re going to do whatever you want, as usual, but
please
don’t make her life any more complicated than it already is. Just be nice to her.”

“Trust me, Jay, I plan on being
very
nice to her.” He and Nick grinned, but Jayne just sighed and watched him finish off his pancakes.

Truth be told, as incredible it had been between them, he’d learned three things about Regan last night: she was serious about him not sleeping over, she had a sweet spot where her neck curved into her shoulder, and she wasn’t the least bit interested in taking it any further than last night with him.

He’d never had a chick kick his ass to the curb like that, so he had no idea why it made him smile, but it did.

He waited around the house for a while, then rode downtown to meet Rossick and Julia. They’d already arrived and were squaring off in the empty waiting room when he found them. Julia, decked out in navy sweatpants, matching tank top, and zipped hoodie, stood with her hands fisted on her hips, staring defiantly up at Rossick.

“I already called dibs.” Charlie Rossick towered over her by at least half a foot, but as usual, Jules didn’t back down an inch.

“
Dibs?
What are you—eight? Whatever happened to ladies first?”

“Screw that,” he snorted. “You wanted equal rights, you got ’em, and I called dibs.”

“And so it begins.” Carter closed the door behind him and moved over to kiss Julia’s cheek. “Happy New Year. What are we fighting over now?”

“Office space.”

“Hey, man.” Carter shook Rossick’s hand and grinned. “You know there are four offices and only two of you, right? Do we need to get some paper and go over the math again?”

The space they’d bought was almost perfect; a small reception area vee’d into two separate hallways, and each hallway housed two large offices and attached exam rooms. Each office was about the same size, and each had been freshly painted, so the only reason they were fighting over them was because messing with each other was standard operating procedure with them.

“This one”—Rossick led them down the south hall to the office in question—“has the best view.”

“The best view?” Carter repeated. “And that’s important because you’re going to spend a lot of time staring out the window?”

“Standard shotgun rules,” Rossick laughed. “I was in sight of the room and I called it.”

“Shotgun rules?” Jules snorted.
“Really?”

Carter grinned at both of them. “Looks like there’s only one way to settle this.”

He waited for Jules to argue, but she just rolled her eyes and set her right fist in her left palm.

“Best of three.”

Rossick won it in two.

“Damn it.” Jules tried not to smile, but failed miserably as she turned to Carter. “Do I need to fight you for the one at the other end?”

“It’s your building, Jules, you can do whatever you want.”

“I know, but we’re still kind of hoping you’ll change your mind and partner up with us.” She raised a hopeful look at Rossick, who nodded.

“It doesn’t feel right doing this without you.”

“You’re not doing it without me,” Carter said. “You’re just doing it without my name on the mortgage.”

The three of them stood staring at one another for a few seconds before Rossick chuckled.

“What if I gave you this office? Would that get you to sign on permanently?”

“Tempting,” he laughed, “but no.”

“We’ll get you eventually,” Jules said. “But moving on to the good news/bad news, what do you want first?”

“No brainer,” Rossick answered. “Always go with the good news first.”

Carter was already nodding. “Always.”

“Tracy’s all set to start Monday. She’ll come in and get herself organized, familiarize herself with the layout and what-all, so she’ll be all set when we open on Tuesday.”

“And the bad news?”

“Amanda quit.”

“What? She can’t quit!” Rossick gaped. “What happened to giving us two weeks’ notice?”

“If she’d actually started working, I guess two weeks would have been appropriate, but she wasn’t supposed to start until Monday, so…”

“What the hell are we supposed to do now? Can Tracy do it?”

“She’s a nurse, not a receptionist,” Jules said. “I’m sure she can help out a little, but she’s not going to have time to do much more than her own job, and we really need her focused on the patients in the office, not running around answering phones and organizing files. Besides, we need someone who can transcribe patient files into the computer, and Tracy doesn’t type.”

“Shit.” Rossick folded his arms over his chest and slumped back against the wall. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Jules sighed. “I guess we’ll have to have another look at the other women we interviewed; maybe one of them is still available.”

“Right,” he snorted. “Which one? The one who was so nervous she cried through the whole interview, the one who said she’d need Fridays off as well as all of March and half of June, or the one who just got released from Rockwood?”

“I don’t know why you didn’t hire her to start with,” Carter chuckled. “I mean, come on, so she embezzled a couple hundred grand from her last employer…big deal.”

“That’s not even funny, man.”

Jules thought it was, but the second Rossick turned to look at her, she threw her hands in the air. “What else can we do? Do you want to cancel your appointments so you can run the front office? ’Cause I sure as hell don’t.”

“I, uh…” Carter rubbed his hands over his face and sighed, regret starting to pool in his gut even before he finished his sentence. “I know someone who might be interested. At least temporarily.”

It would give her something to show the bank and it would keep her out of a blue-vested retail job at least for a while. It could work. Or it could be a complete and total disaster; he didn’t know her well enough to be sure. Too late, he’d already opened his mouth.

“Who?” Jules and Rossick said in stereo.

“A friend of Jayne’s. I doubt she has any medical experience, but she ran her own business for seven or eight years, so she knows how to get things done.”

“Does she type?” Jules asked.

“Who doesn’t?” he asked, then surrendered a half nod. “Besides Tracy, I mean. Want me to tell her to swing by?”

“Sure, tomorrow would be great if she can make it. Now let’s get going; we have to go look at the apartment, remember?”

“How ’bout you guys go check out the apartment and I’ll go find us a receptionist?” When Jules started to argue, Carter stopped her. “Oh, come on. I trust you. If you guys like it, it’ll be fine, just tell me where to redirect my mail.”

Rossick shook his head slowly, pushing away from the window frame. “I still don’t understand why you keep living with us when you could live at your cousin’s for free.”

“You trying to get rid of me?” The three of them had shared a tiny two-bedroom apartment in Vancouver since the first year of med school and it had worked great. Jules kept them on track and made sure the bills were paid on time, and since none of them had ever had a significant other for any amount of time, there’d never been problems with too many people in their already-cramped apartment.

When they decided to open a practice in Newport Ridge, it only made sense to move up here, so Jules had done her thing and found them a new place in one of the buildings at the end of town.

“Besides,” Carter shrugged, “Nick and Jayne just got married. They don’t want me hanging around being the third wheel all the time.”

His friend’s mouth twitched slightly. “Grab a drink tonight?”

“Can’t.” Carter rubbed his ear and shrugged. “New Year’s dinner at Nick’s folks’ place. You guys want to come over?”

“We, uh…” Rossick looked to Jules for help, but she just smiled up at him, all innocence. “Is that Ben guy going to be there?”

“Probably.” Carter snorted quietly. “He
is
their son-in-law.”

“Yeah…maybe we’ll just head back into Vancouver.”

“Whatever, man. More food for me.” Carter grabbed his helmet, shot Jules a wink, and headed down the hall. “Let me know how it goes with the apartment.”

“Forget the apartment,” Rossick called after him. “Let us know if we have a receptionist or if we need to call in the ex-con!”

Carter swung the door closed behind him and hustled out to his bike. Being New Year’s Day, most of Main Street was deserted, but Regan’s car and a battered U-Haul were parked in front of her shop. Carter wheeled his bike into an empty spot a few stalls away from her car and sat watching for a few seconds before he set the kickstand and climbed off.

A guy in a gray work shirt and matching cargo pants locked the back door of the truck and passed an envelope to Regan, who smiled and nodded, but any idiot could see that smile was as genuine as a three-dollar bill.

Carter hung his helmet on the handlebar, then sauntered over to where she stood in front of the glass door, shivering in her way-too-big green sweatshirt as she watched the truck pull away.

“Hey.” She wrapped her arms over her stomach, pressed her lips together, and blinked up at him. No mistake about it, the guard was down and she was fighting like hell to get it back up. “What’re you doing here?”

“There’s someth—you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m f—” She snapped her mouth closed, took a second to breathe, then tried again. When her mouth opened and closed two more times without uttering a sound, Carter pushed the door open and ushered her inside. She covered her mouth with one hand and held up the other, palm out. “Give me a minute.”

Without a backward glance, she bolted to the back of the salon and disappeared into the bathroom, her long ponytail bobbing against her back as she moved. Carter stood inside the door with his hands stuffed in his pockets, staring at the compact empty space. The guy in the truck really did take everything; the sinks, the chairs, the shelves. Hell, even the mirrors were gone.

It seemed smaller with everything gone but for some reason the void was huge. What was he supposed to do now? Offering her a new job so soon after her own business closed seemed wrong, sort of like he wasn’t giving her time to…what? To grieve?

Maybe he should call Jayne. This was definitely one of those chicks-needed situations where they could cry and eat ice cream and do each other’s nails or whatever it was they did. It was definitely not something a guy was good at.

He’d just pulled his phone out when Regan stepped out of the bathroom; no tears, but her eyes were still glassy, and if she chewed her bottom lip any harder, she’d chew it right off.

“Sorry ’bout that.” She smiled brightly—too brightly—and stopped well out of his reach. “What’s up?”

“Regan—” Carter stuffed the phone back in his pocket and took a step toward her, but she backed away, keeping a good wide gap between them. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, of course.” Her voice was quiet, soft, and when it started to waver, she cleared her throat and spoke louder. “I’m fine.”

“Right. Fine.” He tipped his head to the right and stared back at her. She could say whatever she liked, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out her bullshit meter was getting dangerously close to red-lining.

“I am,” she insisted, even as her eyes grew wider and blinked twice as fast as usual.

If she wanted to stick to that story, Carter wouldn’t argue with her, but he sure wished she’d stop looking at him like that; like she expected he was there for one reason and one reason only, and it had nothing to do with her salon closing and everything to do with repeating last night.

He’d be lying if he said that wasn’t part of it, but oddly enough, mostly he just wanted to do something to make her stop blinking so fast and to help ease the tension from her shoulders. But what?

“Jayne thought you were doing this tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I, um…” Regan licked her lips and shrugged over a wince. “I sort of lied to her.”

“Why?”

Her eye roll might have been funny if those same eyes didn’t shine with held-back tears. “Because I just want to get through it and move on without it turning into a big deal.”

“But it
is
kind of a big deal.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” She closed her eyes, exhaled slowly. “Sorry. Look, I love Jayne, and I appreciate her concern, I really do, but sitting around wringing our hands isn’t going to make it any easier, so I’d just as soon get it done and over with by myself.”

“Yeah, but—”

Before he could finish, the glass door whooshed open behind him and a heavyset guy in a tight-fitting gray suit stepped inside. His hair was a weird unnatural brown and his pale watery eyes shifted uneasily.

“Hello, Regan.”

“Sid. Perfect timing.” She blinked a few more times, then stepped around Carter. “I’m all set here.”

“Good.” The man nodded, waved his hand in no particular direction. “I just need to have a quick look and we can finish up.”

It happened that fast: Carter hated this guy. He didn’t know a thing about him, except his name was Sid and he was a big part of the reason Regan was
not
fine.

Stupid son of a bitch.

Regan licked her bottom lip as she tipped her chin up a little. “You don’t have to stay, Carter. I’m fine.”

“I’m staying.”

“But I don’t need—”

“Staying.” Grinding his teeth together, he moved toward the door, as far away from Sid and his stupid polyester suit as he could get. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and watched the little weasel move around the empty gaping space, inspecting it for damage.

Every once in a while he’d cast a glance at Carter, clear his throat, and shuffle farther away. When he was finally satisfied, he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Regan.

“Your damage deposit,” he said. “With interest. And a reference letter.”

“Great,” she said, her voice still quiet. “Thank you.”

Carter lifted her coat off one of the hooks on the wall and held it up for her. Yeah, she was fine all right; that’s why her arms shook so hard it took three tries to get them in the sleeves.