Road to Redemption (19 page)

Jack heard the familiar sound of squeaking coming from outside his office and glanced away from his computer toward the open doorway. There she was balancing two Styrofoam containers in her hands, beaming with happiness as she literally bounced up and down on her toes.

“Guess what?” Cori asked excitedly.

“You brought me lunch?” he calmly stated.

“Duh,” she said, kicking his door shut with her foot and placing the containers on his desk.

When she stood there and didn’t say anymore, he assumed she still wanted him to guess. “You brought my favorite,” he said, squinting with a twinkle in his eyes. “I love when you serve me my favorite.”

Rather than the blush he was hoping for, she only threw her head back and laughed. “Really, Jack? If you are trying to embarrass me then you aren’t very good at that either,” she said, referring to his poor attempt at “ask and answer” on date night.

She stalked toward him. “Darn, I love when you wear your glasses. It’s so hot. Did you know women have sexy male librarian fantasies, too?” She leaned in toward his mouth and whispered, “Maybe you should bring those glasses home and keep them on the next time I climb on top of you.” Placing her lips lightly on his, holding the barest of contact she whispered seductively, “You know, so you can see every move I make that way.”

When he moved to deepen the kiss, she pulled back, walked away and sat down in the chair across from his red face and giggled. “That is how you embarrass someone.  Or make them blush. Bonus for me.”

Nothing ever seemed to make her blush. He didn’t even know why he bothered to try. But her words lingered in his mind now that she was seated across from him. “Male librarians?”

“Oh yeah. Well, I don’t know. I never thought of it before. But I started thinking about it the first time I saw you in those horn rims.  Do you have another pair of them you keep at home? Maybe you can bring them over some night?” she asked with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

He cleared his throat and tried to remember he was at work, behind his desk, with his scrubs and lab coat on.  She completely made him forget everything when she was in the room.

Opening the first container, he discovered a BLT and fries, and moved it forward without checking the contents of the other. He was about to take a bite when she asked him, “Well?”

“Well what?” he replied, then took a bite and looked at her while she was biting into her own grilled chicken sandwich.

“Guess,” she told him, then she eyed his sandwich, then her own, then back at his again.

He knew what she was doing.  The same thing Roxy did, and it was annoying. “Don’t even think about it,” he stated, wondering why he never seemed to be able to completely finish his entire meal before her or the dog.

“Let’s share,” she suddenly stated, distracted by food once again. “I’ll give you half of mine for half of yours.”

“No,” he her told her simply. “If you wanted a BLT, then you should have picked one up for yourself.” Then he took a big bite to rub it in more.

“Maybe I wanted that but you took it first.  I was being nice and let you choose,” she said sweetly.

He wasn’t buying it. “Don’t be so nice then.”

She glared at him for a second, looked down at her own sandwich, shrugged and took another generous bite. “Fine, you win. This time. Anyway, guess?”

Back to that again. “I did. I guessed you brought me lunch.”

“It was the wrong guess. Guess again.”

He sighed. “Cori, tell me. I hate guessing games.”

“You’re no fun, but I’ll let it go because I’m so excited,” she said, bouncing in her seat. “I’m going to be a Maid of Honor.”  He looked at her, confused. “Brooke’s Maid of Honor.  You know? My best friend is getting married. She asked me to be her Maid of Honor,” she said in what could be considered a squeal.

He tried not to wince at the high-pitched sound.  “That’s nice.”

“Aren’t you the least bit excited? Or happy for me?”

Was he supposed to be? Men didn’t get this happy over weddings.  “Sure. I’m happy for you.” He put a fake smile on his face so she’d think so.

She finished chewing and waved a hand at him. “You don’t get it. It’s a girl thing.”

“Since I’m not a girl, I guess that gives me a free pass then.”

She snorted. “I suppose. Anyway, guess where they are getting married?”

He groaned and rolled his eyes.

She sighed.  “Geez, OK, I get it. I’ll tell you.  The Bahamas. On Memorial Day weekend.”

“That’s nice,” he answered and hoped it was a sufficient response.

This time she rolled her eyes.  “This Memorial Day. Three months from now.  I’m so excited. I’ve got a serious case of the winter blues and the weather will be so nice by then. Won’t it be nice to get away for a few days together?”

That caught his attention. “Huh?”

“It’s only the beginning of March. That’s almost three months away. Surely you can get a few days off that far in advance.  Thursday and Friday actually, and make sure you aren’t on-call. We could fly back on the holiday Monday, unless you want to stay later. We can have a mini vacation,” she said before she realized his mood had suddenly changed.

“They don’t want me at their wedding. That’s for family and friends.”

“I’m the Maid of Honor,” she said slowly as if he didn’t understand. “And you’re my boyfriend. Yes, they want you there.  What’s wrong?” she asked, the dread starting to show on her face.

“Nothing.” He just wanted to end the conversation that seemed to be getting away from him.

“Yes, there is.  Tell me,” she demanded, looking a bit more worried.

He hedged. He wasn’t sure how to express the panic he felt when he thought of them going away on a vacation together. He wasn’t even entirely sure why he felt the way he did, but it was there.  “It’s a little early yet, isn’t it?”

“What do you a mean early? Early for what? For them to get married?” she answered, totally misinterpreting his answer. “Lucas doesn’t want to wait and Brooke wants a destination wedding so her mother can’t control the wedding plans.  They spent their first weekend together on Memorial Day last year, so they felt it was perfect to get married then, too.”

“No, not them, us.”  He could see her unease and knew he felt it himself. He didn’t want to mess this up, but he wanted to be upfront with her. “Isn’t it a bit early for us to be taking vacations together? I mean it’s only been two months.”

“So? What does that have to do with it?”

He tried another approach. “We’ve barely spent twenty-four hours together at one time. You want to spend, what, five days together? What happens if we need a break from each other during that time?”

“What do you mean break?” she asked cautiously, and fisted her hands in her lap.

“What if we start to get on each other’s nerves?” he said before he thought better of it.

“Nerves? You think I’m going to get on your nerves? Like I’m going to be stuck to you like glue for the entire five days? There are rehearsal dinners, the wedding—which I’m
in.
Then checking details and everything else that the wedding entails. We would have
one
day to ourselves. Sunday, that is it.”

She took a deep breath. He saw her try to bring her anger under control, but the bright red flush was hard to miss. “You are more likely to be on your own than with me for the first couple of days as it is.”

He was trying to think of a response but found he couldn’t think of anything to say back that would make her understand. Or that would even make sense to him. He hadn’t felt panic like this in a long time.  It just all seemed to be going so fast and he was having a hard time catching up.

She decided she wasn’t going to wait around for him to answer. “I need to get back to my shift. My lunch hour is over.  Listen. I’m sorry I put you on the spot. I thought it would be fun to get away together for a bit since we don’t get a lot of time together.”

She stood up and tried to keep her voice from cracking while she fought back the tears, but she was losing the battle and he felt horrible. “I guess maybe we are at different stages at this point.” She collected the remains of her lunch that she failed to finish, a first for her. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Jack continued to stare at the empty doorway for several seconds after she left.  He hurt her, he knew, but he didn’t know if he was ready to start planning vacations together yet.  It had only been two months, he reminded himself. A lot could happen three months from now, especially this early in a relationship.

He had already seen her frustration over the amount of time he spent at work. Didn’t she just say that they hardly ever saw each other? She would most likely get fed up with it three months from now and end things anyway. No use making plans then, right? 

Those excuses felt weak even to him.

***

By the end of the next day Jack knew he was in trouble.  He hadn’t heard a peep out of Cori since she left their shortened lunch.  It was so unlike her. She always sent him some type of text throughout the day, even if it was a funny phrase to make him smile.

If she wasn’t texting him, then she was at least trying to find him in the building. But he hadn’t heard or seen her in over twenty-four hours, and he was starting to get worried.

The last time she was quiet for this long she had been sick. Once that thought popped into his head he sent her a text to make sure. But when her one word response of
no
came back quickly, he knew he had messed up big time.

He was done with patients for the day and she knew he wasn’t on-call.  He had actually hoped she would have suggested they have dinner tonight, but it never happened.  For the first time ever, the prospect of going home alone didn’t look inviting.

After several minutes of hoping she would have said something else other than her quick denial of illness, he texted her back and asked if she wanted to have dinner tonight. 

***

Cori was annoyed.  And she hated being annoyed. It took too much energy. How dare he not even realize she was mad at him, or hurt for that matter?  Nope, she didn’t talk to him for a day and he thought she was sick.  How could someone so smart be that thickheaded?

She had been debating between going to the gym to work off her frustration or going home and having a bowl of ice cream for dinner when his next text came in asking her about dinner.  Her hackles rose, and she responded back quickly before she could think over her reply.
I don’t know. You sure we’ve waited long enough between visits with each other? We wouldn’t want to get on each other’s nerves.

Several minutes went by and Cori was sure he had thrown in the towel.  She was so frustrated at this point she decided she wanted ice cream, so she headed toward her car instead of the gym. 

Before she even left the building, her phone went off.
I’d like to have dinner with you.  My place? An hour good?

She read the text twice. It didn’t even register that this was the first time he actually asked her to get together. Let alone go to his house. She hadn’t been there since the night she had no power and she was beginning to suspect it was on purpose. That he didn’t want her at his house. Especially after his comment about getting on each other nerves. She convinced herself that he always came to her house so he could decide when he wanted to leave, rather than having to worry about her staying longer than he wanted.

Typing back a quick
fine
, she headed home for a shower and change of clothes.  If he thought she was going to show up with bells on and be ready for a quick roll in the hay, he had another thing coming.

Jack couldn’t hold back the grimace when he read Cori’s response to his dinner invitation.  Any doubt he might have had that she wasn’t mad at him was canceled out in that single response. 

He didn’t have much time, but he needed to have a plan.  He had a feeling she wasn’t going to be coming over with a smile on her face this time.

An hour later he still didn’t know what he was going to say.  And something told him he might only have one chance to get it right.

In the end, he needn’t have worried.

All five-foot, one hundred pounds of her came in his front door guns blazing. She barely got the front door closed behind her when her tiny finger drilled into his chest. “Not once have I gotten angry about all the hours you’ve had to work. Not once have I given you any grief about it.”

She was pushing him back as she continued to push her finger further into his chest. “I’ve never once demanded anything of you. Never to take me to fancy restaurants, never to take me on vacations, nothing. Ever. The only time I didn’t
ask
you if you wanted to get together was on New Year’s Eve. And I only did that because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t some one-night stand to you.”

She wasn’t giving him a chance to respond. She kept pushing him further down the hall toward the kitchen, and he wasn’t going to attempt to stop her. She needed to say what was on her mind and he was going to let her. It was the least he could do.

“I’ve always given you a chance to say no. But you never did, did you? You say I push you? It’s not pushing if I see something I want and I go after it.  It’s called confidence. But you could have said no at any time. But did you? No, you didn’t,” she answered for him.

Taking a deep breath, she took her finger off his chest and then pushed him right back with it again, this time with more force. He was sure he was going to have a mark there in the morning. “You’re the one who asked me for that first dance at the wedding. You’re the one who made the first move on me. So say I push all you want, but I don’t. I don’t ever push.”

He looked down at her finger still embedded in his chest and then back to her.

She dropped her hand and turned in a huff. “Forget it. Forget this.” She started to walk toward the front door.

Two long strides were all it took for him to reach her. He gently put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around, then was crushed to see the tears welling in her eyes.  “Aw, hell,” he said as he pulled her against his chest, his hands rubbing up and down her back.

“You’re right.  No, you are,” he acknowledged when she shook her head against his chest. “I was wrong, and I’m sorry. Sometime in the middle of the night everything you’ve said had already crossed my mind. You’ve always given me an out, and I’ve never taken it. You’ve never even gotten angry over my work. Ever.”

She pulled back and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’m trying not to rush you. And it’s
hard
for me. I want to do everything
fast
, but I’m trying to slow down. I’m pretty sure you’ve felt guilty enough in your life over your job and I’m trying so hard not to make you feel that way again. And it hurt that you still thought it,” she said with a sob.  “I’m not trying to control you.”

“Come here.” He took her by the hand and led her back to the kitchen.  Helping her onto one of the stools and sitting next to her on another one, he picked her hand up and held it for a minute while he tried to figure out his next words. “I don’t know why I acted the way I did when you brought up the trip. But I did. Another knee-jerk reaction.” He refused to tell her he was scared.  Scared to lose parts of himself, parts that she was slowing filling in his life. But even more scared he might have just lost her.

“But why?” she asked him, sniffling. “I don’t get it. I’ve never done anything to make you react that way.”

“No, you haven’t. And I’m sorry I made you feel the way you did.  Yes, what you said is true.  My marriage wasn’t...” He trailed off, looking for the right words. “It wasn’t ideal.  We had problems—there’s no use lying and saying we didn’t.   Some of them were my fault and some of them were hers.”

He was struggling to find the right words to use without betraying Tracy. It didn’t feel right to him to talk bad about Tracy when she wasn’t here to defend herself. He still wasn’t
positive
she betrayed him.  And he couldn’t bring himself to look into it further. Plus he felt he was just as guilty for their marital issues as she was, maybe even more so. He could never get it out of his head that maybe if he’d tried a little harder, things might have been different.  That he could have worked harder at their marriage than he did.  Maybe he shouldn’t have taken Tracy for granted. 

He shook those thoughts from his head. “Regardless, I loved her and I let her down.  I told myself I wouldn’t ever do that to anyone again.  Nor is it something I want to go through again, either.” The sense of failure was a bitter pill to swallow for someone who prided himself on succeeding.

She pulled her hand from his and ran it across his cheek. “You haven’t let me down. Well, you did yesterday when you reacted that way. But besides that, nothing you’ve done has let me down. I’m not stupid, Jack. I know what your job entails. And I know you’ve worked hard to get where you are, and will continue to work hard.  I can accept that. I have accepted that.”

He looked at her, not sure he believed her, even though he wanted to.

“But what I won’t accept is if you think I’m controlling you. I’m not. And if you think I am, I can’t change that. I can’t be someone I’m not. I’m already holding back because I do care,” she said sadly.

“I don’t want you to be someone you aren’t,” he explained to her, wiping a tear from her cheek.

“I’m not.  I’m being me when I’m with you, only toned down a bit at times. And that’s not such a bad thing, is it? Maybe we all need to slow down a bit in our lives, or speed up for some,” she added with a watery smile.

“Maybe,” he said simply.

He stood up from the stool and pulled her into his arms.  “I really am sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know. You can’t help being you, any more than I can help being me.”

***

Jack lay holding her in his bed later that night. They had talked some more and cleared the air. She said all the fighting had made her hungry and he’d promised her dinner, which he had actually forgotten about once she came in his front door drilling her finger in his chest. 

In the end, he went out and picked up some burgers while she fed Roxy for him. He even stopped and picked her up a chocolate cake at a bakery he passed. 

In typical Cori fashion, once she ate her fill—which included two large slices of chocolate cake—she told him it was time for “make-up sex.” He was never going to get used to her saying what was on her mind.

Thinking back, maybe it had its perks.

Taking him by the hand she had led him down the hall back to the front of the house and to where he thought was going to be upstairs to his bedroom. But instead she pulled him into the living room and pushed him into his favorite recliner, telling him to stay put.  Then she ran out of the room and came back with her hands behind her back.

Once she pulled them from behind her back he noticed his glasses that she must have gotten from the desk in his office.  “No way. I’m not putting them on.”

“Oh, I think you will,” she stated, a wicked smile forming on her face that made him nervous.

And he did. He didn’t know how she talked him into it and didn’t even care anymore at that point. 

She had set the glasses on the table next to the chair and climbed into his lap. Slowly, like a cat stalking its prey, she rubbed against his body, warming him up.  It even sounded like she was purring low in her throat, or maybe that was his imagination. He really wasn’t sure at that point. 

Pulling her shirt over her head, he discovered she wasn’t naked underneath this time, but it wasn’t a bra either. She had on some tight-fitting little camisole, with lace around the top edges and thin straps.  He could see her hardened nipples right through the material and somehow that was more erotic than her bare skin.

He pulled her forward, placing his mouth on one hardened peek. The louder she moaned, the more he played with her.

His jeans had been uncomfortably tight with him sitting in the chair, but she hadn’t let him up.  It reminded him of his teenage years, both of them fully clothed grinding and groping each other.

Unbuckling his belt and top button, she unzipped his pants and freed him.  He was so lost in her every movement he hadn’t even noticed that she had picked up the condom she had laid down by his glasses earlier.

Ripping it open, she placed it in her mouth, then slowly lowered her head down to roll it over the length of him, using her tongue to caress him on the way down. Just like every man’s fantasy.

Standing up, she removed only her jeans and panties and climbed back in his lap. Slowly, gently, she lowered herself on him inch by inch, moaning and purring the entire time. “I love the feel of you inside of me. That first slide in is like heaven, filling me up so much.”

He never felt her reach over and place his glasses on his face as she continued to ride him right there in the living room, in his favorite recliner, while he was fully dressed.

When they were done, she had gotten up, cleaned them both up and said that it was late and she should head home.

He asked her to stay.  When she looked doubtful of his request, he had taken her hand and led her upstairs, then slowly undressed her and made her purr even louder the second time. 

She finally passed out, spent from the emotions and lovemaking of the night.

Now he was in bed watching her sleep on his chest, holding her tight.  It felt right, and it felt good. He closed his eyes and fell asleep with a smile on his face.

***

Cori reached over blindly to shut off the piercing alarm clock. Only she couldn’t reach it and instead connected with flesh.  The loud slapping sound of her open palm hitting his chest echoed in his room. “Ouch,” he said.  Only Cori could manage to do that to him, he thought.

He grabbed her hand and placed it next to the pillow, then shut the alarm off.  “Sorry,” she mumbled into the pillow.  “Time’s it?” she asked, as she pulled the covers up to her chin.

“Five,” he replied, then he threw back the covers and stood up. “I need to be in early today.”

She grunted and then pulled the covers over her head to block out the offending light coming from the master bath that he had turned on.

“Cori.” Jack shook her shoulder, or what he thought might be her shoulder since he couldn’t see anything but a lump under the covers.  “Cori, wake up.”

When all he heard was a muffled noise—which he assumed was a grunt of annoyance—he pulled the covers back down to her waist. His heart beat fast in his chest when he looked down at her, still naked lying on her side with her hands tucked under her knees trying to get warm. Her hair covered half her face.  “Come on, baby, you need to get up for work, too.”

She rolled over on her back exposing her breasts to his wandering eyes, not a care in the world and completely comfortable in her nakedness. “No, day off,” she mumbled, then popped her eyes open to stare at him standing there freshly shaved, his wavy hair still damp as he leaned over her with a frown on his face.

“Day off, huh? You sure?” he asked, trying to make sure she was aware of what day it was. “It’s Thursday.  What are you doing today?”

“Shopping with Brooke. Wedding dresses.” She grabbed the covers back and pulled them up to her chin, closing her eyes. “Cold,” she mumbled.

“OK. Have fun.” He leaned down and placed his lips against hers.  It felt good to kiss her, and wake up next to her in his bed, to go through his morning routine while she snuggled down in his room.  Good to see her so comfortable there, like she belonged.

Suddenly his heart raced for another reason when that thought popped in his head.  Too soon, don’t go there, he told himself. Panic started to fill him and he had to get out of there. Fast.

“You smell good,” she said as she opened one eye and leaned back after his kiss, breaking his dangerous thoughts.

He forced a laugh out, and got out of there before he said something they would both regret. “Lock up after you leave.”