The One Real Thing (Hart's Boardwalk) (2 page)

Two Weeks Earlier

Women’s Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility

Wilmington, Delaware

“You know, if you go running into any more doors I’m giving you a vision test,” I said dryly as I applied antiseptic to Mary Jo’s cut lip.

She glowered at me but didn’t respond, which was unusual. If only she’d use that kind of restraint with the other inmates she might stop running into so many “doors.”

I dropped my cotton swab and took off my latex gloves. “Nothing more I can do here. You can sit in the ward for a half hour with ice on your eye. It should take some of the swelling down.” I strode over to the small freezer in my clinic and took out an ice pack.

When I turned back to Mary Jo she was squinting at me with her good eye.

“How come you don’t talk to us like we’re trash? That older bitch speaks to us like we’re trash.”

I ignored her reference to my colleague, Dr. Whitaker, who worked part-time at the prison infirmary. She didn’t peer down her nose at just the inmates; she considered everyone beneath her. And despite the fact that I was the primary physician and worked the most hours, she still consistently tried to tell me how to do my job. “Maybe because I don’t think you’re trash,” I said, slapping the ice pack into Mary Jo’s hand. I guided her hand over her eye.

“How come?”

I heard the suspicion in her voice.

Working as a prison doctor for the last two years had taught me a few things. One of those things was that most of the female inmates were suspicious of absolutely everyone and their motives.

“How come I don’t think you’re trash?”

“Yeah.”

I turned away to put the cotton swabs I’d used in the medical trash. The answer to that question was like the deepest root of a solid twenty-one-year-old tree—buried too far down to unearth it now without toppling the entire tree. “Mistakes don’t make you trash.” I pasted a bright smile on my face as I turned back to her. “You’re good to go.” I knocked on the glass pane of my door and the guard on duty, Pamela, nodded and strode over. She opened the door. “Doc?”

“Let Mary Jo sit in the ward for about a half hour with this ice on her eye, and then she’s good to go.”

“Sure thing. Come on, Mary Jo.” Pamela ushered her out.

Once I was alone in my office again I sat down at my computer to update Mary Jo’s record. I was just finishing up when there was a knock at my door.

Fatima marched in. Six foot one, proud, and physically fit, Fatima was like a warrior queen in a prison guard uniform. She was also a riot. I grinned. “What brings you here?”

She pulled a face and waved a dusty leather-bound book at me. “These girls have been watching too many movies.” She sat down on my desk and flipped the book open.

Well, look at that.

The middle of the pages had been carved into, and sitting hidden in the hole was a makeshift shank. “That’s a new way to hide a weapon.”

“In Jane Austen,” Fatima huffed. “They defiled Mr. Darcy for this shit. Don’t they know that man is
fine
? No shank hole should be defiling such a gentleman.”

I chuckled. “I don’t think they care about how much of a gentleman Mr. Darcy is.”

“See, that there is the problem. Instead of using library books to hide weapons, they should be educating themselves. No wonder they cut the freaking library budget.”

“I heard they did that.” I knew how much getting the women into the library, for reading groups and to teach them computer skills, meant to Fatima. “I’m sorry.”

She sighed heavily. “Shit, I knew it was coming. I’ll just make do with what I got. Anyhow, how was your date last night?”

“I told you it wasn’t a date.” Andrew and I didn’t date.

She shook her head in disappointment. “You need your head checked. So does this idiot you’re hooking up with. Nothing sweeter than coming home to your man after a long day at work.”

I looked at the gold wedding band she was subconsciously touching. “That’s not what you said last week when you were complaining about Derek forgetting to do the laundry, or the week before, when his idea of doing food shopping consisted of buying a year’s supply of beer and Cheetos.”

Fatima scowled at me. “Do you remember absolutely everything?”

“Pretty much.”

“It’s annoying.”

“Noted.” I laughed.

“Okay, so I want to kill Derek as much as I want to make sweet love to the man, but it’s nice living with my best friend. You should get yourself one and kick that Dr. Commitment-Phobe to the curb.”

“I told you, I like not being in a relationship.”

She grunted at me like she didn’t believe me, but the truth was I did like keeping things casual. I’d never had a serious relationship in my life. I came and went as I pleased. I made all the decisions in my life and got to live each day my way.

And on the days I got a little “fris-frisky” I had Andrew on speed dial.

“I’m setting you up.” Fatima got up from the desk with determination. “How do you feel about chocolate?” She winked at me.

Laughing, I shook my head. “Chocolate is very nice, but right now I am happy with my casual dose of vanilla.”

“That particular slice of vanilla is boring.” She huffed and her pager beeped. She checked it and all amusement fled her features.

“Everything okay?”

“Fight in the yard. Gotta go.”

“Be careful!” I called after her.

“Always am.”

The door slammed closed behind her and I felt a wave of uneasiness in my stomach. The uneasiness wouldn’t go away until she returned to let me know she was okay.

As I turned back to my computer my eye caught on the book Fatima had left on my desk. Curious, I took the old book in hand, feeling sad that the classic had been mutilated. I flicked open to the front pages and felt even sadder. The book was printed in 1940. A vintage copy of
Pride and Prejudice
would have some value. Not a lot, but some. Mostly its value was in its history.

And someone had destroyed it, completely oblivious to all that.

I flicked through the broken pages to the end and was just about to put the book down with a sigh when my thumb brushed over the back binding.

Hmm. It felt a little spongy—a little thicker than it should. With curious fingers I prodded at it. A faint line at the bottom near the spine drew my gaze. It looked like the paper that covered the leather there had been cut and opened and then resealed.

Why?

I pressed at the thickness.

There was something in there.

My heart rate started to speed up a little at the mystery of what the book might contain.

I looked up at the glass windows around my office. No one out there. No one watching.

The book and Mr. Darcy were already defiled so it wasn’t like I could do much further harm—I picked and picked at the line until eventually I was able to rip the paper back.

“What the . . .” I stared down at what had been placed inside the binding of the book. Tipping them over onto my lap, I stared at four small envelopes.

There was a name and address scrawled on all four.

The same name and address.

Mr. George Beckwith

131 Providence Road

Hartwell, DE 19972

Had an inmate hidden these letters in the book?

And when?

My fingers itched to rip open one of the envelopes.

The phone on my desk blared to life, making me jump. “Dr. Huntington,” I answered.

“An inmate on their way up. Yard fight. Nothing more serious than a deep cut.”

“Thanks,” I said and hung up. Without thinking about why, I stuffed the four little envelopes into my purse and hid it under my desk. I glued the paper back down on the binding of the book and put it aside for Fatima for when she came to collect it.

My door burst open as Fatima and Shayla, an inmate I was familiar with, came in. Shayla was hanging on to Fatima and clutching her stomach. “Fucking bitch!” she screeched. “I’m gonna fucking kill that motherfucking bitch!”

Fatima rolled her eyes at me as if to say,
Is this our life? Really?

“Outstanding,” Andrew grunted out as he came.

I had a little giggle to myself as he rolled off of me and collapsed on his back.

Every time Andrew climaxed he grunted out the word “outstanding.” It was a nice compliment, but the longer our casual arrangement of sleeping together went on, the funnier I was beginning to find it.

And comedy wasn’t really high up on my list of dirty talk that worked for me. Although I did remind myself it was way better than the guy who kept referring to his dick as his rocket. Finally, while we were in the middle of sex, he told me that if I didn’t do something quick his rocket was going to launch and detonate. I started laughing before I could stop myself and he had no choice but to pull out of me. I tried to apologize, because it really wasn’t nice of me to laugh, but he stormed off in a huff. I never saw him again. I think that was for the best.

Andrew turned his head on the pillow and grinned at me.

I smiled back and he bounced up off the bed with the kind of energy a surgeon needed. Once he’d disappeared into the bathroom to dispose of the condom, I got up out of the bed. Inside my pants pocket I found my pager and checked it, even though I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard it go off. Sure enough, it was quiet.

“You are so sexy.”

I glanced up at Andrew. He was leaning against the bathroom door with his arms crossed over his chest, completely at ease with his nakedness. I felt the same way about being naked in front of him and grinned at him. “You’re kind of sexy yourself.” And it was true. The man worked out at the gym in his fancy-ass hospital between patients. He had a sleek, hard, athletic body that was a delight to explore in bed.

As for me, I normally wasn’t this sexually confident woman who walked around naked with ease. It was just that Andrew and I had been at this whole fuck-buddy thing for about three years now on and off. About a year after we’d started sleeping together, he met a woman and started dating her seriously, so we stopped. They broke up after about nine months, and Andrew realized he was just too much like me and we started our casual relationship back up again. Once you’d been naked with a guy that many times and he kept
coming back for more, you were pretty confident that he liked your body, so I didn’t feel self-conscious around him.

“Just kind of?” He guffawed.

I didn’t say any more. The man had enough of an ego to fill the entire state of Delaware. It was best to keep him on his toes so it didn’t get even more out of hand than it already was.

“What are you doing?” he said as I began pulling my pants on.

“Going home.”

He pushed off the door frame, frowning as he strode toward me. He picked up my shirt and held it out of my reach. “We just started. I put aside two hours for you.”

I tried not to roll my eyes at him. Andrew liked to think everything should be done on his schedule since he was the big important cardiothoracic surgeon. And in the interest of saving lives it probably should, but that didn’t mean I had to stick around when I didn’t want to. “I can’t stay. I’m sorry.”

Pouting—yes, pouting—he continued to withhold my shirt.

I stared him down. When we weren’t having sex it only reminded me of what a jackass he could be. Which was one of the reasons it would only ever be sex between us. His arrogance and self-involved sense of importance would drive me up the wall.

He thrust the shirt at me when he realized I wouldn’t back down. “So what is so important that it’s worth messing up my schedule?”

“I said I’d cover Dr. Whitaker’s shift at the prison,” I lied. In truth I was desperate to get home so I could finally open the letters I’d found. They had been on my mind my entire shift. For a moment I’d considered canceling my sex date with Andrew so I could read them, but I remembered he said he had a conference in Sweden coming up. Our sex dates were weekly and I’d gotten used to getting myself a little something-something on a regular basis so I figured I’d better get it while he was around to give it.

I watched his delicious ass as Andrew stomped across his bedroom to grab his neatly folded pants off a chair. “Why on earth do you insist on working in that shithole?”

My blood turned instantly hot at his condescending attitude toward my job. I swore to God, if the man didn’t know what to do with those hands of his I’d have wiped my own clean of him long since. “Quit it,” I bit out.

“No.” He spun around, his hands on his hips. “Jessica, you’re a fantastic, talented doctor. It’s a crying shame that you’re locked up in some dingy prison doctor’s office when you should be a surgical resident.” He donned his shirt, a look of disgust on his face. “I still can’t believe you left your residency and gave up the chance of a fellowship at the hospital. No one can.”

“Can we not do this again?” I snapped. We’d been having this argument for two years.

“Maybe if you’d tell me what the allure of the prison is, then yes. Why do you insist on staying there?”

Instead of answering I sighed, grabbed my bag, and walked over to him. I brushed my fingertips over the frown line between his brows and leaned in to press a soft kiss to his mouth. “Good night, Andrew.”