Callie felt Trey’s arm around her waist, as hard and unyielding as a steel band. His other hand clasped her forearm just as firmly. She had only a moment to snatch her cardigan sweater as Trey half lifted, half carried her around the table.
It all happened so fast she had no time to marshal an adequate protest.
“Excuse me,” Trey said to no one in particular, addressing the crowd as a whole. His tone and body language conveyed the far-less-polite demand, Get out of the way.
Everybody reacted instantly, jumping left and right to allow Trey, still gripping Callie, to make their way through the pack of partyers.
“’Night, Sheely. ’Night, Trey. Be sure you two crazy kids spend the night doing everything I would,” Leo’s teasing shout carried over the din.
Since Leo had never been shy about discussing anything, Callie already knew the wild and varied ways he spent his nights. She gulped for air.
Trey continued to walk her to the front door of the bar, his body shadowing hers, his hands holding her against him as he propelled her forward.
Her feet were barely touching the ground. “Let me go!” she commanded. “Stop right now!”
“And if I don’t?”
He used the same baiting tone that she’d used to taunt him a few minutes ago, while sitting on his lap. Callie’s heart seemed to stop, then start again at warp speed.
Trey didn’t let her go, and she was aware of every inch of his muscular frame moving against her.
They reached the entrance, and Trey pushed the door open with his shoulder, retaining his grip on Callie as he hauled her outside. Compared to the noise level inside the Squirrel Den, the street was relatively quiet.
Trey released her, quickly moving several steps away from her.
For a few moments they stood together in awkward silence on the sidewalk. Callie pulled on her peacock-blue cardigan to ward off the damp night chill and noticed that Trey had no jacket. The sight of his bare, well-muscled forearms and strong masculine hands struck her as especially sensual.
“Where’s your coat?” she blurted out. If he were wearing one, maybe it would be easier for her to focus on something else. “Aren’t you cold?” she added weakly.
“Not at all. My anger has raised my body temperature to at least 112 degrees Fahrenheit. If it starts raining, the drops will boil as soon as they hit me.”
She knew it was supposed to be a joke, but Trey’s forbidding demeanor didn’t invite any laughter in response.
“So this dump is where you choose to spend your off-duty hours?” Trey’s eyes were fixed on her, watching her intently. “Helluva place you picked to go for fun, Callie.”
Callie swallowed. Was this how a mouse felt when being observed by a purposeful cat? Plus, her overly feisty streak seemed to have run its course, leaving her practical, sensible self to handle the consequences. Well, she would try to inject a practical, sensible note into an otherwise chaotic evening.
“I’m sure the Squirrel Den is quite different from where you choose to spend your off-duty hours.” She took care to keep her tone deliberately, carefully bland.
Her remark visibly annoyed him. Trey’s frown deepened, his dark brows knit together, turning his expression into a classic one of disapproval. “And where do you suppose I choose to spend my off-duty hours, Callie?”
“Oh, no doubt hanging out at your country club.”
“I don’t hang out in country clubs,” he replied testily. “I don’t hang out at all. That implies loafing, wasting valuable time, which I make a point never to do.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you, Trey. Nobody knows more than me how valuable your time is. I just meant that whatever it is you do at your country club—golf? tennis? black-tie dinners and charity balls?—any of that would be an extreme contrast to an evening at the Squirrel Den.”
Country clubs. The Squirrel Den. Upper class, working class. Once again, the vast differences in their social stations struck her. Of course, the most insurmountable chasm of all was the vast differences in their feelings for each other.
She was stupidly in love with him, while he didn’t find her acceptable even as a receptacle of his lust. He’d proven that by his rapid flight from the bar when his physical reaction to her on his lap became apparent. If she needed more proof, she could find it in his abject horror over their kiss in the stairwell earlier today.
Unrequited love was nothing more than a fantasy, ultimately unrewarding and disappointing, Callie silently reminded herself. If she required further proof of that, she need only look at the mess her life had become since this afternoon.
Being in love was a game for two players—a bit of wisdom from her mom that Callie herself had borrowed to quote to lovelorn friends through the years. How disheartening that she hadn’t listened to her own warning!
Callie turned to stroll casually along the sidewalk, away from the Squirrel Den and from Trey. At least, she hoped it looked like a casual stroll, because she was trying hard not to give in to the powerful urge to bolt and run.
She needed to get away from him. Being around Trey Weldon, even when it involved arguing with him, was a pleasure she could not allow herself. She couldn’t afford the emotional price.
But seconds later Trey was walking beside her.
“How do you know I belong to a country club?” he demanded, picking up the thread of their conversation.
“I guessed.” She shrugged. “You do, don’t you?”
Trey said nothing. His usual long-legged, fast-paced stride caused him to move ahead of her. He had to slow down and wait for her to catch up to him, then purposely take smaller steps to stay at her side.
Callie could only guess how much that must irk him. In the hospital, she was always the one keeping pace with him, even if it meant running to match his high-speed gait.
“I’m going to take your silence as a yes answer,” she said dryly. “You belong.”
“I like to golf, and my free time is too limited to spend waiting on a public course. Is that a crime?” Trey snapped.
“Of course not. I, um, bet you’re a whiz at tennis, too.”
“If I don’t comment, will you take that as a yes answer?”
“I probably will.”
She kept walking and so did he, still at her pace, much too slow for him. “Trey, is your—”
“I avoid black-tie dinners no matter where they’re held,” he cut in vehemently. “They’re invariably dull. And I already gave you my opinion about dancing.”
“Yes, I remember. You hate it and hold Miss Martha’s Ballroom Etiquette Classes responsible. But I’m sure those lessons have come in handy on the charity ball circuit.”
“You don’t seem to have made the connection that hating to dance rules out going to balls,” he said through gritted teeth. “And don’t think I haven’t picked up on your disparaging inflections, Callie. Are you accusing me of being a snob?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not at all. You’re just being true to your origins.”
“As if you knew,” he growled.
Callie was tempted to say she did know. But wouldn’t that risk revealing she’d read everything published about him in every Pittsburgh publication, that she’d committed to memory every fact she’d ever heard or overheard about him?
She had endured enough blows to her pride today without adding another, thanks very much. A change in subject was definitely in order. “Where are you parked?”
“What?” Trey stared at her, as if he couldn’t comprehend the very simple question.
“Your car. Where is it parked? You are walking to your car,” she added because he still looked uncharacteristically blank. “Aren’t you?”
“My car is parked in the opposite direction. I’m walking this way because you are… And I know you know it, Callie.”
Now it was her turn to stare, uncomprehending.
He heaved a sigh. “You aren’t going to make this easy for me—you’ve already made that clear.”
A swift jab of excitement pricked her, and she sensibly tried to counter it. “It would help a lot if you told me what you’re talking about,” she said carefully, keeping her voice steady, her tone light. Revealing none of her increasing inner turmoil.
Was it possible that she’d misinterpreted his reaction to what had happened this afternoon…and tonight? That maybe he wasn’t averse to a personal relationship between them, after all? Being Trey, he would find it hard to admit, especially after his declaration to the opposite in the stairwell.
“This must be what is called eating humble pie,” Trey grumbled. “Not a tasty dish.”
Callie’s heart thudded with anticipation and uncertainty. “Trey, whatever it is, just say it.”
“All right.” Trey pulled something out of the back pocket of his jeans. It was a piece of white paper folded into a square small enough to be crammed into a pocket. “Here it is.”
Confused and unable to take her eyes off him, Callie watched in silence as he methodically unfolded the paper. She tried hard to tamp down her physical awareness of him, but it shimmered through her, enticing and strong, even as a sense of dread began to grow.
“Your resignation.” Trey held out the paper with a flourish.
One quick glance confirmed that, despite the many wrinkles from its folding, the paper was indeed the copy of her resignation, which she’d tendered to the director of nursing several hours ago. Callie jumped back as if struck by a poisonous snake.
“Rip it up,” Trey ordered. His hand reached out to grasp her wrist, and he shoved the paper into her hand.
Her fingers closed automatically around it. “Where did you get this?” she whispered, staring at her signature, which had been witnessed by the director of nursing, who’d signed it herself. “I gave it to Mrs. McCann.”
“I know. And she gave it to me. She undoubtedly thinks we’re both—well, to put it kindly—not quite acting like our normal selves today.” Trey cleared his throat and looked away, studying the traffic light with apparent fascination.
“That is putting it kindly,” Callie mumbled, forcing herself to look away from him. She pretended to stare at a parking meter with the same rapt attention Trey was bestowing on the traffic light. “Putting it more honestly, we’ve been acting like lunatics today.”
“True, unfortunately,” Trey agreed brusquely. “First you went racing into Ellen McCann’s office to insist you were quitting your job with me on the spot. Then, within an hour, there I am, barging into her office, demanding to know if you’d actually gone through with your threat and resigned in the throes of a bad-tempered snit.”
“Ohhh! You didn’t say that to the director of nursing, did you?”
“Well, yes. She said you told her you were quitting for personal reasons and had assumed we’d had an argument. I…let her believe that. So when I asked for the copy of your resignation to give back to you, Ellen handed it over. She also suggested that we work things out between us. Er, professionally, of course.”
“After all that, I can just imagine what kind of reference I’ll get from Mrs. McCann when I apply for a job somewhere else!” exclaimed Callie, aghast.
“You don’t need a reference from her, because you aren’t leaving the hospital center or my team, and we both know it.” Trey gave a harsh laugh. “The very fact that I tracked you to that rat hole tonight—and went inside!—proves that I intend to…” He took a deep sharp breath.
“Rip up that resignation, Callie.”
Instead, she began to refold the paper as meticulously as he’d unfolded it, until it was again a minuscule square. She tucked it into a side pocket of her purse.
“You’ve called me Callie all evening,” she murmured, looking thoughtful. “Why? Is your not calling me by my last name part of your effort to work things out professionally?”
“I don’t always call you by your last name.”
“You did until today.”
“The, uh, stairwell incident?” He lagged behind a pace or two.
Callie didn’t wait for him. “Before that,” she called, over her shoulder. “The locker-room incident.”
Trey flinched and came to a halt. So she’d noticed him practically slavering over her in her underwear? Well, how could she not? He certainly hadn’t been subtle about it. As for when she’d become Callie and not Sheely to him…
A good question. One he wished she hadn’t asked because it made him face what he’d prefer not to. Sheely. Callie. He’d managed to keep them separate entities—for a while.
Callie appeared only in his steamy erotic dreams, while dependable, sexless Sheely remained the perfect helpmate in the OR, so attuned to him she often seemed like a seamless extension of himself.
But at some point, he couldn’t exactly pinpoint when, the sexy nighttime dream girl and his faithful daytime partner had fused into one and the same woman. A woman he admired and relied upon, needed and wanted. That had never happened to him before.
It was both exhilarating and terrifying, but he’d tried to keep a lid on his feelings. A mistake, no doubt. Because given the intensity of his pent-up desire for her, it was probably inevitable that an out-of-control scene like the one in the stairwell would result. Not to mention tonight, when he’d pulled her down onto his lap and held her, so desperate for her he never wanted to let her go.
Trey reminded himself of his life strategy, of his plans for marriage at forty to a carefully chosen proper wife candidate. Right now he was seven years off schedule.
Forty was the right age for him to marry; he was absolutely certain of that. Dad had been forty when he’d married. When his older brother, Winston, turned forty, the same year he married Parker Lee—whose proud lineage dated back to prerevolutionary Britain or maybe beyond—Trey was convinced his marital decision was eerily prescient.
But right now a future marriage at forty was a long time away. Right now he was watching Callie Sheely walk away from him. She didn’t even bother to cast a glance back at him to see if he was following her.
Probably because she doesn’t care if you are or not, taunted a snarky little voice in his head, a voice he seldom heard because he was too sensible, too rational, too basically indifferent, to wonder about women and their motivations.
He was wondering now. And drawing some disturbing conclusions….
True, Callie had responded passionately to him this afternoon, but she had also quit her job. She was royally ticked off: her sexual attraction to him had taken a back seat to her anger. After all, it wasn’t as if she had professed her undying love for him.
The realization jolted him. Why, it was her rage that governed her behavior, not any desire to marry him! And here he was, behaving like a chump, getting panicky about marriage simply because Callie Sheely turned him on.
Just because he wanted to sleep with Callie didn’t mean he wanted to marry her! And vice versa, of course. She would probably laugh in his face if he told her he’d been brooding about their kiss leading to marriage—that would be after she called him an arrogant snake or decked him. Perhaps all three?
Of course sex did not automatically lead to marriage! Why he had somehow forgotten that in regard to Callie was a question he didn’t care to pursue. Not now, not watching her walk farther and farther away from him.
She hadn’t ripped up that damnable resignation, either. She meant to go through with it. She was really serious about quitting her job with him, about leaving him….
A dark chill went through him, and it had nothing to do with his lack of a jacket. He’d been so sure he could convince Callie to come back to him. But she hadn’t ripped up the resignation. She was still walking away from him. Trey felt a bleak inner cold that seemed to permeate every cell of his body.
“Wait!” He called as she was inserting a key into the front door of a large Victorian-style house set slightly back from the sidewalk.
Callie paused and turned to see Trey striding toward the house. She waited for him to join her on the small porch. He stood beside her, seeming to tower above her.
“Where are you going?”
“Inside. I live here.” Callie pushed open the front door. “On the second floor.”
There was a small entrance foyer with access to both a narrow front hall and a carved wooden staircase leading to the second and third floors. There were two apartments on each floor. Callie stepped inside and Trey came right in with her.
The heavy door closed behind them, automatically locking. The pair stood together in the dimly lit foyer. Callie nervously traced the inside of her lips with the tip of her tongue.
Trey stared down at her, his eyes following every movement. The sight of her little pink tongue wetting her lips sent a shock wave through his body, which settled well below his waist.
Say something! Do something! he commanded himself. Don’t stand here gaping like a slack-jawed dope!
Trey moved toward her. He felt the overwhelming urge to behave in a way not at all in keeping with his carefully designed life strategy.
Callie took a step backward. And he advanced one forward. They were now at the foot of the staircase.
He braced one hand on the wall, striking a seemingly casual pose. “Aren’t you going to ask me in for coffee?”
Callie knew him well enough to know that there was nothing casual about his stance or the fierce intensity burning in his blue eyes like a flame. Trey Weldon was not a casual type of guy, even in low-key situations. Which this one definitely was not.
She tried to stall while she decided what she ought to do. “Do you really want coffee at this hour? The caffeine will—”
“So make it decaf, I don’t care. You were concerned about me being cold earlier. Well, a hot cup of coffee will warm me up, won’t it?” He shifted, almost imperceptibly.
But the slight motion brought him closer, and he towered above her, hot and male and intense. Callie sucked in a breath. If he were to come up to her apartment, she could think of better ways to warm him up than serving him a cup of coffee.
So ask him up, an inner rebellious voice challenged. Never mind what you ought to do, why not do what you want to do, for a change?
“Please, Callie,” Trey said quietly, his eyes meeting and holding hers.
Callie needed no rebel alter ego to encourage her this time.
“Come on up.” She turned and started up the stairs.
When he asked her in that particular way, looking deep into her eyes, saying please, calling her Callie… She was lost and she knew it. Might as well be gracious in defeat.
Trey followed her up the stairs and watched as she used a second key to let them into her small apartment.
Which seemed even smaller with him in it. His masculine presence dominated the decor, a coordinated mix of floral patterns in pastel shades. There was an assortment of bright accent pillows piled on the sofa, an arrangement of silk flowers on her small coffee table, an old toy brown bear wearing a sweater on a toy-bear-size rocking chair in the corner. A shelf by the bay window held a number of well-tended plants in colorful ceramic pots.
She also had an eclectic collection of picture frames crowded together on a polished, round table. Trey went to them immediately, picking up one of her, Kirby and Bonnie aged five, four and one, respectively.
“You were a cute little girl,” Trey said, looking from the picture of little Callie to the present-day Callie.
“Thank you.” She smiled at the memory the old photo evoked: their mother dragging them to the photographer’s, bribing them with the promise of ice cream if they behaved and smiled for the camera.
“That picture was the last time our mother ever dressed the three of us alike. Not long after, Kirby and I absolutely refused to wear anything similar to what Bonnie—a mere baby—was wearing. Now that we’re grown up, you still couldn’t pay me to dress like her,” Callie added dryly, remembering Bonnie in Leather Night garb.
“Since my brother and I are ten years apart in age, there was never a question of us dressing exactly alike,” said Trey. “Although, I wouldn’t have minded it. As soon as I was old enough, I copied his style, borrowed his clothes. I always tried to emulate Win in every way.”
“I knew you had a brother, but you’ve never said if he’s older or younger. If you tried to emulate him, he must be older.”
“Yes, by ten years. And I endured the misery of Miss Martha’s classes only because Winston himself had been a student. One of her star pupils, actually.”
Trey replaced the children’s picture on the table, his smile fading as he spied not one, but three pictures of Callie and Jimmy Dimarino in a triple frame.
One showed them as small schoolchildren, missing their front teeth. In the middle photo they were beaming teens in high school graduation caps and gowns. The third picture was the most difficult for Trey to look at. It was a recent one of them as young adults, arms around each other and grinning.
In all three photos the pair looked as if they were enjoying their own private joke. Enjoying each other’s company immensely.
Trey thought of this afternoon, after the Radocay laser surgery, when young Dr. Dimarino had picked up Callie and swung her around, when the two of them had entered the waiting room, holding hands. The warmth and intimacy between the two was apparent, and now the presence of three photos of Dimarino here in Callie’s apartment absolutely confirmed it.
Callie watched him uncertainly, wondering why he was glowering at her frame collection. A moment ago he’d been downright congenial, interested in her pictures, smiling, sharing little family jokes. And now…
“You look the way you do in the OR when a resident botches something. Do the pictures of my family annoy you?” She was only half kidding.
Trey didn’t even half smile. “Let’s not forget the special friends interspersed with the family photos.”
“Are you insulted I don’t have any photos of our neurosurgery team?” joked Callie, trying to jolly him into a better mood. “I figure I spend enough time with you guys as it is, so I don’t need to see your faces when I’m off duty.”
It was definitely the wrong thing to say. Trey’s face grew as dark as a spring sky during a thunderstorm. “Well, you won’t be seeing much of our neurosurgery team anymore. You quit, remember?”
“I’m not about to forget,” she retorted. “I need to find a new job right away. Unlike you, I have to work for a living,” she couldn’t resist adding.
“As opposed to me, a dilettante who does neurosurgery for fun and only on a whim?” Trey instantly picked up on her little dig. His face was hard. “That’s low, Callie. My work is my life, and you know it. You owe me an apology.”
Callie looked ashamed for just a second, but then her defenses—and her temper—surged. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for one. You’re not my boss anymore, I don’t have to…to pander to your ego anymore.”
“That’s it! That’s enough!” Suddenly Trey lunged at her, and though she began a quick retreat, walking backward, he followed her. Across the living room, right through the doorway of her small bedroom.
The room was dim and shadowy, the light from the living room providing only slight illumination. Callie didn’t stop to turn on the overhead light; she didn’t even think of it, not with Trey advancing on her.
She backed her way right to the edge of her bed, Trey almost toe-to-toe with her. When she stopped, he abruptly halted in his tracks, his face, his body only inches from hers.
They stood there, their eyes blazing, their breathing fast and heavy.
“I—I’m sorry,” Callie said at last. “That was low. I…I know your work is your life.”
His breath stirred her hair; her rising breath lightly skimmed his lips.
“I’m sorry, too,” he murmured. “The last thing I meant to do was to lose control of my temper and scare you.”
He pictured that flash of fear in her eyes when he’d advanced on her, and the power of his anger made him wince. Years ago he’d made a vow never to become a raging, threatening bully. To rage and threaten a woman, Callie, meant that he—
“I’m not scared,” Callie whispered, gazing up at him. “I know you’d never hurt me.”
Trey saw desire shining in her beautiful dark eyes, without a trace of fear. The burn of his anger instantaneously transformed into a flare of passion; her words were a balm, enabling him to unleash it. He felt his sex swell impossibly fast and full, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, letting her feel his need.
“Yes,” she breathed, in answer to the question he hadn’t asked, at least not with words.