JENNIFER’S CELL PHONE RANG on the nightstand by Marcie’s bed, and Jennifer jerked to a sitting position. She blinked awake and the sound of the phone jangling faded into a distant thrum as she found herself staring into Bobby’s deep blue eyes. Awareness rushed through her as she remembered lying down on his chest; she had been sleeping in his arms, was still in his arms.
“Oh, God,” Marcie moaned. “Make it stop.” She knocked over a glass on the nightstand trying to find Jennifer’s phone. “Please have mercy. Please. Make it stop!”
Jennifer shook herself into action, pushing out of Bobby’s arms, and snagging the phone just as it stopped ringing.
Marcie leaned up and cast the 8:00 a.m. time on the clock a disapproving glance. She dropped to her back, covering her face with her hands. “Please tell me that call was necessary.”
“It’s my service,” Jennifer said and punched the re-dial button. “They wouldn’t call unless a patient had an emergency. So yes. It’s necessary.” She’d arranged to open the clinic late that afternoon for a few hours.
After talking to her service, Jennifer called her client, only to find out that her patient, a poodle, had eaten a bag of chocolates, and was sick.
“How soon can you be at the office?” Jennifer asked the poodle’s owner, glancing at Bobby, who was watching her intently.
As her client responded, Jennifer turned away from Bobby, surprised to hear how far the customer drove to see her, but pleased when she was told it was because she was trusted.
Jennifer glanced at the clock. “Then nine-thirty? Does that work?”
With the time set, Jennifer hung up the line, Bobby’s gaze catching hers, his expression unreadable, but warm, like those strong arms holding her only minutes before.
“I’m going in your closet, Marcie,” Jennifer said. “I don’t have time to go home and shower and still make it to the clinic.”
“If you will stop talking so loudly,” Marcie murmured, “I will give you my entire closet. Actually please stop talking. Please take what you need and leave.”
Bobby smiled and stood up. “I’ll take that as a cue to go check on Mark.”
Forty-five minutes later, Jennifer stood in Marcie’s kitchen surrounded by the aftermath of the party, a mess of trash, cups and food everywhere. Jennifer had showered and dressed, though her options had been limited considering Marcie dwarfed her by three inches and all her pants were too long. She’d settled on a simple black shell dress, bare legs and heels that thankfully fit.
Jennifer poured coffee in a mug and set it in front of Marcie, who sat at the bar, her pale faced smudged with dark circles under her eyes.
“Thank you,” Marcie said grumpily, and not all so convincingly.
“I didn’t make the coffee for you,” Jennifer said. “I made it for everyone who has to tolerate you while hung over. I’m headed to the clinic so thankfully I’m not included in that group.”
Marcie scoffed and shoved a clump of unruly hair from her eyes. She truly looked like death warmed over. “Oh, please. You’re no better than me without your coffee. And I loaned you clothes. You should be nice to me.” She started to sip her coffee and stopped to add, “And I’m the bride. That’s a free ticket to tolerance, even if I admitted that I only had decaf in the house.”
Jennifer gave her a mocking smile and leaned on the counter. “Which is why I made you coffee, not everyone else. I was joking about that part. Sort of. A little. Not really.” She blinked. “Wait. Are you telling me the coffee in that canister I used is decaf?”
“Uh-huh,” Marcie said, sipping from her cup with a keen eye. “Mark felt I was jittery with the wedding approaching.”
“Okay then,” Jennifer said. “I’m headed to Starbucks so you can keep the thermos I was about to fill. Actually, I’ll take it and put a second cup in it.” She narrowed her gaze. “Be nice to your husband-to-be while I’m gone or I won’t bring it back.” The two lovebirds had been snapping at each other yet again this morning, and Jennifer was starting to worry about them.
“He tricked me into agreeing to skydive,” Marcie said. “And he forced decaf on me. You know how serious that is.”
Bobby sauntered into the kitchen, looking weary, his eyes heavy. Jennifer had a feeling he hadn’t slept at all. “Do I smell coffee?” he asked.
“It’s all your fault,” Marcie accused, glaring at Bobby. “You and your stupid ‘let’s go skydiving’ suggestion. Well, Bobby, I’ll tell you right now, if I’m skydiving, let’s go today when I’m nice and sick so I can aim in your direction.”
“Reservations are for tomorrow,” he said, snagging a cup from the cabinet and filling it. “Mark and I planned it so everyone could recover from the party. And don’t either of you tell me you can’t go.” He eyed Jennifer. “I know you close your clinic that day.” His gaze shifted to Marcie. “And Mark has the bar covered.” Jennifer handed him the vanilla creamer on the counter without thinking, knowing he liked it. He took it from her, a twinkle in his eyes, telling her he caught what she’d done.
“Don’t get too excited,” she told him. “It’s decaf.”
Bobby set the cream down. “Oh, hell. What the flip, Marcie? I thought only little old ladies bought decaf.”
“And high-strung brides-to-be,” Mark said, walking into the kitchen, looking about as half-dead as Marcie. “Drastic actions were required if I’m going to survive until the wedding.”
“You want me to jump out of a plane, but I can’t have caffeine,” Marcie complained. “That’s wrong.”
Mark arched a brow. “I’m not seeing the problem.” He glanced at Bobby. “Can you help me roll the cover over the dance floor, man? I don’t want those guys moaning at me when they come to pick it up.”
“Sure,” Bobby said, without hesitation. Bobby had always been willing to help a friend. Last night had proven to Jennifer that hadn’t changed. She liked that about him. One of the things that had made loving Bobby so easy was liking him. Jennifer turned away, put the thermos in the cabinet, intentionally giving Bobby her back for fear her expression was a little too transparent—the “I loved you, please don’t let me love you again” feeling twisting in her stomach.
Mark walked to Marcie and kissed her. “And don’t you moan at me either, or I might have to turn you over my knee.”
“Promises, promises,” Marcie mumbled.
Jennifer shut the cabinet to find Bobby sipping the coffee and setting it down. He winked at Jennifer. “Pretend there is caffeine. It tastes the same.”
“It’s the jolt, not the taste, I was going for,” she assured him.
Before she knew his intention, he grabbed her and kissed her. “How’s that for a jolt?” he asked softly.
She’d let him know when she stopped vibrating, which might be several hours from now. “Bobby,” she chided.
He leaned close, his lips near her ear, his breath warm, his body hot and hard. “You felt good last night,” he whispered.
“Ready, Bobby?” Mark asked. Bobby pulled back and gave a nod to Mark, but his gaze was on Jennifer. “I’m ready.” He then pressed a tender kiss to her forehead, a boyfriend kind of kiss, not a two-week bedroom buddy kiss, and walked away.
“He’s ready,” Marcie said, the minute Bobby and Mark disappeared. “Are you? Or did you get your fill last night?”
Jennifer wasn’t about to have this conversation. “The only thing I’m ready for right now,” she said, “is Starbucks.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh.” She grabbed her purse. “I need to run.”
Marcie made a chicken sound. “Run is right. From Bobby.”
Jennifer scoffed and started toward the door, calling over her shoulder, “Why would I run from two weeks of incredible sex?”
But deep in her heart, she knew she was, indeed, running. Running because no matter how many times she told herself sex alone was enough with Bobby, sex was a way to end this on her terms, she knew she could only take so many of Bobby’s mind-blowing kisses before she got hurt. And she liked to think she was smarter than that, having learned from past mistakes. Yeah, she thought. She had learned how to get hurt by Bobby. She was highly skilled at it, in fact. So much so, that she feared she might be excelling at doing it all over again.
SIX HOURS LATER, with one emergency after the other, Jennifer’s short-term caffeine rush had long ago faded, and her lack of sleep was wearing on her quickly.
“You’re sure it’s allergies?” said Kate Wilmore, a sixteen-year-old pet owner of Roxie, the Chihuahua panting at her feet. Kate’s youthful features frayed with worry as Jennifer walked her to the door. Her father had gone to pull the car to the door.
“I’m positive,” Jennifer assured her, well aware from Kate’s fears from the exam room, that she’d lost a pet several years before to pneumonia.
“We told you she snored all night,” Kate said. “Right?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said. “You told me. The steroid shot I gave her will work wonders, I promise. Snoring is perfectly normal with allergies.”
The door to the clinic opened but instead of Kate’s father, Bobby stepped inside. “You said you weren’t going to tell anyone I snored.”
Instant adrenaline rocketed through Jennifer, all sense of exhaustion gone, but somehow she kept her expression unaffected despite the discreet head-to-toe inspection he gave her. Kate didn’t notice, she was smiling up at Bobby, her eyes lighting with teenage appreciation, and Jennifer couldn’t blame her. Clean-shaven, with faded jeans, a snug Army T-shirt and his blue eyes shimmering in a backdrop of sunlight, he looked country-boy sexy.
Roxie barked and huddled at Bobby’s feet. He squatted down and gave the pup a rubdown. “Hey there, cutie,” he said and smiled at Kate. “Yours, I take it?”
“Yes,” she said brightly, the worry from moments before fading away. “Her name is Roxie, and she snores, too.”
“Really?” Bobby said. “Small world. You know, when I was in college, I had a German shepherd that snored. The two of us together drove Jennifer crazy.”
“Jennifer?” Kate frowned.
Bobby pushed to his feet and eyed Jennifer, his expression lighting with pride. “Dr. Jones,” he corrected.
Kate looked between them and said, “So you two are—”
“No,” Jennifer said quickly.
“I’m in the doghouse right now,” Bobby told Kate. “But I’m howling my way back out.”
Kate laughed and the door opened as her father poked his head in. “Ready, Kate?”
“Yes,” she said quickly before eying Jennifer. “Thank you, Dr. Jones.”
“Call me if you need me,” Jennifer said, waving.
The door shut, leaving Jennifer and Bobby alone. “You’re making a habit of leaving without saying a proper goodbye,” Bobby said. “You didn’t even give me a phone number.”
“I was in a rush to get to work,” she said quickly.
“And away from me,” he added, and didn’t give her time to object. “So this is your clinic.” He scanned the lobby—the tiled flooring, to make accidents easier to clean up; simple cloth chairs, again, easy to clean; and pictures of animals on the walls. “You did it,” he said, more of that earlier pride in his voice and his face. “You made your dream come true.” His voice softened. “I’m happy for you, Jen. I really am. You knew what you wanted and you went after it.”
“Thank you,” she said, sadness balling in her chest. It was her dream, yes, but seven years ago, she’d shared it with Bobby. Expected to live it with him. “And you? Did you find what you wanted?”
His jaw tensed in a barely perceivable way, his answer coming slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I found what I wanted.”
It was all she could do not to press her hand to her stomach at the coiling inside. Good. That was good. She did want him to be happy. She did. She loved him. That meant letting go sometimes. She understood that; it was the not saying goodbye, not dealing with the past, that had been hard. She had that chance now, and she should be thankful. Right. Thankful. Embrace opportunity.
She cleared her throat. “The door,” she said, trying to move beyond the moment because the embracing-opportunity thing really wasn’t calling to her. “Can you lock that door behind you? Roxie was my last patient, and I don’t want to risk any walk-ins without anyone covering the front.”
He stared at her, his blue eyes probing hers, before he turned to the door. “Ah, Jen,” he said, messing with the lock. “Is there a trick to this lock that you forgot to mention?”
Jennifer squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, God, no,” she said, weary to the bone. “I had a new door put in two weeks ago, and the lock hasn’t worked right since. I just had a guy out here last week to replace it.” She pressed her hand to her face and then let it fall. “I can’t leave the place open. I’ll have to call the locksmith.”
Bobby opened the door and gave it a quick once-over, moving it back and forth. “It’s not the lock. It’s the door. It’s off center. I can fix you right up if you have a tool kit.”
“You don’t have to do that, Bobby,” Jennifer said. The idea of him taking care of this for her was hitting a sensitive spot. She didn’t want to depend on Bobby. He was leaving. “I can call someone.”
“I’m here,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I do this for you?”
Of course. Why wouldn’t he? “Tool kit coming right up,” she said.
Thirty minutes later, Bobby appeared in the doorway of her office. “All done and locked up.”
Jennifer pushed to her feet. “Great. Thank you.” He was so big and sexy, and her office, so small and confining. Jennifer gathered her purse from her desk, ready to escape. She wasn’t going to get perspective until she slept. “I desperately need a few hours of shut-eye.”
Bobby propped himself in the door frame. “The skydiving operation we’re going to tomorrow…they’re doing an exhibition show tonight. I was hoping, after you got a few hours’ rest, of course, that maybe we could drive out there together.”
Usually one to think before she acted, or spoke, Jennifer found herself unable to contain the explosiveness of her instant reaction. Her purse went down on the desk with a thud. “No, Bobby,” she said. “No, we cannot drive out to the exhibition show. Just like you shouldn’t have fixed my door. We,” she said, waving her hand between them in an exaggerated fashion, “are not dating. We do not do dating-type things. This is a fling. Nothing but a fling. An ends-in-less-than-two-weeks fling! That translates to sex and goodbye. Goodbye and sex. We’ve had this conversation. You don’t have to walk around that. You don’t have to make it pretty.” She was mad. She couldn’t help it. “Just make it good!”
His expression hardened, stone-cold and calculating, in a way she’d rarely seen Bobby. He stared at her. She stared at him. And then suddenly, she said, “Darn it, Bobby, I know you’re mad. But what right do you have to be mad? You left me. You were silent for seven long years. You cannot come back here and just expect me to fall at your feet. I didn’t do this to us. You did.”
He pierced her with a shadowy, haunted gaze. “I thought there was no ‘us’ to do anything to, Jen,” he said. “So is there or is there not?”
“There was,” she said softly, fists balled by her side as she tried to stop her hands from trembling, telling herself it was lack of sleep, when she knew it was him, it was Bobby, his nearness. The need to feel him touch her again, the fear he would and that she would lose herself to him forever this time.
“But not now?” he pressed. “Now there is only sex?”
She drew a shaky breath at the directness of the question, at the tension crackling in the air, as if the elements around them waited for an answer as surely as he did. She didn’t understand him, didn’t understand any of this.
“I’m not pressuring you, Bobby,” she said. “I’m not asking you for forever. I didn’t ask you to explain the past. You don’t have to do any of this. I won’t let our past ruin the wedding. But you keep pressing. I don’t know what you want from me. What is it you want, Bobby?”