“I’ll be back in an hour, one hour, I promise.” I hold up one finger for emphasis. I happen to know that it eases a patient’s anxiety if you give them a specific time that you’re going to check on them.
He frowns again. He frowns a lot, I’ve noticed. With a wrinkled brow, he pulls that sexy, full bottom lip between his teeth for a long moment before he concedes.
“Ok, an hour, as in one. I don’t want that other nurse giving me a bed bath.”
I smile wide and breathe a sigh of relief that he’s willing to compromise. “Don’t worry. You won’t be getting a bath unless it’s from me.”
“Alright, go then. The sooner you’re gone; the sooner you can come back to me. Hurry up.”
Something strange and possibly insane inside of me makes me happy to comply. I don’t like to be told what to do, especially by a man, but it’s different with Marcus.
His hand drifts from where it’s been resting over my wildly beating heart to the swell of my breast, where he pauses, and then down to my waist. He nudges me, and I rise from the bed and back out of the room closing the door with a soft click after one last look at him.
I scan the hall in both directions before I make a beeline for the elevator to avoid any new questions Courtney may have come up with in the past thirty minutes.
When I step out of the hospital, I feel like I’m emerging from a thick fog, the Marcus fog.
I check my phone for the first time since leaving the club last night. Sixteen missed calls and ten texts, good Lord. All of them are from the girls, but most from Lana.
Where the hell did you go? Who woke up? Imani! Answer me!
And on and on - I shoot a quick group text back to them,
I'm alright, don’t worry, it was a patient at work. I’m sorry, I’ll call you later. There, I pray that appeases Lana. I can’t talk about any of this right now, I don’t even know what the hell I’d say.
Uh, yeah, this gorgeous crazy patient I’ve been flirting with while he’s been in a coma for two weeks woke up and decided he couldn’t live without me, so I had to go.
Even thinking it makes me feel unbalanced.
I check around me for strangers while I walk to my car, a habit I’ve perfected after ten years of looking over my shoulder. I press the button on my key fob to unlock the doors and get in, relock immediately, and start for home.
My generalized anxiety disorder stems from the knowledge that one of my kidnappers is still out there somewhere. He knows that I could identify him if he’s ever caught. They never planned to let me out of that house alive, so they had no reason to hide their faces. Now, all three of them are seared onto my brain forever.
My one saving grace is the reconstructive surgery on my face. I don’t think he would recognize me if he saw me today. The attack was so brutal that I needed plastic surgery just to breathe properly. So a nose job it was, along with reconstructing my jaw and my shattered eye socket. I am a different Imani Jefferson now, inside and out.
The morning is brisk, and my entire body is covered with goosebumps when I unlock the door to my apartment. A shower, I need a nice warm shower. Sitting in a hospital chair dressed in club clothes all night left me feeling grimy and sore.
After a much shorter shower than I’d like, I braid my hair and throw on some jeans, a cashmere sweater, and comfy Sperry’s.
Heels are definitely out for a while; twelve hours in stilettos was enough for my poor feet.
It’s been forty minutes when I grab my purse and dash out the door. I only have twenty minutes to get back and prevent another meltdown.
I don’t want to tempt fate by being late. The last thing he needs right now is another episode like last night.
I gave him a specific time so he wouldn’t panic, and I have to be punctual or security will be getting their morning workout in room eight.
Courtney stops me on my way to Marcus’s room, of course.
“Wow, you’re back already? It’s noon, and you don’t work tonight, what gives?”
How can I explain what I’m doing here when I don’t even know myself? Maybe the truth is easiest, or, at least, a partial truth.
“He asked me to come back. Did anybody call his sister last night?” I ask.
“Yeah, I think Sheila did. No answer, though.”
“And she hasn’t been by today either?”
“Nope, which is weird, too, because she’s always here at nine.”
“Did Sheila leave a message?”
“Yeah, I think so. Why?”
“Oh, nothing, I just wanted to make sure she knows he’s awake. I promised her I’d call right away, but it was hectic last night and I wasn’t technically working.”
“I think they are talking about moving him to a regular floor now that he’s no longer considered critical,” she says.
“Oh, that’s great,” I say, with zero enthusiasm. If he leaves my floor, someone else will be taking care of him. Cue my own panic attack.
“I better go see how he is.”
“Traci is his nurse today if he needs anything, or you can do whatever it is that you two are doing in there.”
“We aren’t doing anything. I’m just here until his sister arrives, so he’s not alone, that’s it.”
“Yeah, sure. You keep telling yourself that, honey.”
I huff out a breath and turn on my heel to work my way down the bustling hall to his room.
Inside, he’s sitting up in bed with his computer next to him on the mattress. He has dark-rimmed glasses propped on his head and papers organized in neat piles all around him.
He looks up from whatever he’s been concentrating on, and I see relief in his bright green eyes.
The attraction is undeniable and mutual. I approach him as if we’ve been friends forever and make myself at home, draping my coat over the back of the chair next to his bed.
He lays the pen in his hand down on the bed. “You came back.”
“I said I would.”
“You look beautiful. I like your braid. In fact, I’d love to pull it.” His eyes darken with lust, and I fiddle with the hem of my sweater.
“Thank you, I think.” I scrunch up my face, unsure if that was a compliment or a come on, or both. “You’d better watch yourself, Mr. Castillo,” I say, folding my arms over my chest and raising an eyebrow.
This game of ‘you’re not affecting me’ is getting harder every minute. I wait for a response as he continues to probe me with sharp green eyes.
I feel my body leaning toward him when I notice a thin circle of purple around the edge of his irises. Everything about him sucks me in, and that tiny bit of purple that I haven’t noticed until now hypnotizes me.
I sit down when his intense stare becomes uncomfortable. I cross my legs and fidget in my chair.
Shit, he’s good at this.
A broad, panty-melting smile spreads across his face, and he chuckles quietly. He looks away, breaking the spell, as he gathers up his papers.
When everything has been cleared off the bed, he pats the mattress beside him inviting me to sit with him. Is he nuts? I never voluntarily go that close to a man unless he is my patient, ever.
He is my patient but, technically, not right now. I’m torn as to how to proceed. I would love nothing more than to slip under the blanket with Marcus and explore the hidden parts of his body more thoroughly.