Where I was hiding out like a fucking loser.
With his goddamned dick in his hand.
This time, pretty literally.
“Damn it!” I spat. I owed her more than this. A lot more.
After drying off hastily, I strolled back to the kitchen, white towel low on my hips, and grabbed my phone. Twenty minutes had passed, and a flurry of texts lit up my screen. All received in almost pinpoint accurate intervals of one minute.
Mac. Where are you?
Seriously, WTF?
Someone said you were disqualified. What does that even mean?
And where are you?
You know what? Forget I asked.
I bolted out onto my terrace again to see if I could still spot her in the stands. My heart lurched as I caught the taillights of her 240sx as she peeled out of the parking lot toward the main road.
“What the fuck?”
Why hadn’t she come up to the house? She was pissed, and I couldn’t say I blamed her, but she hadn’t even given me a chance to explain.
But do you deserve one?
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
If I ever recovered from this mess, it would be a miracle. Honestly, I didn’t deserve her forgiveness. I let my own pride get in the way of what I desired the most, and now I’d have to pay the price for it.
Paging Dr. Clown. Egotistical douchebag extraordinaire at your service.
Chapter Three
Taylor
Being back at this place was surreal. It seemed like just moments ago that Mac carried me across this exact parking lot at Scripps Green in La Jolla and then drove me home.
And then changed the fiber of my being.
After that night, absolutely nothing had been the same.
I scanned the lot for an available parking space and pumped a quick fist with the minor victory of spotting white taillights ahead, signaling someone else was backing out. I gave them as much room as possible in the narrow lane, flipping on my turn signal in case anyone came along and had designs on the same parking space.
Missy sputtered and chugged as I parked and then turned the ignition off. I quickly checked out the area again to see if anyone had heard her automotive flatulence.
She never did that when he drove her.
And no, I wasn’t going to dignify the comment by thinking of that he for one more second.
But I was already breaking my own rule.
“Get a grip on yourself,” I seethed at my hands, still positioned at ten and two o’clock on the wheel. “This is ridiculous. It’s Thursday. He’s in surgery.” At least I was still at he and not the alternative. “There is no damn way you’ll run into him today. Flukes are flukes because they’re…well…flukes. And that last time was a fluke.”
And I’d officially lost my mind. Talking to myself, alone in my car, even throwing in a hand gesture or two.
But it couldn’t be helped. I was so pissed at Dr. Maclain Stone that if I saw the man in person, I’d likely stab him.
No.
I’d definitely stab him.
Two weeks had gone by since he’d turned me into a humiliated ass—in the middle of the fucking desert. Worse, for a woman who’d been raised by the queen of the game players, I hadn’t seen through one second of his game. I’d let my hormones become a hurricane that swept me away, lured completely by his sexy smugness and intoxicating allure—all the way up to the moment I realized he’d stood me up. Did I mention the part about being in the middle of the damn desert?
I hadn’t talked to him since that Saturday afternoon—if unanswered texts even counted as talking. Now mid-June was upon us, and I just wanted to head out to the beach for some Pacific Ocean therapy. After I donated some blood. My days off were rare, and I cherished them like gold, which made me long for the similarly colored rays atop the breakers along the shore. I wasn’t about to waste one more second thinking about a certain clown.
Thinking about him.
There. That was much better.
Inside the Bloodmobile, the giant RV the San Diego Blood Bank used as their command center for on-site collections, it was the same drill as every other time. I signed my name on the clipboard hanging on the door and then grabbed another clipboard of required paperwork off the table. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs lined up against the vehicle and searched my purse for a pen.
“Hey, Taylor! Great to see you.” John, one of the regular blood bank phlebotomists, popped his head out the RV door to greet me.
I jumped a little, recovering with a laugh. “Hey, John. Sorry. You…uh…startled me. How’s it going?” I flashed a friendly smile though struggled to keep it in place. I silently pleaded the fates that he wouldn’t mention the last time I was here. Dear God, what a fiasco that had all been. Supremely uncomfortable, party of one.
“Not too bad. Nothing too exciting to report.” His boyish grin reached his eyes when he spoke. “At least not ‘excitement’ the way you define it.”
Crap, crap, crap; here it comes.
“You’re, umm, not going to need rescuing again today, are you? That boyfriend of yours…”
“Yeah, well. Can we just—”
“He’s a little…much.”
I gulped and tried not to break open a hole in the asphalt to dive into. John grinned wider, finishing his comment with a wink.
“Okay, first…” I began the challenge with a good-natured tilt of my head. “How many times have I given blood here, John? You know that whole thing was just a fluke. I never have problems after donating.”
John held up his hands. “Fair enough.”
I huffed and then nodded. “Glad we’re straight.”
He winked again, and my stomach did a weird twist. “So…is there a ‘second’?”
“Oh yeah, there fucking is.” I was definitely back on solid footing. Knew exactly what I wanted—needed—to get off my chest, despite the fact that it now looked like I was freaking poor John out. “Secondly, Dr. Stone is most definitely not my boyfriend.”
I topped it off with a hard glare, all but daring the poor guy to carry the conversation further. As I could have predicted, John held his hands up a little higher.
“Hey, whatever you say. I was just joking around a little bit.” He didn’t sound like he’d been joking, but I was glad for his tactics switch, at least.
“Sorry, John,” I mumbled. “This is all me. It—him—it’s all just still a touchy subject, I guess.” I resumed digging for a pen and came out with a bright-pink ballpoint. What the hell? I was batting a thousand at maintaining any semblance of dignity at this point. Thank God it was John, with his sweet disposition and ready acceptance.
“Well.” He snorted, and the brutal edge of it had me rethinking the “sweet disposition” stuff. On the other hand, it was kind of nice to see someone getting incensed on my behalf. Damn nice. Maybe I wasn’t losing my mind, after all. “The guy was a fool to let you go. A fool. That’s all I know.”
“Thanks.” I eked out a new smile, but John didn’t vacillate from his stance. “You’re sweet.” And why had I just let that slip out? The guy wasn’t going to let the subject go, which meant the conversation snippets had to come from me. “But really, he never had me in the first place, so there’s that.” I finally added a nonchalant shrug and then set to work on the papers in my lap. There. Done.