Steeling myself, I was about to knock on the door when the angry face of Zach filled the doorway.
I swallowed hard and nodded at him politely. “Mr. Caruso.”
Zach Caruso’s eyes narrowed on me, but before he could say anything in reply, Crockett, his soon-to-be wife, was there.
“Hello, Catori.” She smiled. “How are you today?”
She eyed me up and down, her eyes taking in the pink.
“I’m well. How are you? How is Zakelina doing today?” I asked.
As Crockett pushed her man out of the way, the two of us walked toward the living room where I could hear an adult male chatting with a small voice that I knew to be Zakelina’s.
I was prepared for a man.
I just wasn’t prepared for this particular man.
I gasped, face filled with shock.
Because the man that was sitting next to Zakelina on the couch wasn’t a scary guy.
It was someone that I knew.
Someone that I’d been watching all morning.
Porn guy!
I lost the next couple of seconds. Or minutes. While my mind went absolutely haywire.
In fact, it shorted out so spectacularly that I hadn’t even realized they were talking to me until Zach was mad.
When the man swept past me, my face flamed even higher.
Why?
Because I’d seen this man masturbate all morning. I’d watched and rewatched the video so many times that I knew what his face looked like when he came. I knew what the cords of his neck did when his release hit him. I knew that right before he came, his belly tensed and the V at his belly went so rigid that it almost looked painful.
I also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’d never be able to look him in the eye again.
Luckily, the next thirty minutes that I spent with Zakelina served to cool my raging libido down to a simmer.
Unluckily, when Zach came in and spouted out the nonsense that he spouted, I hadn’t been prepared.
I’d said things I shouldn’t have said.
And now, I was sure that I’d be looking for a different job tomorrow.
Funny enough, I wasn’t too upset.
The name of the game was getting patients better.
Did it suck that I had to do that by hurting them? Yes. I didn’t enjoy watching kids cry. I especially didn’t enjoy being the cause of that pain.
And Zakelina having to deal with pain, after already suffering so much, hadn’t been something I’d wanted to do.
Yet, that was exactly what Zach was accusing me of with his comment as he came into the room a while later as I was wrapping up the session.
“Maybe if you were paying more attention to my girl and not how you have the hots for some man that doesn’t reciprocate, you wouldn’t be hurting your patients,” Zach snapped.
Where in the hell had those words come from?
What the absolute hell?
“I’m doing my job.” I calmly stood up, gathering my things. “My job is to help that little girl get better. To help her to learn to speak and eat normally again. Now, you need to work on her opening her jaw all the way. She’s spent weeks with it wired shut, and I’m sure, as an ex-doctor and all, you know what’ll happen if she doesn’t use those muscles, correct? Or did you forget your medical knowledge when you killed that patient?”
Zach took a threatening step toward me. And when he did, my eyes went hot as I inwardly cursed my lack of weapon.
I knew that Zach wouldn’t hurt me.
At least logically.
Illogically, my brain was going haywire. And I talked when I was nervous.
“I’m here to do my job. I’m not here to be her friend. I’m here to make sure that she can live the rest of her life as a normal person. Now, she needs to open her mouth as wide as she can. And repeat. All the damn time. Then she needs to actually get back to eating real food. Chewing and swallowing. I’ll be back tomorrow.” I gathered her things and shouldered her bag.
Zach’s eyes were spitting fire. “Not if I can help it.”
I smiled sweetly at Zach. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Then I left before I could say or do anything more that would make the situation any worse.
Like tell Zach he was a piece of shit to everyone but his closest family.
I was halfway down the length of the driveway when I heard someone say, “Wednesday!”
I frowned and kept walking, but turned my head and looked over my shoulder. “No. I’ll be here tomorrow. Tomorrow is Tuesday.”
And that’s when I realized that Porn Guy had followed me out.
He was jogging down the length of the sidewalk, gaining on me with those long, powerful legs of his.
I swallowed hard and stopped at the pukey Pepto Bismol colored car.
Once there, I threw my bag into the back seat, then opened the driver’s side door.
That’s when I turned to survey the guy that was looking at me with an odd expression on his face.
Amusement? Pride?
Hell, I didn’t know.
But it was one look I never expected to see on a man’s face that I didn’t know.
“Can I help you?” I asked, aiming for a cool, calm voice.
It came out sounding like a teenage girl meeting her crush for the first time.
Jesus Christ.
Why did Harlow always do these things to me?
I mean, how the fuck? What were the freakin’ odds?
The man’s eyes took me in, starting at the top of my head, running his gaze down the length of my straightened hair, pausing briefly at my boobs that were all but dwarfed in the oversized puke-pink scrub top. He lingered slightly on the tops of my pants that I just now realized had wrinkles in them due to me sitting still and sweating my balls off while working up the courage to go into that house.
He finished up by taking in my black Chucks.
They were battered, needed a wash in the worst way, and were so comfortable that I wore them everywhere. No matter what the occasion.
“Listen, Wednesday,” Porn Guy said. “He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just had a really stressful couple of weeks, and you’re not helping things by being so antagonistic.”
Wait, was he calling me Wednesday?
I tilted my head slightly. “Antagonistic? You think that I’m being antagonistic? I just listened to him threaten my life last time over me helping this kid. This time he’s accusing me of being a slut. Or whatever. I’m not sure.” I frowned and turned back to him. “Do you really think that I should just take that sitting down? Because I don’t. He’s already run off two other home health agencies. I realize that he’s scared. I realize that he’s worried. But he needs to get his shit together, because if I quit, y’all aren’t going to be able to find anybody else to do this. This is the last company—and don’t think that we didn’t talk to the other companies. We did. We’re small. We’re trying to make a name for ourselves, so of course we said yes even though we didn’t want to. Did you know that my boss, who is a staunch believer that guns shouldn’t be in a workplace, told me to conceal carry? He honestly thought that I would get hurt. That’s why he allowed me the option.”
Porn Guy’s eyebrows went up, showing off those beautiful, long lashes.
That’s when I paused, remembering another thing he’d said that pissed me off.
“Why did you just call me Wednesday?” I challenged him.