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Which made her next thought stop her in her tracks. What would it matter if they engaged in a little hanky-panky on the side? They were no longer involved—Clay had a young daughter he needed to concentrate on.
But she had needs. And she imagined he did, too—although Clay probably had those needs met on a regular basis. She wasn’t made like that. But maybe she could bend her own rules in this case, since she and Clay weren’t exactly strangers.
Her fingers tightened a bit on his neck. Clay’s response was to grip her waist with a firmer hand. Or maybe that was her imagination wanting to make it so.
And, Lord, if he didn’t smell good. Too good. Especially this close. The match and exertion should have washed away any trace of aftershave, so that couldn’t be the source of the woodsy, yummy scent that made her breathe a little bit deeper.
It was just Clay. She recognized it—remembered going to sleep to it and waking up with it beneath her skin. And, just like in the past, it drew her to him.
Her nose brushed his shoulder before she realized how close she’d gotten to him. With almost no hesitation—except maybe in her brain—her head turned sideways and she pressed her cheek against him, allowing her eyes to close. To “feel.” Something she hadn’t done in a very long time.
Her days of med school and internship had turned her into an analytical machine, with cause and effect always at the forefront of her mind… her feelings tucked in a distant part of her brain, where they rarely surfaced. Except in instances like with Mr. Phillips, when they’d reemerged without warning and threatened her objectivity.
Maybe she shouldn’t even be a doctor.
Yes, she should. Her mom had been so excited for her when she’d been accepted into med school.
And if it had come with a price—her relationship to Clay—it was still worth it.
If she could help people like Mr. Phillips, then she would continue to make those sacrifices.
The hand at her waist slid backward until it rested on the small of her back. She might have thought he was trying to put some distance between them but, if anything, he was tucking her closer, his chin coming down to rest on top of her head.
Her breath caught at the familiarity that was slowly wrapping her in cords of silk.
Especially with the little hum of vibration that went through his chest, a sound she couldn’t hear but that she could feel. And she felt it all the way down to her toes.
What was one night? Was Clay even thinking the same thing? Wondering if they could set the love machine for a quick tumble cycle that would heat up quickly, shaking out the wrinkles from their daily lives? Afterward they could fold everything up and put it back into a drawer. Out of sight. Out of mind.
Should she say something? Proposition him?
And just where would this sexathon take place? She could drag him back to her unit at the brownstone, where Caren, Holly or Sam might overhear something. Her nose crinkled. No, if they got together, she didn’t want to hold back anything, except her emotions.
They could go to his place—where he’d murmured he wanted to take her when they kissed in Central Park. His apartment was empty—at least according to Clay, who’d said that Molly would be at his parents’ house for the night.
She tilted her head, dislodging his chin. He glanced down, a frown marring his brow.
“Do you think Marcos would mind if we left early?” she asked.
“Marcos?” His eyebrows pulled closer together as he studied her for a second or two. “Feeling okay?”
“Not really.” That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. She hurried to correct herself. “I’m feeling a little…”
Her courage gave out, and she let her voice trail away.
“A little what? You’ve only had a glass of wine, not very much, even for a featherweight like you.” This time a slight smile edged one side of his mouth, although his frown was still there.
“No, it’s not the wine.” Wow, she was glad she wasn’t a man, because she was terrible at this pickup stuff. They could have it. “I was just wondering if you might want to…”
She swallowed and forced the rest of the words out. “Leave. Go somewhere else.”
His face went totally still, and she held her breath, praying that if he was going to refuse he would at least let her down easily.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I was thinking the very same thing.”
“Oh, God.” She sagged against him. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? We shouldn’t. We both know it.”
“Yes. My head knows it.” He hauled her closer, where she could feel the inner workings of a certain body part. “But other areas disagree. Vehemently, I might add.”
“Ditto on both counts.”
His hand slid beneath her hair and held her while his mouth came down and claimed hers.
Lord, she hoped no one in their party could see them now. But if Clay wasn’t worried about it, why should she be?
She kissed him back, stretching up as high as she could in order to reach him better. It wasn’t enough. What they both needed was a surface that put them on a level playing field.
Like a bed.
Something on Clay’s body vibrated again. Only this time it didn’t come from his chest but his waistline.
She broke free. “Clay…”
“I know. Give me a sec.” He unclipped his cell phone with one hand while keeping her tight against him with the other. He put the object to his ear. “Matthews here.”
The frown was back. Not of confusion this time but of concern. “Where are you?”
She thought at first it was his parents saying something had happened to Molly, except his face was up looking over the heads of the people on the dance floor. When she turned to follow his lead she saw a hand waving.
“Got it,” he said. “We’ll be right there. Call 911 as soon as you hang up.”
He let go of her and shoved his phone back in its holder. He leaned down so she could hear him above the music. “Something’s wrong with Marcos. Let’s go.”
Her heart in her throat, she kept hold of Clay’s hand as he led the way toward the place where she’d seen the hand waving. As soon as they arrived, she dropped to her knees.
Marcos was having a seizure, eyes rolled back, muscles twitching in useless contractions. The connections in his brain were going haywire.
Why?
She went back into analytical mode as she tilted the capoeira master’s head to the side in case he vomited, while Clay belted out question after question about whether or not anyone knew Marcos’s medical history. More capoeira folks had evidently noticed that something was going on, because they slowly gathered around them, including the man who’d mentioned sharing a cab with his wife. He was the one who finally spoke. “He has epilepsy.”
What?
Tessa looked down at the man she’d known most of her life. She glanced at his wrist, but there was no medical alert bracelet, something he should have been wearing. But Marcos was a proud man. And Brazilians didn’t like to display weakness. She remembered one of her father’s friends who’d severed his index finger at the second joint. He’d insisted the doctor reattach it, even though the digit would never bend again but would stick straight out. He’d just wanted to “be whole.”
Clay asked their group to form a ring around Marcos just like during practice to keep everyone back and then knelt beside her.
She glanced at her watch, timing the length of the seizure. Two minutes from the time Clay’s phone had rung. If it lasted longer than five minutes, they were in trouble. Right now, though, they were helpless to do anything except wait it out and hope that an ambulance arrived soon.
“What does he take?” Her eyes went to the man who’d voiced that Marcos had epilepsy.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just saw something on the calendar on his desk about a doctor’s appointment. I asked, and he told me. I had no idea until a couple of years ago.”
Marcos went still suddenly, all his muscles going lax. Glancing at her watch again, she murmured, “Just over three minutes from the time you got the call.”
Despite the medical emergency, the music was still playing and there was activity on the dance floor. Not everyone knew something had happened on this side of the room, which was probably a good thing, since she could just barely hear the sound of an ambulance in the distance.
A man in a tie broke through the ring and stood over them, introducing himself as The Pied Piper’s owner. “What happened?”
Clay spoke up. “We’re doctors and our friend had a seizure. There’s an ambulance en route. If you can clear a path to the door and let the EMTs get through, we’d appreciate it.”
All it took was a motion from the owner to get three beefy men to come over. He explained and they immediately opened up a swath of space. Within another minute a duo came through, wheeling a stretcher.
Marcos was just starting to regain consciousness, trying to weakly wave away their attempts to help.
Tessa leaned close to him and whispered in his ear that he needed to go with the EMTs and get checked out at the hospital. “Did you take your meds?”
He blinked at her as if he might deny taking anything, then nodded. “Yes.”
The medical services pair quickly took her friend’s vitals and checked his pupils, asking a few standard questions about whether he’d hit his head and how much he’d had to drink. Marcos was still too confused to really answer much, so they put a collar around his neck just in case and bundled him back through the crowd on the gurney, with Tessa following close behind. Clay turned to talk to the other guys from the studio, probably reassuring them that he’d let them know what was going on as soon as he knew something. He caught up with her just as they reached the ambulance. The EMTs recognized her from the hospital, so they didn’t question her when she said they’d meet them at the hospital.
Then the ambulance was off and Clay was flagging down a taxi.
There was silence on the way to the hospital. Her stomach churned in her gut as her thoughts raced. Marcos had epilepsy? He was a grande mestre in capoeira, a level that took many years and a whole lot of training to reach. She couldn’t believe someone hadn’t discovered this sooner, although most epileptics whose seizure activity was well controlled could live normal lives and do most of the things that other people did. Except drive. And even that depended on the type of seizure activity.
But Tessa had never seen any evidence of even a petit mal seizure.
A taxi pulled up to the curb and they both got in.
Clay wrapped an arm around her waist and slid her next to him. “Sorry, honey. He’s confused right now. Maybe he forgot to take his meds this morning. And if he had anything to drink…”
“I know.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “Anything could have triggered it. We’ll have to wait and see what he says when he’s a little more with it.”
“I know he’s special to you.”
She closed her eyes. “Yes. Very.”
Warm fingers cupped her chin and lifted her head. “How ‘very’ is very?”
What did he mean? “I’ve known Marcos my whole life. I’ve been at that studio since I was a kid. Marcos took over as owner when I was a teenager.”
“Is there something more to it than that?”
“More…?” She sat straight up, eyes widening. “What the hell, Clay? Do you think I would have asked you to leave the club with me if there was anything going on between me and Marcos?”
His fingers tightened to prevent her from jerking away. Instead, she glared up at him, anger pulsing at her temples. “The way he talks to you…”
“We’re friends. He’s friends with my parents.” She shook her head. “Just like your parents and mine are friends.”
“Exactly.”
She sighed, her indignation beginning to unravel at the seams. “He’s almost twenty years older than me.”
“Since when has that mattered?”
She could see his point. But her and Marcos?
It was true that she and Clay had originally met through their parents—at a Christmas party his folks had thrown years earlier. The second they’d seen each other it had all been over. And when they’d danced.
She and Marcos had never shared that same spark. Not when they first met… and not after all these years of working together. She saw him as a mentor. Someone to learn from.
“We’re friends.” She placed a little more emphasis on the words this time around.
They pulled up to the hospital, and she was the first to leap out of the cab, hurrying up the walkway while he had to stop and pay the driver for the short ride. Even so, he caught up with her before she reached the double doors of the emergency room. “Wait.”
She slowed her pace. “You can go ahead and go home. He’s my friend. I’m going to check on him.”
“He’s my friend, too.” Once they were through the doors he stopped in front of her. “It was an honest question. If we were going to go back to my place, I wanted to know the score. I don’t encroach on anyone’s territory.”
“I can’t believe you just said that. I’m no one’s territory.”
He laughed. “No. You’re not. You were always your own woman. Someone who knew exactly what she wanted out of life.”
A flash of hurt went through her heart. At one time that “want” had included Clay.
“No more than anyone else.”
There wasn’t any time to say more because one of the ER doctors met them in the hallway, nodding a greeting at them. She quickly explained why they were there. “Marcos Figuereiro. The man who came in with epilepsy.”
“Dr. Simon is back there with him right now. Exam room three, I think.”
They made their way to the cubicle and Tessa called through the closed curtain. “Drs. Camara and Matthews are here to see Marcos.”
“Come in. We’re just getting some background on him.” Randy Simon’s words came through loud and clear. A large man with a booming tone and optimistic manner, he was good with patients and family alike.
Clay drew back the curtain and motioned her in first, then followed her. Dr. Simon draped his stethoscope around his neck and glanced up at them.
“He has epilepsy?”
Marcos growled, “I am right here.”
“So you are.” Randy’s brows went up an inch, but he smiled down at the man and went back and forth with him about his diagnosis and medical history. It was like pulling teeth, though, to get anything out of the man.
But they did eventually. Dr. Simon decided to hold him overnight and check the blood levels of his meds. Marcos grumbled about it all, but Tessa got the feeling the episode had scared him as much as it had those around him. Which meant it wasn’t something that happened every day. So, yes, it was better to make sure nothing had changed or that there wasn’t something else insidious going on inside her friend’s body.
“You two might as well go home.” Marcos crossed his strong arms over his chest. “I’ll probably get the worst night’s sleep known to man, but I would rather do it in private than have someone hover over me for the next eight hours.”
“Are you sure?”
“I will call if I need something.”
Tessa managed a smile. “Hope you don’t mind if I don’t believe you.”
She reached into her purse—realizing for the first time that Clay must have retrieved it from their table at The Pied Piper, as she’d forgotten all about it until they were in the cab. But there it had been. She found a business card and wrote her cell phone number on the back of it, handing it to Dr. Simon. “Will you have someone call me if something changes?”
He glanced from her to Clay, probably wondering what they were doing out and about together. Those damned jars. She vaguely remembered seeing a pair of them in the ER, as well.
Perfect.
“I’ll give you a call,” he assured her.
Clay shook the other doctor’s hand while she leaned down to kiss Marcos’s cheek.
“You get some rest,” she said. “We have a lot more practicing to do over the next couple of weeks, and we need you strong and rested.”
He grumbled about them needing a lot more than a couple weeks, but since that was all they had…
They left, and Tessa wasn’t sure what to do. Did she hang around in the waiting room to see if there was any news? Or did she go home?
Now that the scare was over, she was wide-awake. There was no way she’d get any sleep tonight.
A vision of herself wrapped in Clay’s strong arms shimmied through her head, bringing with it the knowledge that she’d never had insomnia when they’d spent the nights together. Instead, she’d slept like a baby.
Clay, as if reading her thoughts, said, “You can’t do anything by waiting around, Tess. Randy said he’d call if something changed.” He glanced at his watch. “Besides, it’s almost eleven.”
Too late to do anything besides sleep? Yes, he was probably hinting that his better sense had put in an appearance after all and that he wanted to go home. Alone.
The least she could do was be graceful about it if that was the case, although now that Marcos’s doctor had her cell phone number she would love nothing more than to go to sleep with Clay next to her. But she wouldn’t.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
They stepped through the emergency room doors into the balmy night air. “That depends on how long you plan on staying over.”
“Staying over?” Said as if her heart had not just leaped in her chest at the idea that he might not be saying good-night quite yet after all.
His eyes narrowed. “Nothing’s changed, Tessa. And if I know you, you won’t get any sleep.” He wrapped his hand around her nape. “I still want you to come home with me. Will you?”
He was asking. Not demanding. Not assuming, as he might have when they’d been together before.
Relief washed through her. “Yes. If you’re sure.”
“Honey, I’d like nothing better than to be pinned down by you in circumstances other than standing in a roomful of men watching our every move.”
Capoeira.
She grinned, her eyes holding his as her fears over Marcos began to fade. “You just don’t like to lose in front of a bunch of people.”
“I don’t like to lose at all. But what I have in mind has two winners and zero losers. And no one around to see the outcome except for us.”
He drew her a little closer and then bent down to give her a light kiss.
Unfortunately, he didn’t move to deepen the contact, and considering they were standing outside the hospital, that was a good thing. For both of them.
He didn’t release his hold on her, however. So his next words were whispered inches away from her lips, giving them an intimacy she was dying to explore.
“My place. My bed.” The promise from a week ago flowed over her skin, making her shiver.
“Your car?” She didn’t have a vehicle at the moment, preferring to zip around the huge city on public transport or her own two feet.
“I think we can make it to the apartment.”
Only after he’d said it did she realize he’d taken her question about how they were going to get to his place and expanded it to include whether or not they would even make it that far. Or whether they’d have to park his car and consummate things inside. As they’d done before.
An ambulance pulled into the circular drive in a blare of sirens and Clay finally lifted his head and backed up a pace. But he didn’t leave her totally without contact. Reaching down, he grabbed her hand, tugging her to his side. “Ready?”
She made a sound of affirmation that found her being towed behind him, his long steps requiring two of hers for every one of his. She didn’t care. All she knew was that she was going to feel him around her in a way that she hadn’t in four long years.
And she couldn’t wait.
Maybe they wouldn’t make it back to his apartment after all.
She managed to climb into his car with shaky legs and settle into place. She even managed to keep her hands to herself, although she couldn’t say the same of Clay. Because once they got out of the parking lot and onto the street, they were immediately caught up in a snarl of traffic that slowed to a crawl.
“Damn,” he muttered.
Double damn, she echoed in her head. Balling her hands together in her lap, she tried not to squirm on the leather upholstery beneath her thighs. Or dwell on the warm ache between those very same thighs.
Clay let go of the gearshift and dropped his palm onto her left leg, just above her knee. “This wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but…”
Her breath caught in her throat when his thumb brushed over the loose, gauzy fabric of her long skirt. The ache grew a little stronger.
The car in front of them crept forward a couple of inches, and Clay followed it, the slow pace evidently not requiring him to shift, since his hand stayed right where it was. In fact, his fingers ran in little waves of motion along her inner thigh in a way that caused the hem of her skirt to rise almost to her knee, where he caught it with his index finger and lifted it higher.
“Clay?” His name came out a bit strangled.
“Shh…” This time when his fingertips came back in contact with her it was against bare skin. “Who knows how long this ride is going to last? Just keeping you interested.”
Interested? She didn’t need him to do anything to hold her enthralled. And the only ride she wanted right now was one where she was straddling his hips and moaning.
His windows were darkly tinted, and between the streetlights and headlights she doubted anyone could see inside the vehicle. Still, when his hand changed legs and bunched the fabric up until it was halfway between her knees and her hips, her stomach tightened in anticipation, along with everything else.
He dragged his palm with painful slowness up her skin, raising goose bumps in its wake, his eyes never leaving the road. And yet, even without glancing at her once, he seemed to know the havoc he was wreaking on her mind… and her body.
Traffic moved forward another couple of feet, and suddenly Tessa wasn’t in such a hurry to arrive at their destination.
He continued to tease with light strokes up… down… across, never quite reaching his destination. Eventually, she couldn’t take it any longer and her eyelids slammed shut, unable to concentrate on anything other than what Clay was doing, how he made her feel.
And it was incredible. She trusted him not to go so far that he would get them both arrested, even as she turned her body over to him, allowing him to do things she never would have let anyone else do.
Because she did trust him.
Wanted him.
Despite their past.
And when he got them home she was going to show him exactly how much.
His fingers slid between her thighs and urged them a few inches apart with a gentle pressure that she immediately responded to, although she did have enough common sense to reach down and flip the fabric of her skirt down over his hand and her knees.
“No fair, Tessa.” He ventured higher, wringing an unwilling moan from her throat, her head lolling back against the seat. “I’m beginning to think I should have chosen the car option.”
She felt the vehicle move forward again. Each time it did, Clay seemed to grow a little bolder.
When he withdrew his hand completely, though, her eyes jerked open in disappointment.
“Truck,” he murmured, as a big vehicle rumbled forward and moved twenty yards ahead of them.
Thinking she’d give him a taste of his own medicine, she twisted on her seat and moved her hand to the gearshift, sliding her fingers over the top of it and then down its stem, watching him. He wasn’t looking but she knew he was aware of exactly what she was doing—of the game she was playing.
“Dangerous.”
“No more dangerous than what you were doing,” she whispered.
“I’m driving.”
Yeah, driving me insane. She didn’t say it out loud, though, because it sounded stupid, even to her own ears. But it was true. And Clay knew it was. He always did somehow, even when she’d tried to hide how devastating his touch was to her. And when he’d shown up at her dorm room she’d kept the door between them, knowing that if he touched her it was all over.