KeyParty (10 page)

“She left about an hour ago.” He held Rachel’s good hand
when she stirred and mumbled something in her sleep.

“Do you want us to sit with her for a while? You could go
home, get some sleep.” Petra offered. “We can take her home with us once she’s
released.”

“I’ll wait. I’d like to take her home with me so I can keep
an eye on her later. I can call a cab when they release her if the two of you
want to get out of here.”

Petra gave him a long look before she leaned across the bed
and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good guy, Ben Richards,” she said, and then she
and Jude left.

He heard yet another emergency call go out over the hospital
PA system, this one calling for all docs who were free throughout the hospital
to come to the emergency room. Kicking off his shoes, he slowly and gently
rolled Rachel onto her good side and tucked his rolled jacket under her arm to
keep it elevated. Then he settled himself into the space behind her, took a
deep breath of the scent of her hair and slept.

Was there anything more erotic than a man’s hairy forearm?

Rachel lay there staring at Ben’s arm. He was sound asleep,
curled up behind her with his arm under her neck, sandwiched between her
shoulder and the pillow they were sharing, his long fingers hooked over the
safety rail in front of her.

There was something about the way that soft, black hair lay
across his skin, all the way down to where it became sparse and fine over his
wrist, that made her stomach flutter deliciously.

And his hands—the definition of the tendons to his fingers,
that sexy dip between his thumb and the heel of his hand practically begging
for her tongue to touch him there. She loved his long, straight fingers and
well-kept fingernails. The way those fingertips felt when they traveled over
her skin…

She moved to touch him but a lightning bolt of pain reminded
her why she was lying in a hospital bed in the first place. She gave the
bright-pink cast a withering glare, laid her broken arm on the…what was that
propped in front of her?

Slowly, she became aware there was someone else in the room.
It felt as though it took her a long time to move her eyes. When she could, she
found Ben’s mother, Dr. Lindsay Marks, standing near the foot of the bed,
observing her. She spent a long, moment wondering what on earth his mother
would be doing there before she remembered she was a doctor and probably had
every right to be there.

“A new patient of mine was born this morning,” Dr. Marks
said quietly, her smile kind. “I heard you were here so I thought I’d check in.
How are you feeling?”

Rachel pried her dry lips open and said, “I think I’m pretty
high on painkillers.”

Dr. Marks laughed softly and moved around the edge of the
bed. She put the electronic tablet she was holding on the counter behind her.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said. “I just saw Dr.
Ombrowski in the hall,” she said, meaning the emergency room doctor who’d reset
Rachel’s arm. “It looks like he should be in to release you shortly.”

She pulled a chair close to the bed and sat elegantly on the
edge of the vinyl seat.

“He used to talk to me about you,” she said, catching Rachel
off guard. “When you and I met at the center in Homewood last month, your name
struck me as familiar. I remembered why later. He worried about the way you
quit school.”

Rachel looked behind her to make sure Ben wasn’t awake.

“He sleeps like the dead,” Dr. Marks assured her.

Rachel didn’t mention she already knew how soundly he slept
once he was out.

“You know, he tutored several students over the years, but
you were the only one he talked about. He’d come home to do his laundry and go
on about Rachel. Always Rachel. He got frustrated for you when you struggled,
wishing he could help you understand your classes better. He’d tell me all the
quirky things the two of you would talk about, and I think he admired the way
you could eat as much pizza as he could.”

She groaned and turned her face into the pillow. “Great.”

“And when you left he made himself sick trying to find out
if you were all right.”

Rachel looked at her for a long time, the painkillers
putting a pleasantly numb haze over what would have otherwise been an awkward,
embarrassing moment.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I think you should know.” Dr. Marks gave her a
small, knowing smile. “And because I’ve never seen him like this before.” She
stood and put the chair back in its place. “My husband’s birthday is next week.
I’d love it if you came to dinner and celebrated with us.”

Rachel felt all kinds of giddy bubbling up inside her.
“Thank you. I’d like that.”

“I’ll see if I can get Dr. Ombrowski to move a little
faster.” She gave Rachel a wink, picked up her tablet and left the room as
silently as she’d come in.

Rachel rolled onto her back slowly so she wouldn’t wake Ben,
but he was already awake. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough to know my mother just spilled my deepest secret to
my girlfriend.”

She flushed hot and had to stifle a ridiculous giggle. He’d
called her his girlfriend.

Good Lord, she was really high.

He used his free hand to tuck his end of the pillow, raising
his head.

“I had an interesting conversation with my dad this
afternoon. Or rather, yesterday afternoon.” He smoothed an unruly curl off her
forehead. “You backed out of the job.”

She wrapped the fingers of her good hand around his wrist
and focused on the top button of the shirt he was wearing. “I did,” she said,
unable to meet his steady gaze.

He tucked a finger under her chin and pressed until she
looked at him. “Why?”

She took a long moment, steeling herself before she
answered.

“I know it’s probably silly, but I can’t go back to being
just friends, Ben.” That her voice was strong, clear and confident surprised
her. “Having to be platonic coworkers after spending so much time together the
past few weeks is out of the question. Even if you got up out of this bed right
now, told me you never wanted to see me again and walked out of my life for
good, it wouldn’t change my mind. I can’t stop seeing you because of a job’s
rules.”

There was a long moment when he said nothing, where he
simply looked at her, his expression unreadable. “You were at the top of a very
short list of people they wanted for Homewood. The third interview they’d
scheduled was really just a formality. I know how much you wanted this job,
Rachel.”

“It doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t. She meant every word of
what she’d just said.

Her heart was racing wildly in her chest. She could hear the
hustle and bustle of the emergency room beyond the curtain and wished she could
make it vanish. She traced his eyebrow, his cheekbone, the full lines of his
mouth, suddenly lost in how much she was in love with him.

“No job is worth losing you again,” she whispered, her throat
tight with emotion.

“Funny thing about that,” he said, catching her hand and
pressing a kiss to her fingertips. “I’m pretty sure you could have had me all
along.”

* * * * *

It was his mother who eventually spilled the beans about Ben
going to his stepfather about changing the no-fraternizing policy so she could
have the job he knew she’d wanted so badly. Ben never mentioned it. And by the
way he reacted when Lindsay brought it up over dinner one evening, he hadn’t
planned to mention it at all. He’d fully intended to let Rachel think she’d
been the one who’d made the big sacrifice for the sake of their new
relationship.

It wouldn’t have stayed a secret long. By then he’d formed a
committee with some of the younger staff members to amend that and several
other outdated policies regarding the company as a whole. And no sooner had the
board announced the amended rules than no less than three people requested a
transfer because they were secretly involved with someone within the company.

There had been no keeping Ben or his mother from gloating to
his dad about how right they’d both been after that.

Rachel removed her mitten and knocked on his door. Her
stomach fluttered with butterflies of anticipation. She’d told him a little
white lie. A couple of little white lies, actually. She’d been planning this
surprise for weeks, first telling him the cast on her right hand wasn’t going
to come off for another week, then telling him she was going to be busy so she
could catch him off guard.

As long as he was really spending the night home she was
good. If he’d changed his mind and decided to go out, her surprise was going to
backfire.

She tucked her hand back in the mitten just as the lock on
the other side of the door turned. And then he was there, standing in the doorway
looking gorgeous in a plain white t-shirt and dark-blue, plaid pajama pants,
his hair slightly disheveled.

It was the middle of summer and way too warm for the hat and
mittens, so she wasn’t at all surprised by the startled but amused look on his
face.

“Well, well, well.” The gleam in his eyes as he looked her
over from top to bottom and back made her toes curl. “What do we have here?”

“I know you said you don’t have any leftover hang-ups about
me getting up and walking out that night, you know, back in college when you
couldn’t resist me any longer,” she explained with a grin, pulling herself up
with much more confidence than she felt. “But I’m curious to know how things
might’ve played out if I’d stayed.”

He fell heavily against the doorframe and held one hand to
his stomach, fingers splayed wide over the flat surface. She was dressed
exactly the way she’d been the night she’d chickened out on him seven years
earlier—Northwestern sweatshirt, faded jeans and the black-and-white striped
hat and mittens her mother gave her that first winter she was on her own.

She’d covered her anatomy book from massage school with a
brown paper bag the way she’d covered her textbooks in high school and had
written the word Chemistry in big letters across the front.

She propped it on her hip and said, “I don’t know why I’m
bothering to study. There’s no way I’m going to pass that stupid exam
tomorrow.”

He backed out of the doorway and let her inside.

A movie she didn’t recognize was paused on the television,
the actor’s expression frozen with his mouth open in mid-speech. A lone empty
beer bottle sat next to a medium pizza box on the coffee table.

She heard the door close behind her as she made her way to
the couch.

“Seriously, all those letters and numbers? Periodic tables?”
She sat heavily, flopped against the back and heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’ve
started having nightmares about all those damn terms.”

He was approaching her slowly, his smile and careful
movements predatory. She plucked her right mitten off and tossed it aside,
showing him her bare hand. His smile brightened several degrees as he sat next
to her. They’d learned to work around her cast during sex, but there had been a
few awkward and slightly painful moments for both of them before they’d figured
it out.

“I’m going to freeze up tomorrow,” she pouted, still
playacting. “I’m going to throw up the moment the professor puts that test in
front of me.” She tilted her head to one side. “Do you think they sell barf
bags in the bookstore?”

“I’m going to marry you, Rachel Marsh,” he said, taking the
book off her lap and setting it on the pizza box.

She gave him an impatient look and pulled off her other
mitten, tossed it in the direction of the first with a careful flick of her
healed wrist. “You’re not playing.”

He pulled her hat off and sent it sailing over his shoulder.

“I’m going to buy you the biggest diamond ring you’ve ever
seen.” He was speaking quietly, reverently, as he leaned toward her, one arm on
the couch behind her, the other hand sliding up her thigh. “I’m going to get
down on one knee in the sappiest, most romantic place I can imagine and propose
in a way that’ll make you weep every time you think about it for the rest of
your life. Even after we’re old and gray.”

“I don’t see how this is going to help me pass that exam
tomorrow.” Her voice was stubbornly sarcastic, but her heart was giddy with
joy, her body already on fire for him.

He shifted, one knee on the couch and the other foot on the
floor. “We’re going to have a ridiculously huge wedding.” He lifted her leg
that was closest to him at the knee. She had to shift toward him when he moved
it so it was stretched along the back of the couch and he was kneeling between
her thighs. “We’re going to live in an enormous house in the suburbs and have
dozens of freakishly tall children.”

“That we’re going to adopt? I hate to bring this up at such
a delicate moment, Ben darling, but this body of mine isn’t having dozens of
anything but orgasms.”

Emotion pricked at her eyes as he held his weight on one arm
and slipped the fingers of the other around the back of her neck, laying them
both back on the couch. When he lifted her free leg so she could wrap it around
his waist she realized he was positioning her the way they’d been just before
she panicked that night years earlier.

“I love you, Rachel Marsh,” he told her, his eyes holding
hers steady.

She slipped her arms around his neck and tightened her leg
as he settled his weight over her, that glorious erection of his pressed
against the inside of her thigh.

“Come to think of it, an orgasm or two might help me clear
my head so I can get more out of our study session.” Her eyes rolled as he
buried his face in her neck. “Maybe I’ll even pass that damn test.”

“Tell me you love me,” he murmured against her skin.

She turned so her mouth was close to his ear and whispered,
“I love you.”

She slid her hands in his hair as his mouth found a spot on
her neck she hadn’t known existed, let alone would make her feel as though she
was coming out of her skin, until he’d found it by accident recently.

He pulled the collar of her sweatshirt aside to give himself
better access. “You know, studying with you is driving me crazy, Rachel,” he
murmured against her skin.

She groaned and laughed at the same time. He was playing
along.

“I’m trying to understand chemistry, Ben, I swear,” she
said, pulling up the hem of his t-shirt and running her hands over the smooth
skin and taut muscles of his back.

“It’s my fault you’re not getting it.” He lifted his head
and looked at her. “I can hardly concentrate myself. All I think about is
kissing that mouth,” he said, reaching between them to slide his hand under her
sweatshirt. “Jesus. You’re not wearing a bra.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at his wide-eyed expression. He
groaned and kissed her, his tongue plunging deep as he rubbed his cock against
the apex of her legs through their clothes. He pinched her nipple roughly,
making her gasp, then went up on his knees over her and pulled her sweatshirt
and then his t-shirt off.