My Sweetest Sasha: Cole's Story (Meadows Shore Book 2) (4 page)

He leaned back in the chair, flattening his fingers on the edge of the table, sliding them back and forth along the polished grain. When he stretched his legs out in front of him, his foot grazed hers. He didn’t apologize or move it, instead he held her gaze with dark, penetrating eyes. “As for me … I’m all yours. Take your best shot,” he dared. “I’ll cooperate fully within the boundaries we just set.”

* * *

She squeezed her hands into tight balls, hoping to gain control of her emotions before opening her mouth. “That you set, you mean. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to unilaterally determine the rules.”

“Yeah, I do, and we both know it. But I understand you have a job to do, and I’ll help you in any way I can. I have no desire to see you get screwed in this.” His voice was calm and steady, and he seemed earnest.

She searched his face for motivation. “You want to help me. Why?”

Cole shrugged.

Alexa had read the file on him, knew about his endless string of hookups. Surely he didn’t think she’d exchange her body for his cooperation. “What’s in it for you?” she asked in a hushed voice, gauging his expression.

“Nothing. Maybe I’m not the villain you’ve been told I am.” His phone rang, and he wasted no time answering.

“Clarisse. I was hoping you’d call. No, your timing’s perfect, it’s quiet here. Take the elevator up, and I’ll meet you outside the trauma suite.”

Alexa noticed his face soften when he said the name Clarisse.

He tossed his phone aside and considered her briefly. A single thumb held his chin high while an index finger flitted from top to bottom over his perfectly smooth lips. She saw his Adam’s apple bob, once or twice, before he spoke.

“A friend’s coming up to see me, so you’ll need to find somewhere else to hang out while she’s here.”

Alexa’s mouth fell open and she gawked at him in disbelief. “Can’t you wait a few hours, until you’re off, to see her?”

“No. It can’t wait. I’m going to meet her now—be out of here before we get back.”

“Where exactly do you expect me to go?”

“I don’t know,” he said grabbing his keys. “You can sit at Sherrie’s desk, although she’ll be pissed if she finds out. Why don’t you sit in the waiting room?” he tossed over his shoulder on the way out.

* * *

Alexa took her laptop to Sherrie’s desk. She wasn’t about to sit in the dimly lit waiting room. Sherrie would have to get over it, or she could talk to her boss about his nocturnal activities. A few minutes after she was settled, the outer door opened and a feminine voice floated from across the room. “I don’t have long. I told Christian I was meeting a friend for coffee.”

When the footsteps came closer, she saw a tall redhead tucked casually under Cole’s arm. Clarisse she assumed. The woman shrank when she noticed her behind the desk.

“It’s okay,” Cole whispered to Clarisse. “Don’t worry about her.”

When the redhead fidgeted with her hair, Alexa caught a gleam of the ring on her left hand. There was no mistaking it, a thick gold band topped by a solitaire diamond ring. Clarisse was married …
and not to Cole
.

Now what? Exactly how did Chet expect her to remediate this? Warn Cole about women in his office after hours? Maybe. Deliver a stern lecture on the morality of hooking up with married women? No, she wouldn’t be doing that, but it would go in the report.
Good Lord!
He couldn’t keep it in his pants for even one day.

The door snapped shut behind her, and before long images of Cole and Clarisse began to intrude, making it difficult to concentrate on her work. The words on the computer screen registered zippo on her brain, replaced by Cole’s mouth and hands skating over the willowy redhead. She wanted to splash some water on her face, maybe get a cold drink, but afraid of what she might overhear, she didn’t dare move in the direction of the back offices.

* * *

“Do you want a drink?” Cole asked.

“Water if it’s handy.”

He placed a small bottle on the side table next to her chair. “Clarisse, your hands are shaking. What’s going on?”

She looked down. “I don’t know where to start.”

“The beginning, start at the beginning.”

She had a distant look on her face and still hadn’t said a word. “Clarisse. You’re scaring the shit out of me. What’s wrong?”

“Christian.”

“What’s wrong with Christian?” His voice was calm, but his heart was thumping.

“Everything,” she said so softly he could barely hear her.

“I need you to be more specific if I’m going to help.”

“He’s not himself. He’s rarely home, even to sleep. And when he is home, he doesn’t laugh anymore, or play with the kids. Sometimes days go by, weeks, and he doesn’t even see them. Noah’s always asking, ‘Where’s daddy? When’s Daddy coming home? Doesn’t Daddy love us anymore?’”

He felt like a pallet of steel plates had been lowered onto his chest. Christian loved those kids. He’d once told Cole about the powerful love that grips you the first time your child is placed in your arms. “It’s a feeling of awe,” he’d said, “of I made this, our love for each other made this tiny human being—there are no words to describe it.”

Cole remembered the day Noah was born, three years ago. Christian raced through the halls handing out chocolate cigars wrapped in blue foil, kissing anyone within arm’s reach. After everyone was tucked in for the night, he and Christian had sat out under the stars sharing Cuban cigars and toasting the healthy baby boy.

Tears streamed down Clarisse’s cheeks now, and he moved his chair closer to hers. “It’s okay … How long has this been going on?”

“It started after the school bus accident. When all those kids were hurt. So many of them died.”

“Last year,” he said, remembering the horror of ambulances lined up, two deep, at the entrance to the emergency room, each one carrying a second grader who’d been on the way to a field trip at the zoo. Their school bus had plunged over a steep embankment onto the highway below. There were so many injured that both he and Christian, who normally worked on older kids and adults, had scrubbed in.

Severely injured children were crammed into every nook and cranny of the ER, wailing from pain and for the comfort of their parents, while they waited for triage. Those were the lucky ones. The less fortunate went directly to the operating room or the morgue. It had taken months for the staff to put the tragedy behind them, and he suspected there were some, especially parents of young children, who would never put it behind them.

She nodded. “At first he was moody. I just shrugged it off as a bad stretch. You know how it is.”

“He saw the shrink, right?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “But come on, one session with a psychologist who determines if you’re fit to go back to the OR? What good is that? You guys know exactly what to say so they’ll sign off. It’s just for show. So the hospital protects itself from liability in case there’s a problem down the road. No one cares about what you’re really feeling. No one cares that those kids’ faces pop up every time you close your eyes.” She was angry now, disgusted, and her words had more than just a ring of truth to them.

“I care, Clarisse. I think about … I worry about it for every person who works for me, for every member of the team.”

She looked up at him, the anger gone replaced by sorrow. “I know you do. I’m sorry, I didn’t come here to blame you.”

“Don’t apologize, you have every right to be angry. But I can’t explain what’s going on with Christian. I haven’t noticed any out of the ordinary behavior from him, and I haven’t heard about any, either.” Although they were so busy these days that he rarely saw Christian, except for a moment or two when they passed in the hall.

“Sometimes I think he’s using drugs. He’s moody and mean one minute, and then apologetic the next. Though the apologies are becoming less frequent.”

She met his eyes. “Cole, I can put up with a lot. The hours, the unpredictability, the periodic dark moods … it’s all become normal to me. Some people look at my life and think it’s the pits, but it’s my life. I’ve grown up with it, been there since the beginning of the road. But this is different, and it’s getting worse.”

She paused, and her voice became almost a whisper. “He came home to shower and change this morning, and while he was there I ran out to grab some milk. When I got back Noah was cowering in his closet, shaking, snot and tears smeared all over his little face. He was terrified.” She covered her washed-out eyes with a hand. “Christian was in a tirade, spinning out of control because Noah spilled some apple juice on a cheap little kitchen mat. After he stormed out in a fury, it took me almost an hour to calm Noah down.”

“Is he with the kids now?”

She shook her head. “They’re with a friend … I can’t leave my kids with their father. Can you imagine that? Did you ever think there would be a day when Christian couldn’t be trusted to be alone with those babies? Did you?”

No. No, he couldn’t imagine that day. He just couldn’t. He wanted to believe she was making this up, exaggerating, but he’d known her too well, for too long. She was steady, and solid as a rock. How could he have missed this right in front of his nose?

“He hasn’t touched me in at least six months. I don’t mean sex. We haven’t had sex in … I don’t know, maybe a year. But he doesn’t touch me at all, and when I’ve tried to touch him, he recoils like my hand is made of ice.”

He didn’t really want to hear this, but he forced himself to listen, to stay present. “Have you thought about what you want to do?”

“Some. I thought about leaving, but I’m not sure I have the energy. And I don’t really want to go back to Ohio. It’s too far—our marriage won’t stand a chance if I go back home.” She shook her head. “No. I’m going to ask him to leave tonight … At least I think I am. He’s in such a bad way. I don’t want to make things worse for him.”

“What can I do to help? Do you want me to talk to him?”

“I came here because I know you love him, that you love me and the kids. I guess I came for strength. And I came for a reality check, to be sure I wasn’t just being a bitch, throwing him out when he was down.”

He grabbed both her hands in his. “Clarisse, listen to me. You need to do what’s right for your kids, and for you. You’re a good person, a wonderful woman with a big heart. A great mother and wife. You don’t need my approval, or anyone else’s, to do what’s necessary take care of yourself and the kids. But I’ll stand behind you. Whatever you need.”

She nodded.

“I’d like to reach out to him, but I might have to tell him you came to me. I’ll ask around, but there’s nothing I’m aware of that’s happened here that would open the door for me to confront him.”

“Maybe you could reach out without saying I’ve been here. I don’t know. I don’t want to lie or ask you to. But I don’t want him to feel like I’ve gone behind his back, even to you. It seems like such a betrayal. He’ll see it that way.”

“Do you want me to be there when you ask him to leave?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure you’ll be safe talking to him alone?”

“Yes,” she choked out. “It’s hard to believe that you’d ask me, that anyone would ask me, if I’d be safe with Christian. Did you ever think you’d wonder that?”

He’d been the best man at their wedding, and he was Noah’s godfather. He had never seen anything but tenderness and love between them. Christian had been crazy about Clarisse from the moment they met twelve years ago. He worshiped the ground she walked on … or at least that's what he’d always thought.

“Call me tonight after you talk to him. And let’s have dinner on Wednesday. It’ll give me some time to ask around about his behavior. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe we can have some kind of intervention or something.”

He leaned back in the chair. “What’s your family saying about all this?”

“I haven’t told them much of anything. You know how it is, you spill too much of your marital woes to your family, and even after you’ve forgiven and forgotten, they never do.”

“I wish you had come to me sooner. You didn’t have to be alone with this.”

“I kept hoping one day I’d wake up and everything would be normal again. That’s what always happened, someone would die unexpectedly and it was a shitty week. Then it got better. But this never got better, it only got worse,” she whispered, shredding the tissue between her fingers into bits.

* * *

After about forty-five minutes the door opened and Clarisse was once again under Cole’s arm, but it didn’t seem quite so casual this time.

Alexa heard him say, “Don’t forget to call me later, after he leaves,” and “let’s plan on dinner Wednesday.”

After a few minutes Cole walked back into the trauma suite. “Hey. Sorry for kicking you out of my office. You’re welcome to go back in if you’d like.”

“I’ll just work out here for now.” The last place she wanted to be was in a room that reeked of sex. One thing for sure, she’d never sit on the couch in his office again.
Ew!