The Best Medicine (26 page)

“Your bathroom is bigger than my apartment,” he said.

“It’s a little excessive. I realize that, but I just couldn’t resist this party shower.” I undid another button, and another as we talked. “Guess what I thought of when I first went through this house with my Realtor.”

“How many surgeries you’d have to do to pay for it?”

I shook my head and pushed his shirt off his shoulders. “Nope.” I kissed his neck, and he gave up a throaty little sound.

“How many gallons of water you’d use?”

I smiled. He knew me. “Yes, actually, but right after that, guess what I thought of.” I ran my hands into his hair and tilted his head down so he’d look at me. “I thought about you being in there. In that shower.”

“No you didn’t.” His lips curved a bit more. Some of the tension eased. His hands reached up to my waist, inching up under the hem of my shirt. “You’re just saying that to make me feel good,” he said.

“No I’m not.” I raised up on my tiptoes.

His fingers traced a line around the waistband of my shorts, sending shivers into every cell of my body. Making him feel better was going to make me feel better too.

“You looked at this house months ago. You hardly even knew me then,” he said, pulling my shirt up and off and dropping it to the floor.

“I know. That’s why the idea of you in there was so . . . tantalizing.”

“Tantalizing.” Now he smiled. “That’s a nice four-dollar word. I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before.” He deftly unclasped my bra, and I let it slide off my arms.

Bare skin to bare skin, I pressed against him. And I liked it.

“I bet you’ve been called that lots of times. Just never to your face. So, see? With me you get full disclosure. I’ll always be honest with you.”

I was teasing, trying to lighten his mood, seduce him. But something in his expression shifted again, and the humor drifted away. He looked down at me as if he wanted to say something more, but instead he kissed me, hard, stealing my breath, and suddenly I couldn’t tell if it was the shower steaming the room or the heat between us. Our shorts went the way of our shirts, and then we were in the luxury shower, water streaming down, pulses speeding up. I’d wanted to take our time in there, enjoy the suds and novelty, but he was intense, insistent, focused. There was a tension there, still. A heaviness he’d carried since he’d walked in my door tonight. I wanted nothing more from this moment than to take that weight away. And so I let him set the pace. He knew my body by now, and I knew his. He knew what I liked, and I responded, giving as I received.

But when all was said and done, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still so sad.

We fell into my bed sometime later, and Tyler pulled me close against his side, like a shield. I pressed my hand against his cheek and turned his head toward me.

“Hey. You know I’m crazy about you, right?” I said, following it up with a kiss on his shoulder. “No matter what.”

He kissed my temple and sighed. “I know. I’m crazy about you too. No matter what.”

Chapter 29

I DREAMT THERE WERE SEVEN
dwarves working on my house. They each had their own pickax, and they were tap-tap-tapping against my bedroom door. Then I woke up and realized the tapping was real. Fontaine must have let himself in to hang pictures. It was nice to know how little my opinion about such things mattered to him.

Tyler was still sound asleep beside me, his face pressed into the pillow. I’d loved him once more, during the night. Slow and sweet and full of comfort.

In the shower, it had seemed as if he’d been trying to prove a point or deny the frustration that lingered from bad news, but when the moon was high and we could hear the waves rolling over the sand, we’d taken our time. Defenses down. In bed we were always equal.

I slipped into the bathroom and freshened up, pulling on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Then I went downstairs to tell Fontaine to find something else to do until Tyler woke up. I found him in my home office surrounded by thick black picture frames.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Fontaine sang out.

“Shhh!” I pressed a finger to my lips. “Tyler’s sleeping.”

Fontaine arched a dark brow. “Oh, is he now? Wore him out, you little minx? It’s always the quiet redheads who are such vixens.”

“That’s me,” I said. “Anyway, what are you hanging?”

“Your diplomas, girlfriend. You left a pile of them on your desk, and I couldn’t resist. I had them matted and framed so they all match. Do you love it? Tell me you love it, because I’m about to hang them regardless.”

He’d arranged them in a geometric pattern on the floor. All my years of hard work represented on card stock, now turned into lovely artwork. I’d moved those darned certificates from shitty apartment to shitty apartment, hardly having a place to stash them, much less a decent spot to hang them. Now that wall of frames would be a constant, lovely reminder of all I had accomplished. I blinked back a tiny little tear.

“I do love it, Fontaine. It’s wonderful. Can I help you?”

“Can you hammer a nail?” He had the nerve to look speculative.

“I’m pretty good with my hands, Fontaine.”

“All right. But be careful. I’ve marked the spots on the walls.” He handed me the hammer and nail. “See the dot? Put it right there.”

Tyler found us fifteen minutes later, just as I hung the very last diploma, and I realized in my excitement over this project I’d forgotten about trying to be quiet.

“Hey, good morning. I’m sorry if I woke you up.” I leaned over to kiss his unshaven cheek. He didn’t react, almost as if I hadn’t touched him at all.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Those are all of your girlfriend’s diplomas. Can you imagine?” Fontaine said. “This is one smart woman. She’s practically a Rhodes scholar. Oh, hey! Get it? A Rhodes scholar? I am hilarious!” Fontaine snapped his fingers while I stared at Tyler staring at that wall. And it didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to see that all those framed certificates were making him see something he hadn’t before. The breadth of my education.

“That’s awesome, Evelyn,” he said. “It looks great.”

Evelyn? Since when did he call me Evelyn?

“Listen, I have to run, though. I have to take care of some stuff for Carl. And I work the next few nights. I’ll give you a call.”

His smile was so patently false he looked as if he’d had a bad injection of Botox.

“Tyler.” I wasn’t sure what I was going to follow that up with, but it didn’t matter anyway, because he was already out the door.

“And then he just took off?” Gabby asked.

She and Hilary were at my new house for dinner. Now that I had a kitchen, I wanted to show everyone I knew how to use it. And so we ordered pizza.

“Yeah. He’s taking this court thing hard.” I stole a glance at Hilary.

She shrugged and set down her virtually uneaten slice of pizza. “Well, what do you want me to say? Steve’s a shitty lawyer. He’s a shitty lawyer and a shitty husband.”

Gabby shook her head.

“Hilary, you have to talk to him about this.
Acho que você é fazendo tempestade em copo d’água
.”

“What?” Hilary snapped.

Gabby patted her hand. “I said you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“You think him cheating on me is a molehill?” Hilary sat up straight, pushing her plate away.

“No, I think assuming your husband is cheating on you because he’s had lunch with a coworker is the molehill. Talk to him. Get it out in the open. You’ve been festering over this for months, and it’s time to deal with it.”

Hilary slumped back down. “I know. I know. I will. This weekend. I will for sure. I guess, it’s just . . . what if I’m right? What if he is cheating on me and I find out that all this time we’ve been living a lie? What if this whole relationship was a sham?”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “Of course it’s not a sham. That’s crazy talk, Hilary. You guys have had a great marriage. And I think it’s still great.”

She sniffled and picked up a napkin to dab her nose. “It’s just . . . I followed the rules and married the kind of guy we always talked about. I had a list too, remember, Evie? I wanted to marry a smart, professional guy, and so I did. But all he does is work, and talk about work. And work some more. And I see you all aglow with Tyler this and Tyler that. It makes me think I made the wrong choice. Maybe I should have fallen for some unconventional guy like you did. Then I’d be happy now.”

Suddenly her recent behavior started to make some sense. Just as I’d felt betrayed by my mother when she fell back in love with my father, Hilary was feeling betrayed because I hadn’t followed the rules we’d set up back in our residency days. And she had.

“Hilary, honey, your relationship with Steve has nothing to do with my relationship with Tyler. We are different kinds of women, and we have different taste in men. Plus you seem to be forgetting the wonderful eight years you’ve had with your husband. I know you’re worried about things now, but I’m certain you’re going to work this out. If my parents can get back together, you guys certainly can. You just need to have a little faith.”

Have a little faith? Where had that come from? And since when did I start doling out marital advice? But deep down, I knew I was right.

“She’s right.” Gabby confirmed it. “Talk to him so we can all move on. And speaking of moving on, back to Tyler and the settlement. What do you think he’ll do now?”

Hilary sniffled.

“Are you OK?” I asked her.

She nodded. “We can talk about Tyler now. Even I’m sick of talking about me and Steve.”

I stared at her, just to make sure she meant it, but she seemed sincere. Then I turned back to Gabby. “I don’t know what Tyler’s going to do. Keep working and paying his bills, I guess. I just wish I could make it go away. It’s so unfair. He didn’t even—”

Hilary and Gabby both looked at me with interest. “He didn’t even what?”

I stopped myself in the nick of time. I’d nearly said,
he didn’t even steal the Jet Ski
. “He didn’t even tell me he was seeing his lawyer that day,” I said instead.

Gabby shook her head slowly. “That poor guy needs a do-over.”

“A do-over?” I took a bite of pizza, but suddenly it had lost all flavor.

“Yes. You know. Like in a game. You have a bad shot or a bad play and you get to call do-over. He needs a chance to just wipe the slate clean and start over. If he could magically get all that stuff paid off and do the paramedic training, he’d be great. It would be a whole fresh new start for him. He needs to win the lottery or something.”

A clean slate. A fresh start. A glimmer of excitement sparked low in my chest and grew with every passing beat of my heart. I was formulating an idea. A fabulous idea. I wanted to shout it out, but it was another secret for me to tuck away. I couldn’t share it with anyone. Not even these two.

I looked down at my watch and yawned. “Yeah, he needs a clean slate for sure. And I need to get to bed. Sorry to kick you guys out, but we need to wrap this up. Gabby, do you know what time my first patient is in the morning?”

I stood up and collected their plates.

“Probably nine. Why?”

I put the plates into the dishwasher. “No reason. Just hoping I can sleep in.”

But I didn’t sleep in. I was in the office at eight in the morning with a box of doughnuts for the staff and a teensy little request for Delle. I pulled her into my office and shut the door.

She looked nervous, as if I was about to reprimand her. As if I could.

“Delle, can you keep a secret?”

Her eyes went round behind her tortoiseshell frames. “Of course, Dr. Rhoades. I am a bastion of secrecy when the occasion calls for it.”

“OK. This occasion calls for it. I really, truly need you to keep this to yourself.”

She made the sign of the cross. “I’m your girl, Dr. Rhoades.”

“Excellent. You have access to patient billing, right?”

“Yes.”

I took a big breath. This was just the first step in my plan, and I hoped it worked. “I want to pay off Tyler Connelly’s medical bills. Not just the ones for our office, but all the bills from his emergency room visit too. Can you manage that?”

She stood, spine straight. For a moment I thought she might salute me. “I can certainly take care of that for this office. It might be a little trickier for the other bills, but I have a very reliable friend who works in the hospital billing department. She’d help us, and she can be trusted, especially if you took care of a little mole she has right here.” Delle pointed to the side of one nostril.

“Done,” I said.

She rubbed her hands together. “Oh my goodness, Dr. Rhoades. This is like a caper. I’m very excited.”

It was a caper, and that had been the easy part. Dealing with the other bills was going to require a little more effort. As soon as Delle left my office, I made a phone call.

“Good morning. Pendleton, Whitney, Pullman and Frost, Attorneys At Law. How may I help you?”

“What the hell are you thinking, Evie? Tyler’s a nice kid and all, but come on. This is a lot of money you’re talking about. Is he really that great in the sack?”

Steve Pullman sat across from me, a mammoth oak desk between us. He was clearly compensating for some sort of shortcoming with a desk like that. He’d lost a lot of hair in the last year or so, and he was starting to show his age. Maybe this alleged affair was his midlife crisis.

“Yes, he is that great in the sack,” I said defensively, “but that’s not why I’m doing this. I’m doing it because he deserves a break. He didn’t steal that Jet Ski. His idiot brother took it out for a joy ride and Tyler was bringing it back. I mean, really, did it never occur to anyone that a thief doesn’t return stuff?”

“Of course it occurred to people. That’s why the larceny charges were dropped, but he still crashed into the dock. He only has to pay for stuff he was actually responsible for.” Steve loosened his tie, a tie that probably cost as much as Tyler made in a night serving at Jasper’s.

I moved to the edge of my chair. “Do you really think that Jet Ski needs to be replaced? Or is this guy just taking advantage of an opportunity?”

Steve shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. If your boyfriend doesn’t want to fight the charges in court, then he has to pay the restitution. I don’t care who took what or who brought what back. The owner wants to be compensated.”