When One Night Isn't Enough

He stiffened beneath her. “Ali, I never said that.”

She ignored his statement. He may not have said the words, but his actions had implied them. “If you’re cold, I’ll warm you up.” She kissed down the side of his neck. “I’m real hot inside.” She opened the sides of her jacket and rubbed her body against his. “You want to feel me on the inside, Doc?”

“Call me Jared.” He reached under her skirt, beneath her panties, and gripped the bare skin of her butt with his large hands, pushing her down while lifting his hips, grinding his erection where she needed him most. God, it felt good.

He rocked against her again and again. She reveled in his strength, the intensity of his desire. In his masculine scent, the feel of his firm body beneath her, around her.

“Please, Ali. Call me by my name.”

Nope. Too personal. She sucked on his neck, tasting a mixture of salt and soap. The thing about controlling a situation was not to get too personal. “Not in a truck or in the muck or for a buck.” She giggled.

“You’re drunk.”

Buzzed—definitely. Giddy—oh, yeah. She was on the verge of acting out a fantasy. But drunk? No. “How did you expect I’d be after a girls’ night out? Isn’t that why you came looking for me?” She reached between them to unbutton his jeans, lowered his zipper and released him, took his hard length into her hand. Even though her back blocked the moonlight, making it too dark to see, he looked down, tried to watch.

She cupped her hand around his thick, hard shaft and began a leisurely slide along his hot, silky skin. “Didn’t you figure you’d have more luck getting some skin-on-skin action after I’d had a few drinks?”

He let out a frustrated breath. “I can’t do this.” He palmed her ribs like he planned to lift her off of him. Didn’t make any attempt to remove her hands, she noticed. “Let me take you home.”

So she would have to live with the memory of them together in her bed? Absolutely not. Right here. Right now. Or not at all. “Don’t worry about me.” Her knees resting on the bench at either side of his hips, she lifted up, slid her panties to the side, and lowered onto his impressive length. They were not leaving this bench until she got what she came for. “We experienced girls can get off anywhere.”

He sucked in a deep breath.

Slowly Ali sank down, moved up a bit then down, again and again, as her body stretched to make room for him, until she took him all. Aaaahhhh. Exactly what she needed.

Jared sat perfectly still, his head back, moonlight illuminating his handsome face, a face she wouldn’t mind waking up to, morning after morning, year after year, if he were anyone else. His eyes closed, his features relaxed, there was no sign of the dimples that seemed to wink at her every time he smiled. His hands dropped to her waist, held her loosely.

Physically, he was everything that attracted her in the opposite sex. Tall. Firm. A commanding presence. And he filled her like no man had before, touched something so deep, so unexpected and thrilling she didn’t want to move for fear she’d never feel such a perfect union again. Like he’d been made for her and her alone. Sublime.

She’d waited her entire life to feel this connection with a man. Why did she have to find it with him?

She started to move.

He groaned. “This is so wrong. You’re Michael’s …”

Suddenly he’d developed a conscience? “Not anymore.” Thanks to him. “Right now I’m yours. Now show me what you’ve got.”

With a growl he did just that, holding her tight, plunging into her like a man who had gone too long without intimate contact. “I knew you’d feel this good.” One hand found her breast, teased her nipple. A flare of arousal exploded inside her, her jaw went tingly, her eyes fluttered closed.

His words echoed in her thoughts. I knew you’d feel this good. Pleasure. The letters floated through her brain, the sensation traveled to every part of her body. Jared Padget, a strong, confident, uninhibited man; a caring, competent doctor who made her body sing like a soloist belting out a sustained high C.

She flopped onto his chest, matched each of his thrusts, moved her hips harder, faster, driving painful memories of her mother’s suicide from her brain, seeking release, sweet oblivion. Salvation.

“I’ve dreamed about this. About us,” Jared said between panting breaths, his hands roaming the bare skin of her back.

Me, too.

“It’s so much better than I ever imagined.” Oh, yeah.

“You’re so beautiful.”

So are you.

“But I have to stop.”

What? Ali sat up. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she insisted, leaning back to place her hands on his knees, swiveling her hips, driving him into her. “You have tormented me for weeks, teased me, flirted with me. We are not stopping. Not yet.” She was so close. “I don’t have a condom.”

Usually those words would have ground the action to a halt. Ali didn’t take chances. Yet here she was, already at risk, so intent on keeping Jared close, on taking the sexual and emotional release she so desperately needed, she hadn’t even considered birth control. The higher her blood alcohol concentration climbed, the lower her capacity for rational decision-making plunged into the abyss of irrationality.

“I don’t care.” She arched her back, took him deep, then relaxed. “You said you’re a real man. Don’t real men have control?” Arch. Relax.

He expelled a huge breath as if trying to muster some of that “real man” control.

She leaned forward, rubbed her lips over his. “Please,” she whispered then kissed him, thrust her tongue into the warm confines of his mouth.

He turned his head. “Ali, I’m … We shouldn’t …” He tried to push her away.

“No,” Ali cried out, throwing both arms around his neck, holding him tight. “Don’t leave me,” she begged, willing to do anything to keep him there, to not be alone. She squeezed her inner muscles, trying to hold him inside her. “Stay with me,” she whispered in his ear, slowly tipping her pelvis forward then back. “Love me. Make me forget.”

Jared moaned in surrender and began to move beneath her, gradually increased his pace until he rocked into her with a power that matched her own.

Ali’s head started to spin, scattering her thoughts as effectively as a centrifuge. All but one. Perfection. The ultimate satisfaction was within reach. “Do. Not. Stop.”

“I won’t, Ali. I want to make you feel so good.” His hand slipped between her legs.

“I do. Oh …” With a few flicks of his talented fingers a surge of ecstasy flooded her system. It was different, intense, freeing. It wiped her mind clear, and a blissful contentment spread through her. A dark, satiated calm engulfed her, until the chime of the big clock at the top of the town hall echoed through the thick haze of her mind.

Ali counted. Twelve.

Approximate time of death—midnight, November 23rd.

Her tequila-soaked defenses failed, allowing the memory of that fateful day to seep into cognition.

Sophomore year of high school.

Ali’s mother and her married high-school principal caught doing the nasty on his desk, the act broadcast on the wall-sized movie screen in the auditorium during a full school assembly. In surround sound.

Girls looked at her with more disdain than usual that day. The boys kept their distance. Even her teachers turned away rather than look her in the eye.

Storming into the house after school, Ali had one purpose—to find her mother and make her feel as bad as she was feeling. How much was a fifteen-year-old girl expected to take? This time her mom had gone too far.

Ali pounded up the stairs, down the hallways, craving confrontation, in desperate need of an outlet for the anger and frustration raging inside her. She found her mom in the last place she looked, on the back porch. She must have heard Ali calling out, slamming doors, yet she hadn’t moved from her sprawl on the cushioned wicker couch. She just stared off into the backyard, seeming oblivious to Ali’s arrival.

“Mom,” Ali yelled.

With awkward, sluggish movements, her mom repositioned herself, slowly turning toward Ali, getting tangled in the multicolored afghan covering her. An empty wine bottle slid off her lap, crashed onto the wood decking and rolled under the coffee table. In hindsight, Ali should have taken pity on her mom, drunk in the afternoon, her eyes droopy, her face devoid of makeup and emotion, her hair an unwashed, blond, scraggly mess in need of a dye touch-up.

But Ali’s anger had overtaken rational thought, her adolescent angst-ridden brain focused solely on her pain and anger, and how her mother’s actions had caused both. “You have ruined my life,” she screamed at her mother. “I hate you.”

Ali had been poised for battle. She’d needed it.

But her mother seemed unaffected by her outburst. Calm as could be, she said, “Right back atcha, kiddo.”

Ali stood immobile, her urge to fight replaced by a cold, empty feeling.

“If I had to do it all again,” her mother went on, staring off into the distance, her slurred speech doing nothing to conceal the malice in her tone, “I would have given you up instead of giving up my dreams to keep you.”

Her mother’s last words to the daughter she’d blamed for every bad thing that had happened in her life, the daughter she had never wanted or loved.

Jared’s lungs were heaving, his skin tingling, his mind clogged by post-orgasmic fluff, following the best, albeit the only, sexual encounter he’d allowed himself in years, as he fought to make sense of what he’d just done.

He’d had sex with Ali. Without removing a single piece of clothing. Without a condom. He felt sick. He’d pulled out just in case she wasn’t on birth control but still … He’d driven into her like an animal. On a park bench, for God’s sake. According to Bobby, who had refused to shut up about his history with Ali, Jared had treated her no better than the jerks from her high school.

He felt like the lowest form of life, a maggot living on a rotting corpse at the bottom of a filthy dumpster.

Jared thought about Bobby and couldn’t help but wonder how often Ali had to fend off the unwanted sexual advances of men she’d known as a teenager. If last night had been the first time one of them had used force? If the reason she’d been willing to settle for a man like Michael was for the protection being married might offer?

Something balled up at the back of his throat, making it difficult to swallow.

Bobby had taken pleasure in sharing his high-school nickname for Ali. And in explaining why. But Jared didn’t care about her past. Ten years ago he’d been a different person, too. Present-day Ali, the smart, sassy, thoughtful woman, the kind, compassionate, skilled practitioner, was all that mattered. And she deserved so much more than the man he’d become. Jaded. Distrustful. Unwilling to love.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

She didn’t respond.

Back before he’d gotten married, before Typhoon Cici had blown through, nearly destroying his life, when Jared had dated, he’d enjoyed making women feel special. Flowers. Candy. Dinner at fancy restaurants. He’d complimented their outfits and hair, acted the perfect gentleman, waited for them to invite him in. He’d never, ever, had unprotected sex in the middle of the woods. Never, ever felt guilty after a sexual encounter. Until now.

And yet he couldn’t bring himself to regret one minute of it.

Ali lay slumped against his chest, her head wedged in the nook between his neck and shoulder, the only indication she was alive the puffs of warm air on his skin when she exhaled. She’d fallen asleep. He appreciated the quiet disturbed only by the movement of water from the stream, the rustle of dried leaves, an occasional car pulling into or out of the bar parking lot.

He had no desire to talk, or move. So he sat, with her still straddling his lap, in no hurry to leave, enjoying the feel of her in his arms, which he tightened around her, slipping his hands under the bottom of her sweater to warm them. They fit together like two distinct halves purposely manufactured to become one seamless whole, a feeling he wouldn’t soon forget.

What a mess. He hadn’t intended to take things this far, hence the lack of condoms. He never should have shown up at the bar where he’d known Ali and her friends would be.

But he’d been at odds with himself. After a few hours of sleep, he’d packed his life into his rolling duffel then prowled around his apartment with nothing to do but think. Of Ali, and how he wanted to see her one last time. A smiling Ali, not the angry one who’d scowled at him when the police officer had shown up at the E.R. Or the one who, when her shift ended, had left the hospital without so much as a glance in his direction.

Break them up before Michael proposed. That had been the plan. One glimpse of the fire in Ali’s eyes the first time they’d touched, of her temper when she’d joined a young mother’s fight against Child Protective Services, and Jared had known she’d never achieve Stepford wife status, no matter how hard she tried. Yet, in Michael’s presence, she’d transformed herself into the soft-spoken, malleable woman Michael wanted in a bride.

The ultimate deception, a relationship based on pretense.

Having suffered through one, Jared had every intention of sparing his friend the heartache, and legal problems, he’d experienced.

Jared’s plan:

Stage One: flirt. Reveal what he sensed was Ali’s true nature. Evoke her passion, a passion Michael wasn’t man enough to satisfy. A passion she’d tamped down with rigid control. Until tonight.

Stage Two: tease, taunt and prod. Point out Michael’s shortcomings. Joke about them. Give Ali a chance to vent her frustration with Michael’s routine tendencies, to realize what a mistake it would be to marry him. Instead she had praised and defended Michael, never saying an unkind word. Deep down, Jared longed for the day a woman spoke with such conviction in support of him.

When Ali had proved too strong to manipulate, Jared had implemented Stage Three, turning his energy to Michael. A few carefully chosen words, a “chance” encounter at a bar with a woman Michael thought highly of, and the deed was done with remarkable ease. It turned out Michael had harbored a growing concern about Ali’s malleable nature when she’d tried to change up their bedroom routine.

Now Michael, one of the few friends who’d stood by him during the DEA investigation, was genuinely happy with his equally boring new girlfriend. While Ali, a woman he barely knew, a woman who had tried to con his friend, was anything but happy. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.

So he had amended the plan, adding a Stage Four: make Ali forget about Michael by turning her focus onto him. Who’d have known he’d enjoy her so much? Their banter over the past month the most fun he’d had in years.

Since the day he’d said, “I do.”

Jared stretched out his legs. His feet were cold. He reached down to touch Ali’s bare thighs. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t shivering. He shifted her weight. “Come on, honey. It’s time to go.”

She didn’t budge.

“Ali.” He kissed the top of her head, her soft hair tickling his chin. Nothing.

He took her by the shoulders and pushed her off his chest. Her head hung down between them. Great. Now what the heck was he supposed to do?

CHAPTER THREE

Five weeks later

THE storm dubbed The New Year’s Eve Nor’easter raging outside had no effect on the festivities or attendance at the Madrin Memorial Hospital New Year’s Eve Gala.

“No champagne?” Victoria yelled to be heard over the dance music blaring from the DJ’s speakers immediately to the left of their table.

Ali shook her head. Not that she was ever a big drinker, but she hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since her park-bench encounter with Dr. Padget. Didn’t trust herself. Waking up in her bed with no clear memory of how she’d gotten there, or what she’d done after straddling his lap down by the river, was an effective motivator for maintaining sobriety.

“You’re missing out on some primo bubbly,” Roxie called out, chugging down the contents of Ali’s flute after the waiter topped it off.

“Who’s driving you home?” Ali asked Roxie, who scanned the crowd.

“I haven’t decided,” Roxie answered with a mischievous smile and a wink.

Polly slapped Roxie’s arm. “You are so bad.” She leaned in close to Ali. “We came together. I’ll be driving Roxie home.”

Ali scanned the dance floor packed with her smiling coworkers and wanted to shoot off a champagne cork or two into the crowd. No. Just because she was in an awful mood it didn’t mean she begrudged her friends a good time. But having no one to kiss when the ball dropped, and watching everyone who did, was not on her agenda for the night. Excuses that would get her home before midnight started to take form.

Stomachache? A possibility. Menstrual cramps? She wished. Itchy rash? Headache?

Back when they’d been dating, she and Michael had talked about getting engaged prior to the New Year. Michael made good on the plan, proposing to Wanda on Christmas Eve in front of the Christmas tree on the pediatrics floor. It’d been the talk of the hospital. Ali could have done with a bout of sudden-onset hearing loss.

No such luck.

So she smiled and told everyone she wished the sickeningly happy couple well. In private she researched how to make voodoo dolls. Three of them. And stockpiled enough pins to start her own clothing line.

The DJ took a break, blessing them with some quiet background music, and Lyle Crenshaw, the catering manager on staff at the hospital, took the opportunity to approach their table.

Three years ago, after a major expansion and renovation to upgrade facilities, hospital management had left space in the rear of the building for class and conference rooms and a large party room for hosting fundraisers, staff appreciation luncheons and the occasional hospital celebration. While the outside of the building screamed hospital, the inside could have been the lobby of any four-star hotel. The transformation from abandoned medical services departments to premier catering hall was so significant; people in the community had expressed an interest in holding their weddings, communion parties and the occasional Bat Mitzvah at the hospital, creating an unanticipated stream of income and making Lyle Crenshaw a bit of a hero in town.

“Hello, there, ladies,” Lyle said with his trademark southern drawl. “I’d like to invite ya’ll on a tour of my office later this evening. I’ve brought some Southwestern charm to the Northeast, and I’m eager to show it off.”

“Do you want us all at once?” Roxie asked with a twinkle in her eye, her voice taking on a seductive tone. “Or one at a time?”

“Well, I’ll take you any way you want, sugar.” Lyle smiled, well aware of Roxie’s antics after her behavior at last week’s new IV pump in-service held in the large conference room.

Roxie batted her eyelashes and smiled back.

“Is that who I think it is?” Polly asked, pointing at the main entrance to the ballroom.

Ali turned to see Jared Padget decked out in a tux, looking too handsome to be a real flesh-and-blood man, and her heart skipped a beat. A few beats actually, allowing the blood to drain from her head. At the same time her lungs ceased to function, and she held on to the table to keep from falling to the floor.

Shame and embarrassment did not begin to cover her feelings at that moment. She’d accosted him in a bar, forced herself on him, and proceeded to pass out immediately following the finale. And the signs he’d been in her bed had not boded well for her going right to sleep upon returning home. Despite the lack of blood flow to the upper reaches of her body, her face felt on fire.

While she regretted her choices that night five weeks ago, her gramps had taught her there’s nothing you could do about your past so focus on your future. Ali had put their interlude behind her, didn’t allow herself to think about it, or him. And had no desire to revisit either.

Voilà! The perfect reason to blow this party, before the horns and noisemakers. “I’m out of here,” Ali said to Victoria as she stood, stooping a bit, trying to blend in with the people milling around the dance floor.

Victoria knew what had happened between Ali and Dr. Padget. At least the parts Ali remembered. “We’ll head him off,” Victoria said, sending Polly one way and Roxie the other.

Ali ducked behind the DJ, watched her friends make their way through the crowd. Roxie reached him first, grabbed at her throat, pretending to choke, and collapsed to the floor at his feet. Ali smiled at the scene, Dr. Padget dropping to his knees to render first aid, a crowd gathering, Victoria and Polly off to the side, laughing. As if sensing her watching, Victoria motioned for Ali to get moving. Which she did, heading for the rear hallway, planning to loop around, pick up her coat and boots at the coat check and hop into one of the designated driver cars, coordinated by the hospital, lined up outside.

No sooner had she entered the brightly lit hallway of closed doors than she saw an entwined Michael and Wanda leaning up against the wall of her planned escape route. While she no longer had feelings for Michael, and had conquered her anger at Wanda, she preferred to avoid seeing the two of them together. Or alone for that matter. So she turned, only to see Jared walking in her direction. The hairs on her arms rose and leaned in his direction. Ali scanned the hallway, looking for an alternate route. When she saw none, she tried the doorknob for the main conference room on her right, ecstatic to find it unlocked, and slipped inside before he spotted her.

In the safety of darkness, Ali leaned against the closed door, allowed her breathing to slow and her eyes to adjust to the shadowed interior.

A few minutes and she’d peek outside. If she skipped the coat check she could duck out the rear exit and be home in five minutes.

The doorknob at her right hip turned with a click. Had Dr. P. found her so quickly? And if not him, how would she explain standing alone in the dark in an empty conference room?

“Michael,” she heard him say just outside the door. “Have you seen Allison?” She froze.

“Hey, Jared,” Michael answered. “I heard you were coming back.”

What had he heard? And why hadn’t she heard?

“Four weeks this time,” Jared said.

Joining the traveling nurse corps was looking better and better.

“Have you seen Allison?” he asked again.

Ali didn’t wait to hear the answer. Instead she took off in a rapid tiptoe, as quietly as she could, into the black, cave-like conditions at the far end of the rectangular room. Feeling along the wall, she found the rear door that led to Lyle’s office, and slipped inside just as the door to the conference room opened.

Ali didn’t want to risk making any noise so she rested the door against the frame rather than pulling it closed.

Aside from knowing where it was, Ali had never been inside Lyle’s office before. It was darker than the conference room. There didn’t appear to be any windows, just a thin strip of light at the base of the door on the far side of the room. She stood perfectly still, willing her eyes to adjust, wishing she hadn’t left the protection of her friends and cursing the impractical trendy stilettos that pinched her toes.

“I don’t see anything but darkness,” Allison heard Wanda say, her deceptively sweet voice too close for comfort.

Allison didn’t know which was worse, looking like she was stalking Michael and Wanda or being found by Dr. Padget. She took a step back, preparing to duck behind the door if necessary, and bumped into what felt like a tall filing cabinet. Apparently Lyle was not as conscientious as he appeared because the file drawer he’d failed to secure in place, the one her right hip connected with, shifted the few centimeters necessary to click closed, the top corner snagging a section of Ali’s skirt in the process.