Chapter Eight
“So...that happened,” Whitney explained, wincing as she took a huge gulp of red wine. One thing about Pleasant Park—there were wineries and vineyards in abundance, and most of what they produced was really good. Cheap too. Who knew they were hiding all the best wine out in the country?
“You’re banned from the golf store?”
“The whole chain of them, actually. I’ve been blacklisted so hard I might as well put a scarlet letter on my chest and call it done with.”
Kendra sighed and buried her emotions in an equally oversized glass of cabernet. “This isn’t going to be good for business. You need damage control.”
“What did Dimples say?” John asked. “I can’t imagine that sober smile takes kindly to tarnishing its schoolteacher reputation.”
Whitney frowned into her wineglass. There was no easy way to answer that question.
Naturally, Matt admitted a shared culpability. “I was kind of an active participant in there, if you didn’t notice,” he’d said wryly as he walked her to her car. “No need to apologize to me.”
And he hadn’t said a word about her outburst against that horrible, uptight Natalie woman. Which seemed about right, actually. One of the things she was coming to appreciate about Matt was that he didn’t try to tell other people what to do. He had his own moral code and adhered to it with an almost frustrating level of diligence, but he didn’t force it on anyone else.
But she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d somehow let him down. Herself down. Kendra and John and New Leaf down. Slashing and burning bridges—that had always been her style. Why waste energy placating people she cared about less than fingernail clippings? She could always build new bridges. She could always find an alternate route.
Pleasant Park, though...it was different. There were only so many paths to take here, and encountering the same people day in and day out meant she had to take a good, hard look at the consequences of her admittedly impetuous actions. And to be honest, she didn’t always like what she saw.
What had she gotten herself into, moving here? What had she gotten herself into, taking up with a guy like Matt?
“Dimples is too much of a gentleman to say anything,” she finally replied, purposefully haughty to stave off any further discussion. “He kind of thinks I’m amazing.”
“Well, we’re all happy that you’re settling in with your new boyfriend, but I think you should find something more productive to do tomorrow. You’re bored, that’s the problem.” Kendra looked at her pointedly.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Whitney ignored the rest of her friend’s statement. “I’m helping him move on with his sexual journey. That’s all. You know, like Beatrice and Dante. Except you replace the seven levels of hell with sexytimes.”
John snorted and held up his glass in a toast. “Here’s to replacing hell with sexytimes.”
“You’re both older than twelve, so please act like it,” Kendra snapped. “I mean it, Whitney. Find something to do other than Matt. You could, you know, volunteer at the hospital or something.”
Whitney’s jaw clenched. Next to the word boyfriend, she hated volunteer the most, recoiling against it with the force of a thousand black holes. And Kendra knew how she felt about both.
“I’ve already worked out the operating room situation with them. I just have to coordinate with their physician liaison whenever I want to schedule a complex procedure or overnight recovery there, but otherwise we’re all clear—there’s no need to go all Mother Theresa on them in order to grease the works.”
“No one would ever accuse you of going Mother Theresa,” John said.
Whitney flipped him off. “I’m good at what I do, Kendra. Incredible, actually. I don’t need to prove myself by kissing babies and making nice with the community. So we can drop it now, okay?” She grabbed her glass and stomped to the kitchen, not stopping until she reached the sink. She poured the rest of her wine out, watching the dark red liquid swirl down the drain.
She knew she was overreacting, but she couldn’t help it. Besides her parents, Kendra and John knew better than anyone just how much she didn’t want to start up all the charity work again. As far as she was concerned, she’d done her time—and then some.
For the past twelve years, she’d busted her ass, getting the grades, landing the residency, passing the boards. All she wanted right now was to spend a little time looking out for Number One. And since Number One wanted to kick her heels for a few months, dallying with a nice, cute guy and making no commitments further than a cup of coffee tomorrow, who was she to stop her?
“Stop sulking!” John called, snapping his fingers. “We’re not saying you have to change, Whitney. We’re saying you should probably work a little bit harder on your Plays Well With Others badge. That’s all.”
Whitney slapped on a smile, determined not to let gloomy self-reflections derail her. In the battle of introspection versus Whitney Vidra, she would always put her money on the latter.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “And I’m going to start by letting you pick which Lifetime movie we’re going to watch.”
She took a seat next to John on the overstuffed leather couch. Kendra sat at their feet, her gaze locked on some complex problem neither Whitney nor John could see.
Whitney snuggled closer to John, instantly feeling better. He was big and warm and comfortable, and it didn’t take long before she even felt conciliatory toward Kendra. These were her friends. She had hot sex, great professional success and people who loved her.
What more could a girl possibly want?
* * *
Matt rarely got sick.
He laid most of the credit for it on Hilly’s capable shoulders. At almost a full decade older than her brothers, she’d been primarily responsible for raising them when their mother had passed away in a car accident at the unfairly young age of forty-two. Matt remembered his mother as a soft, gentle woman who always smelled of sunshine and used cookies to bribe them away from dangerous activities like climbing to the roof and daring each other to jump off.
He and Lincoln took after her in a lot of ways, both smaller of stature than they cared to admit and with a distaste of arguments and disorderly scenes. Lincoln, Matt knew, tried to hide it behind his overloud bachelor lifestyle and the gun his job required him to carry. But other than a few rebellious years in which he dyed his hair black and—only once, he swore—wore eyeliner, Matt was content to simply be himself.
Hilly, on the other hand, took after their father, an unapologetically brazen bear of a man who never spoke but barked. Commands, questions, queries about the weather—she didn’t distinguish. In her mind, all communication required complete attention and decibel levels that would endanger anyone subjected to them for longer than a few minutes at a time.
And since Hilly didn’t believe in getting sick, he and Lincoln didn’t get sick. She yelled the germs away.
But not today. Today, his head felt as though it was seconds away from ripping into two, his entire body aching in sympathy with it. He knew, in a vague, swimming-through-water type of way, that he needed to call in sick to work. As this feat sucked away the last of his will to live, he dropped to the couch, which still carried the thrift store smell of unwashed hair and unidentifiable meat products, and reconciled himself to inevitable death.
The pounding on the door came later. Hours, minutes, days...Matt had no real idea of anything except that the apartment was dark and his face pressed so hard down into the threads of his couch he probably had a permanent tic-tac-toe grain on his cheek.
“Mahamanama,” he called, his mouth unable to form any distinguishable syllables. He swung his legs over the side of the couch and promptly tucked his head between his knees, the world dangerously close to tipping on its side.
In the blur of semi-consciousness that took over, Matt recalled a moment, when he and Laura had first been married, that he’d gotten food poisoning from a questionable lamb curry. Even though Laura was squeamish about bodily fluid, she’d been by his side with some sort of vitamin-infused remedy and her cool, efficient hands.
He couldn’t help but feel that if she were here right now, Laura would have gotten rid of the person at the door. She would have force fed him chicken soup until he felt better.
This wasn’t the first time he missed Laura. But it was the first time he realized just how alone he was since he left.
Before he could wallow any more than he already was, the pounding at the door picked up. A glass of stale, tepid water on his coffee table helped alleviate the worst of the nausea, and he’d even gotten so far as to put both feet on the floor and stand when his phone started ringing.
The phone was easily cast aside, but the pounding monster clearly wasn’t going away any time soon. He shuffled to the front door, which was, thankfully, very close—one-bedroom apartments did have their advantages from time to time. He unlatched the lock but didn’t have to pull. The door moved all by itself.
Okay. Not by itself. There was a force on the other side much stronger than wood or air or him.
“I cannot believe you stood me up, you a*shole.”
“Come on in,” Matt croaked, gesturing for Whitney to cross over the threshold. She looked chipper and bright, her hair pulled into a ponytail and a wool coat covering a tiny dress the color of a Smurf.
Tennis dress. That was a tennis dress, and she carried a racket under one arm. In his stupor, he’d somehow forgotten he promised to take her to the country club he had a lingering membership to, courtesy of Laura’s family. After the golf store fiasco, Whitney had made him swear to teach her how to play tennis and how to host a tea party—two activities she somehow equated with both him and the ladies-who-lunch crowd in Pleasant Park. He’d been so excited at the prospect of seeing her again, on what was almost a real date, the insulting portion of that comparison hadn’t sunk in until later.
“Oh, shit. You look awful.”
He nodded and kept moving, force propelling him to the couch and allowing him to collapse onto it.
“Are you dying or something?” Whitney followed him inside and stood over the couch, her arms crossed.
“It’s possible,” Matt mumbled. “You’re the doctor.”
“I only ask because that is the sole acceptable excuse for not picking up a phone and calling. Or even texting, for crying out loud. Your fingers look fine.” As if to reinforce her point, she picked up his hand—and then immediately dropped it, moving to place her palm on his cheek instead. “Well, you’re hot, I’ll give you that.”
“Thanks. I work out a little.”
She laughed. “I see your sense of humor survived. Seriously, though. That wasn’t very nice of you. I thought that of all the things wrong with you, not being polite wasn’t one of them.”
“The only thing wrong with me is the flu,” he groaned, sinking farther into the couch. Whitney plopped down near his feet, lifting the appendages and tossing them to the floor to make room for herself. “And it wasn’t my fault I missed the tennis, er, non-date,” he added. “I only just now woke up.”
“Yeah, well.” Whitney reached for his remote control. “You’re lucky I’m not an insecure person—in fact, I have a strong suspicion you’re totally into me. I brought a note. You can check yes or no.”
“You’re funny,” he muttered. The room was beginning to grow a little fuzzy. “So when I stood you up, you decided to stop by my house to aggravate me? That’s the whole plan? By the way...while you’re here, do you think you could get me a fresh glass of water?”
“What am I, your servant?” Whitney clicked on the television, scanning through until she found a Lifetime movie. “Oh, I love this one. The hero travels through time to save his wife’s parents from dying in a horrible car accident, but he makes a mistake and ends up killing his wife before they have a chance to meet. Makes me cry every time.”
Matt blinked and tried to sit up some more but the room spun. “I’m surprised you can cry.”
“Only when the movie is really over the top. I’m a sucker for melodrama.” She looked over and smiled. There was something warm and comforting in that smile. “Relax, Galahad. I’ll grab you a juice and some acetaminophen during the commercial break. You’re not near death yet.”
“How do you know?” he asked miserably.
“Because you’re cracking jokes and kicking me with those freakishly large feet of yours.” She paused, listening for a moment. “And your breathing sounds good.”
“That’s your professional diagnosis?” He settled a little more comfortably on the couch. This wasn’t the kind of sick-time pampering he was used to, but he couldn’t deny that there was no fault to find with the company. And there was something about the brusque, no-nonsense way Whitney treated him that seemed right.
Like her. It feels like her.
“Shh. This is a good part. He messes up the time-travel machine knobs and ends up in the middle of the French Revolution.”
Matt closed his eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t play tennis with you. I was looking forward to it.”
Whitney picked up his feet, which he was having a hard time keeping still, and dumped them in her lap. The warmth of her seeped into his bones, stilling some of the restlessness and making him feel at home for the first time in his god-awful apartment.
“You can make it up to me when you feel better,” she assured him, running her hands firmly over the soles of his feet, her thumbs strong and dexterous where they landed. He should have known she’d be an excellent foot rubber based on the way just a few capable strokes of those hands could reduce him to nothing but about eight inches of nerve endings. “Don’t worry, Matt. I’m not going anywhere. You still have a lot of recovery to do.”
He relaxed and let her hands go to work. Recovery seemed like a golden future beckoning on his horizon—especially since he had the suspicion she was talking about a heck of a lot more than the flu.
* * *
Men were huge babies.
It was something every woman knew, but Whitney had daily proof of this fact, brought to her in the shape of men who whined and complained through every stage of plastic surgery.
She could extract the exact same amount of fat from the asses of both a woman and a man using the same techniques, and the only one who would complain about the bruising and pain afterward would be the man. Women accepted that pain and beauty were inexorably linked. Men, on the other hand, threatened to sue her for malpractice.
Unfortunately, if there was one thing she’d learned on the job, it was that telling men how useless they were rarely got the desired effect. It was better to pander, to soothe and coo and be the benevolent angel they sought.
That was why she stopped by all that week, bringing Gatorade and trashy magazines, which Matt pretended he hated but she knew he secretly adored. He knew an awful lot about Justin Bieber for a man nearing thirty.
“I thought you were supposed to be working,” Matt protested on the third day. He’d only stayed home from work because she’d prescribed one more day of rest—which had nothing at all to do with how enjoyable hanging out in his apartment had become and everything to do with the aforementioned truth about men and their inborn wimpiness.
Yeah, right.
“I swear it’s like you never go to work,” he added.
“I’m a plastic surgeon, Matt.” Whitney breezed in the door with an armful of flowers, which she proceeded to artfully arrange in a big blue plastic tumbler—the closest thing to a vase Matt owned. “Even if our facility was ready to open, I only intend to work nine to five with a generous hour for lunch. I bet you have to put in more time at the day job than I do.”
“That’s awful.”
“It’s genius, that’s what it is. Look around you, Matt. You’re not exactly living the grand lifestyle.”
She finished putting the last daisy in place and surveyed the rest of his apartment. It was exactly what one pictured when imagining a man striking out on his own after an unhappy relationship had sucked away the largest portion of his twenties. It had none of the cold, clinical charm of a typical bachelor pad, and none of the comforts of a home. She was going to have to buy him a new couch too. She was pretty sure this one wanted to break underneath her weight.
“How are your germs doing?” she asked, coming up behind him and snaking two arms around his waist. God, she loved the lean strength of him. It was all flat abs and hard lines for as far as the fingers could explore. Which she promptly set hers out to do. “I’m not so sure I can take much more of this incubation period stuff. Hmm...well, hello there. I guess you might not be able to take much more of it either.”
He let out a sound that was half laugh, half shudder. “I’m pretty sure you could bring a man back from the dead with that move. What are you—?” His cock, stiffening against the flat of her palm, gave a satisfying twitch before she let go.
“I’m just making sure all the parts still work,” she whispered, nipping the side of his neck. “I think we should feed you. Get your strength up. Then I’m going to find ways to assemble your parts you’ve never imagined.”
“That is both the most intriguing and the most disturbing sexual proposition I’ve ever received,” he murmured.
Whitney released a crack of laughter. “I’m happy to hear it. Now sit. I brought sandwiches.”
“Oh, good. I’m starving.”
Matt grabbed the to-go bag she’d laid down next to her purse and started rifling through it. Unlike most men she knew, who would grab the best-looking part and settle in, he went to his cupboards and pulled down plates, also taking the time to set out silverware and napkins. Just a small gesture, and one she was pretty sure he didn’t even know he was making.
But she noticed, and she appreciated it. She was also put on her guard. It would be very easy to get used to a man who was helpful in the kitchen.
“Am I all clear to return to work tomorrow?” Matt asked, taking a huge bite of his pickle. He was cavalier about it, as if he knew that having a large phallus between his lips was actually a turn-on. And it was. He was the exception to the rule, the one man who could probably walk into a movie theater, order the largest pickle they had, and not cause fits of hilarity behind the popcorn machine.
Dammit. Now she was the one getting aroused.
“I hate leaving the kids for this long,” he added. “They prefer stability.”
“They prefer recess and cookies,” Whitney returned. It wasn’t that she didn’t like kids—she’d done one or two ear pinnings a month during her residency—but it was hard to imagine a life where their presence was the end all and be all of her earning potential. “Take another bite of that pickle, would you? Slower this time.”
Laughter lit his eyes as he processed her request. “You mean, like this?” Without losing eye contact, he began running his tongue around the width of the condiment in an exaggeration of a blow job—and a rather poor one at that, if you asked her. Far too delicate.
“No, no. Don’t be so shy with the poor thing,” she commanded. “You’re supposed to wrap your lips around it like you’re starving. Like you couldn’t bear it if you missed out on a single delicious inch.”
He lowered his hand, eyes wide. “Is that your trick?”
“It’s not a trick, Matt. When I take your cock in my mouth, it’s my intention to enjoy as much of that hard, throbbing beast as I possibly can. I don’t want to miss a single delicious inch.”
Matt’s throat worked up and down, and the pickle fell to the table. If it was possible to f*ck someone with just a gaze, he was doing it right now. With that kind of fierce, blue power, he could have had her stripped and panting between blinks.
Which was why, when a loud knock at the door sounded a few seconds later, it took them both a moment to process the interruption.
“Are you expecting company?” she asked, the first to speak, though her voice came out a little hoarse. “It’s a good thing you dropped that pickle. Things were about to get very inappropriate in here.”
He frowned. “I don’t think so. What time is it?” The insistent rat-tat-tat filled the apartment again. “Excuse me just a second.”
Whitney didn’t want to appear too interested, so she focused on her food. The deli by her condo baked rye bread that was so good it made her want to do illicit things with whole grains. If the past ten minutes in Matt’s company had been any indication, she was going to need the energy. And possibly some illicit whole grains.
Matt checked the peephole. “Oh, crap.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Laura.”
“The evil ex?” Whitney tried not to let her surprise show, but she did a poor job of it. The woman called and she showed up at Matt’s apartment unannounced? That took some kind of nerve. “You could pretend we’re not here. By all accounts you should be at work anyway.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “I might have, if you hadn’t just said that loud enough for the neighbors to hear.”
“Right. Sorry.” Except she wasn’t—not really. She felt a powerful urge to see this unfaithful creature for herself, to judge and stone. “You can’t let her stand there forever, you know.”
With a deep breath and a nod, Matt pulled open the door.
“Hey, Laura,” he said kindly, though Whitney noticed he didn’t move out of the doorway enough to let the woman in. Or, she realized, to let her catch a glimpse. “What are you doing here?”
“I called the school, but they said you were sick.” The woman’s voice was soft and light, almost sing-song, like it came from a princess in a Disney cartoon—the kind who only spoke in rhymes. “I brought soup.”
Soup. That was such a joke. Give Whitney a case full of vitamin C and some Tamiflu any day. Who did this woman think she was, barging in here with her home remedies and old wives’ tales?
“Um...thanks.” Matt didn’t move to take it.
“I just remember how you used to get. You know, when your tummy hurt.”
Oh, geez. What was next, a boo-boo bear and a thermometer up the ass? Unable to take another second of waiting in the wings, Whitney gave up the pretense of eating. She came up behind Matt, flanking him as she eyed the infamous cheat. “Come in, come in. We were just having lunch. You’re welcome to join us.”
As she suspected, Laura was one of those wispy, ethereal women who avoided the sun and shopped in the children’s department. She was short, coming only up to about Matt’s shoulder, which meant she came up to Whitney’s shoulder, as well, since she matched his height when she wore heels. Laura had thin blond hair and no breasts to speak of, and, for some unfathomable reason, had chosen to wear a floaty top over jeggings. Jeggings. Honestly.
“Aren’t you just lovely,” Whitney cooed. She nudged Matt out of the way with her hip. He stood there, watching the pair of them interact.
It was such a...Matt thing to do, to quietly watch, to let the women speak for themselves. Not the approach Whitney would have taken, that was for sure. There was a rule—one she adhered to both in her life and in the world of plastic surgery. One must always be happy and gorgeous in the face of a broken relationship, regardless of how one felt. Even if it took a boob job and ten rounds of laser tattoo removal to get there.
They should put that on a plaque and slap it up in her office.
“I’ve heard so much about you, but none of it has done you justice.” She extended a hand. “I’m Whitney.”
Laura took her hand limply, and there was a clamminess to it that made Whitney feel a thousand times better. Wet hands were not attractive, no matter how tiny and pert one’s ass appeared in jeggings.
Laura looked around uncertainly. “I’m sorry—am I interrupting something?”
Matt spoke up. “I should probably make the formal introductions. Whitney, this is Laura, my ex-wife. And Laura, this is Whitney, my—”
Whitney placed a territorial hand on his ass and gave it a liberal squeeze. “His sexual partner,” she offered.
Matt let out a strangled laugh—the sound he always made when Whitney did inappropriate things and he secretly loved it.
Okay, so maybe the truth would have been better coming from him, but it wouldn’t kill Laura to know that there were plenty of other fish in Matt’s sea—willing fish. Fish that were practically begging for it.
She motioned warmly and made proper welcoming noises. Laura, her eyes wide and her color mounting, had no choice but to enter.
In that moment, Whitney almost felt sorry for her. Almost. She hadn’t gotten the whole story out of Matt yet, but based on his standard of living, it seemed a reasonable assumption that Laura had gotten the house and the car and any sort of household gear that hadn’t come from a frat house.
Considering which one of them was the cheating hosebeast, that hardly seemed fair.
“I should have called first,” Laura mumbled.
“Nonsense.” Whitney ushered Laura to a chair and dropped half of her sandwich on a plate, avocado and mayonnaise oozing out the sides. “I have to get back to my office in a few minutes, so you two can have all the time you need. I’m a surgeon, you know. A plastic surgeon—we’re setting up a new practice in town. I’m quite good. In fact, I make an extraordinary amount of money.”
Behind her, Matt covered his laugh with a cough. Laura blinked up at her. “Do you?”
“I know what you’re thinking. You want to know what it is I’d change about you.” She tilted her head and pretended to survey the woman, even though she’d made her assessment in the first few seconds. “You know, I wouldn’t change a thing. You have lovely proportions.”
“I do?” Laura colored rosily. “I don’t think anyone has ever said that to me before.”
“Well, it’s true. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Now, me? I’m all ass and no tits.”
Matt chortled again.
“But I find it suits me just fine. And Matt here doesn’t seem to mind.”
Before Laura could say anything more, Whitney spun and planted a kiss on Matt’s mouth. A wet one, with lots of tongue and a few little mewls thrown in for good effect, germs be damned. If there was one thing she was good at, it was putting on a show.
But it was a mistake, that kiss.
Matt stopped before the kiss got really good, the abruptness of his hands on her shoulders as he pushed her back almost painful. A slight shake of his head and an anxious furrow in his brow could only mean one thing: Matt was worried about his ex-wife’s feelings.
Whitney had to stop and breathe, her fingers rising to her lips almost of their own accord. They felt tingly and hot, and all she could think of was how much she wanted him to kiss her in her other hot, tingly places. Of how badly she wished he’d toss his nobility aside and give her a proper deep dicking.
But she was the last thing on his mind. As was always the case when she found herself a new fling, she was the odd woman out—the one who had no real claim on a man’s time or his heart.
“You know what?” she said brightly, her smile tight. “I think I’ll leave you two alone for a spell.”
“No, Whitney—you don’t need to go,” Matt protested, but it was a move taken in half-measures, at best.
“I’d love to stay, but they’re installing the entryway tiles today,” Whitney lied. In actual fact, renovations on the office had all but stopped while the bank reassessed their business plan. There was some strange loophole Kendra pretended didn’t exist and refused to talk about, which meant that hanging out in Matt’s cheese-smelling apartment had been the highlight of her week. “You two have a nice chat, and you can call me later. Okay?”
“That’s probably best,” Matt agreed. Damn him.
She leaned in and pecked him on the cheek, dropping her voice to a low whisper. “You better call me, young man, or I will make it my personal mission to punish you. Is that understood?”
She’d been aiming for jocular, but the worried crinkle around Matt’s eyes indicated that she fell short of her mark. Never one to outstay her welcome, Whitney offered another cheerful smile to Laura, grabbed her purse and made for the door.
It looked like round one went to the jeggings.
And she’d given the damn woman her lunch.