Her Doctor's Orders (5 page)

Kendra felt herself blushing so hard that despite her tan Levi would definitely see pink in her cheeks. “Well…” she said.

Levi smiled. “Seven pairs,” he said. “One for each day of the week—and for your job at the Seven, I guess. I’ll let you choose them on your own, and I’ll go look at the tires.” He turned and walked away, leaving Kendra wishing even harder that she could ask him what kind of panties he liked.

Flustered, she quickly grabbed seven pairs of standard issue gray briefs that weren’t completely unsexy, because they had lace around the edges, and rose rather revealingly to the waistband, almost like a thong.

She blushed, thinking about it now. Fine, she had a crush on Levi. Fine. But even if it seemed perfectly logical that she had a crush on a thirty-year-old doctor who had said he would spank her if she broke his rules, that didn’t mean that this crush on Dr. Levi Hunter had to make Kendra rethink anything.

She would try it his way, but she still didn’t believe she had a future.

* * *

Through the beginning of dinner (incredibly delicious burgers—the beef mixed with some fantastic combination of special ingredients and grilled by Levi) they talked about books and movies. When Kendra said that she thought Alfred Hitchcock was the most psychologically insightful director in history, Levi agreed, but then hit her with a list of foreign names she’d never heard of—Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, Robert Bresson. For a moment, Kendra felt her face reddening—she was used to being effortlessly the smartest person in the room, which was never a problem at the Seven, but then she looked into Levi’s eyes and saw pure excitement and joy—nothing the slightest bit condescending.

“What?” she asked, for his expression seemed to have something it wanted to say. She felt an irrepressible smile break over her face in response to his own smile.

“Oh,” he said. “I just can’t wait to watch these things with you. I mean…” Kendra watched his mouth twist almost bashfully, “… if you want.”

“God, yes,” Kendra said. “I mean, I just never had the chance, but when I was thirteen my mother dated this guy who loved foreign films, and I only got to watch a couple of age-appropriate ones, but I always wished I could have watched more.”

“What happened?” Levi asked.

Kendra looked down at her plate. “He died.”

“Oh,” Levi said, his voice rich with sympathy. “Did that have anything to do with happened to your mother?”

“Everything.” She felt panic rising up inside her. She had to stop this part of the conversation, but how could she?

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

Fuck.
He had to ask that, didn’t he?

“Christmas,” Kendra said flatly, watching Levi’s face as he took in the knowledge that Kendra had left her mother alone in prison for six months.

She saw him thinking about what to say—or maybe he was waiting her out.

“I did get to see
Seven Samurai
,” she said, almost desperate. “I really liked that one.”

“Okay,” Levi said. “Message received. I’m going to ask you to talk about her sometime soon, but it certainly doesn’t have to be tonight. What time do you have to be at the Seven?”

“Eight.” Relief at Levi letting her off the hook filled her.

“We’d better head out, then.”

* * *

The Seven Horsemen Bar was named after the movie
The Magnificent Seven
, and a picture of those seven worthies hung on the wall behind the bar. Kendra had surreptitiously added, in the corner of that framed glory, a postcard-sized picture of the seven samurai of Kurosawa. As far as she could tell, it had never even evoked a curious stare from patron or employee. Now, as she took her accustomed station behind the bar, she couldn’t help smiling a little, thinking about Levi.

“What. The fuck. Happened. To you?” asked Chloe’s voice, behind Kendra. Kendra turned to face her best friend, conscious in a way she had never been before that having Chloe as a best friend was probably not a good idea.

Chloe Silva, a little taller than Kendra, with tightly curled flaming red hair and flowery tattoos covering both arms, glared back at her. She might not be a good idea as a best friend, but it was wonderful to see her.

“You won’t believe it,” Kendra said.

“When I heard, I went to the police station, but they said some guy had bailed you out. And I knew it wasn’t Bob, because I banged on your door on the way over to the police station, and that sack of shit said he had no idea where you were.”

“Thanks for trying,” Kendra said. The contrast between Chloe’s basic selfishness even in coming to try to help, and Levi’s measured altruism, took her aback. Chloe had definitely heard that Kendra was in jail the night before, but had waited until the morning to try to help. Levi had seen it on TV and headed out immediately. Now Chloe’s voice definitely had at least a note of affection in it, but the basic idea behind her words was, “How could you do that to me?”

“You’ll never believe it. It was the doctor who treated my mom after the accident. He saw the thing on TV and came to get me, because he remembered me.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe it,” Chloe said, her mouth turning up into a smile at last. “Wow—did he fuck your brains out, at least?”

“Jesus, Chloe. He’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met.” Now, though, as the patrons of the Seven started to filter in, and Chloe stood before her in the present, showing Kendra her real life, while the strange things that had happened with Levi gradually faded into the past, the voice of the real Kendra said,
I belong here.

That feeling grew as the night wore on in its usual way, with leers from the guys at the bar and Chloe’s remarks, regular as clockwork, about how Kendra’s doctor couldn’t get it up, and how Kendra probably didn’t care because when you’re a gold-digger, the sex really isn’t important.

When Chloe heard that Kendra was staying with Levi, it got even worse. “Kendra, he’s a pervert,” she said. “He’s got something about ‘taking care’ of girls. We need to get you out of there.”

Kendra knew, intellectually, that Chloe envied her terribly. Chloe had envied Kendra from the beginning of their friendship; she had even been jealous of Kendra living with Bob, because Bob’s house had two bathrooms. Chloe usually did a good job of hiding it, but the thing with Levi was clearly proving too much for her.

Emotionally, though, Chloe’s words had their effect—the effect that Chloe undoubtedly was trying to bring about, at least on an unconscious level. Above all, Kendra’s feeling that the thing with Levi couldn’t actually be what it seemed grew and grew. The Seven, it began to seem, was the real world, and Dr. Levi Hunter inhabited some fantasy world of his own making. And he had tried to pull Kendra into it.

Everyone who came into the bar wanted something from Kendra, and really, Kendra didn’t mind giving them what they wanted: a smile, an extra olive, a word of sympathy about their sick pet. Levi must want something, just like everyone else, and the way to deal with that was to give Dr. Levi Hunter what he wanted. If he wanted her body, fine; she would fuck him, and she would stop feeling like she had to take an interest in herself because he had taken an interest in her.

But he didn’t seem to want Kendra that way. What was wrong with him? Or was there something wrong with her? Of course there was: apparently, she wasn’t even worth fucking. And Levi would kick her out, eventually, of course.

At around 1:00 a.m., serving up an already over-served, handsy patron’s fifth Manhattan, listening to Chloe say for at least the third time, “At least promise me you’ll try to get him to fuck you, okay?” Kendra shook her head to try to clear it, and realized that she had no idea what reality even was, despite having followed Levi’s rule and having had nothing to drink but seltzer all night.

Chloe had been drinking, though, and so by that time she had begun to ease up on Kendra a bit. The beers took away her rough edge, and interspersed with “You’re such a gold-digger, Kendra” (delivered in a way that lay just on the joke side of the joke/insult border) came “I love you, Kendra—I was just so worried about you.” The trouble was that Kendra knew that both parts of Chloe—the affectionate friend and the envious bitch—formed essential elements of her best friend’s nature. For Kendra, having a best friend who made you feel bad about stuff that you thought maybe should make you feel good seemed to fit.

As the customers got drunker and handsier, Kendra found that whether the problem arose from Chloe’s words, or from something about Levi, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Specifically, she couldn’t stop thinking about having Levi’s hands all over her body, and lying next to her with no clothes on. When, at 2:15 a.m., she climbed into his car, she had convinced herself that she had to figure out whether he wanted to sleep with her, because at least right then she definitely wanted to sleep with him.

On the short drive back to his house, as he asked solicitous questions about her night and she thanked him over and over for waking up in the middle of the night to come get her, Kendra sat in the passenger seat of Levi’s medium-nice Japanese sedan, turned toward him, and studied him. She definitely wanted to sleep with him, now. Even the way he turned the steering wheel, with those enormous hands that moved so carefully despite their size—those hands that had touched her bare skin so gently and had seemed to make Kendra feel better even though he had prodded at her bruises with his long fingers—seemed unbearably sexy.

How do you seduce a doctor? Really, how do you seduce any guy
? Kendra’s sexual experience so far involved one other guy besides Bob—the guy she had lost her virginity to at college. That definitely wasn’t seduction, of course, but between that guy and Bob, Kendra at least had a how-to-get-sex repertoire. Unfortunately, it consisted of getting drunk and letting a hot guy do what he wanted until he did something he had probably got out of a porn video—like holding your head while you gave him a blowjob, or trying to move your body into an uncomfortable position while he fucked you—and you said, “Don’t do that, okay?” and even a jerk like Bob almost always said “Okay.” When Bob punched Kendra, it wasn’t because of anything to do with sex—Kendra actually really liked sex with Bob.

Thinking about that, there in Levi’s car, sober at 2:15 a.m., Kendra realized with a start that the shame she felt when she liked being dominated in bed—above all when she had one of those orgasms she only seemed to get that way—probably fed beautifully into her idea that she didn’t deserve someone like Levi. She felt her face move into a pensive expression, and she couldn’t concentrate for a moment on just looking at him, the way she had been. Her head turned to the side and she looked at the dashboard, trying to process what felt like a kind of breakthrough.

Levi seemed to notice Kendra shifting in her seat, and out of the corner of her eye, Kendra saw him glance at her curiously. “What?” he said. “You look like you just had a mighty thought.”

A burst of what she had to admit felt a lot like love filled her heart. Alongside it, though, came a burst of precisely the same shame she had just been pondering. Kendra felt like she was watching her own emotions happen from outside herself, and like for the first time in a long while, she had the acuity to understand what happened inside her.
Yes
, she thought.
This is realer than real. The only question is whether I can keep myself from destroying it.

As Levi was just pulling the car into his driveway, Kendra turned to look at him. The dark stubble on his cheek in the light of a streetlamp made him seem mysterious and almost wolfish. Kendra thought for a long moment.
Not tonight. If it doesn’t work, I don’t want it to be because I fell asleep.
Kendra tried to make her voice sound husky. “Ask me in the morning,” she said.

Chapter Five

Levi got up at 6 a.m. and worked for an hour in his office before he started to get breakfast together. He’d wake Kendra up just before he left, and they could eat quickly together; she could spend the day dealing with the insurance on her totaled truck, over the telephone, and watching movies, and he would come back to have an early dinner with her and take her to work at the Seven. Everything seemed to be in order.

Immediately after deciding that everything seemed to be in order, as he was starting to mix pancake batter, Levi realized that he had been unsuccessfully attempting to avoid thinking about how much attraction he felt for Kendra Jackson. Then Kendra chose that moment to emerge from the guestroom looking adorable in the same cutoff sweats and T-shirt he had given her the day before. The look on her face, as she stood in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest, lifting her pert breasts as if to offer them to Levi, made him think instantly of her saying “Ask me in the morning,” the night before.

“Dr. Hunter,” Kendra said, in the same seductive voice she had used the night before. “I think I need a private consultation.”

The very sound of her voice made him hard, and the urge to walk straight over there and take her back into her room for the ‘consultation’ she had requested nearly got the better of him. Levi swallowed. “Kendra,” he said, though every fiber of his being seemed to be screaming that what he really wanted was to take her in his arms. “I don’t want you to feel bad, but that’s not appropriate. You’re still recovering from a trauma, and I’m taking care of you. That kind of thing would complicate our relationship much too much.”

With great dismay, he watched her face crumple. He wished there were some way to tell her how very, very much he wanted to make love to her—how much his body itself seemed to hunger for her touch—but he didn’t see that he had any choice in the situation.

And Kendra’s face didn’t crumple into sorrow—it crumpled into anger, which made Levi feel even worse, and made the potential damage to their relationship, and his attempt to help her, even greater.