Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (20 page)

Realizing the meaning of what he had just read, Harlan’s forehead began to show beads of sweat.

“Thank you for reading that, Doctor,” Peter chirped, taking the document back from him. “And isn’t it true, Dr. Wilkinson, that at the time Mr. Middleton dismissed you from service, you had just been suspended from active call duty by the hospital as a result of a pending investigation by the State Medical Board of North Carolina?”

Harlan’s jaw tightened, and he shot a look of sheer fury straight at Middleton, who reddened. “That is correct.”

“Thank you, Dr. Wilkinson.” Peter Landall grinned in triumph. “Your Honor, I think it is clear based on both Mr. Middleton’s and Dr. Wilkinson’s own testimony, as well as the supporting documentation provided in the brief I submitted on behalf of Ms. Watson, that the true motivations behind today’s court petition are actually part of a sinister and fraudulent scheme on the part of Mr. Watson, his attorney, and their two witnesses to share in the patent royalty rights Mr. Middleton and his hospital have wrongfully tried to wrest from Dr. Wilkinson.”

Joanna silently thanked her now-deceased parents for teaching her to always trust Peter Landall and his law firm.

“Your Honor, I submit that Mr. Watson’s allegations are nothing more than a slander meant to embellish and advance his counsel’s and others’ illicit scheme,” Peter went on. “I further submit that the nature of these actions should not only cause Mr. Watson’s petition be dismissed, but also that Mr. Slokowski’s and Mr. Middleton’s—and by cooperation and association, Mr. Watson’s and Ms. Daniels’—actions be referred by Your Honor to the appropriate authorities for investigation on federal racketeering charges. I also have submitted a copy of my brief to the State Medical Society of North Carolina requesting that their investigation of Dr. Wilkinson be aborted, as it was likely initiated by Mr. Slokowski for questionable causes. I also have requested the hospital board consider removing Mr. Middleton from administering Covington Community Hospital, and also to reinstate Dr. Wilkinson to staff as soon as possible.” Peter folded his arms across his chest, waiting for the judge’s response.

Judge Diviston looked from Peter over to Slokowski—who by now had turned several shades of purple—and snickered. “Mr. Landall, it’s always a pleasure having your grace and decorum in my courtroom. Lawyers like Mr. Slokowski could learn a lot from you. Mr. Watson, your petition is dismissed. Unless there is any further business on this case, this court stands adjourned. Happy divorce, folks.”

Judge Diviston banged his gavel. Bob Watson, Slokowski, and Middleton all bolted from the courtroom as if the soles of their feet were on fire, but Joanna, Peter, Harlan, and the few citizens who’d been sitting in the gallery remained. The judge gathered his papers and moved to get up from his seat when Harlan stepped up from the witness box and approached the bench.

“Your Honor, I have business before this court.”

“Dr. Wilkinson, if you plan to sue Mr. Middleton and Mr. Slokowski for slander, libel, and attempted theft of patent rights—which I strongly suggest you do—you’ll need to do that in a federal court,” the judge said. “I don’t preside over that sort of thing. I’m a family court judge.” The grizzled old jurist started to leave. But Harlan blocked his path, alarming the bailiff.

Leave it to Harlan to try and strong-arm a judge
, Joanna thought, stifling a chuckle.

“I’m aware of the law in those matters, sir, and I plan to pursue it in the appropriate court,” Harlan said. “But as a family court judge, in addition to granting divorces, you can also perform marriages, isn’t that correct?” Harlan glanced over at Joanna, who jerked up from her chair when she saw the look on his face. As he gazed upon her, his badass-surgeon persona melted away in favor of a look of pure, majestic love and adoration. “Because you see, Your Honor, I love Joanna Watson, and I’d like to marry her as soon as possible. Today, preferably.”

Judge Diviston smiled. “Well now. That’s a horse of a different color.”

Harlan crossed the courtroom to Joanna’s side and took both her hands in his. She saw that he’d had the stitches removed from the right one, which was now perfectly healed. “Your Honor, I assure you that my intentions towards Ms. Watson have always been honorable. I want to marry her, be the father of her children, work with her, live with her, and grow old with her. That is, if she’ll have me.” Harlan went down upon one knee, gazed up at Joanna, his eyes brimming with tears. “Joanna, I love you. Will you marry me? Here? Now? Please?”

Joanna couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even breathe. Her thighs were jelly, her lower belly tomato soup. She wanted to say yes—
needed
to say yes—but for some reason she couldn’t get her mouth to form the word.

Judge Diviston placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, I suggest you hang on to this here fellow. I’m willing to bet my law degree he’s the most lovestruck puppy in all of North Carolina.”

The judge’s strong grasp was enough to unstick Joanna’s lips. “Y-yes, Harlan,” she stammered. “I’ll marry you. Right here, right now. No conditions. Just my love.”

They embraced for a long time; then Harlan’s mouth seized upon hers, and they kissed with more wanton abandon than any courtroom should ever have witness to.

Sex in a Southern City

Some things just aren’t meant to be.

So thought Shirley Daniels as she packed the last of her belongings into her rented U-Haul, rolled the cargo door shut, and prepared to leave behind her beloved hometown of Statesville, North Carolina forever.

Shirley never thought she’d see the day that she’d leave the small rural town of her birth in favor of the big city. After all, she’d lived here all her life. She grew up here, even worked her entire career as a nurse-anesthetist at Statesville’s Covington Community Hospital. The only time she’d spent away from home was her time in nursing school, and she’d always come home on summer and winter vacations, even many weekends. But her life in Statesville was over now. And she had Bob Watson to thank for that.

The bastard.

Just a few short months ago, Shirley had made a deal with Bob Watson.

Or to put things more accurately, she’d made a deal with the devil himself. And it had gone badly.
Very
badly.

Shirley made the mistake of getting in the middle of Bob’s nasty divorce from her longtime coworker—and now—
former
friend—Joanna Watson-Wilkinson. Shirley hated to admit it now, but when Joanna became romantically involved with Covington Community Hospital’s dashing new chief surgeon Dr. Harlan Wilkinson when he’d arrived in town just a few months earlier, Shirley had become insanely jealous. She’d had a crush on Dr. Wilkinson for years, in fact—ever since she first saw a picture of him in
Medical Volunteerism Quarterly
—shirtless, tanned, and rugged on the back of Range Rover when he was on one of his Doctors Without Borders trips. When Dr. Wilkinson had shown interest in Joanna instead of her—well, call her petty, but Shirley had decided then and there that their friendship was over.

It wasn’t much of a loss. Shirley’s so-called “friendship” with Joanna had never been that all that deep, anyway. Joanna had been three years ahead of Shirley back in school, so they’d barely known each other outside the majorette squad where Joanna had been a captain and Shirley only a junior twirler. They were cordial at work, but rarely socialized outside of work—not that Shirley had had much of a social life since high school, anyway. So when Bob Watson and his slimy lawyer approached Shirley one night when she was sipping a watery Appletini at the Dew Drop Inn—Statesville’s only bar—with a scheme on how she could make some easy money
and
get back at her romantic rival in the process, Shirley had been all ears.

Bob Watson, it turned out, was quite the con artist. He’d even managed to rope Covington Community Hospital’s former chief administrator Joseph Middleton into the scam. The plan was for the three of them to show up at a court hearing regarding Joanna and Bob’s divorce decree and offer up a bunch of phony evidence that Covington Community Hospital was entitled to a share of Dr. Harlan Wilkinson’s millions of dollars’ worth of patent royalties. The deal was, the three of them would testify against Harlan and Joanna in court, then split a sizable share of the patent royalties among themselves. According to Bob, there was more than enough cash to go around to fatten Covington Community Hospital’s coffers
and
make the three of them millionaires.

Of course, Bob had failed to mention that he and his sleazy lawyer hadn’t exactly worked out the finer details. The judge saw right through their scam, threw the whole case out of court, and ordered that Bob, his lawyer, and the rest of them be prosecuted for grand larceny and conspiracy to commit interstate fraud. Bob and his attorney were both forced to plead guilty in order to avoid life sentences—both were now doing ten-year stretches in federal prison. Joseph Middleton had died of a heart attack two weeks before his trial began. And since Shirley had never actually gotten the chance to take the stand in court and commit perjury herself, she’d gotten off with a slap on the wrist—a five-thousand-dollar fine and thirty hours of community service, but only after hiring an expensive lawyer whose legal fees ate up her entire nest egg, and then some.

And of course, she’d lost her job, too.

Shortly after she got fired, Shirley’s ailing parents died within a week of each other at the nursing home where they’d both been living for years. An only child, she’d been born when her mother was pushing fifty and near-menopausal, and her parents had both lived well into their seventies. Her parents had died virtually penniless, all of their savings eaten up by years of nursing home bills. Shirley had to pay for their funerals herself.

She was broke, humiliated, and all alone in the world.

Shirley had given up the best years of her life caring for her aging, elderly parents—ever since she’d graduated nursing school, her entire existence had revolved around work and the nursing home, leaving almost no time for dating. She’d spent several years living like a nun—in every celibate sense of the word, in fact. It had hardened her, made her bitter inside. It was that hard, bitter edge that Bob Watson and his scummy scam had appealed to. But now, like her parents, that side of Shirley was dead, too.

And good riddance.

In a way, the double-whammy of losing her job and her parents in the same month was a blessing. It gave her freedom, a golden opportunity to start life anew.

Shirley Daniels was in her mid-thirties now, and she decided that it was high time she began living the life of a single, sexually liberated woman. She’d dabbled a bit in the decadent side of life in the month or so leading up to the time she’d met Bob Watson, and had enjoyed every minute of it. She’d seduced a twenty-year-old fratboy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill one night on a whim, then had impromptu sex standing up in the hospital locker room with a nervous surgical resident just a few days later. Those two encounters had been her little way of making up for lost time, and they’d also made her aggressive, even a little bold. In her final impromptu, illicit tryst, she’d had sex in the hospital boiler room with a sexy young welder while she was technically still on the clock at work. All three encounters were hot, satisfying, even mind-blowing. But something had been missing.

Namely, love.

Or if not love, at least romance. Fucking a sexy stranger almost half her age up against a wall in a boiler room had its appeal, sure. But it didn’t last much beyond the final spasm of her orgasm. It scratched an itch—that was all. Shirley was a mature, sensual woman, not a giddy college girl. She didn’t just want to scratch an itch. She wanted—
needed
—more.

Shirley thought she’d get what she wanted from Bob Watson. Boy, had she been wrong, and in more ways than one. Not only had his get-rich-quick scheme been a total disaster, sleeping with him was even worse. Bob might have been reasonably good-looking and only a year or two past forty, but he was as impotent as a ninety-year-old paraplegic. They’d tried to have sex at least six different times, and every single time Bob had failed to get or maintain an erection. No amount of sucking, licking, or stroking on Shirley’s part had helped, either. And the guy couldn’t even work his way around a clit, either. The only action the two of them had seen at all had involved Shirley’s vibrator.

No wonder Joanna had divorced him.

When it came to comparing her life to Joanna Watson-Wilkinson’s, Shirley knew she came up with the short end of the stick. Joanna was now happily married to a multimillionaire chief hospital surgeon, lived in a huge mansion on the edge of town with twenty wooded acres, an indoor swimming pool, and thoroughbred stables, and had just gotten promoted to chief surgical nurse at the hospital to boot.

On the other hand, Shirley had lost her job, her parents, her home, and had gotten stuck having dildo sex with Joanna’s impotent ex-husband.

Talk about poetic justice.

Shirley climbed into the cab of the U-Haul and keyed the ignition. She wasn’t going to think about all the bad things that had happened in Statesville any more. From now on, she would be looking forward, not back. She pulled the lumbering U-Haul out onto the main drag through town and headed for the interstate. She headed for her new life, her new beginning.

From this day forward, Shirley Daniels was a new woman. And once she made it to Raleigh, things were going to change for her in a very big way. She was sure of it.

If she only knew how.