Sweet Salvation (2 page)

“You better call me when you get there. What will it take, like thirty hours?”

Shaking her head, Stacy rolled her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “It’s Michigan, Lana, not California. It’s fourteen, maybe fifteen hours and I promise to call Mama Lana the minute I get to the motel.”

Lana smiled ruefully; although she hated the nickname, she came by it honestly. A worrywart and a nurturer, Lana just couldn’t help mothering.

“I’ll probably be back here on Friday begging you to let me sleep on your pull-out couch anyway. So be careful what you ask for.”

They worked in companionable silence for a long while until Lana came out of the walk-in and asked out of nowhere, “You named your Jeep Miss Scarlett?”

Stacy looked up at her, thrown. Then she laughed, not just a giggle, but a full rolling belly laugh. She was going to miss her dear friend, convoluted conversations and all. As she tried to piece the threads of their conversation back together, she noticed Lana was looking at her with a big goofy smile, her eyes brimming with tears. “What?”

“You laughed.”

Stacy frowned, more perplexed than ever. “And that made you cry because…”

“Graduation.”

Shaking her head at the weepy young woman before her, Stacy smiled and urged softly. “What about graduation? Come on, Lana, work with me here.”

“I haven’t heard you laugh since graduation, before the funeral.” Lana, who was almost six feet tall in her espadrilles and towered over petite Stacy, pulled her close, engulfing her in a great big motherly hug. “It’s a beautiful sound that I haven’t heard in a while. I’ve missed it. Your daddy would have been upset with you if you’d lost it.”

“Oh, Lana.” Tears pouring from her eyes, Stacy cried as she hugged her friend back. “I couldn’t have made it through these awful weeks without you and Kristie. You were my lifelines, and no matter where I end up, how near or far, if you need me I’m there. I’ll always love you.”

* * *

The sun was almost gone from the Wednesday evening sky as Jared Baker stepped out of the clinic’s back door. Heading to the gym before home, he’d already changed into shorts and a T-shirt, maize and blue, the big M proudly declaring his collegial allegiance. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten his sneakers in his truck. Wearing only his socks, he painstakingly avoided any loose gravel or debris on the ground, as he carefully picked his way across the near-empty back lot on his way to his truck. He sat on his tailgate tying them on when he heard another car drive up. It was a Jeep actually, and he immediately noticed the driver was not a typical Jeep owner. As it pulled into a space across the lot, he noticed the Georgia plates right off and dismissively returned to lacing his shoes. Finding one badly knotted, he cursed mildly and bent his head closer in the fading light.

“Excuse me?”

A quick glance up found a set of bright red-tipped toes, one of which was sporting a silver toe-ring, in a pair of white flip-flops. His interest piqued, he did a double take, this time his eyes slowly following the tanned toned legs up to white jeans shorts that barely reached to mid-thigh. Above deliciously curvy hips was a swath of bare belly and if he wasn’t mistaken, something shimmered at her navel—a piercing, maybe? His cock twitched at the thought. The dark purple ribbed tank she wore was short and fit snugly, showing off a narrow waist. It also cupped her full rounded breasts. She was petite; he guessed barely over five feet. For such a small woman, she had wonderfully full breasts which were in perfect proportion to the rest of her smokin’ hot body.

Realizing he was staring, his eyes jerked to her face. Startling sapphire blue eyes stared at him from a pixie-like face, which was tanned and stunningly beautiful. She had full pink lips and long silky lashes. Thick golden blond hair was pulled back from her face in a high ponytail that fell straight and long down her back.

She was gorgeous. However, with her pint size and youthful features, he’d suspect she was still in high school if it wasn’t for the exceptional tits. Again he jerked his gaze up when he realized his eyes had dipped again to her chest. Damn! He was like a horny uncouth teenager. Keeping his eyes to her face, he was pleased to see she wore little makeup and other than the flash at her belly, no jewelry. As he studied her, gaping like a sex-starved fool, she gave him a little smile, tipped her head to the side as if returning his appraisal and popped the gum she was chewing. Good God, what if she wasn’t eighteen and here he’d been drooling over her?

“I need some directions. Could you tell me which building is 2320? None of them are labeled.”

Holy shit! How did such a soft, sultry voice coming out of such a tiny creature? It was smooth as silk and laced with a sexy southern drawl that made his cock instantly hard and upright. He remembered her plates—Georgia—which made her a sexy southern peach. That got him thinking in a whole other direction. Damn!

Clearing his throat, he tried to collect himself to speak intelligently. “You’re parked behind 2320. The main entrance is on the other side, along Brookside Drive.”

She whirled an about-face, her ponytail swirling around her shoulders, as she looked at the building in question, then back at the paper in her hand. At this distance, her movements sent a whisper of mouthwatering strawberry into the air. She hadn’t doused herself in fragrance as some women tended to do. This was soft, subtle, just a hint that tickled his nose, sending his libido into overdrive.

Damn it, man, get it together
. It had been a long, dry spell, but he had more control than this.

“Hm, Brookside Drive isn’t even on this map.” Turning back to him, she shrugged. “Well, thanks a bunch. I have a really important appointment in the morning and just wanted to scope things out so I know exactly where I’m going.” Tilting her head to the side, she flashed him a bright smile. Her small hand came to rest on his forearm, where she gave it a small squeeze before stepping away. “Thanks again, sugar. I’ll let you go.”

She whipped around and walked away as his phone rang. His first glimpse of her ass staggered him. An ass man of the first order, he loved curvy and Miss Georgia filled out her little white shorts as if they had been made to order, hugging every contour that made up her glorious backside. Her hips rolled seductively as she moved across the lot. Once again, his phone rang. As he dug the annoyingly persistent noise box out of his suddenly tight nylon shorts, his eyes tracked her back to the red Jeep as she climbed in. With one bare shapely leg still out the door, she leaned over to grasp the door handle and paused briefly, her head angled sideways as she cast him a long, thoughtful look and flashed a brief smile. Then she was gone, driving out of his life, seemingly forever.

Adjusting his painful erection to a less binding position did little good when his thoughts were filled with ripe round tits, a full rounded ass, juicy strawberries and peaches. He wondered how perverse was fate to have created the most perfect walking wet dream, only to plant her on the earth over eight hundred miles away—might as well be fucking Timbuktu. He swore again softly, as his phone rang yet again, no longer to be ignored.

Thumbing the screen, he barked at the unlucky caller on the other end. “Dr. Trent is on call, so this better be good.”

Silence.

“Hello?” Jared asked.

“Rough day at the office, sweetheart?”

“Fuck you, Trent.”

The laughing voice on the other end belonged to his partner, Marcus Trent, and was annoyingly energetic considering Marc had already performed three surgeries that day.

“You want to meet for dinner? I’ve got two more consults but I’m starved.”

“I was just heading for the gym.”

“You gotta eat.”

“Yes, Mom,” he said with a long, drawn-out sigh. “It will have to be casual, though. I’ve already changed.”

“How about the deli on Telegraph and Square Lake?”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

“Everything okay, bud? You sound distracted.”

“I saw the most unbelievable woman just now.”

“Hot damn, did you get her number?”

“Yeah, but it was printed on Georgia plates.”

“Shit luck, bud. You can tell me all about it over dinner. Trent out.”

What a goofball
, Jared thought, shaking his head as he thumbed off the phone and slammed the tailgate shut. At least he didn’t say ‘peace out’ anymore. His best friend since grade school, Marc was like a brother to him. They’d grown up together, gone through the trauma of puberty and high school together and played football; Jared’s tight end to Marc’s middle linebacker. After graduation, they headed off to Ann Arbor where they were roommates, chose the same major, and pledged at the same fraternity.

Afterward, it was off to New York and Columbia where they attended medical school and completed their residencies. Except for the year they’d done their orthopedic surgical fellowships on opposite ends of the country, they’d been inseparable. Now, they were back home in West Bloomfield Hills and living out their dream of a thriving private practice together. Life was good, he thought as an image of sapphire blue eyes and a belly ring flashed in his mind, but it could definitely be better.

* * *

Watching the traffic flowing briskly on busy Telegraph Rd., Marc didn’t notice the waitress refilling his coffee cup.

“Ready to order, hon?”

He looked up in surprise. Lillian’s peeling and battered nametag had seen better days, and by the look of the bearer, so had she. To tell the truth, the poor woman looked dead on her feet, the same way he felt after a twelve-hour day in surgery. They had that in common, the only difference about $500,000 per year. He smiled kindly at her, taking in her frazzled appearance, the hair that had long since slipped from the bun that had most likely been neat and together when she started her day and the stained and wrinkled uniform which had been clean and neatly pressed at one time, he was sure. Judging her to be in her early fifties, he could see she still had a nice figure and her thick auburn hair was sprinkled with only a few grays. Her sky blue eyes, probably clear and bright in her youth, were dull and sad. He could tell that she had once been stunning, but that life hadn’t been easy for her. He wondered what she was like when she wasn’t bogged down with the stress of serving a diner full of demanding customers.

“Long day?” Marc asked sympathetically.

“Pulling a double, but that’s par for the course around here. The tips are good and with the hospital right around the corner, we get a lot of handsome young doctors like you, so who’s complaining.”

Marc smiled graciously at the compliment.

“My daughter just hired on at St. Joe’s. She’s a registered nurse. You might know her.”

“Yeah? Is she as pretty as her mother? If so, I’ll need her name and number stat.”

Lillian blushed, smiling at the unexpected compliment. Smiling was something he knew instinctively she didn’t do often enough.

“Oh, you are a charmer. Her name is Jessica and she’s a redhead, a little shorter than I am and much more, uh… well, voluptuous is a good word for Jessie. She just started in surgery about a week ago.” Lillian eyed his name embroidered on his lab coat, which covered his scrubs. “She’s having dinner at the counter.”

His eyes followed the direction of her pencil as she pointed, but he didn’t see a redhead, only a large man on a corner stool, a hot blonde in killer white shorts, and a long line of interested men on stools watching as the blonde paid for her to-go order.

“I’ll tell her to watch out for Dr. Trent. You’re not married, are you?”

“Married?” Jared laughed as he slid into the opposite side of the booth. “No woman would put up with this putz.”

“Butt out, I’m getting fixed up.” Marc winked outrageously at the older woman who was staring at Jared contemplatively.

“You’re a doctor too, aren’t you? I’ve seen you here for lunch before wearing scrubs.”

“Guilty as charged. I’m the better, handsomer, more talented doctor. Who are you fixing him up with?”

“Her pretty, curvy, redheaded daughter,” Marc growled mockingly, “so once again, butt out, butthead.”

Lillian laughed, giving Jared a once-over. “Two handsome charmers… Jessie’s going to have to be on her toes. I’ll tell her to be on the lookout for both of you.”

As the bells on the diner door jangled, another customer called for Lillian’s attention and she held up a finger asking for patience. “The natives are getting restless. I had better get a move on. So what can I get you?”

A minute later, she was off with their order.

“So tell me about the Georgia peach.”

“I’ll see her long blond ponytail and painted-on white shorts in my dreams tonight. I think she had a belly ring, too.”

“Hm… Did she drive a red Jeep, by any chance?”

Jared stared at him in shock. “How did you know?”

“You just missed her, bud, but the eight gawking guys at the counter didn’t. Nine if you count me.”

“You are shittin’ me.”

“Nope, small world, huh?

“It doesn’t matter and there’s no point in dreaming. I’m sure I’ll never see her again, which is exactly my shitty luck with women.”

Jared had been through so many bad dates and hookups that he had pretty much taken himself off the market to concentrate on work, instead. An occasional date here and there, but if Marc’s memory was accurate, it had been well over a year since he’d had anything serious.

“Have you seen any new redheaded nurses at St. Joe’s?”

“Nope, but a pretty curvy redhead sounds to be right up my alley about now.”

“Bullshit. You like tall with a great ass, Jare. I know your type after seeing you in action all these years.”

“First, I was joking. Second, I didn’t know I had a particular type. And third, I’ve come to the conclusion recently, today as a matter of fact, that like they say, good things come in small packages.”

“If you use that line on women, no wonder you haven’t had a second date in a while. The words ‘small package’ is not something I’d figure they’d want to hear.”

Jared snorted and shook his head. “Good thing you have a day job, because as a comedian, your material sucks.”