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“I have a bloody nose. I need to use these.”
“No,” she whispered as if she were talking to a young child. I felt her hand cup my knee. “You are injured. The book cut open your nose, and you may need stitches.” She spoke slowly, articulating every syllable precisely, each dipped in her seductive accent. If I weren’t bleeding profusely, I would definitely have been into this girl.
“What?” I muttered, “no, I have…” But as I processed where the point of pain was coming from—on top of my nose, almost between my eyes—I faltered, “Oh, great. Are you sure it’s that deep? I mean, I can handle it.”
“No, you need to get to a doctor, to the hospital.”
I wanted to get to the bathroom so I could look in a mirror. It was a book. How could a book do that much damage? Damn, that was definitely a rhetorical question in my case. I was trying to figure out how the hell I could get up to my room without folks seeing my face and pictures being snapped. Shit!
“Here, look, look,” she hushed, her hand moving from my leg as she dug into her purse and came out with a compact mirror. She removed the wet paper towels. I had a good look at my face. Fuck, a deep gash was painted across the bridge of my nose. Taking in the damage, I felt lucky it hadn’t hit my eyes. “Damn it,” I groaned, “I can’t let anybody see me with my face covered in blood like this.” My head was spinning with images of me all over social media, with a gashed nose and red streaking down my face…after being visibly jacked up on the field and then in the locker room. The coaches would blow a gasket.
“I know, I understand. I heard you’re famous. Let me clean you up. I have a car here. I will take you to the hospital. The medical center is very close,” she explained.
Damn, that accent makes me wish she could spend the night nursing me. She held up the wet paper towel, then leaned in from her kneeling position. She moved one knee to the side of my thigh, then lifted the other over, straddling my lap as she gently wiped my chin, cheeks, and, more carefully, my nose. Her warm breath wisped across my neck, and when she inched a little closer to inspect my face, I took in the smell of sweet cocoa emanating from her small mouth with its plump red lips. “Lo siento,” rushed from her mouth, her lips pursed in concern, “sorry.”
Focus on her face, I told myself, not the pencil skirt she had jacked up over her knees after she’d positioned herself close enough for her face to examine mine, her sensual lips only a whisper from my cheek. If I just turned my head slightly, my lips would touch hers—that thought was blaring in my head, but then I remembered I had a gash on my nose that needed to be stitched.
Her delicate pointer finger lifted my chin slightly. “There’s a little blood here,” she said before wiping the underside of my chin. As she did, she started to lose her balance, and I felt her falling backward onto my legs. My hand flew out, catching her at the small of her back, pulling her into my chest so she wouldn’t fall to the floor. She gasped for air. “Oh, so sorry,” she hushed out.
Both of our breathing seemed labored. I turned my face toward hers, wanting to look at her again and drink in this exquisite, gentle woman who’d come out of nowhere, just as she murmured, “Thank you.” Cautiously, I slid my hand up her back to the nape of her neck. I had the distinct feeling that one fast move and this beautiful creature would flit back into hiding.
I let my eyes take her in. She was strikingly beautiful, put-together, and intelligent, yet I saw a timidity in her eyes and heard it in her voice, as if unsure where to step in this world. Do I make her nervous?
Two of my fingers touched her delicate wrist near my face as she resumed her examination of me. “Hey, I know you didn’t purposely chuck a book at my head,” I whispered, smiling. Her dark eyes, outlined in thick black eyelashes, widened into saucers as she studied me, obviously curious while simultaneously ruffled. Internally, I thought I could not be more vulnerable right now. I was not giving off any threatening or powerful vibes. But every word I uttered seemed to have a direct impact on her breathing, her chest rising and falling as if she were running, her eyes on my lips. Damn, I thought, just kiss me.
She ran her pointer finger with its long fingernail over my bottom lip repeatedly as if studying my mouth, my breath trapped in my chest, waiting to see what would happen next like I was watching a movie. Then, she rubbed the pad of her finger to her mouth as if absorbing me like we were engaged in some ritualistic exchange. But our lips hadn’t touched. Damn, I need to kiss this girl, lose myself in those lips.
She cleared her throat with an imperceptible shake of her head, as if it had just occurred to her where she was, what she was doing, and with whom. I glimpsed the lines of concern etching around her mouth as she pushed herself up. She scooted back slowly before giving me clear instructions on where to meet her outside the hotel, saying she would pull her car up to the side so no one would see us.
As a matter of fact, she explained that she would drop me at the emergency room door but would not go in with me. As she pulled up in front of the hospital, I started to get out but then asked her name, and she unceremoniously lifted her left hand, showcasing a large square cut diamond blinking from it, then dropped it to her side. “I get it,” I said, shocked. I hadn’t noticed that, and she didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would dance so close to possibly kissing a man if she were engaged. She was promised to someone, yet, I was sure I hadn’t mistaken the vulnerable hunger radiating from her. I felt the resistance pulling her back from stepping out of the shadows. Something was holding this woman back. I was pretty sure she knew who I was, but I had no idea who she was.
Just then, I remembered that I still had a gash on my nose that probably needed stitches.
To my surprise, the emergency room was quiet, with only a few people in the waiting area. When I showed the attendant my nose, she immediately escorted me back to a room and told me she recognized me from the game earlier. Her puzzled look said it all. I had to explain that I had not gotten hurt in the game, nor had I been involved in some post-game brawl. I had to tell her that a book had fallen on my head. Yeah, I really needed a fun story to tell instead of the truth because I felt like I was in for a long road of people shaking their heads in disbelief, the way this woman just did.
As I was sitting in the small examination room, contemplating calling our team doctor, a man in a white coat walked in, introducing himself as the attending physician. He explained that he would be getting plastics down here to stitch it up to prevent any scarring. He looked to be in his early forties, with brownish blond hair, though very thin on the top. He had an affable smile that grew wider when I told him what had happened. There was a question in his eyes, and I could see that he wasn’t completely buying my truth, which was irritating as hell. I definitely needed to conjure up something that would sound more plausible. As he went over how they would stitch me up to leave minimal scarring, there was a knock at the door. I assumed that the surgeon had arrived. When the doctor and I turned toward the door, he said to the beautiful black-haired woman standing there, “Sorry, ma’am, this is a medical examination room.”
“Yes, yes, I know. I was just checking on my fiancé,” she said, holding up her ring finger. The doctor nodded, a puzzled expression creasing the corners of his eyes. “Will he be all right? No permanent damage?” she asked. “I did not mean to throw a book at him.” Her voice sounded thin, her accent softening the edges of her words as if she were begging for forgiveness.
The doctor’s head spun back to me, his eyes wide with concern. “Is this a domestic dispute?” he asked, grimacing at me, turning his gaze back to her. I watched as he inspected her appearance as if doing an examination, noting that there was no blood on her, and nothing seemed out of place. If anything, she looked like she’d just walked out of a business meeting, and I looked like I’d just crawled out of a bar.
“No, no, it was an accident,” she said, wringing her hands together nervously.
“Yeah, she didn’t mean to. She wasn’t mad or anything. It just happened,” I spouted out, then swallowed the thick ball that was forming in my throat as I registered the doctor’s features scrunching—as if he didn’t believe either one of us. Still, I didn’t want to say, “She’s not my fiancé. I don’t even know this chick.”
In a jerky motion, his hand shot up like he was about to make a declaration. “Okay, plastics are on the way, but I should call in a social worker. They handle these situations,” he stated firmly, eyes lingering a little too long on my powerful biceps before shifting back to her petite frame and timid, innocent expression.
Well, just when I wondered if this day could get any worse, here I was in this crazy situation. I didn’t know my so-called “fiancé’s” name, and the doctor seemed to be suspicious of me—like I’d ever lay a hand on a woman, hell no—he was picking up on the weird vibe and attributing that to some story that was taking shape in his head.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rakell paced back and forth on the gym floor, trying to catch her breath after an hour on the Stairmaster, readying herself for Pilates. She would start shooting in the L.A. studio the following morning. The schedule in Georgia had been intense, the days on location long. Then she’d return to her hotel room in the evenings and rehearse her lines for the following day of filming. On too many nights, she had fallen asleep on the phone to Jake, only to be jarred awake by his voice's rough, distant disappointment. “Rakell, Rakell, you’re asleep again.” Her voice scratchy, she’d answer, “Sorry, so sorry.” The long days for each of them, combined with the time difference, made connecting at night tenuous. The frustration she had registered from his not-so-subtle comments, more likely loosely veiled complaints, accumulated in her subconscious.
She missed him, too, yet somehow, his neediness increasingly seemed to morph into blame. Last night, when she’d said, “I love you, too,” amid a yawn, sounding almost robotic as she begged her eyes to stay open, he’d responded, “Yeah, I can tell,” sarcasm lacing his tone. That underhanded jab had felt like an ice pick in her back, spiking her fully awake. “What the hell does that mean?” she spat back. “Jake?”
“I just miss you, and well, I guess…” She’d heard his intake of breath. “Damn it, I’m dying to see you, touch you.” His audible gulp rushed through the phone. “I need you by my side,” he added, his voice softening as if purposefully flattening the irritation she’d heard earlier. “At least now that you’re starting filming back in L.A., we won’t have to battle the time zones just to have a chat, so I should be less grouchy.” She wasn’t buying that this was the whole problem but chose not to address it.
Flopping back on her bed in the apartment she was sharing with Vee, pausing, giving thought to her next words, she’d said, “I know it’s been hard to connect; I’m trying…” The apology in her voice struck her. Why the hell was she apologizing? For her career? Not being there for his? “You’ve said this wouldn’t be easy but that we could do this, that other couples…”
