Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (51 page)

“You’re crazy, you know that?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’m aware.”

I’m kissing his neck and working the front
of his buttoned shirt open, trying to keep the car as still as possible as I
go.

He reaches around under my shirt and
unclasps my bra, giving him access to my waiting skin, and I’m reaching between
both of our legs, grabbing his already growing cock and bringing it the rest of
the way.

“Now,” I tell him, “no big movements.”

I slide up the length of him and put his
tip at my entrance, feeling a renewed surge of adrenaline running through me.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I tell
him and put him inside.

We move slowly and deliberately together
and his arms are out from under my shirt, wrapped around me now, holding me
ever closer as he enters me sweetly, again and again.

The night air is getting cold, but I don’t
feel it. I only feel him — his arms, his lips, his sex, and his love, warming
and comforting me.

“So, you switched the medications for me,
huh?” I ask.

His eyes are half closed and his voice is
quiet as he says, “Yeah, I did.”

“That was very sweet of you. I don’t
suppose you happened to get a look at my scans.”

“What was that?” he asks, his eyes
opening.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” I tell him.

So here we are, somewhere between fucking
and having sex and making love at the top of a broken down Ferris wheel.

I’m out of a job, he’s suspended, but probably
out of a job, too, and I’m still dying.

But I’m not dying today.

Today, I’m just learning to breathe.

Epilogue

Grace

A lot can change in five years.

After I lost my job, I got a lot of calls
from people who had heard what I was trying to do at M.E. If that press
conference was good for anything — debatable — at very least, it boosted my
public image.

Still, it’s taken me this long to find a
position that I really wanted to take.

I moved out of the city after Jace was
told that he would keep his license, but he was fired from the hospital. There
was nothing left for either of us there.

I’m waiting in
Jace’s
office for him to show up. Apparently, one of his patients came down with
pneumonia, a result of chemotherapy’s assault on her immune system.

After a while, though, he finally comes
in, saying, “Hey, Grace. How are you this morning?”

“Annoyed,” I tell him. “When I agreed to
marry you, you told me that you’d give me the world, and now look at me.”

 
“I
think you look great,” he says, scanning over the file in his hand.

“Whatever,” I tell him. “Your ten o’clock
is waiting in your office, and Mr. Landau called to say that he’s going to need
you to come by. I guess his nurse called in sick and he can’t make it to the
door on his own.”

“The help can’t make it to the door?”

“No, the patient,” I tell him. “You’re
really going to do the grammar thing with me right now?”

“Give him a call and let him know that I
can get out there on my lunch break,” he says.

“After your ten o’clock,” I tell him,
“you’re clear for the rest of the day.”

He stops before entering his office and
says, “You know, in New York, I maintained a very busy schedule. Of course, I
had competent help back then, too.”

He stops laughing when the stapler I throw
dents the wall near his head.

“Jeez,” he says. “Calm down. I was just
kidding.”

“So was I,” I tell him, looking back down
at the cross word puzzle in front of me. “If I was serious, you’d probably be
on the ground right now.”

Okay, so maybe being the secretary to my
husband of three years isn’t the most glamorous job in the world, and I should
know; I used to have one that was a lot closer to that particular peak.

I finally heard back from the station I’ve
been wooing for the last few years or so and they’re bringing me in for a
second interview. Hopefully, that means I can stop treading water as
Jace’s
assistant — a term that I cling to dearly — and get
back doing what I’m good at.

Ironic as it may seem, after all the time
I spent trying to put the now defunct Memento Entertainment in a position to
acquire KJBP, I’ve found myself in a position where KJBP is trying to acquire
me. I just hope it’s not Andrew asking the questions or I think my chances
might not be so great.

It only took the station five years to
start taking me seriously.

Jace finishes up with the patient in his
office and calls me in through the open door.

I get up and bring my purse, as there are
no more patients in the office to see.

I’ve been telling him that we should have
opened up his office a little closer to one of the major parts of the city, but
he’s gotten to be very adamant about his free time nowadays.

“Yes, Doctor?” I ask in my best Marilyn
Monroe voice.

“Sit down,” he says. “Your scans finally
came in.”

He tells me that the
oligodendroglioma
is still in my head, but that it doesn’t seem to have shown any significant
signs of growth. He’s been giving me the same speech for the last five years.

“I know you’d like to hear something
different,” he says, “but with this thing being as slow growing as it is, it’s
not likely we’re going to see much change month to month.”

“Yeah,” I respond absently.

“I have good news, though,” he says.
“There’s a clinical trial coming up and I should be able to get you into it.”

I just start laughing.

“Are we going to have to go through the
whole you being disbarred or whatever the hell it is they do to doctors again?”
I ask.

“Disbarment is what they do to lawyers,”
he says. “With doctors, they take away your license and no, you actually
qualify for this one. I won’t have to break any laws or ethical codes to get
you in.”

“You’re still nailing your patient,
though,” I tell him.

“Yeah, but I hardly think that’s relevant
to the trial,” he says. “Besides, if you’ve never bothered to notice, I always
fill out your paperwork under the name Zoe Brinkman.”

“Zoe Brinkman?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It was a girl I used to
date before I met Melissa. She was totally out of her head, but she was a demon
in the sack.”

I think I may have rubbed off on him a
little too much over the years.

“How charming,” I tell him. “So, what
you’re saying is that you’re going to get me into the trial without lying this
time, except when it comes to my name or the fact that we’re married, right?”

“Actually,” he says, “none of that’s going
to matter. I called Dr. Marcum and he’s going to recommend your inclusion into
the trial so we don’t have to falsify anything.”

“Yeah, except any and all records of me
ever being his patient,” I scoff.

“I sent him your file so he could send it
to them,” Jace says. “You’re already in if you want to be in.”

“What kind of drug is it?” I ask. “Is it
going to be better or worse than the chemo?”

“Part of the fun is finding out,” he says
and I’m now convinced that me rubbing off on him at all is a bad idea.

“All right,” I tell him, “but if it puts
me in a bed unable to move, I’m going to have to insist on breast massages at
least three times a day.”

“I’ll check with your trial doctors,” he
says and looks back to the paperwork on his desk.

A lot can certainly change in five years,
but a lot stays the same, too.

I turned him down that night at the
junkyard, but I did eventually relent and allow him to marry me — part of the
deal was that he had to say it like that whenever he told anybody.

“You want to head to Mr. Landau’s place
with me?” he asks, finishing up signing whatever it is that he’s signing.
“There’s lunch in it for you if you do.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “I’ll go with
you and you can eat out.”

“That’s what I just said.”

I give him my corniest wink, saying, “Is
it?”

“You know,” he says, “I could swear I’m
married to a teenage boy.”

“That’s disgusting. You’re way too old to
be with a teenager.”

So, this is our life. We work together, we
live together, I make juvenile comments, and we laugh about them together.

All in all, it’s not so bad.

The only thing I really miss when I left
the city, and this was a surprise to me, was Mags.

Yeah, she was my secretary — excuse me,
assistant — and I never really treated her that well, but she was always there
in the background making my life run just a little bit smoother.

The good news for her is that she finally
landed herself a millionaire, though he’s a lot younger than what she had in
mind. Still though, she tells me, with the sheer volume of alcohol he consumes
on a daily basis, it can’t be too long until he keels over.

I guess you’ve got to have goals.

Jace finishes up and we walk out of the
office together. I forward any calls to my office to my cellphone, though I’m
not anticipating any calls.

“So, after I start at the station, what
are you going to do for a secretary?” I ask.

“I thought you were very adamant about
being called an assistant,” he says.

“I am, but I’m sure whatever bimbo you
hire is hardly going to measure up to my incredible skills.”

“You are by far,” he says, “the worst
assistant I’ve ever had.”

“You do remember that Yuri got you fired
from your last job, right?”

“Yeah, but at least she knew where the
pens were,” he says. “I’ve got someone lined up. I still have to do a final
interview, but she comes highly recommended.”

“It’s nobody I know, is it?” I ask.

“You don’t know anybody,” he says.

“I have friends.”

“Oh, right,” he says, “your coven. Forgive
me if I don’t count the hateful women you bring over to my house as anybody.”

“They’re not hateful,” I tell him.
“They’re spirited.”

“So, I was thinking,” Jace says. “After
your clinical trial, maybe we could start trying to build our family a little
bigger.”

This is about the only thing we argue
about anymore. Okay, we argue quite a bit about a great many things, but this
is the only topic that isn’t complete bullshit.

“You keep saying that we should build our
family,” I tell him, “but what you’re forgetting is that it’s my
vag
that family’s going to have to come out of, and I don’t
know if you’ve ever tried to figure out what that must be like, but I’ve seen
pictures and it doesn’t look great.”

“I’m a doctor,” he says. “I’ve seen women
give birth before.”

“Yeah? How was it?”

“It was thoroughly disturbing,” he says,
“but I hear they give you some pretty killer drugs.”

“I’ll think about it,” I tell him.

We pull up to Mr. Landau’s house and Jace
asks me if I’m coming in.

“Why? So he can stare at my boobs while
you’re doing unspeakable things to him in the name of medicine?”

“Give the guy a break,” Jace says. “He’s
got cancer. He may never see a nice pair again.”

“I have a brain tumor,” I tell him. “Does
that mean that I get to scope out all the junk I want?”

“Are you coming in or not?”

“Fine,” I groan, “but I’m going to have to
insist on some quid pro quo.”

“Well,” Jace says, “you may have to do most
of the work, but I’m sure Mr. Landau would be all right with that.”

“Not what I meant.”

Jace gets out of the car and, hesitantly,
I get out as well.

We walk up to the house, and I can’t help
but think how much differently my life would have been if any other doctor had
walked into the room that day I had my first seizure.

Attraction often has more to do with
proximity than it does with any kind of actual chemistry, but with Jace,
somehow I’ve found both.

He’s still a pain in my ass, but I do love
him. Yeah, it’s probably going to be a while before he convinces me to squeeze
out a kid or two and it’s just as possible that that never happens, but I do
know that I’m glad to be spending my life with him.

“Do you really think he’d go for it?” I
ask as Jace rings the doorbell.

“Who?” Jace asks.

“Mr. Landau,” I answer. “You’ve seen his
bits; do you think it’d be worth my time or would it be like trying to make it
to England in a rowboat?”

“Seriously, I’m married to a teenage boy.”

“Seriously, that’s gross.”

We’re waiting at the door for a few
minutes.

“You know what we forgot?” I ask him.

“What’s that?”

“Mr. Landau did say that he couldn’t make
it to the door,” I answer. “Do we just let ourselves in or what?”

“Call him back and let him know that we’re
coming in,” Jace says. “I don’t want to give the poor guy a heart attack.”

“How sensitive of you,” I answer.

I give Mr. Landau a call and he gives us
permission to enter, so we do. Jace calls out for him and, from the back, a
feeble voice answers.

“Do you really think he’s at risk for a
heart attack?” I ask as we’re making our way down the hall.

“Actually,” Jace answers, “his heart is
probably the only part of him that’s still holding strong. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” I tell him.

We get into the room and Mr. Landau is
lying in bed watching the morning news.

“How are you doing today, Mr. Landau?”
Jace asks.

“Oh, I’ve been better,” the man says.

“Well, let’s see what we can do about
that,” Jace says. “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought my assistant along with
me today.”

“I can see her,” the man says. To prove
it, his eyes move to me and settle on my breasts as they always do.

“Dr. Churchill?” I ask.

“Yes, Assistant Miller?” he returns in his
ass-hat way. This is why I didn’t take his last name.

“You’re certain the patient’s cardiac
health is stable?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, like you said, I should give the
poor guy a break,” I tell him and lift my shirt. “Is that better, Mr. Landau?”