Irresistible Forces (2 page)

The phone rang once, and she answered. Her voice was as calm and cool as Meredith herself. They were a good balance for each other. She had always matched Steve's volcanic intensity with her own special brand of silky smoothness. No matter how crazy things got, Meredith always seemed to stay calm in the heat of crisis. She was quiet and elegant and cool. Her entire being was a contrast to her husband.

“Hello?” She had suspected it would be Steve, but she was in the midst of a huge deal, and it could have been someone in her office calling her at that hour. She had in fact gone home. Meredith Smith Whitman was a partner in one of Wall Street's most respected investment banking firms, and highly respected in her field. She lived and breathed and ate the world of high finance, just as Steve was totally engulfed by his work in trauma. And they each loved what they did. For each of them, it was an all-consuming passion.

“Hi, it's me.” He sounded tired and sad, but relieved that she had answered.

“You sound beat,” she said, sympathetic and concerned.

“I am.” But he smiled as he heard her. “Just another day at the office. Or three of them actually.”

It was Friday night, and he hadn't seen her since Tuesday morning. They had lived that way for years. They were used to it, and had long since learned how to work and live around it. She was all too familiar with his crazy two- and three-day shifts, the emergencies that dragged him back to work only hours after he finally got home. But they each had a healthy respect for the other's work. They had met and married when he was a resident and she was in grad school. It had been fourteen years, and sometimes, to Steve at least, it seemed more like weeks. He was still as crazy in love with her as he had been in the beginning, and theirs was a marriage that worked well for both of them, for a variety of reasons. They certainly didn't have time to get bored with each other, in fact they hardly had any time at all. And with their two all-consuming careers, they had never had the time or the inclination to have children, although they talked about it from time to time. It was an option neither of them had entirely ruled out yet.

“How's your big deal going?” he asked her. For the past two months she had been working on the prospectus for the initial public offering of a high-tech venture in Silicon Valley. They were going to take the company public and sell stock to people buying shares in the company. It was a hot deal for Meredith's firm, and fascinated her, although it wasn't as prestigious as some of the bond offerings they did. But Meredith was much more interested in the firms in Silicon Valley, and the opportunities they presented than their more traditional deals in Boston and New York.

“We're getting there,” she said, sounding a little tired. She'd been at the office until midnight the night before. It was easy for her to do that when Steve was working. He knew she was going to lead the road show for the IPO, to tell potential investors about the company and encourage them to invest, in the next month, and she'd be gone for a couple of weeks. He was hoping they'd be able to spend some time together before that, and he was going to take time off to be with her on the Labor Day weekend. “I've almost finished the red herring.” He knew the jargon, it was a term they all used for the prospectus, and it was called that because of the red caution-warnings required by the SEC along the outer edge of the prospectus. “When are you coming home, sweetheart?” she asked, stifling a yawn. She had just gotten home from the office, and it was nearly ten thirty.

“As soon as I sign some stuff they left for me. Have you eaten yet?” He was more interested in her than the forms he had to sign, as he sat sprawled in his office, staring at the papers on his desk.

“More or less. They threw me a sandwich a few hours ago, at the office.”

“I'll make an omelette when I get home, or do you want me to pick something up?” Despite their heavy work schedules, Steve was usually the one who did the cooking, and he liked to brag that he cooked better than she did. And he obviously enjoyed it more. Meredith had never claimed to be particularly domestic. She'd rather eat a sandwich or a salad at her desk, than come home and whip up a four-course dinner. And he liked cooking a lot more than she ever had.

“An omelette would be great,” she smiled, listening to him. Their time apart always made her miss him, even when she was busy. Theirs was an easy, comfortable relationship, and an attraction that had never dimmed, even in the fourteen years they'd been married. They were still passionately devoted to each other, despite their demanding careers and hectic lives.

“So what happened today?” She could always hear in his voice when things hadn't gone well. They knew each other better than most people did, and cared a lot about each other's victories and defeats.

“I lost two kids,” he said, sounding depressed again. He couldn't help thinking of the young black woman who had lost her daughter five hours before, and how much he would have liked things to come out differently for her. But he was a doctor, not a magician. “A fifteen-year-old kid who got in a shoot-out against a rival gang. He managed to hit three of them before he went down, but they killed him. And a little girl a few hours ago. She was an innocent bystander in a shootout between three kids and the cops in Harlem. They shot her in the chest. We operated, but she didn't make it. I had to tell her mother, the poor woman was devastated. And after that, I operated on a fourteen-year-old who fell out a second-story window. She's in lousy shape, but I'm pretty sure she's going to make it.” Meredith would have hated doing what Steve did, the constant agony of the patients he saw, the despair, the losses, the heartbreak. She knew all too well what it did to him, and she could hear the toll it had taken.

“Sounds like a miserable day, sweetheart … I'm sorry. Why don't you come home and relax? You need it.” He hadn't been home in three days, and he sounded exhausted and disheartened.

“Yeah, I need a break. I'll be home in about twenty minutes. Don't go to bed till I get there.” She smiled at the warning.

“There's no danger of that. I came home with a full briefcase.”

“Well, park it somewhere when I get there, Mrs. Whitman. I want your full attention.” He was dying to see her. Going home to Meredith was like being on another planet from his work and all the responsibilities he had there. She was a refuge for him, a breath of fresh air and normalcy and health, a safe haven from the brutality and violence he dealt with every day. And he could hardly wait to see her. He didn't want to come home and find her asleep or working.

“I promise you will have my full attention, Doctor. Just get your ass home.” She grinned and he smiled, envisioning her, as beautiful and sensuous as ever.

“Pour yourself a glass of wine, Merrie, and I'll be there in a few minutes.” He was always optimistic about time, but she knew that about him.

As it turned out, he walked in the door of their apartment nearly forty minutes later. The chief resident had needed a quick consultation with him before he left, about a broken hip and pelvis on a ninety-two-year-old woman, and the fourteen-year-old who'd fallen out the window had developed complications. But Steve knew better than anyone that it was time for him to go home. He was beyond exhausted. He finished the paperwork on his desk, and signed out for the weekend. He didn't have to be back on duty at the trauma unit until Monday, and he could hardly wait to get out, he'd had it. Enough was enough. He was so tired by the time he left, he could hardly think straight.

He hailed a cab just outside the hospital and was home ten minutes later, and as he let himself into the apartment, he could hear soft music playing, and smell Meredith's perfume. It was like coming home to Heaven after three days in hell. His time with Meredith was what he lived for, but she knew he loved his work too, just as he knew how much she loved what she did.

“Merrie?” he called out to her, as he unlocked the door of the apartment, but there was no answer. She was standing in the shower when he found her, long and lanky, and blond and incredibly beautiful and graceful. She had modeled for extra money when she was in college. They had both gotten through school on scholarships. Both of them were only children, and both of them had lost their parents while they were in college. Hers in a car accident in the South of France on the first real vacation her parents had taken in twenty years, and his to cancer within six months of each other. For years now, they were not only husband and wife, but they were the only family each had, and as a result they meant everything to each other.

And as she saw him, she smiled broadly, turned off the shower, and grabbed a towel. Her shoulder-length blond hair dripped water on her breasts, and her green eyes were sexy and warm. She was as happy to see him as he was to see her when he kissed her and pulled her close to him soaking wet. He didn't care how wet she was, he just wanted to hold her.

“God, what you do to me when I come home like this … you make me wonder why I ever go to work.”

“To save lives of course,” she said as she put her arms around his neck and glued herself to him. She made him feel refreshed and alive again, better than a vacation or a night's sleep. He kissed her, and in spite of the grueling seventy-six hours he had just spent at the hospital, he was instantly aroused by her. She had a powerful effect on him, and had since the day they met.

“What do you want first? Me, or the omelette?” he asked with a boyish smile, and she looked at him with feigned consternation.

“That's a pretty tough choice. I was beginning to get hungry.”

“Me too,” he grinned. “Maybe the omelette first, and then I'll hop into the shower, and we can celebrate the fact that we're both here for the night. I was beginning to feel like they were never going to let me out. Thank God I'm off for the weekend. I can't believe we've actually got two days to spend together.” But her eyes clouded as soon as he said it.

“I get the feeling you've forgotten I'm leaving for California on Sunday.” She looked instantly apologetic. She hated leaving when he was off, it was so rare that they got a whole weekend together. As second in command in the trauma unit, it was pretty common for him to work weekends. And when he was off during the week, she had to be at the office. “I've got to go back out to meet with Callan Dow one last time before the road show. We're getting down to the wire, and I want to go over the prospectus one more time with him in California.” She was meticulous about every detail.

“I know, don't worry about it. I forgot.” He tried not to look disappointed, as he watched her towel-dry her hair, and then left her to go to the kitchen and cook them the omelette he had promised.

She joined him wearing a white cashmere bathrobe five minutes later. Her hair was still wet, her feet were bare, and he could glimpse that she was naked underneath the bathrobe.

“If you flash me, I'll burn the omelette,” he warned, pouring the mixture into the pan with one hand, and then pouring himself a glass of white wine with the other. She didn't say anything, but he looked drained. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a worn look that came from three nights of no sleep. “It's good to be home,” he said, turning to look at her with a tired smile and unconcealed admiration. “I missed you, Merrie.”

“I missed you too,” she said, putting her arms around him as she kissed him. And then she sat down on a high leather stool at their kitchen counter. Their apartment had a sleek New York look that seemed more Meredith's style than his. There was something very stylish about her, and everything about her exuded the aura of competence and success. Steven had the rumpled, disheveled look of a harried overworked doctor. It had been weeks since he'd had time to get a haircut and he hadn't shaved in two days. He looked younger than his forty-two years, and it was hard to tell in scrubs what he would look like dressed. He was wearing mismatched athletic socks, and a battered pair of clogs that were comfortable for him to work in. It was hard to imagine him in a blazer and gray flannels and a tie, although he looked terrific when he wore them. But most of the time when he wasn't working, he wore faded jeans and T-shirts. Most of the time, he was too tired to think about wearing much else.

“So what are we going to do tomorrow, other than sleep and make love and stay in bed until dinner?” he said, smiling at her mischievously as he set the omelette down in front of her on a plate on the granite counter. Their kitchen was all beige and white, and looked like a magazine layout.

“All of the above sounds good to me, except I have to drop by the office to pick up some papers. And then come home and read them. They're for the meeting in California,” she said apologetically, with a look of regret.

“Can't you read them on the plane?” He looked disappointed as he devoured his half of the omelette.

“I'd have to fly to Tokyo to do it. I won't work longer than I have to, I promise.”

“That sounds ominous,” he smiled, as he poured them each another glass of wine. It felt great to be off duty. He had no responsibilities to anyone except his wife. He couldn't wait to get to bed and make love to her, and then sleep until noon the next day. “So tell me about work. How's your IPO coming?” He knew how much her work meant to her, and her eyes danced with excitement as she answered.

“It's going to be fantastic. I can hardly wait till the road show,” she said, referring to the due diligence tour where they sold the opportunity to potential investors. “I just know this is going to go over big. I talked to Dow this morning, and he's like a little kid waiting to hit a home run in the play-offs. He's a nice guy. I think you'd like him. He's built the company up from nothing, and he's deservedly proud of it, and now he's taking it public. It's like a dream come true for him. It's exciting showing him how it all works.”

“Make sure that's all you show him,” he admonished, pointing at her with his fork, as she leaned toward him and he could see one creamy white breast exposed within her bathrobe. She laughed at what he was saying.

“This is strictly business,” she said confidently. For her, it always was.