Masquerade (15 page)

The slight hesitation that Cliff gave was enough to have heat rising through her. Cliff had seen her and Alex head upstairs. She should be thanking him for his consideration in phoning; it gave her and Alex enough time to compose themselves.

“That’s fine, Cliff, send Phoebe up.”

She hung up the phone and turned to Alex. “Phoebe’s on her way up.” She could have kicked herself with how stupid she sounded. Of course he knew Phoebe was coming up, he’d heard her end of the conversation.

“I gathered that, but I’m not going, we still have some unfinished business.”

She shivered at the innuendo. She wanted Alex so much but they’d jumped into bed without knowing each other. They’d both been living a fantasy the night they’d met, drunk on the allure of the masquerade and New Year’s Eve. Now was the time to take a step back and get to know each other.

Sophie stood straighter and smoothed down her hair. “Yes, we do have a lot to discuss.”

At that moment the doorbell rang. “Why don’t you go out onto the balcony? I’ll see what Phoebe wants and try to get rid of her.”

By pushing him out on the balcony, she hoped Phoebe wouldn’t see who was keeping her company. She gnashed her teeth in frustration when he made his way to the couch.

“It’s bit chilly now. I think I’ll sit inside.” A spark of challenge lit his eyes and if the doorbell hadn’t pealed again she would’ve walked over there and kissed the challenge away from them.

Kiss the challenge away?
No there would be no more kissing — not tonight, anyway.

“I’m coming,” she called as the bell rang for a third time.

She yanked the door open with more force than was necessary and Phoebe all but fell into her apartment.

Phoebe waved her arms to get her balance. “Whoa, I know I let you down but there’s no need to be rough.”

Sophie shut the door behind her and then almost walked into Phoebe’s back — Phoebe had sighted Alex lounging comfortably on her couch, and that had stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Dr. Scavoni, what are you doing here?” Phoebe asked with an incredulous note to her voice.

Before he could answer, Sophie stepped between them so that all Phoebe saw was her. “He came to tell me about the admin meeting he went to this afternoon. He happens to live here. Well, not here, here but a couple floors down. We had no idea we lived in the same building until we ran into each other in the lift. I was — ”

“Soph, you’re babbling.” That was all Phoebe had to say to her to stop her montage. Color suffused her face and she saw Phoebe’s eyebrow rise in question.

She was so busted.

“Well, I won’t keep you then,” Phoebe said brightly, contrition replacing the inquisitiveness in her eyes. “I just felt bad because I kind of blew you off tonight. But I can see that all’s good so I’ll just go now.”

She pointed toward the door and before Sophie could do anything, she’d called out a goodnight to them both and then left.

Silence fell between them, and Sophie kept her gaze fixed on the door, almost willing Phoebe to change her mind and come back.

She sensed more than heard the moment Alex left the couch and walked up behind her. He wrapped his arms loosely around her waist, nuzzling his cheek on her hair.

“She won’t say anything, she’s your friend.” He turned her so that she was facing him. He placed his finger under her chin and raised it up until she looked at him again. “She will have a lot of questions, though. How do you want to handle it?”

Sophie untangled herself from his hold. She couldn’t think when he was so close to her. She went over to her armchair and sat down, curling her legs underneath her. “She’s been suspicious since you turned up in the ER. She’s sensed there is something but I’ve managed to avoid her attempts to question me.” She closed her eyes and let her head rest against the plump back rest of the chair. “How did everything get so out of hand? I wish I could turn the clock back and not go to that damn ball.”

“I don’t, and I’m glad you went to the ball, because if you hadn’t, I’d have never had that wonderful night with you, Sophia.”

“Sophie, my name is Sophie,” she practically shouted at him.

“I know what your name is,” he countered quietly. “I can’t help it. It just slips off my tongue.”

“Well, try to help it, will you? Don’t let it happen again.”

She heard his sigh and realized she was being unreasonable. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was close to eleven. She really needed to sleep.

“Look, it’s late, Alex, and I’m tired. Can we do this another time?” She pleaded with him to understand as she looked at the stubborn tilt of his jaw.

“No, not this time, Sophie. You keep running away and it’s stopping now.”

“I don’t keep running away,” she replied indignantly even though deep down she knew that she did. “Besides, why do you always chase? You told me that first night all you could offer me was one night. I took that on board and accepted it.”

Nervous energy zapped through her body and she jumped up and started pacing. “I was happy with the one night. I left before you woke. I continued on with my life and that one night was my little secret. A secret no one was going to know about. Then you turn up at work and everything goes upside down.”

She stopped her pacing and went over to where he sat. “Since that moment you’ve been everywhere I look and you keep chasing when all you wanted — no, all you said you could give me — was one night. One night, Alex. So why are you still chasing?”

“Because one night was not enough.”

• • •

Alex couldn’t believe he’d spoken those words out loud. He’d thought it time and time and time again, though — his one night with Sophie was just the tip of the iceberg. He wanted more and he was willing to risk everything he had once believed in to take a chance on her. There was something about her that was different from every woman he’d ever known, even Amanda.

He needed to explain to Sophie why he was the way he was and why he felt she was the one who could change everything.

“Come, Sophie, sit next to me.” He grabbed her hand to stave off any argument. As he pulled her down next to him, his little spitfire spoke.

“Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice, Sophie, but I need you to listen as I explain things. Can you do that?” he asked.

Moments passed and he wasn’t sure whether his plea was going to get answered.

“Yes, I can listen,” she said on a sigh.

He took a deep breath. What he was about to tell her, he’d never told anyone, not even his family. “To understand, I need to go back to my university days. You know how those days were, where everything was study and party and party and study. How I managed to pass those first couple of years still amazes me.” He paused and licked his lips.

“Can I get you a drink of water?” Sophie asked. He nodded and was glad of the short reprieve he had from telling his story.

It was a part of his past that still hurt him. He hated to fail at anything and his failed marriage he always considered a black mark on his copy book.

Sophie placed two glasses of water on the table and when she sat again, he noticed that she curled herself up again, but in the far corner of the couch. There was no chance of their bodies touching.

He reached for the glass and took a sip, the cool liquid quenching his parched throat.

“So anyway, I nearly failed a subject and decided then I wasn’t going to risk that again. I took extra classes and that was when I met Amanda.” He recalled those early days of their relationship. Things had been pretty good then. “We got to know each other as the class progressed. She wasn’t a medical student but on a whim decided to take an anatomy class. Before I knew it, two years had passed and it was a leap year and Amanda proposed to me on February twenty-ninth. I said yes because I did love her and she’d helped me study and claw my way to the top of the class.”

He drummed his fingers on the couch, getting ready to delve into the dark period of his life. He jumped slightly when he felt a warm hand on his thigh. He hadn’t heard Sophie scoot along the couch until she was next to him.

“Alex, you don’t have to go on if you don’t want to.”

“But to get you to understand, Sophie, I must.” He placed his hand over hers and squeezed. “It’s all okay now, I don’t harbor any feelings toward Amanda. We’re friends — it took us a while to get there but we did. She’s remarried now and has a little girl.”

Sophie tried to pull her hand away but he kept a hold of it. “So the first year of our marriage wasn’t so bad. Amanda had graduated and was working in an advertising company. Her hours were a bit erratic but as I was in my final year, I was okay with the situation. It gave me time to study in peace. I passed and entered my internship.” With his free hand, he scratched his forehead. “God, those days were hard. Double twenty-four hour shifts. Falling asleep at the triage desk or sitting up in the locker room. I was pushed to my limit and would get home so exhausted that all I would do was collapse on the couch. Amanda dealt with it the first six months. But after that she found it frustrating. I wouldn’t talk and if I did, I was always relating some tragic event that had occurred. If we were at dinner somewhere, I’d embarrass her by almost dropping off to sleep in front of everyone. That was when the fights started.” Alex gripped Sophie’s hand tighter, willing her to understand that he wasn’t selfish during that time. He was just doing everything in his power to get through his internship.

“Oh, Alex, it’s a tough time for any doctor. Let alone a married one.”

“I came home one day to an empty house and a note. Amanda said she couldn’t do it anymore. She wanted a husband that would be there when she needed him. A husband who could leave his job behind when he got home at the end of the day. She wanted a husband with normal hours and there was no guarantee that I would ever have normal hours. I may be director of emergency and my hours are more settled now, but it’s taken a long time. What really hurt the most,” he took another breath and relived the emotions he felt that night so long ago, “was when she said she couldn’t rely on me to be a father. She’d had a pregnancy scare and hadn’t even told me. It was that that made her realize I wasn’t what she wanted.”

“Oh, Alex, that’s tough.” Alex could hear the compassion in Sophie’s voice.

He closed his eyes, reliving that day as if it were yesterday. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and continued. “Her reasoning was, if I was never there for her, how could I ever be there for a child? How many times would an emergency prevent me from attending an awards ceremony? She argued that divorce was hard on a couple, but it’s even harder on the children. And she was right. We were married for five years. I vowed that after my divorce was final, I wouldn’t get involved with anyone again. Not deeply, anyway. I didn’t want to put anyone else through what Amanda had gone through. Unless they were in the same industry, no one would understand the pressures of working in a hospital.”

He stopped speaking and drank some water. He needed to give Sophie time to digest everything he’d told her.

Guilt assailed him as he saw the tiredness and bewilderment light her features. He shouldn’t have dumped it all on her this late in the evening. He should’ve waited until another night. She was so emotionally overwrought that for him to tell her everything in the way he had wasn’t fair.

He gathered her close, reveling in the feeling of her soft, pliant body in his arms. He would never tire of holding her. “I’m sorry, Sophie. That’s a lot to take in. I should have waited for another time.” His heart skipped a beat as her hand snaked out from between them and came to rest on his cheek.

“Thank you for telling me this, Alex. It means a lot.” She raised herself slightly out of his embrace. “But I have a couple of questions. Why am I so different? Is the only reason you’re chasing me is because I’m a nurse, and work erratic hours, too? Am I just convenient?”

He felt her go from pliant to rigid in thirty seconds. He knew where her thoughts were taking her. He could appreciate it. But he wasn’t using Sophie. It had never once entered his head to use her as a convenient date or bedfellow. He wanted to explore what was developing between them.

“No, Sophia, you are not a convenience.” He brushed his thumb over her lips, still pink and plump from their earlier kisses. “I tried to put you out of my mind. I tried to work with you and maintain a professional distance between us. I really tried but it was as if fate had dealt her cards in relation to us and we were bucking her deal. I just can’t be your work colleague, Sophie, I want to be more.”

I want to be more.

The words stayed with Sophie all night and were still playing a steady rhythm in her brain the next morning. Standing at her kitchen counter looking at the view didn’t make the words go away.

I want to be more.

After Alex’s revelation of his marriage collapsing, then his desire to pursue a working and a personal relationship with her, she’d asked him for time to think. He’d plied her with so much information, that even now she was struggling to compartmentalize it all.

And she would have to work with him in less than half an hour. Her stomach dipped at the thought. Nausea churned through her. She swallowed hard. It didn’t help. Sweat beaded her forehead. Her mouth dried.

She made a dash for the bathroom, getting there just in time before she lost the contents of her stomach. When she felt there was nothing left to throw up, she stood. Her legs buckled and she slid to the floor. Her cheek rested on the cool wall tiles. She counted to ten, then to twenty before she felt maybe she could stand without collapsing again.

Slowly she pushed herself to an upright position. The room swayed slightly. She laid her palm flat against the wall. Taking another few deep breaths, she eventually felt able to walk over to the sink.

She washed her hands, letting her wrists linger a little longer under the cool water in an attempt to reduce the heat that was still radiating through her. She looked in the mirror — her hair was sticking up and the color had leached from her face. Her blue eyes stood out starkly against her pale skin.