Nothing But Trouble (19 page)

He'd thought that hasty behavior had been
over with.

On the other hand, Danielle had been
exhibiting worrisome behavior and she'd needed to go. He didn't
regret firing her. But he should have been more prepared with a
replacement.

He dug his cell phone out of his back pocket
and dialed Rebecca's number. They really had no reason to speak,
other than he wanted to hear her voice. He desperately needed some
sweetness in his shitty day.

The phone rang several times before she
picked up.

"Hello?" The word was breathy, yet strange.
She sounded distracted and not like herself.

"Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"What?" she asked as though it were an
afterthought. "Oh, no. I've just had a busy day. I can't seem to
get out the door."

She accented her statement with a quick
laugh, but it wasn't the sort of chuckle he usually associated with
Rebecca. Her laughs were always carefree and airy. This one was
strained and short. Put on, almost.

Come up with a reason you called so she
doesn't think you're psycho
.

"I was just calling to let you know we
started the rebuild on your father's car."

That was lame, asshole
.

"Oh, good," Rebecca responded as though she
wasn't paying any attention.

He didn't blame her.

He cleared his throat and tried to regain
control of the conversation. "Are there any last minute changes you
need to make?"

She was silent for a moment and some
background noise came through. Shuffling papers maybe. "What was
your question again?"

"Is something wrong?" he asked her.

"What do you mean?" she asked with a strained
laugh. "Everything's fine."

The woman was a terrible liar. Always had
been, especially to him. But R.J. accepted the statement even if he
didn't believe her. Rebecca was not what one would consider an open
book.

"All right. Looks like we're coming slightly
ahead of schedule on the car. You can come by and see it anytime."
That way I could see you too
.

"I trust you to do a good job. I don't need
to come see it."

A wise idea. So why did that leave him
deflated? "Okay."

Her heavy sigh came through the line. "I
gotta go."

"Don't work too hard, Rebecca," he told her.
Sometimes he wondered how she had time for herself. She deserved
some pampering.

"Thanks," she responded in a low voice.

She hung up and R.J. stared at the phone
before setting it on the desk. Rebecca was perpetually upbeat
person who rarely let anything get to her. The defeat in her voice
was uncharacteristic of her and left him wondering what had
happened. It had to have been something profound to have that much
of an impact on her. Damn his protective side for wanting to
strangle whoever had taken the laughter out of her voice.

And damn the person for making him want to
commit violence.

He ought to bring her something or… do
something. Hell, he didn't know what. One of his many faults was
wanting to fix everything. Something was wrong with Rebecca and
R.J. felt the uncontrollable urge to make it better.

Especially since she was so much more
beautiful when she smiled.

Rebecca wanted to
crawl into a dark hole and die.

She wanted to pound on Dr. Gross's door and
demand to know why he couldn't have stayed a straight arrow.

She wanted to bash Agent Reinhold's knee caps
in for taking her license away.

Without her work, what did she have?

Helplessness like she'd never experienced
before washed over her and hovered like a black cloud. It followed
her as she left the practice and clung as she drove home.

Home, where her bed waited and she could
crawl under the covers and not think about anything.

But going home didn't appeal to her. Her
parents where there, waiting to talk to her about things like
termites and her biological-flipping-clock.

It was a good thing she didn't have kids. How
could she support them now that she was unemployed?

As much as she loved her mother, and often
sought her council, Rebecca didn't want to talk to her about this.
Patsy had called about six times today asking Rebecca the most
mundane questions.

She was doing a load of clothes and wanted to
know if Rebecca would like her to throw in some of her clothes for
her.

Then she'd wanted to know if Rebecca was
going to be there for dinner. And, just as she'd walked out of the
office, Patsy had called again to let her knew there was a
suspicious stain on the living room ceiling.

"It looks like a water stain," her mother had
warned.

Well, wasn't that just the greatest thing
ever?

Unemployed
and
a leaky roof.

She was really on a roll.

Never in her life had she felt so out of
control. And Rebecca lived and breathed control. However, it had
all been taken away before she'd even realized what had happened.
All afternoon, she'd bounced back and forth between red hot anger
and unbelievable despair.

Normally she was pretty even-keeled. Current
events made her feel not like herself.

As she cruised through town, Rebecca racked
her brain for a solution, even a temporary one. But what?

Perhaps she could change her identity and
move across the country.

Going into work, knowing the clock was
ticking, made her sick to her stomach. But she'd never been one to
quit, even if she didn't hold out very much hope.

How long would she be out of work? Months?
Years? Would she ever be able to go back? More importantly, would
she be able to practice medicine with the same sterling reputation
she'd worked so hard for? Could Dr. Gross single-handedly toss out
everything she'd killed herself for? The sleepless nights of being
on call. The endless hours of studying. Making rounds after
listening to hours of lectures.

It would not all be in vain, dammit!

There had to be something she could do. She
couldn't just sit back and watch her career be taken from her like
this.

She drove past her street but didn't turn.
She couldn't face her parents in this condition. Her mother would
see right through the fake smiles and put-on cheerful tone. The
woman would pepper her with questions, and Rebecca wasn't in the
mood to deal with them.

In fact, she wasn't in the mood to deal with
anyone. No one would understand. They would ask questions, for
which she didn't have the answers to. None of this made sense to
her, so how could she possibly explain it to others?

Only one person on the planet knew what she
was going through. Only one person was connected to this, and he
was the only one she wanted to be around at the moment.

How strange.

Against her better judgment and all logical
thinking, Rebecca cruised through her neighborhood until she came
to the other side where it dumped onto a side street that
ultimately ended on Main Street. Rebecca took a right on the main
drag and drove for several minutes to the newer part of town. Two
small strip centers gave way to an apartment complex. She took a
right past the apartments and drove down the four lane road,
cruised through a green light and eventually came to R.J.'s
neighborhood.

It was a newer development surrounded by
nothing. Not big, stately homes like the complex R.J.'s oldest
step-brother, Noah, lived in. These were smaller and modeled after
sixties, ranch-style homes. She'd always loved this neighborhood
but the price tags were beyond her reach.

Everyone thought doctors made shitloads of
money. Yeah, those were the guys in their fifties and head of their
departments. In the meantime, Rebecca was too busy paying off her
student loans.

She drove to R.J.'s house without any real
thought of which way to go. Funny how she knew this route like the
back of her hand, even though she'd spent so many years telling
herself to stay the hell away.

His house came into view and she pulled along
the curb just as R.J. came out the front door. She stepped out of
the car and her stomach dipped just at the sight of him. Faded
jeans and a white t-shirt were nothing spectacular, but on R.J. it
was a dangerous thing. Dangerously sexy that made her skin itch and
her heart take a nosedive to her stomach.

She squashed her reaction to him because the
last thing she needed was to add lust to what she was already
feeling.

He came to a stop next to his car, holding
some kind of drink in one hand and a baseball glove in the
other.

R.J. played baseball?

Rebecca didn't say anything as she walked
closer to him. But really, what was there to say? They'd never been
good at conversing anyway. Sexual tension had a way of muddling the
conversational waters. Perhaps it was time that she accepted her
fate as such. She and R.J. would never be pals who sat around and
shot the breeze. They fit into some other category she'd yet to
label.

R.J. braced a muscled forearm on the roof of
the car, and watched her. She stopped a few feet from him and tried
not to notice how the denim of his jeans cupped that magnificent
package to knee-weakening perfection.

She licked her lips. "I had a really shitty
day," she blurted out.

One corner of his mouth kicked up and his
gaze lowered down her body. A second later, he opened the driver's
side door.

"Hop in," he stated.

She shouldn't be doing this. Getting in the
car and being alone with R.J. Devlin was complete and utter
madness.

On the other hand, Rebecca hardly had a
choice in the matter. Her feet moved across the concrete, taking
her to the passenger door. Even though the logical side of her
brain screamed at her not to, she pulled the handle, opened the
door and lowered herself to the seat. The loud clunk of the door
closing sounded like a vault door trapping her in. As though there
was no going back. As though getting in the car was finally
crossing that line she had no business crossing.

The classic car roared to life when R.J.
turned the ignition over. He tossed the glove in the backseat and
settled the bottle in the drink holder. His big, strong hand
gripped the gearshift as he maneuvered the car down the driveway
and through the neighborhood.

She should demand that he stop. She should
make him pull over so she could get out and run the opposite
direction.

But what she should do and what she wanted to
do were two different things. And, dammit, Rebecca was tired of
doing what she
should
do. For once she was going to do what
she wanted to do and damn the consequences.

Because there would no doubt be many.

Neither of them spoke as R.J. drove through
town, working the gearshift with an expertise of someone who was
born to handle powerful cars. His right hand gripped stick with
just the right amount of confidence and pressure, moving it back
and forth without any real thought. The muscles of his left thigh
flexed when he pressed down on the clutch at just the right
time.

Rebecca had tried driving a stick-shift once,
but gave up at that first awful grinding sound. R.J. had probably
mastered it the first time because he was that talented and always
excelled at anything involving a motor.

They came to a red light just before the
interstate and R.J. used the break to hand her the drink. She eyed
it for a moment before accepting it from him.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Root beer," he answered.

Not her favorite, but it was cold and that
was all that mattered. She took a sip and lowered the bottle. "Got
any pumpkin beer in here?"

He accepted the bottle from her. "What the
hell kind of girly shit is that?"

"Girly shit," she answered with a smile.
"It's good stuff."

He snorted and muttered, "Says you," just
before chugging half the bottle.

"You should step outside your comfort zone
every once in a while." She grinned at being able to throw his own
words back at him.

The look he tossed her could have scorched
the clothes off her back. "Why do you think you're here?"

Okay, touché
.

The light turned green and R.J. drove them
onto the interstate. Where they were headed, Rebecca had no clue,
nor did she care. Just getting away, leaving her problems behind,
if only temporarily, felt so… freeing.

They drove east toward Cheyenne, but R.J.
quickly merged onto 287 North toward Casper. Her family had
traveled through this area several times when she'd been a child.
The scenery up here was breathtaking and peaceful. Aspens dotted
the hillsides, their little leaves dancing in the breeze. The winds
had grown gustier in the past hour, bringing with it dark clouds
that chased away any remaining sunlight. The sight promised a wet
evening, and perhaps a few thunderstorms.

R.J. had removed his sunglasses, giving
Rebecca the opportunity to study his profile. A sexy layer of
stubble covered his square jaw, giving him a disreputable, carefree
look. Her fingers itched to trace the edge of his chin just to feel
the roughness of those whiskers.

You can't fall in love with him
again
.

Loving R.J. was an impossible thing. She'd
learned that the hard way many years ago, but her heart didn't seem
to care. It always succumbed to him no matter how wrong she knew it
was. Nine years ago she'd mistaken his love-making for something
deeper, but he'd quickly proved it had been nothing more than
scratching an itch. She'd jumped into the situation as a naïve girl
and had learned a hard lesson:

Don't fall in love with R.J. Devlin.

Such a simple thing shouldn't have been so
hard for her to grasp.

If she kept gravitating toward him like this,
she'd be in the same position she'd been in nine years ago.