In Good Hands (11 page)

“And you think spending a night with my leather couch is going to do all that?”

Put like that, she sounded ridiculous. “Look, I started this little dance,” she said, feeling her way through her words. “I wanted to remember it all again. I had fun putting on the designer boots and makeup. I loved the negotiation with Jack, and the hot sex in the elevator was beyond fantastic. But it was a trip down memory lane for me. And now it's done.”

He touched her face, caressing her cheek before finally cupping her chin. She should have known he was about to switch tactics. Worse, she should have known from the beginning the way he would find to make her cave.

“You know, this is really bad for my blood pressure. If I leave now, I'm going to spend the rest of the night worrying about you.”

“Don't be silly—”

“I'm not being silly! Amber, I can already feel my blood vessels throbbing. That's a sure sign that my blood pressure is up dangerously high.”

Yes, it was, and she was immediately worried about him. “Look, you need to sit down.”

He stubbornly shook his head. “What I need to do is get you somewhere safe until Spike is caught.”

“Roger—”

“Amber, please. Just for tonight. So I won't stroke out on your floor.”

She sighed. He had her there. She'd seen his regular readings and knew that a stroke wasn't out of the question. This close, she could see the steady beat in his temple.

“You don't play fair,” she groused.

“Not when it's important,” he said with a cocky grin. But then he sobered. “I'd be happy to talk to you about your life choices, about all of it—the research, the living space, even the psychopath addicts. We can examine it all in minute detail. Let's just do it somewhere safe.”

But would she do the thinking she needed to? Or would they end up in couples yoga again? “I really need to think, Roger.”

“Great. Do it at my place because I'm going to pester you until you do.”

That was obviously true. So she caved. She'd go just for one night. She'd see if they actually got some serious thinking done or more hot monkey sex. And truthfully, she thought with a wry grin, would the second choice be all that bad?

“Fine,” she said. “But we're taking the fake lasagna. And you're going to meditate tonight.”

He grinned. “Not a problem.”

“That's meditation without the sex,” she snapped.

He huffed. “Spoilsport.”

She gave him a stern look that he appeared to take at face value. Silly him. She knew better than anyone just how impossible it was to resist him. But for both their sakes, she had to remain firm. They both needed to examine their lives. He needed to find out what was making his blood pressure soar
and she needed to find a better way to do her life's work. Because living on the edge of poverty just wasn't working.

“No sex,” she repeated in an undertone as she went into the bedroom to pack a bag. “Not even if I beg.”

A
MBER STEPPED INTO
Roger's apartment and half snorted, half laughed. He turned, his brows arched in question and she tried to wave it away. But he didn't let her off the hook, so she finally confessed the truth.

“I can absolutely feel that this is your apartment,” she said.

“What, because the decor suits me?” He gestured to the clean modern lines. Electronics abounded, fabrics were soft browns with a few red accents and, of course, everything was dominated by a huge desk set up in the spare bedroom. Piles of papers were spilling out of that room into the main living area. She counted four stacks of books, a haphazard stack of brochures and the like, plus a tennis racquet perched on top of an old monitor that was probably on its way to the home for unwanted electronics.

“Well, yes, it does. But that's not what I meant.” She stepped deeper into the living room and tried to take a deep breath. She couldn't. The energy of this space was frenetic, cluttered and filled with all his thinking, thinking, thinking. “There's a lot of mind here.”

He blinked. “You sound like that's a bad thing.”

She shrugged, knowing he wasn't going to flow with what
she said, but feeling compelled to explain anyway. “Thinking is great. But it's easy for it to spiral out of control. And your mind, my friend, spins and spins and spins.”

He snorted at her answer, but then sobered when he realized she wasn't teasing him. She remained silent, giving him time to work out whatever he needed to. He set down her duffle bag.

“I thought you wanted me to think. About my life and…whatever.”

She nodded. “But I wonder if there's room in your brain for more thinking. You understand that's what meditation is for, right? To empty out the thinking to allow space for better.”

He arched her brow. “Better?”

“For God.”

His face carefully blanked, and she knew he was terrified she was going to morph into an evangelist, so she rushed to reassure him.

“I'm not talking organized religion, unless that's what works for you. I'm saying there is something that is more than what our thinking can dream up. There is something beyond your mind. And unless your mind shuts up, you will never hear what else is out there.”

He shook his head as he moved into his apartment. “You are the strangest person I've ever met.”

“Because I talk about God and mind and space?”

“Because you make sense in the oddest ways.” He folded his arms and frowned at her. Not in anger. It was more like confusion. “You're a doctor, and yet you're not. You're nurturing in a way that will probably get you killed, and yet the woman that wowed me in the elevator was the furthest thing from a mother figure I've ever seen.” He took a step forward, his body crowding into hers. But she didn't shy backward. The air was too electric—too delicious—for her to run. “I can't figure you out,” he finally said.

“That's because there isn't space in your mind for me.”

“That's total bull,” he said with a laugh. “I've got plenty of thoughts about you.”

She put her hand on his chest, pushing him gently backward. She wasn't ready for another bout of high-energy sex with him. Well, her body was ready. Her body was
always
ready around him. But her mind was beginning to spin just like his, and that would end up with her like a whirling dervish. And once she got to that place, who knew what havoc she would cause?

“Let's eat, Roger. And then we'll see about the rest.”

He arched his brows, his mind going straight to the obvious. “Really?”

She laughed. “Food. Now.”

 

R
OGER CHEWED HIS
“living food lasagna” with what he thought was good grace. Amber's peal of laughter told him differently.

“You know,” he grumbled, “this doesn't taste anything like real lasagna.”

It had long strips of cucumber in place of noodles, crushed cashews for the cheese, smooshed tomatoes for the sauce and then a whole lot of other weirdness going on. All in all, it looked like lasagna only because it was layered and had some red stuff in it. And it wasn't even served hot, which made it a weird-looking salad in his book, not a favorite Italian meal.

She smiled. “Yeah, I know. The recipe calls it lasagna because of what it looks like. And because calling it zucchini strips with cashews and tomatoes doesn't sound as interesting.”

He frowned down at his plate. “This is zucchini?”

“Yup.”

“Huh. I hate zucchini. Have since I was a kid.”

“Do you hate the meal?”

He looked at her, letting his expression say it all.

“Bet you'd hate stroking out even more.”

He stabbed his fork into the damned vegetables. “There's dying and then there's living your life such that you wish you were dead.”

She laughed, and he realized that he'd eat a ton of weird lasagna-shaped salad just to hear that sound again. Gone was the lost woman who'd sat on her couch waiting for the police. In her place sat a woman who smiled at him, her expression warm with sympathy even as her eyes danced with humor.

“Look, I know this is hard,” she said, “but there is something better on the horizon.”

He glanced up. “Let me guess. Spaghetti made out of cucumbers? Hamburger from crushed bean pâté? Or better yet, cheesecake made from two kumquats and a pistachio?”

Her laughter rang deeper and longer, and he found himself smiling at the sound.

“My, that sounds interesting. You should become a chef.”

“A chef. Of food that isn't cooked.”

She nodded. “I have ten cookbooks on food that isn't actually cooked.”

He frowned. “I can't tell if you're teasing me or not.”

“Not. I'll show them to you when I get back to my loft.”

He shook his head. “That's just wrong. Flat out wrong.”

She leaned back in her seat, apparently full. He did, too, not because he was full but because he couldn't stomach more of it. She patted his hand.

“Give it three weeks. Your new taste buds will have kicked in by then.”

He blinked. “Taste buds? I get new taste buds?”

“Yup. For life. As in, you can taste the life in foods.”

He simply stared at her, his mind boggling at the thought.

“I'm not joking,” she said. “I can actually taste life in my
food. It's not that I don't like fish or bread or a good steak, though it's been years since I had red meat. But whenever I taste them now, they seem dead to me. Like eating Styrofoam. Even weird lasagna tastes great to me because it's bursting with life. I don't have any other word for it. It's alive, and it satisfies me as nothing else does.”

He looked at her, seeing that she was serious but unable to imagine what she meant. How did one taste life?

“Give it three weeks, Roger. You'll see what I mean.”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, let's examine my options here. Medically speaking, exactly how bad would a stroke be? Sure, part of my brain would die, I might start drooling onto my lap and be unable to carry on a real conversation. But on the other hand, at that point, I wouldn't really care what I was eating, right? You could feed me all the leaves you want.”

She stood up and dropped a kiss on his forehead. “If you're finished, we should really start looking at your meditation practice.”

He straightened, happily abandoning his lunch. “If it's anything like our yoga practice, then I'm game!”

She shot him a look, and he held up his hands, already knowing what she was thinking. How freaky was that? They were already close enough that he could read her thoughts?

“I was joking!” he said. “I am taking this seriously.”

She arched her brows at him and he tried to look sincere.

“I really am! Trust me, there's no way you could get me to eat that lunch unless I was taking this seriously. But between you and me, I think it's more likely that my skin will turn green before I taste life.”

She laughed. “Well, if you do, I promise to write you up in a medical journal. You'll be famous as the first green-skinned human.”

“But I'll be green.”

She shrugged. “Fame has its costs.”

So did high blood pressure, but he wasn't going to bring that up again. Instead, he ordered himself as sternly as possible to man up. After all, he was doing this for a reason, and it wasn't just to have hot sex with his new yoga instructor. He had to do something drastic. That meant salad and meditation. Even if it killed him.

Amber had already pulled two large cushions onto the floor. She sat on one and leaned her back against the front of the couch. Then she extended her legs out in front of her and let her hands drop loosely onto her thighs. He eyed her with a frown.

“You're not going to ask me to get into the lotus position, are you? I don't think my knees work that way.”

“Neither do mine,” she said. “I don't even like going crosslegged because my feet go numb.”

“So what do I do?”

She indicated the cushion beside her. “Just sit down. Get comfortable. But not so comfortable you could fall asleep.”

He nodded and got into place. Like her, his back was braced on the couch, his legs were extended before him. As meditation positions went, this was rather comfortable. In fact, he'd once spent some hours just like this, only he'd been playing a new video game at the time.

“Now what?” he asked.

And so began her lesson. It was really rather simple. She gave him a ton of different possible mantras or other tricks, but it all added up to emptying his mind and just breathing. Eventually, so the theory went, his mind would learn to be quiet and that would create space for something cool. Something divine. Or just something that would lower his blood pressure. That was the plan and he fully embraced it.

Up until the moment he fell asleep.

 

A
MBER OPENED HER EYES
when she heard Roger's low, steady snore. She couldn't help but smile. First, he looked adorable,
all rumpled and exhausted. Second, she remembered her first serious attempts at meditation. She had been so chronically exhausted, she'd fallen asleep at least half the time.

But most of all she smiled because it was Roger sitting beside her, trying to do what she asked. Sure, he had a huge incentive, but it didn't seem to matter to her heart. He listened to her, even when he didn't really believe a word she was saying. He was eating weird food that she'd taken months to warm up to. And he was the most gifted lover she'd ever had. All in all, that made him one hot package.

She pushed up to her feet. As long as he was sleeping, she could do some deeper sessions while he wasn't distracting her. And then, of course, she would have to do a little self-examination of her own. Because while Roger had been showering and she was supposedly setting up lunch, she'd used his computer to check her email.

Right at the top was a note from Jack at Mandolin. Her old boss—Bob the Boob—was retiring. Jack thought now was the perfect time to come back. She could get hired on while the committee was still searching for a replacement. After all, the Smithson name still held a lot of power at Mandolin.

And just like that, her old life was within her grasp. With just a little bit of work, she might very well step back into the life she'd left behind minus Bob the Boneheaded Boss. It was exactly what she'd been maneuvering for, especially with the trip out to Mandolin already planned for two weeks from now.

Everything was exactly how she had angled to get it. But now that it was here, she was assailed by doubts. She glanced behind her at Roger sleeping so adorably. Did she really want to leave everything in Chicago behind?