Unfinished Business (7 page)

Erica gulped for air, fighting down an inexplicable panic. “I hate guns…” she tried to say. “I hate violence…I hate…blood…”

Then everything went sort of dark and murky again, then bounced back to brightness. She focused her mind on what was right on in front of her.

That really
wasn't
a chair beneath her bottom was it? She glanced down again, the room snapping back
into sharp focus as quickly as it had slid out of it.

Mark Newman sat on the chair, his cane lying on the scuffed linoleum beside him. His right leg was stretched out stiff in front of him, his left leg bent beside it…and on that leg—

“Oh my God,” she murmured in a shaky, weak voice. “I'm sitting on a Conservative's lap.”

Mark Newman's lips curled upward into the biggest, happiest, devilishly handsome grin Erica could ever remember seeing on any man.

“Safest place in the room,” he drawled in a voice gone Gomer Pyle and Jed Clampett again.

But for some reason, with her head all light and fuzzy and weird, the sing-songy drawl didn't bother her that much. She lay her head against his shoulder, felt his warmth and closed her eyes, breathing in his strength until her own returned.

“I was looking forward to gettin' the chance to talk.” The words rumbled warm in her ear. “But it's not to be. A little more unfinished business, I guess.”

“Unfinished business?” Erica asked when her head finally started to clear. She lifted her head, meeting those clear blue eyes again in query.

“Yeah,” he rumbled on, and for the first time she noticed his lips—how pink and soft and kissable…

Their eyes met and she realized he had been considering her own lips with equal attention.

But then the sound of nearing sirens filled the room. In a matter of seconds, Erica knew, the red and blue lights of a half dozen police cars would be flashing outside and the tiny storefront would be crowded with EMTs and officers.

Shaky as she was, the knowledge brought her back to herself. Erica slid quickly off the man's lap just as she saw the lights appear outside the wide front windows.

“Unfinished business,” she repeated, though she wasn't sure why. The only thing she was sure of was that, at that moment, finishing any business with this man would be by far the most dangerous of the evening's events.

“Thanks for coming,” Mark murmured, sliding into the rear of Chase's dark sedan with what felt like the last of his strength.

It was late—nearly ten. The police had taken the captured would-be robber away, gathered information from Mark, Erica, Tia and Tony, and begun their search for the one that got away. Mark had managed to keep it together while the officers did their duty and until he'd seen Erica safely bundled into her car with a patch of white gauze taped to her freshly stitched ear.

“Do you need a lift?” she'd asked him and he might have taken her up on it, had it not been for the exhaustion in her face and her voice. That and the throbbing in his knee that he knew wouldn't withstand the effort of bending to slide into that tiny car.

“I'll be fine,” he'd told her even though he knew from the way the pain spiked that he wasn't. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

The evening had drained her, too. All the “fight” had left those smoky eyes of hers as she mumbled, “Good night,” cranked up the engine and pulled off
into the night. He watched, leaning hard on the cane, trying hard to keep the weight off his bad leg. When her brake lights disappeared from view, he lifted the cane and turned, hopping on his one good leg back toward the pizzeria to wait for Chase.

“You know, we could get you a driver,” Chase muttered, pulling Mark out of his thoughts.

“She said the same thing,” Mark muttered, biting his lip. It had been a long while since he'd hurt this bad. A long, long while.

Chase's eyes found his in the rearview mirror.

“Who?”

“Erica.”

“Of course.” Chase nodded. “And she's right, too. Heck, there's still half a dozen police cars lined up out there. Any one of them could have run you home.”

“No.” Mark shook his head. “First of all, I wouldn't ask them to do that. They're law-enforcement officers, not taxi services. And second…” He let the sentence die unfinished, knowing Chase could finish it in his own mind. They both knew it wasn't good for too many people to see him in these moments of weakness. Especially not a mere two weeks before an election.

“That bad, huh?” the other man asked.

Mark nodded.

“Worse than little white pills?”

Mark nodded.

“Do we need to make a stop?”

Mark nodded once again. “Sorry, Chase.”

Chase shook his head. “No problem. I'll call ahead. Let the doc know we're coming.”

“Thanks.” Mark stretched his throbbing leg out on the leather seat, rubbing the kneecap like that might help.

It didn't.

He closed his eyes and shifted his focus toward anything that might distract him from the pain. Erica Johnson's face immediately stepped into the void, right at the moment when she'd realized she was sitting on his lap. If he hadn't been hurting so much, he might have laughed aloud just remembering the stricken expression that had crossed her face. It was almost worth the whole encounter with those hoodlums—the sudden wrenching shift of his weight as he lunged at the one with the gun and the unfortunate prolonged pressure on the damaged cartilage of his knee joint that had brought him to this moment of exquisite agony.

She was lovely, but that didn't explain the feeling that had swept over him when he'd held her in his arms. Why did his heart keep telling him that she belonged there? Why did his body react like he couldn't bear for her to leave his side ever again—even though he knew in his brain that the whole thing was absolutely preposterous? He couldn't possibly be falling for a woman so irritatingly granola, could he? He couldn't possibly be losing his head to a twenty-first-century flower child who actually believed all the conflicts in the world could be solved if everyone would just lay down their weapons and make love, not war?

Ridiculous.

Mark grimaced, rubbing his hands over his face.
I'm just tired
, he told himself.
I'm tired and hurting, and the looming election is starting to get to me. I'm tired and she's pretty and that's that. That's all there is.

“Yeah, ten minutes,” he heard Chase say, then the sound of his cell phone as the connection was severed. “Doc was on her way to the hospital, so she's going to meet us at your condo,” he said, finding Mark in the rearview mirror, concern in his eyes. “Hang in there, buddy, okay?”

 

“This is going to hurt like hell.”

Dr. Marian Salter had the bedside manner of an Old West sheriff: straight shooting, with no sugarcoating whatsoever.

“What else is new?” Mark tried to grin, offering up the dregs of his charm through gritted teeth, as though tonight might be the night she finally gave in and smiled at him. Winning the bet he and Chase had made six years ago when they'd first come to Washington and this woman had first entered their lives as Mark's physician would be some small consolation for tonight's suffering.

“You're never going to get that woman to smile,” Chase had asserted on the first of these sessions with Dr. Salter—a cortisone shot under the cover of darkness. “She plays for the ‘all girl' team, if you get my drift. She's immune to your masculine charms. Not only that, I'm pretty sure she's a Democrat.”

“Doesn't matter. She'll smile at me,” Mark had promised him, taking the woman on as a project right there on the spot. “One day. You'll see.”

But so far it was no dice, and today was no exception. The woman's expression stayed just as flat as her iron gray hair, which she always wore cut in a short, boyish style that looked just as wash-and-wear as the rest of her. Mark couldn't recall her ever wearing so much as a swipe of lipstick or a hint of perfume. Right now, he could have cared less if the woman was straight or gay, if she ever smiled at him or anyone else: She was one of the best orthopedists in the United States and happened to be on the faculty at nearby Georgetown Medical Center. She could have dressed like a peg-legged pirate for all Mark cared at that moment, as long as she did her job.

“It's full of fluid again. I'm going to have to drain
it before I can give you the cortisone shot,” she murmured, manipulating the scarred flesh around his kneecap. “I'll numb it a little first, but you're still going to have some discomfort,” she said more to the knee than to Mark. “Might help to have a distraction.”

“Consider it done!” Chase exclaimed appearing from the kitchen as if on cue, one of Dickey Joe's beers in each of his hands. “I snagged a six-pack from the office. They're even cold this time.”

Mark tried to grin, but he knew the effort was a sad imitation of the real thing. Right now, even Dickey Joe's beer couldn't tear his attention from the burning pain in his leg. “That's great,” he managed, closing his hand around the bottle. “You think of everything.” His eyes swept over the good doctor, already preparing the needles for the procedure ahead. “Doc, will you join us?”

She shook her head without looking up. “Enjoy,” she muttered. “Ready?”

Mark took a quick pull at the beer and nodded. “Fire away.”

The needle was long and thin and cut through his skin and muscle with agonizing purpose. Mark heard a long, loud shout, but it took him a moment to recognize himself as the sound's source.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit…shit…”

“Half way.” The doctor's voice was detached and calm.

Only half way?
Mark wanted to scream. She was killing him with this damn thing and talking about half way? What the—

“Done,” she said softly, and Mark realized he'd had his eyes closed only when he opened them and saw her disposing of the needle with a quick flip of her gloved hand. “That was the painkiller. We'll start re
moving the fluid next.”

“That was the painkiller?” Mark sputtered, his voice shaky even to his own ear. He rubbed his sweaty forehead with an even sweatier palm. “The cure's worse than the disease, huh, Doc?”

Nothing. Not a quiver of the lip, one way or the other. She eyed him dispassionately and said flatly, “The next two shouldn't hurt as much. Ready?”

“No,” Mark answered truthfully. He wasn't ready. He'd never be ready. For the millionth time, he swore an oath to put an end to the embedded shrapnel and the fused bones and just have the entire leg amputated mid-thigh. Then he could get one of those fake legs that little boy—Anthony, he recalled effortlessly—found so fascinating.

“He's got a real leg, Anthony. And that's much better than anything artificial,” Erica Johnson said softly in his memory. “Now stop asking that question.”

Mark sighed, took another swig of beer and glanced at Chase, who hovered near the black leather sofa that had become a makeshift emergency room, looking like he'd rather have been just about anywhere else. “Talk about something,” he told his friend. “Talk to me.”

“About what?” Chase took the seat farthest from Dr. Salter and her bag of needles and instruments and rubbed his bald spot. “The campaign?”

“No,” Mark shook his head. “I hear about that all the time. No politics. Talk about something interesting. Tell me some gossip. Something. Anything…distracting.”

“Anything?” Chase sounded dubious.

“Anything,” Mark repeated. “Anything. Just talk. Don't think I can get through this on Dickey Joe's alone.” And as if to prove the point, he took another deep swallow and frowned.

Chase hesitated, and Mark knew he was searching the extensive vault of information stored in his brain for an appropriate topic. He opened his mouth, appearing on the verge of saying something and then stopped short. Mischief dawned in his eyes and a smile curved over his face.

“Have you—?” Mark stopped him with a finger and pointed at the next needle, this one attached to a larger syringe to extract the fluid surrounding his inflamed cartilage, ready in the doctor's hand.

“Fire when ready,” he told the woman and nodded at Chase to signal simultaneous conversation.

Without an instant's pause, Dr. Salter complied, searing his flesh with the second assault. Mark gritted his teeth.
This is better? This is numb?
He thought, but aloud he hissed in Chase's direction, “Talk! Talk!”

“The topic is ‘women,'” Chase said quickly.

“Go 'head,” Mark urged, grimacing, barely hearing the words.

“You ever dated a woman of another race?”

“No,” Mark shook his head, struggling not to cry out. “Not yet.”

“Not yet? Does that mean you're planning on it?”

Not yet? Is that what I just said? This Erica woman is like a virus.
Mark shook his head again. “Nothing is imminent. I just don't rule it out.”

“Does that mean you rule it
in
?” Chase asked, with all the doggedness of the lawyer he was.

Mark rolled his eyes. “It means,” he managed, while the needle seemed to scrape against his very bones. “Life is long and the world is full of possibilities.”

“So dating Erica Johnson is a possibility for you.”

Mark swung his head in his friend's direction, a query on his face.

“Erica Johnson?” he asked. “I'm not dating Erica
Johnson.”

“Oh really?” Chase's round face broke into a beaming smile. “And what do we call dinner at Mama Tia's tonight?”

“We call it working,” Mark grunted, shaking his head. “We were just—”

“Oh come on, Mark!” Chase exclaimed, chuckling a little as though there were really something funny about Mark's reply. “You don't honestly expect anyone to believe that, do you? Not after that TV interview today!”

“Look,” Mark grumbled, forgetting about the doctor and her instruments of torture long enough to fix his friend with his most serious gaze. “I don't know where you're going with this, Chase, but—”

“There's only one place
to
go, Mark. It's pretty clear you two like each other. Even though your politics are on different planets, you definitely like each other.”

“I respect Erica—Ms. Johnson,” Mark declared, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. “And I certainly don't
dislike
her.”

“It's more than that.” Chase took a long pull of beer, grimaced and murmured, “This stuff is just nasty, Mark,” before repeating, “It's more than that. And you know it.”

And Chase had the nerve to stare at him like he'd read Mark's mind. Or even worse, like he'd read Mark's groin.

“Well,” Mark muttered, heat rising in his ears and cheeks. “I confess I had noticed a couple of moments when…I don't know. She looked at me funny. Like she might have had a crush on me or something. But that's got nothing to do with me. You know how it is with me and women, Chase,” Mark sighed. “They love me. God knows why.”

For some reason, that made his friend laugh so
hard the room vibrated with his guffaws. “I'm sorry,” he sputtered before breaking out in another fit. “I'm sorry. It's just, that's such bullshit, Mark.”

Mark swiveled on the sofa, almost jerking himself out of the doctor's grasp. “What's so funny?” he demanded. “You know what I'm talking about! Bitsi, for example. And you've seen the way the little interns in the office go all gushy when I'm around! If Erica Johnson wants to make eyes at me, then—”

“That's just it.” Chase managed to stop laughing, but he was still grinning like he might start again at any second. “I'm not talking about her, Mark. I'm talking about
you
, my friend.” He rubbed the spot on his head and continued before Mark could interrupt. “You can't stop talking about this woman, Mark. And for all your bullshit about how the women
love
you, you've never taken any of them up on it. You've had all kinds of opportunities…”—Chase shook his head—“and done nothing. Nada. Some ladies' man, you are. Own your shit, man. You're a one-woman man. For a long time, even after she died, that woman was Katharine. And now, it's Erica Johnson. I knew it from the moment you stood up in that hearing yesterday.” Another mischievous glint lit his eyes. “You want to talk about goo-goo eyes, you should take a look at your own face.”