Page 14 of Beautiful Life
Tony sighs but takes me by surprise. He turns in the bed with me in his lap and falls back, landing on my pillows with me on top of him. Not stopping, he rolls us to our sides, sits up to flip the covers over us and flops back down. He proceeds to roll back to his side facing me and yanks me into his big, hard chest. Reaching down he pulls my leg at the back of my knee up and over his hip, stuffs my face in his neck again and holds me tight. “Sleep.”
“Tony…” I’m breathless from our new position.
“Relax.”
“But—”
“Go to sleep.”
“I don’t think I—”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks firmly.
I clamp my mouth shut.
“Tell me about your dreams, Leigh.”
After quickly contemplating my options, I mumble, “I think I’ll go back to sleep.”
He pulls back enough to kiss my forehead. “That’s what I thought. Go to sleep.”
It takes me a while to relax as my mind wanders. Like, I’m glad I’m wearing my jammie pants and a tee instead of just my panties and a tee like I usually do. It’s impossible to not think about being pressed up next to Tony. His bare chest, big and warm, his long legs tangled with mine. He feels so good I think I could even let myself forget about my nightmares and the pain I caused over the last few months. Nothing has ever felt this good.
I shouldn’t let this happen. I’ve got to put a stop to this tomorrow. I’m going to let myself be weak for one more night—let myself have Tony like this for the few hours remaining before the sun comes up. I can’t kid myself, I’ll still be weak tomorrow, but I can’t let myself be stupid any longer. Being weak and stupid is worse than just being weak. Tomorrow is Monday. Gabby and Jude will be back in the morning and Tony can go home. It doesn’t matter how much I want him, how good he makes me feel, the Tony Torture has to end tomorrow.
For now, I press closer, seep into him, and try to memorize every single caress he’s given me. And I pray I’ll never forget.
*****
“When are your interviews?”
I look up at Gabby as I’m making lunch at the island in her huge kitchen.
It’s Monday and Gabby’s standing in the midst of boxes and storage containers in the process of decorating her home for Christmas. Gabby doesn’t do anything small and by that, I mean she does everything off the charts. She and Jude flew home early this morning from Colorado. Jude has his pilot’s license and they borrow a friend’s plane when the weather is clear to quicken the trip. I think Jude knew the Christmas decorating was about to commence because he blew through here with their bags at the speed of light and turned to kiss Gabby goodbye to go to work.
That’s when Gabby wrinkled her nose up. “Can’t you carry the trees up? Just real quick. Please?”
“Sugar.” Jude looked down at her and sighed. He turned to move to the basement while calling, “Where do they go?”
Gabby gave me her grin that says she just got her way before she followed him to give instructions. Honestly. They’re cute together. Although I would never say that to Jude, I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who would appreciate being referred to as cute. I’m really happy for them. They both had a hard road.
Now it looks like Christmas has exploded in her great room with Gabby at the center of it all. I’m making myself a sandwich and Gabby a salad.
“I have three,” I answer. “One tomorrow, one on Thursday, and one Friday.”
“Which one do you want?”
I pull in a breath because I really want to work in my old department, ICU. I like being assigned a small number of patients and the focus ICU requires will be good for me. I won’t be able to let my mind wander to dark places. I need something else to focus on.
“Tomorrow is the ER, which I don’t want. Thursday is ICU where I worked before and Friday is with a private practice for office work. I want to go back to ICU, it pays better than the private practice job and the ER is just for backup.”
“I’m glad they have an opening in your old department.” She’s arranging garland over her mantle. “It’s all coming together, you know? Like it’s meant to be.”
I look up from my sandwich and see her standing on her stepstool looking at me with meaning. Gabby is the best friend I could ever hope for. She pulled me out of my hell-hole with Preston when I felt my weakest and most broken.
“Yeah, girlie. Like it’s all meant to be.”
She smiles carefully. “So … can I ask you something?”
