Page 4 of Just One Night Together
“It’s not a joke, Damon.” She grasped his fingers with urgency and he paused to look up. “You’ll find her,” his mom said with quiet conviction. “You’ll find her, Damon, if you let yourself look for her, and then you won’t be alone after I’m gone.”
“You’re not going anywhere anytime soon, Mom,” Damon began, and Haley knew he was wrong. She didn’t want him to be misled. In her experience, people did better if they had time to prepare themselves for the truth. She’d checked his mom’s charts. Her leukemia wasn’t responding to treatment. If anything, it was getting worse and spreading faster.
Haley must have made some slight sound, the merest protest, but Damon heard her. He spun and his gaze locked with hers. He was even better looking than she’d expected, and he was annoyed. She saw anger flash in his dark eyes and his unblinking stare made her fully aware of her transgression without him saying a word.
She flushed, hating that she’d been caught, but not regretting what she’d learned. She took a step back when he frowned, then pivoted in the hall and leaned back against the wall of the corridor, her heart leaping. She closed her eyes and saw him again, and her heart raced.
Damon.
Not gay.
Very intense.
What would he look like when he smiled?
She’d guess that he’d be transformed, from a dark angel into an irresistible hunk. She closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath before she went back to her shift.
And those hands. What would it be like to feel them on her own skin? She’d be like butter in no time at all, warm and soft, and then...
No. She wouldnotfantasize about Mrs. Perez’s son.
At least not when he was only fifteen feet away.
Haley had to pull herself together and get back to the cardiac ward.
She stood with her eyes closed for just a moment longer. The corridor was quiet, just the low murmur of voices carrying from the nurses’ station at the far end of the hall. She could hear patients snoring and sleeping, more than one murmuring, the heating pipes creaking and the sound of traffic far below. An ambulance rolled into the ER and Haley heard the familiar sounds of activity but at a distance. There had been a siren, so the patient was alive. They’d stopped the siren once the ambulance was on hospital grounds so he or she was stable. As ever, she said a little prayer for that stranger’s well-being.
It was an old habit, one her mom had taught her, and Haley didn’t even think about it anymore. She just did it. Her mom always said there couldn’t be too many prayers for anybody. Haley imagined them like little pairs of gold wings, flying from her lips to the ears of the divine.
She heard Damon murmuring to his mom and assumed the massage had been resumed. The beeping of the monitor slowed again and Haley smiled.
He really had a gift.
Was there any way she could learn to do the same? She’d studied and taken courses but it seemed to Haley that there was an emotional component to the success of Damon’s massage, or even a mystical one. It was more than just technique. What had he meant when he told her to push it out? Had he taken on his mom’s pain to give her relief? It was an intriguing idea, but she didn’t imagine he’d be in a hurry to share more of his secrets with her.
There was something familiar about him, something Haley hadn’t noticed until he looked directly at her. Did she know him? She was pretty sure she didn’t, but the sense was hard to shake. She couldn’t put her finger on the reason and stood thinking about it, listening to the heart monitor. Conversation in the room stopped. She guessed that Mrs. Perez had fallen asleep.
Where could she have seen Damon before?
How could she have seen him and not remembered?
Haley didn’t even hear his footsteps. She wasn’t aware that he’d left his mother’s side, until his fingertip landed on her shoulder. The unexpected touch made her jump and her heart skipped again when she found Damon right beside her, that dark gaze locked upon her. She shivered right down to her toes.
Then she simmered, just a little.
“Do you always listen to other people’s conversations?” he asked, his voice low so that he wouldn’t disturb his mom’s sleep.
Haley was sure she flushed from head to toe. “I was watching, actually.”
He lifted a brow and she knew that didn’t sound much better. At close proximity, Haley felt the full weight of his attention. He was taller than her and broader than her, seemingly all muscle...
And that was when she knew where she’d seen him before. He was the guy in the billboard for that downtown fitness club, Flatiron Five Fitness.
Get hard at F5F.
So, she knew what he looked like almost naked.
Haley’s mouth went dry. Of course, all of greater New York area knew what he looked like almost naked, because those ads were everywhere, but still, she felt like she was talking to a superstar.
