Road to Redemption (6 page)

Jack still couldn’t believe he was in his truck driving on the Northway toward Lucas’s house. He’d had no intention of attending this little get together. But Ryan, always Ryan, had called him and somehow convinced him to go.  He had no excuse this time. He had been on-call for several weeks in a row, and this was his one weekend off. 

So here he was on a late Saturday afternoon making his way to Saratoga Lake to socialize. The one thing he hated to do. But at least it was better than meeting Ryan at a bar.

Thankfully it was a small gathering, immediate family and a few friends to celebrate Lucas’s thirty-fifth birthday that had been earlier in the week. And now he guessed to also celebrate the engagement of Lucas and Brooke, which also happened on Lucas’s birthday.

Pulling into the long driveway, he noticed a scattering of cars, mostly foreign luxury cars. A Mercedes that was Ryan’s, a Lexus SUV, which he suspected was Lucas’s mother’s and a Mini Cooper.  Cori. He wasn’t surprised, was actually expecting it.

Which was another reason he didn’t want to come tonight.  After yesterday, he realized that he wasn’t working hard enough to avoid her.  Or discourage her.

It was just too hard to avoid her completely at work.  At least he always had the patients as buffers when he did see her. And he was actually running out of excuses to get away from her when she tried talking to him outside of the exam room.

Shaking his head, he pulled his extended cab truck next to her Mini Cooper, dwarfing it even more.  Then sat there a minute to get his bearings. 

He shook his head. This was ridiculous. She was less than half his size. And here he sat, by himself, in his truck, trying to calm his nerves. He was a grown man. He had been with plenty of women in the last few years. Yet this little slip of woman was turning him inside out.

He shoved the door open with more force than necessary and made his way to the front door determined to take control of the situation.  His way.

“Jack,” Lucas called out when Jack walked down the hall to the large family room where everyone was seated. “Glad you made it. Everyone’s here now. The weather is keeping several people away tonight.”

Too late, Jack realized he would’ve had the perfect excuse to stay home tonight. Too bad he hadn’t checked the weather forecast first, he thought with regret.

He was quickly greeted by Ryan, and then Ryan’s parents Michele and Thomas.  After he pulled back from Michele’s quick hug, he noticed Brooke coming down the stairs followed by Cori. Then felt a shock to his system. He had no idea she would look like that.  He had only ever seen her in brightly colored scrubs and that cursed pink bikini.

Tonight, though, she looked like nothing he had ever seen before, nor expected to see.

She was wearing dark washed skinny jeans, a bright red sweater that hugged her tiny waist and flared slightly over her hips, with knee-high black leather boots attached to deadly looking ice pick heels.  The only thing that looked familiar was the red headband in her hair, with a tiny more discreet bow off to the side. 

Her eyes met his as she descended the stairs.  Stopping right in front of him, she looked up—because even in those heals she was still almost a foot shorter than him—and she smiled.  Her green eyes stood out even more, due to the dark liner and shimmering eye shadow. She literally took his breath away. And standing in front of him smiling like that, she knew it. 

All thoughts of taking control flew right out of his brain. He was in trouble.

But he still tried. Except his best wasn’t good enough. She was just too tempting.  Everywhere he turned, there she was.  Just like at the hospital. If he didn’t know better, some days he would swear she was following him. Yet whenever he saw her she never seemed to be aware of him. 

It was as if she magically appeared where he was. The worst of it was she always seemed to catch him looking at her.  He never meant to, but he couldn’t help it.  She would see him, and smile, and he would look away quickly, embarrassed.

But tonight it was almost impossible to stay away. Though the house was large, it was too small when everyone was hanging around the open-floor layout.  Plus, there weren’t that many people there to begin with. He knew he was going to end up having to socialize more than he liked tonight.

He was getting himself his second and last beer of the night. Since he was driving home, he would enjoy his two lonely beers and then switch to water.  Cori had walked over and poured a glass of wine, then leaned one sexy hip on the counter and turned to look at him. “Having fun?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t look like it. Is it really so hard for you?” she said teasing, her eyes dancing.

“What?” he asked confused.

She chuckled. “It looks like you are trying to solve the mysteries of the world rather than answering a simple question.  Is it really so hard for you to have fun?”

“Oh.” Gosh she was pretty, he thought. “I don’t know. I never really thought much of it.”

“Is it me?” she asked.

He frowned again. “What do you mean?”

“Is it me,” she repeated. “Do I make you nervous?”

“No.”

She laughed. “Please don’t elaborate.”

Finally, he smiled. 

“Was that so hard? Now you look like you are having fun.”

“Cori, stop embarrassing Jack,” Ryan ordered when he walked over to get himself another beer. Jack frowned when Ryan leaned in and gave Cori a brief kiss on the cheek. 

She wrapped her arm around Ryan’s waist in response. “Oh, I don’t think he embarrasses easily. Do you, Jack?”

“Not really.”
Why
couldn’t he think of more than a few words to say to her at once?

Cori leaned in and whispered loudly to Ryan, loud enough so that Jack could hear her. “I think a cat has his tongue tonight.  I’ll leave you two alone and go bug Thomas.”

“You’re staring at her,” Ryan said, taking a drag of his beer.

“Huh?” Jack asked in bewilderment.

“I said you are staring.  Got the hots for her?”

That got his attention fast. “No. Absolutely not.  She has relationship written all over her. I’m not going there. Not again.” Jack grabbed his beer and walked back into the living room before Ryan could question him further.  But he had a feeling Ryan knew he was lying.

***

Two hours later Ryan stood next to Cori and Brooke by the windows listening to them talk, then glanced over at Jack standing in the kitchen across the room.

“Look at the snow,” Cori said, pointing out over the water through the tall windows. “I probably should leave soon,” she said with a sigh of regret.

“You could stay the night. You know you’re more than welcome. There’s plenty of room,” Brooke suggested.

“Thanks, but I think I would rather go home tonight.”

Brooke frowned. “I would rather you stay than risk driving home in the snow. Especially in your car and with the way you drive.”

“What’s wrong with the way I drive?” Cori asked defensively.

“Nothing, if you were an Indy Car driver.”

Ryan decided to intervene and made a suggestion with a grin. “Why don’t you ride home with Jack? You two live close to each other. Brooke can take your car home tomorrow rather than Lucas driving her back in the morning.” Ryan hadn’t missed Jack watching Cori when she wasn’t looking and Cori doing the same.  It was about time someone gave Jack the push he needed to get out of the shell he marooned himself in. And Cori was the person to do that.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Cori said with a big grin. “Of course you should probably check with Jack before you volunteer his services.”

“Jack doesn’t care. Do you Jack?” Ryan yelled across the room. “You don’t mind giving Cori a ride home tonight, right? The roads could be pretty slick,” he pointed out, purposely putting Jack on the spot. 

“Sure,” Jack replied uneasily.

***

“Hang on, I’ve got you,” Jack said, reaching for Cori when she slipped in the snow making her way to his truck.

“Thanks. That was close,” she said, gazing up at him with a smile.

That
was
close, he thought to himself.  All he needed was to have her fall on her face in front of him.  That would be real gentlemanly.  He tightened his hand around her arm and guided her over.

When they reached his truck he opened the door for her, then watched when her heeled boot slid on the metal step guard as she attempted to pull herself up.  No choice, he had to put his hands on her a bit more.  Despite the cold, he felt a surge of heat rush to his face when he placed his hands on her hips and easily lifted her up, then turned her so she could sit down. He hoped he wasn’t actually blushing, or even worse—if she noticed it.

“Sorry you got roped into this,” Cori said twenty minutes later.

“No problem,” he replied stiffly.  Then winced at his tone of voice, he wasn’t trying to be rude, but rather was trying to block out all thoughts of his hands on her body.

A few more minutes of silence passed. The roads were pretty slippery and Jack was concentrating heavily, trying to make his way to the Northway that would take them back to Albany.   At least he had something else going on his mind besides her body.

“Talk to me,” she stated simply.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

He didn’t have an answer to that. Or at least not one she would like. He couldn’t very well say that he didn’t know what to say to her, that she made him nervous, just as she had guessed earlier.

“Please? You are making me nervous,” she confessed.

“Sorry. I’ll slow down.”

“Your driving isn’t making me nervous. It’s the silence,” she clarified.

“Huh?”

“I don’t like silence. It makes me nervous.”

“Oh.”  Keep your mind on the road, not on her, he reminded himself.

She frowned, tapped her finger on her leg. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Not much to say,” he replied, never taking his eyes off the road.

“Are you an only child?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too.” More silence. “How old are you?” she asked a moment later. He shot her a questioning a glance. “What? Men don’t normally care if you ask how old they are. Only women.”

He could feel her eyes on him, so he grudgingly answered, “Thirty-three.”

“I’m twenty-eight. In case you wanted to know,” she added with a grin.

He looked over at her in shock.

“Yeah, I know. The size deceives everyone.” She giggled. “You should have seen my friends all groan in college when I joined them for a night out.  The whole group got carded with me around.”

“College?” he asked raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I went to college. What’s so surprising about that?”

“Nothing. I thought RN was a two-year program.”

She sighed dramatically. “It is. But my parents are teachers and they wanted me to have options later in life.  At the time I wanted to do the two-year program, but they talked me into going to college instead. So I ended up with my Bachelor’s in Nursing Sciences.”

He would have to reevaluate that. Nursing school was difficult. He knew that many didn’t make it. But a Bachelor’s in Nursing Sciences was even harder. He would have never thought she would be one to take the difficult road. 

“College was a blast, so I’m glad they talked me into it,” she said, intruding on his thoughts.  That he could picture. “See, this conversation thing isn’t so hard, is it?  Now it’s your turn”

He grunted.  She had no clue how hard it was.

She grinned. Not one to give up easily, she asked another question. “So I know you and Ryan went to Duke together and that you didn’t play football. Play any other sports?”

“No.”

She snorted, and then asked, “Do you ever answer a question with more than one word?”

His lips twitched. “Sometimes.”

“I saw that!” She pointed a finger at him in the cab of the truck.  “You almost smiled.  I know you can do it, you have to want to.”

His lips twitched some more.

She laughed again. “Almost there, Jack.” He caught her looking at him when his eyes crinkled a bit, but never quite made it all the way.

A few minutes passed with only the sound of the windshield wipers on the window when he finally asked, “Why do you care if I smile?”

“I don’t know. I just do. I like helping people. That’s why I went into nursing. Even if it’s just making them smile,” she said with one of her own. “Don’t you like making people smile?”

“Never thought much about it,” he answered honestly.

“Well, I do. And I like making them laugh. Life is better that way.  Isn’t it better to be happy than sad?  To have fun doing what you need to do to get through life?” She ground her teeth, when he remained silent.

“I can’t give you want you want,” he stated suddenly.  There, it was out in the open. Maybe now he could breath a little, and she would understand.