Tina Beckett - Hot Docs On Call - New York City Nights

“I know.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “Anything could have triggered it. We’ll have to wait and see what he says when he’s a little more with it.”

“I know he’s special to you.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes. Very.”

Warm fingers cupped her chin and lifted her head. “How ‘very’ is very?”

What did he mean? “I’ve known Marcos my whole life. I’ve been at that studio since I was a kid. Marcos took over as owner when I was a teenager.”

“Is there something more to it than that?”

“More…?” She sat straight up, eyes widening. “What the hell, Clay? Do you think I would have asked you to leave the club with me if there was anything going on between me and Marcos?”

His fingers tightened to prevent her from jerking away. Instead, she glared up at him, anger pulsing at her temples. “The way he talks to you…”

“We’re friends. He’s friends with my parents.” She shook her head. “Just like your parents and mine are friends.”

“Exactly.”

She sighed, her indignation beginning to unravel at the seams. “He’s almost twenty years older than me.”

“Since when has that mattered?”

She could see his point. But her and Marcos?

It was true that she and Clay had originally met through their parents—at a Christmas party his folks had thrown years earlier. The second they’d seen each other it had all been over. And when they’d danced.

She and Marcos had never shared that same spark. Not when they first met… and not after all these years of working together. She saw him as a mentor. Someone to learn from.

“We’re friends.” She placed a little more emphasis on the words this time around.

They pulled up to the hospital, and she was the first to leap out of the cab, hurrying up the walkway while he had to stop and pay the driver for the short ride. Even so, he caught up with her before she reached the double doors of the emergency room. “Wait.”

She slowed her pace. “You can go ahead and go home. He’s my friend. I’m going to check on him.”

“He’s my friend, too.” Once they were through the doors he stopped in front of her. “It was an honest question. If we were going to go back to my place, I wanted to know the score. I don’t encroach on anyone’s territory.”

“I can’t believe you just said that. I’m no one’s territory.”

He laughed. “No. You’re not. You were always your own woman. Someone who knew exactly what she wanted out of life.”

A flash of hurt went through her heart. At one time that “want” had included Clay.

“No more than anyone else.”

There wasn’t any time to say more because one of the ER doctors met them in the hallway, nodding a greeting at them. She quickly explained why they were there. “Marcos Figuereiro. The man who came in with epilepsy.”

“Dr. Simon is back there with him right now. Exam room three, I think.”

They made their way to the cubicle and Tessa called through the closed curtain. “Drs. Camara and Matthews are here to see Marcos.”

“Come in. We’re just getting some background on him.” Randy Simon’s words came through loud and clear. A large man with a booming tone and optimistic manner, he was good with patients and family alike.

Clay drew back the curtain and motioned her in first, then followed her. Dr. Simon draped his stethoscope around his neck and glanced up at them.

“He has epilepsy?”

Marcos growled, “I am right here.”

“So you are.” Randy’s brows went up an inch, but he smiled down at the man and went back and forth with him about his diagnosis and medical history. It was like pulling teeth, though, to get anything out of the man.

But they did eventually. Dr. Simon decided to hold him overnight and check the blood levels of his meds. Marcos grumbled about it all, but Tessa got the feeling the episode had scared him as much as it had those around him. Which meant it wasn’t something that happened every day. So, yes, it was better to make sure nothing had changed or that there wasn’t something else insidious going on inside her friend’s body.

“You two might as well go home.” Marcos crossed his strong arms over his chest. “I’ll probably get the worst night’s sleep known to man, but I would rather do it in private than have someone hover over me for the next eight hours.”

“Are you sure?”

“I will call if I need something.”

Tessa managed a smile. “Hope you don’t mind if I don’t believe you.”

She reached into her purse—realizing for the first time that Clay must have retrieved it from their table at The Pied Piper, as she’d forgotten all about it until they were in the cab. But there it had been. She found a business card and wrote her cell phone number on the back of it, handing it to Dr. Simon. “Will you have someone call me if something changes?”

He glanced from her to Clay, probably wondering what they were doing out and about together. Those damned jars. She vaguely remembered seeing a pair of them in the ER, as well.

Perfect.

“I’ll give you a call,” he assured her.

Clay shook the other doctor’s hand while she leaned down to kiss Marcos’s cheek.

“You get some rest,” she said. “We have a lot more practicing to do over the next couple of weeks, and we need you strong and rested.”

He grumbled about them needing a lot more than a couple weeks, but since that was all they had…

They left, and Tessa wasn’t sure what to do. Did she hang around in the waiting room to see if there was any news? Or did she go home?

Now that the scare was over, she was wide-awake. There was no way she’d get any sleep tonight.

A vision of herself wrapped in Clay’s strong arms shimmied through her head, bringing with it the knowledge that she’d never had insomnia when they’d spent the nights together. Instead, she’d slept like a baby.

Clay, as if reading her thoughts, said, “You can’t do anything by waiting around, Tess. Randy said he’d call if something changed.” He glanced at his watch. “Besides, it’s almost eleven.”

Too late to do anything besides sleep? Yes, he was probably hinting that his better sense had put in an appearance after all and that he wanted to go home. Alone.

The least she could do was be graceful about it if that was the case, although now that Marcos’s doctor had her cell phone number she would love nothing more than to go to sleep with Clay next to her. But she wouldn’t.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

They stepped through the emergency room doors into the balmy night air. “That depends on how long you plan on staying over.”

“Staying over?” Said as if her heart had not just leaped in her chest at the idea that he might not be saying good-night quite yet after all.

His eyes narrowed. “Nothing’s changed, Tessa. And if I know you, you won’t get any sleep.” He wrapped his hand around her nape. “I still want you to come home with me. Will you?”

He was asking. Not demanding. Not assuming, as he might have when they’d been together before.

Relief washed through her. “Yes. If you’re sure.”

“Honey, I’d like nothing better than to be pinned down by you in circumstances other than standing in a roomful of men watching our every move.”

Capoeira.

She grinned, her eyes holding his as her fears over Marcos began to fade. “You just don’t like to lose in front of a bunch of people.”

“I don’t like to lose at all. But what I have in mind has two winners and zero losers. And no one around to see the outcome except for us.”

He drew her a little closer and then bent down to give her a light kiss.

Unfortunately, he didn’t move to deepen the contact, and considering they were standing outside the hospital, that was a good thing. For both of them.