“I need more than luck—I need a miracle. But I’m still not letting you go until you tell me what you’ve decided.”
Layla smiled. “Bye, Mall.”
She slowly hung up the phone then sat there quietly for a long moment before moving on with her afternoon, no closer to a decision on the situation than she’d been at nine that morning.
It wasn’t all that long ago that she’d vowed never to date a fellow physician again.
What was the saying? Once bitten, twice shy?
But she’d also gotten wiser. This time around she’d know the score going in. Sam wasn’t married—she’d checked—but she knew he was a womanizer with a capital W. So if she did go tonight…if she did give herself over to this incredible desire…she’d do so knowing there could never be anything beyond great sex.
She swallowed hard. And there was no doubt in her mind that it would be great.
Another rap at her door. “Dr. Hollister?”
She shook herself out of her reverie and grabbed the chart in front of her. “I’m coming.”
She caught herself up short, then shook her head and headed to see her next patient.
AT TEN-THIRTY that night, Sam opened the front door to his sprawling house in Hollywood Hills and heard the sound of the phone ringing. He waited for his answering machine to pick up. When it didn’t, he strode toward the closest extension and picked up the receiver, loosening his tie at the same time.
“What happened to your answering machine?” It was his sister, Heather.
“Funny, I was just asking myself the same question.” Carrying the cordless with him, he crossed the large sunken living area, then punched the button on the piece of black plastic. He had ninety-nine messages. “I think it’s full.”
“I think it’s broken.”
“A possibility.” He gave a wry smile. Leave it to ever-practical Heather to point out the obvious.
“So what makes you call so late?” He shrugged out of his suit jacket, tossed it across the steps, then headed for the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.
“Oh! Sorry. I guess I hadn’t realized it was so late. Is it really after ten already?”
“Brian working the night shift again?” Sam tried to keep his voice casual, but somehow he was never any good at it when it came to his sister’s live-in boyfriend. In the past three years they’d been together—two of them in the same house—Brian had bounced around from job to job, the latest at a national shipping warehouse where he handled stock.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he is,” Heather said, her tone telling him she wasn’t buying the casual question either. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”
Sam downed half the contents of the water bottle then ran the back of his hand across his mouth. “Good, because if it was, I’d have to hang up on you.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” He screwed the cap back on the bottle and looked at his watch. It had been a long day filled with getting-acquainted meetings with staff personnel that hadn’t been nearly as interesting as his meeting with Layla Hollister. Then he finished up with another dinner with the center director who, it appeared, was in the middle of a divorce and had nothing better to do with his time than schedule long dinner meetings with underlings who might prefer to be doing something else.
“Anyway, I was just thinking that it’s been a while, you know, since you and I had some private time together.”
Sam put the bottle on the counter and took off his tie. “I was just out for dinner with you and Brian the Sunday before last.”
Oh, happy day. Brian had spent the whole time scowling into his beer can while he’d openly belittled the medical community at large and Sam more directly, and Heather had tried to smooth everything over. For her sake, Sam hadn’t hauled off and given Brian a piece of his mind by way of a fist, but he probably would have had he stayed even five minutes longer. So he’d left as quickly as possible without looking back—which he wouldn’t want to do anyway, considering the state of that place. The tract house was little more than a shack that his sister tried her best to make into a comfortable home.
He rubbed his face. “Do you need money?”
Heather laughed. “No, I don’t need money. Thanks for asking. In fact, I’ll have you know that I just started turning a profit.”
“Making pigs?”
“Creating collectable porcelain pigs I sell on the Internet.”
“Good.” Sam massaged his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. With a great deal of assistance from him, his little sister had graduated from UCLA with honors. But after only one year in a promising public relations career, she’d met Brian and all her career ambitions had gone down the drain.
Now she was not only living with a pig, she was making them.
“No, I thought that you and I, you know, could go to our favorite place. Hang out for a while.”
Their favorite place. Just the two of them. Sam grinned. That, he could definitely do. “Sure, name the time.”
She did, three days from now, for lunch.
“Anyway, what are you doing home so early?”
“If you didn’t expect me to be home, why did you call?”
“I expected to get your answering machine.”
“You could have called my cell.”
“I never call your cell.”
“I know.” He glanced at his watch. “Interestingly enough, I have a date tonight.”
A pause. “Have, as in, it has yet to begin?”
“Uh-huh. She’s coming here after she gets off work.”
“And you talk about Brian working strange hours.”
“She’s a doc and puts in time at a free clinic.”
“Same difference.”
Sam bit his tongue to stop himself from saying it wasn’t.
“Is this serious? I mean, you never have anyone at the house.”
“I suggested a restaurant but she didn’t bite. As for the serious part, this is our first date.”
“First date…at your house. Mmm. I was going to ask her name, but I won’t, because I get the feeling her name won’t come up again anyway after tomorrow.”
“Ouch.”
“Don’t ‘ouch’ me, Sam. When are you going to stop all this dangerous playing around and get serious about someone?”
“Just as soon as I meet someone I want to get serious about. And what I’m doing is not dangerous. I have plenty of condoms.”
“You should hold stock in the company.”
“Actually, I do.”
She sighed heavily. “You know, one of these days I’m going to give up on you, big brother.”
“No you won’t.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“Because you love me.”
She laughed. “Yes, you big lug, I do.”
Shortly thereafter Sam pressed the disconnect button on the phone then stood silently in the middle of his kitchen. Heather