The Doctor She Always Dreamed Of. Wendy S. Marcus

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      “What would you have liked me to do with you?” he challenged.

      “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe take me to my home?” she yelled.

      “You have no memory of what happened after we got to the restaurant, do you?”

      No, not really.

      “You don’t remember me going through your bag to find your wallet to find your driver’s license?”

      Nope. “If I had seen you doing that I would have told you I don’t have a driver’s license.” She’d lived in New York City all her life and couldn’t afford to keep a car, so she’d never bothered to learn how to drive.

      “I found a few college IDs, a bunch of credit cards, and insurance cards. But you know what I didn’t find?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Anything with your current address on it.”

      Very possible.

      “So I tried your phone, hoping I could find a home number or Connie’s number.”

      She winced. “You need a security code to access it.”

      “Yes, you do.” He shifted his position so his back rested against the door. “And even though I could rouse you to ask, you weren’t giving up the code, any phone numbers, or your address. So there I sat, parked on Thirty-Eighth Street with a drunk woman fast asleep in my front seat.”

      “You could have tried harder to wake me up.”

      “Oh, I tried,” he said. “For the record, you are very cranky when your sleep is disturbed.”

      That was true.

      “So there I sat,” he repeated. “A drunk woman fast asleep in my front seat. No idea where she lived and unable to contact anyone on her phone while the minutes ticked by. I sat there for an hour, Kira. Then I tried to wake you again. You grumbled and complained in words I couldn’t understand. I asked where you lived. You refused to tell me. But you know what you did say, loud and clear?”

      Kira wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

      Too bad, because Derrick seemed intent on telling her. “You said, ‘Take me home with you. I want to go home with you.’ Over and over. So you know what? That’s exactly what I did. I brought you home with me.”

      Kira narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

      He reached into the front pocket of his slacks and pulled out his cell phone, pressed a few buttons, then held out the screen for her to watch and listen to him trying to get her home address and her refusing to answer.

      “You took a video of me?” And not a very flattering one. Yikes!

      He nodded. “You seemed like the kind of woman who’d want proof.”

      That she was. She’d glanced away from the screen but looked back in time to see and hear herself say, “I want to go home with you. Take me home with you.”

      Kira turned to face the window. “I’m never drinking alcohol out in public again.”

      Derrick walked up behind her. For some strange reason she didn’t feel at all threatened by his closeness. “I didn’t go down to the city planning to bring you up here. But I’d had every intention of heading up after I met with you. Family takes care of family. You were right. So I cleared my appointment schedule and got someone to cover for me so I could help my dad this weekend. I didn’t know what else to do with you. It was getting late. My dad was depending on me to be here this morning. So I brought you with me. As soon as I spend some time with my parents and help get Mom settled for the day, I’ll take you home.”

      Kira turned to face him. “Thank you.”

      “Now let’s go down and have some breakfast, then you can meet Mom, last I checked, she was still sleeping.”

      Go down and have breakfast, as in with his father? Kira would rather starve. “Your father hates me.”

      Derrick smiled. “He doesn’t hate you. As far as he knows you’re my friend Kira who wanted to come home with me this weekend.”

      “Wanted? That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”

      “We can go downstairs and tell him the truth if you want.” Derrick headed for the door. “Your call.”

      “Wait. No.” Kira followed him. “Let’s not.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “WHERE’S YOUR FRIEND?” Dad asked when Derrick entered the kitchen.

      He looked old and worn-out in his standard at-home summer attire, a dingy white tank undershirt, his navy blue heavy-duty mechanic uniform pants cut off at the knee—because why waste money on shorts when you could cut up old pants?—and his black, steel toe work shoes with white socks.

      “She freshening up,” Derrick answered, pulling out a chair and sitting down at one of the spots Dad had set at the kitchen table. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.” Mom’s sunny yellow tablecloth with matching placemats and napkins dressed up the usually bare round wooden table. And he’d put out the floral glasses Mom saved for company—because heaven forbid her rambunctious sons should break them.

      “This is the first girl you’ve brought home since high school. It’s a big deal.”

      Kira Peniglatt was hardly a girl. She was a full grown, much too appealing woman. “She’s just a friend,” he lied. Hopefully she could remain civil through breakfast and until they left. He’d have to figure out a way to break it to his mom and dad that he wouldn’t be staying through Sunday as planned.

      Derrick eyed the offerings on the table. Fresh croissants and Danish. Butter and a jar of Mom’s homemade raspberry preserves. A fruit bowl filled with fresh peaches, plums and bananas. Dad set a casserole dish on a trivet in the center of the table. It contained scrambled eggs and bacon he’d taken from the oven where apparently he’d been keeping it hot. “Pop. You went all out. When did you have time—?”

      “I asked Mrs. Holmes to run out to the store for me this morning,” Dad said. Their neighbor of more than forty years was also Mom’s best friend. “If your mama could, she would have done it. But she can’t.” Dad turned away to put the oven mitts on the counter and grab a serving spoon.

      The sadness in his dad’s voice squeezed Derrick’s heart. His first instinct was to say something like, “She’ll be back to shopping on her own in no time.” But it was too early in her recovery to know that for sure. Derrick didn’t want to give his dad false hope.

      “Well hello, there,” Dad said, surprisingly cheerful all of a sudden.

      “Good morning, Mr. Limone,” Derrick heard Kira say.

      He stiffened. Things this morning had gone much better than he’d hoped. But how would she act toward his father? Would she keep her identity and how she’d wound up here secret?

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