The sea of milling people eventually reaches a small boutique hotel three blocks away. Not time for speeches or food yet, a string quartet begins to play as soon as the wedding guests arrive. Zeth holds his hand out to me, and the night gets even weirder.
“You want to dance with me?” I ask.
“Yes.” Zeth takes hold of me and pulls me into him, breathing me in. “I want nothing more right now.” He holds me, and we dance, and in this small moment, the nightmare we’ve just been through doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does. It’s well after midnight, after the food and the speeches and lot more dancing when Zeth tells me we need to leave.
“What? We have to go? Why?”
“Because.” He kisses me lightly, his mouth lingering on mine. “The clock’s already struck twelve. That’s how most fairytales go, right? The beautiful young woman has to leave before the end of the ball?”
“No,” I say, laughing, shaking my head. “Not this one. Not this time. And this time the princess gets her Prince Charming, too, right? You said it yourself. One night only.”
He smiles. “I’ll give you more than one night, Sloane, I promise. Or at least I’m gonna work on it. But right now we do have to leave because you have to be up early in the morning.”
“I do?”
He just nods, fighting back the beginnings of a smile. We slip silently out of the wedding party, and my heart feels heavy in my chest. It would have been nice to stay and eat, to laugh and dance more, but I’m intrigued by his cryptic clue.
In the back of the car, Zeth hands me a black backpack. “Here.” It’s the backpack he had over his shoulder when he came back from Michael’s place earlier. I look at him, trying to figure out what’s inside even as I open the zip.
My heart stops beating when I see what’s inside.
Scrubs.
Blue scrubs.
“What…what’s this?” I can barely breathe.
“That’s what you normally wear to work, right?” Zeth bites back a grin as I pull the scrubs out, my mouth hanging open.
“But…how? How did you…? Oh god, you didn’t threaten anyone, did you?”
“No. Money talks, Dr. Romera. Though threats were gonna be next if that chief of medicine woman didn’t give me what I fucking wanted.”
“You bribed Chief Allison?”
He tuts. “I gave her something she wanted.”
“Which was?”
“A new MRI machine.”
“Zeth! MRI machines cost millions of dollars! There was a lot of cash in those bags, but there wasn’t a million dollars.”
“There wasn’t, no. But Charlie had a fair chunk of cash sitting in his safe, and he didn’t exactly need it anymore. And I sure as hell didn’t want any more of his money.”
God. I try to imagine the chief’s face when Zeth handed over that amount of money in cash. She’d have had to accept it as an anonymous donation. The paperwork on something like that would be a nightmare. I suddenly feel like throwing up.
“So I’m going back to work? I’m really going back? Tomorrow morning?”
Zeth checks his watch, as though my shift is about to start any moment now. “Nine am sharp. Which means, Sloane, we have just enough time to go home and spend some time together before you need to sleep.” His hands are already sliding up the silk of my dress, and I can barely believe this is happening. He fixed this for me. Doctors don’t just get to steal medical supplies and involve themselves in shootouts inside hospitals and then expect to go back to work. He made all of that disappear.
By the time Michael pulls up outside The Regency Rooms, I’m severely sexually frustrated and my hair is all over the place, and I am even more in love with this crazy, sexy man. Michael goes to park the limo, leaving Zeth and me to ride up to our floor in the elevator.
“What are you going to do all day without me if I’m back at work? You’re gonna miss me, aren’t you?” I tease.
Zeth presses me up against the side of the elevator, hands working quickly as he slides his fingers underneath the lace of my panties. I gasp as he slips two of them inside me, a devious smile on his face.
“Don’t you worry about me, Dr. Romera. I have plenty of things to keep me busy.”
“Don’t go looking for trouble,” I whisper.
He gives me that wicked smirk of his. I knew from the very beginning that smirk was going to be the ruin of me. “Always,” he says. “But you know how it is, Sloane. Trouble does seem to have a way of finding me.”
The heat of New Mexico is something I've read about but never really experienced first hand. I leave the car parked on the side of the road as I was told to, and I set off down a long stretch of dust track that stretches out into the distance. No trees. No shade. Only the road and the sun overhead, and my already parched mouth.