“Save it,” she said. “I should have known better.”
“Let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said. “It’s not like…like we were…”
Dating. Exclusive. Made for each other. Fucking perfect together.
“Shay!”
And she was gone. Storming upstairs.
Why was she back so goddamned early?
And how was I supposed to reveal who Gretchen was without fucking everything up?
I groaned. I’d paint the bulls-eye on my ass now. Shay would kick me to the curb, and I didn’t want her aiming too low.
“The little missus is jealous.” Gretchen leaned on the coffee table. It didn’t help that she was all fucking leg in the skin-tight cocktail dress she wore for the house-call. “I’m assuming you haven’t told her about me.”
“What’s to tell?”
Gretchen shrugged. “I’m always trying to drum up business.”
“Stick around. She’s loading a shot gun. You can stitch me up.”
She stood, tucking a blood-pressure cuff into her bag. “You’re lucky I like you, Zach. Please promise you’ll take care of yourself. No more working out for four hours a day.”
“Two.”
“Zach.”
“Three and a half.”
“You’re healing,” she said. “I know you refuse to believe it, but you aren’t one hundred percent healed yet. So use your brain and be glad it still works right.”
“I am.”
“No, you aren’t. If you had an episode that scared you bad enough to call me during my date.” She wagged the doggy-bag from the Italian restaurant. “Then you’re overdoing it.”
“The appeal is in two weeks.”
“All the more reason to rest. I already lost my brother in this war. I’m not going to lose his best friend too. Okay?”
“I hear you.”
“Go rest.”
Gretchen shouldered her purse and bag. “And, for Christ’s sake, go talk to Shay. Tell her what happened. She won’t judge you for getting injured overseas. She looks sweet…as long as she doesn’t rip your innards out first.”
“If she hasn’t yet…”
Only one way to find out. I escorted Gretchen to her car to delay coming clean to Shay. Even if she forgave Gretchen, she wasn’t going to be happy about my condition or the truth about my extended leave.
I knocked outside her bedroom.
No explosions. No gunshots. So far so good.
She didn’t answer, but I didn’t expect her to welcome me with open arms and legs. I knocked again and edged inside.
“So…you came home early…”
Nothing.
The room was empty. Bathwater hummed from behind the partially closed bathroom door. I watched as Shay shifted at her vanity, but I didn’t say anything. Just stood there like a damned idiot, without a single fucking idea of how to start my apology or explanation.
The bathroom door opened. Shay shrieked.
She hadn’t tied her silk bathrobe, and the pink graced her dark curves with a hypnotic beauty.
I stared. Who the fuck wouldn’t?
The softness caressed her full breasts, and the hint of her slit peeked between the short pleads of the robe. She wasn’t quick enough to hide from me. Even better, she missed the hem of the robe and revealed more. She screeched and turned to tie it. The pink silk barely kissed the bottom curve of her perfect ass.
“Zach!” She pulled the robe’s belt tight, either to shield her nudity or because it’d be a felony to knot it around my neck. “Knock first!”
“I did. You didn’t hear.”
“Then don’t come in!”
“Let me explain.”
“Don’t start with me.”
Shay wove her curls into a quick bun, a little too violent for the clip she jammed against her head.
“I’ve had a horrible night,” she said. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. You’re free to hump whoever you like.” Her eyes widened, dark and brimming with tears. “But my father ruined his family because he strayed bed-to-bed. Don’t you dare make me into some other woman.”
“Other woman?” Christ, she thought I was dating Gretchen? I took her hand before she escaped to her bath. “Gretchen isn’t my girlfriend.”
“I don’t need the specs on your petty officer’s latest mission.”
“She’s my doctor.”
Shay stilled. I pulled her business card from my wallet.
“Dr. Gretchen Mahoney,” I said.
“Internal Medicine?” Shay flipped the card over. Her voice softened. “Why did you have a doctor in our living room?”
Our living room.