“Try me then. I’m taking it to my lawyer tomorrow and I’m giving you one day to change your mind and hire me back on staff.”
“Good bye, Dr. Coarse. This is pathetic, even for you.”
She hung up, but I leaned up against a jeweler’s window and smiled as I pushed the phone into my pocket. The trap was set, the bait dangled out, and all she had to do was be herself—and take it.25Fiona“Your plan is insane. You realize that, right?”
Dean shrugged and spread his hands. “I know, but it’s the best plan I have, and it’s sort of too late already.”
I leaned back on his couch and put my feet in his lap. It was the middle of the day, and it was my first day off in a month. It felt good, lounging around with nothing to do, and although the news of his little meeting with his lawyer friend wasn’t exactly great, I still had a hard time feeling down.
For the first time in forever, I felt like I’d found something I wanted to keep.
“I’m not sure I can be a part of it.”
“It’s probably better if you’re not, but it would help.”
I laughed and kicked him in the stomach. He grunted and pretended like it hurt.
“You’re going to get killed.”
“That’s sort of the idea, you know, minus actually dying.”
“They’re going to kill you. I hope you know that.”
“Do you know where I can get a bulletproof vest?”
“Nope. No clue.”
He shrugged again, actually shrugged in the face of death. “Then I guess we’ll have to hope they’re bad shots.”
I sat up straight and looked at him for a few seconds, my anger pulsing in the back of my mind. I felt like he had given me something good, something real and right, and now he was talking about taking it back.
But I knew that wasn’t really the case. He had a plan, and he was sticking to it, whether I liked it or not. That was Dean, and even if it annoyed the crap out of me, I had to admire it too.
“All right, fine. I’ll play along.”
“Perfect.” He sucked in a breath then let it out. “So the plan is we sit around inside all day, you get naked, you let me do all the nasty things I’ve been imagining, and then I go and get in a fight.”
“And you don’t die.”
“Right, I don’t die.”
“Got it. I have one problem with that plan.”
“What’s that?” He frowned a little, tilting his head.
“I don’t want to get naked.”
“That’s a huge disappointment.”
I stood up and stretched, getting up on my toes and arching my back. I saw the way he looked at me, letting his eyes roam down my body, and I really, really liked it.
“But maybe you’ll get naked for me.”
He laughed. “I’m not that easy, you know.”
“Oh, I think you are.” I leaned down and put my hands on his knees, then kissed him. “I really, really think you are.” I moved forward and straddled him, moving my ass down against him.
We kissed for a while then, and I kept thinking about this stupid plan, about the huge risk he was taking, but I also knew why. He wanted his job back, of course, but he also wanted to protect me.
I was on the chopping block next. Maria took him down, and she’d take me down sooner or later. I might be a little harder to get rid of without a good reason, since I was a member of the nurses’ union in good standing, and they’d have my back if Maria tried to throw me out for clearly trumped-up bullshit. But regardless, she’d watch me like a hawk and find something to use against me, unless Dean acted now and got rid of her.
I didn’t love the idea of him risking his life for me, and it helped that it wasn’t entirely for my sake alone—but still, I didn’t want him to go out there and get hurt. The plan essentially relied on Maria making an aggressive move to stop him from dragging her down, even though he’d already given over his proof, this was only to speed things up.
If he was going to make a stupid mistake and get himself hurt, then I was going to get my fill of him first. So I kissed him, ground back down against him, and let him have his way with me—again and again, because that was what I needed, even if I was terrified that it might never happen again.* * *He waited until after dark before he put on comfortable clothes and shoved a bunch of blank printer paper into a backpack.
“That doesn’t look suspicious at all,” I said.
He shrugged and threw it over his shoulders. “Doesn’t have to look good. They’re not going to question it.”