All for Me: A Rock City Romance, Book 2

Cat
An artist who always marched to the beat of her own unique drum, can’t help but fall in love with her best friend’s, straight-laced, doctor brother. They have nothing in common except a spark of attraction.

Sean
Sean knows that Cat is too young, too closely connected to his sister, too different from how he lives his life. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting her and when a freak accident puts them in the same place at the right time, will that spark catch fire?

***

Chapter 1

Sean

When I dropped by my sister Sukie’s yarn shop, Sticks and String, the last thing I expected was to have to snap into doctor mode. My motivation for stopping by was to ‘check up’ on things in Sukie’s absence while she was on her honeymoon with my lifelong best friend, Eamon. The shop was in great hands because Sukie left her best friend, Cat, in charge. Really, I was just stopping by to check out Cat. Chat her up a bit. Flirt, if I was honest. Tempt myself with something I shouldn’t be doing and someone I shouldn’t want, but seem powerless to resist. Instead, her actual hand became the focus of my attention.

I opened the door, the doorbells jingled. Cat looked up from the box she was opening with a box cutter and sliced her palm open, all in one swift movement. Cat looked down at the blood blooming on her hand and dropped like a rock to the floor. 

Shit. I sprinted across the store and knelt beside where Cat, sprawled on the polished concrete. I grabbed the closest clean cloth I could find, a t-shirt from the box Cat was opening, and wrapped it around her hand. Sukie wouldn’t mind the loss of a store t-shirt. My instincts, honed from years of training, took over. I applied pressure on the wound with one hand while I ran my other hand along her body, looking for any other injuries. I didn’t think she was hurt anywhere else; she seemed to go down in slow motion, but I needed to check to make sure. She might have a goose egg on the back of her head, but everything seemed to be in order besides the gaping cut on her palm.

I needed to move her into a more comfortable position. After wrapping a second t-shirt around her hand, I scooped her into my arms. She wasn’t big, not compared to me, but she did have some curves on her. I winced, not because she was heavy but because those curves felt amazing pressed against my body. How often had I fantasized about scooping her up in my arms and carrying her somewhere where we could get more comfortable? Countless times since I met her. Countless. Unconsciousness and injured weren’t part of the fantasy.

I carefully settled her on one of the couches in the middle of the store. I sat on the coffee table before it and laid her arm across my lap. I took a peek under the t-shirt to see the extent of the damage. The cut was deep, and long, and went through the center of her palm, not a place that was easy to keep immobile during the healing process. Stitches were going to be necessary.

“Cat…” I tried to rouse her. When she failed to respond immediately, I stroked the hair back from her face. In the year or so that I knew her, Cat’s hair color changed often; everything from platinum blond to pink, blue, and now black. Black suited her the best, though. The inky black starkly contrasted her pale skin, and the Betty Paige bangs framed her face in an appealing way.

Cat’s big, dark doe eyes blinked open behind her funky horn-rimmed glasses. Her surprise at seeing my face so close to hers was apparent. She looked down at the couch and then over to the box where she'd been working before she went down.

“What….?”

“You had an accident,” I supplied. 

“What kind of accident?”

“Should I fill in the blanks?” I offered.

“Please.”

“I walked in the door.”

Cat nodded, remembering. “I was opening the box of t-shirts with a box cutter.”

“You looked up at the sound of the door and managed to drag the blade across your palm.”

“I saw the blood and then fainted?”

“That would be the case,” I confirmed.

“Ahhh.” Cat didn't sound surprised that she’d fainted.

“You’ve fainted before?” I asked.

It was Cat’s turn to nod. “Blood and needles.”

I snorted. That was hard to believe. I pointed to her arms, where a spray of exotic-looking flowers and a series of birds peeked out from under the cuff of her t-shirt, reaching down to her elbow. “Needles too? But you’re covered in tattoos!”

Cat shrugged as much as she could in her prone state. “I don’t look until the piece is finished.”

“How do you do with stitches?”

“Stitches?” Her voice cracked.

“You’re going to need probably at least twenty to close up the wound on your hand.”

“Twenty stitches?”

“That’s my professional estimate.” I looked around the shop. It was almost closing time on a Saturday night, and it was dead for all intents and purposes. Not a single customer witnessed the incident.

“Do you think you’re ready to sit up?” I asked.

Cat looked up at me with her big brown eyes. Her head nodded ever so slightly in what I considered a tentative but affirmative response. 

“Here, I’ll help you.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and slowly helped her sit. I could smell her - a hint of jasmine. Not too strong, just a touch, just enough, in my opinion. It made me think of the last time I held her this close, close enough to catch the slight scent, just a week and a half ago at Sukie and Eamon’s wedding. I took a deep breath to calm myself; a hard-on would not help this situation.

I spotted the metal water bottle she never went anywhere without on the counter and left her for a second to fetch it. “Take a drink.”

I held the bottle to her lush mouth, watched as she carefully wrapped that full lower lip around the opening, and took a drink. A drop of moisture glistened on her bottom lip. I wiped it away with my thumb. It was a compromise; I wanted to suck it away with my mouth. 

Popping wood in front of a patient wasn’t usually a concern. But then again, Cat was never my patient before. Cat, the woman I’d been having inappropriate thoughts about for weeks. Okay, truthfully- it was more than weeks, more like the whole time I’d known her, but those thoughts ramped up exponentially in the weeks around the wedding.

I shook my head as the memories came flooding back to me. The wedding. That night, she was temptation wrapped in green satin, hair piled on top of her head in some fancy way, bare arms, showing off the tattoos that stretched from one elbow to the other, and her breasts in that strapless dress. Days later, my mouth still watered.

At the reception, I did all the necessary dances with the grand dames of my family, but that night, whenever the chance arose, I sought Cat’s eye across the room, and we would meet in the middle of the dance floor. She fit snuggly, right under my chin. 

It is such an intimate act, dancing. Holding another body as close as you might if you were making love, the whispered conversations in each other’s ear that only the two of you can hear. 

I held her lower around the waist than I should have; her hand rested on my chest in a more familiar way than we were with each other off the dance floor. But still, at the end of the night, we both held back, allowing ourselves to be wrapped up in the business of the party so Sukie and Eamon were free to leave. As my mother engaged me in lengthy, redundant, and puzzling conversations about who would drive which guests to the airport the next day, something we’d already outlined via email, I turned to see Cat getting into a cab. Not the way I hoped the evening would end.

Was it a missed opportunity or saved by the hackney? I couldn't be sure. But I still seemed to seek her out whenever I could, so I dropped by the shop tonight for no good reason.

The drink of water helped her relax a bit more, even if watching her mouth work the bottle had the opposite effect on me. The color was starting to return to her face, her cute, cherubic face. I knew she was younger than I was, maybe almost by ten years. She just graduated from college after all, which I guessed would put her around twenty-two with her creamy white skin, short bangs, and horn-rimmed glasses; she could pass for a few years younger than her chronological age, and it made me feel like a dirty old man. The age difference was just one of the many items on the long mental list I kept regarding why Cat wouldn’t be appropriate to date.

“Next stop, the ER.” I declared.

* * *

Cat

“The ER? I can’t go to an ER!” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. I leaned back against the couch, my newly regained strength seeming to leave me at the thought of a trip to the hospital. The emergency room was out of the question for several reasons.

“You need to get stitches to hold that wound together,” Sean stated matter-of-factly.

“I know, but I can’t go to the ER.” I racked my brain, trying to think of an explanation that wouldn't make me sound like a total freak. “I don’t have health insurance,” I confessed. It was accurate and an immediate concern, but how could you tell a practicing MD that the most significant reason you couldn’t go to his place of employment was that you were raised not to believe in Western medicine?

“But I helped Sukie pick a healthcare plan for you.” Sean was confused, and I couldn't blame him. I spent enough time around him to know that he wouldn't take herbs at the first sign of the sniffles.

“True, and I thank you for that, but today is the 28th of the month. The plan doesn’t take effect until the 1st.” Also, a true statement and again saved me from the embarrassing confession that I’d never seen inside a hospital and didn’t have plans to start tonight.

When my best friend and boss, Sukie O'Leary-Houlihan, proudly presented the health care plan as part of a managerial benefits package to go along with the promotion I received upon graduation from university, I thought about finding a way to rescind the offer of health insurance graciously. I knew I would never use the health insurance, which cost Sukie plenty of money. But then, I thought about a friend who’d been hit by a car while riding his bicycle. He was without health insurance, and after being put back together by a team of doctors, he was also tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I didn’t own a car, only a bicycle, and knowledge of my friend’s debts caused me to rethink the situation and graciously accept Sukie’s health insurance offer, just in case. I wasn’t about to start visiting a traditional MD regularly, not when my mother was a world-renowned ND, a naturopath, who had kept me healthy for all of the last twenty-five years. And besides, my mother would be horrified if someone started shooting me up with antibiotics and senseless pharmaceuticals. But still, in this day and age, a healthcare plan that could keep me out of crippling debt in the event of a catastrophic incident wasn’t a bad idea. 

Twenty stitches did not constitute a catastrophic incident.

“Is there a free or low-cost clinic somewhere I could go?” I asked. If my parents were home, I would ask my mom for help, but they weren’t due back from their latest trip to Africa for another couple of weeks.

“I know just the place,” was Sean’s response. “Follow me.” Sean held out his hand, and I took it.

I carefully rose to my feet. Sean wrapped his arm around me to help steady me on my feet. I repressed a shiver. I didn’t want to give Sean the wrong impression that I was weak and about to fall again. This shiver was purely a physical reaction to his closeness.

“Oscar, come on, boy,” Sean prompted. Oscar, Sukie’s shop dog, sometimes mistaken for a small horse or a bear, lumbered off his perpetual perch in the store's front window.

Sean loaded Oscar in the back of his truck, stashed my bicycle inside the store for safekeeping, and helped me into the front seat. He reached over me to pull the seat belt across my chest, and I held my breath. He was so close. I could smell his minty shampoo. I stared at his ear and silently scolded myself to keep from licking it. I wanted to run my tongue around the rim of his ear since the night we spent dancing in each other's arms ten days ago at Sukie and Eamon’s wedding.

After the belt clicked into place, he straightened to his full height, carefully lifted my injured hand, and placed it across my chest so that it rested in the valley between my neck and shoulder.

“I know this isn't a very comfortable position, but try and keep your hand above your heart.”

He pulled a lever, and my seat reclined a little. “Maybe that will help.”

I sighed. He was all business tonight; no chance of seduction, not that I should or could be thinking about ripping his clothes off with only one functional hand.

“You okay? Not going to pass out on me again?” Sean asked after he strapped into his seat. He looked me over to make sure.

“I’m good.”

“Okay.”

He pulled away from the curb. I watched the city lights pass. We were headed away from the artsy-University district where the shop and my apartment were. The truck was pointed toward downtown, and I was confused. Most of the clinics for the under-insured were close to the University, but I wasn’t as knowledgeable about such things as Sean probably was, given his line of work. My preferred clinic was thirty minutes by bike outside the city, in the geodesic dome my parents built by hand to be their state-side residence.

“This isn’t a clinic.” Even from the reclined position in the front seat of Sean’s sporty pick-up truck, I could tell the large brick building we pulled in front of was not as advertised. “It’s your building.” I’d been to his place before. Sean hosted a lovely engagement party for Sukie and Eamon after he’d recovered from the shock that his best friend and sister were madly in love and getting married after a whirlwind courtship.

“I keep some emergency supplies on hand. I should have everything we need to fix you, and I promise not to bill you. And then I can keep Oscar for the night, so you don’t have to worry about him with your beat-up hand.” This wasn’t how I envisioned spending quality time in Sean’s apartment, but hey, I would take it.