The Family Business #2

  "Hello, Doctor Jarvis? This is Alex Brenton. I've got an emergency problem for you. Can you come to this address?" He spoke my address like it was a second home. "And hurry. The patient is very uncooperative and might leap off the couch at any moment. Thanks, bye." He hung up and I glared at him.

  "I don't think I'm going to be doing much leaping after your driving," I commented. Then I furrowed my brow. "How did you get behind the sticks of Phil's machine, anyway?"

  Alex sheepishly grinned and slid down onto the couch cushions. "Well, I didn't exactly stay put like you wanted."

  I narrowed my eyes. "And?"

  "And I sort of wandered over to where Phil was working."

  "And?"

  "And I asked him how hard it was to drive one of those things."

  "And?"

  "He said it wasn't hard, and said I could give it a try. The rest is-well," he stared down at my hip, "medical history," he finished.

  I shifted my weight and winced when my hip complained. "And who's this doc you called?"

  "My family's private physician. He's a little odd, even for a doctor, but he's good at what he does."

  "Quacking?" I guessed.

  Alex chuckled. "If you offer him enough money he'll suggest going for a swim in the park's pond, but he's got the integrity not to do it. But while we're on the subject, why don't we take a look at that hip?" he suggested. He scooted over to me and I squished against the arm.

  I waved off his 'helpful' hands. "How about we wait for a medical professional to suggest what we should do?" I countered.

  "I don't have any intentions toward you." I raised an eyebrow. "Right now," he added.

  "Want to see what your handiwork did to me?" I guessed. He cringed and pulled back his hands. I sighed and turned my head the other way. "Sorry. I didn't mean for that to sound that mean."

  "I guess it's something I deserve. I should know my limitations with that back room," he agreed.

  I laughed, winced when my hip bruise decided to ruin my fun, and turned to him. "I guess we're both learning your limitations. You're learning the easy way, and I'm learning the hard way." He didn't laugh. I slipped my hand into his and gave it a squeeze. "I'm fine, you're fine, and even the forklift is fine. Not much harm done."

  He snorted. "We'll let the doctor decide that." There was a knock on the door and he stood. "And speaking of doctor." He strode over to the door and opened it to reveal an older gentleman in some slacks and a simple white t-shirt. The stranger had a black bag in one hand, and a donut in the other.

  Alex stepped to the side and the man stepped inside. "Stop for a bite to eat, Doc?" Alex teased him.

  "You interrupted my afternoon snack," Doctor Jarvis replied.

  "That doesn't sound healthy for a doctor," Alex commented.

  "Yes, it's downright unhealthy." The doctor took a healthy bite out of the donut to show how much he cared and nodded over to me. "Is that the patient?"

  "Yes, but be careful. She bites," Alex warned him.

  I scowled at him. "I only bite donuts," I countered.

  The doctor popped the rest of his donut into his mouth, wiped the powder onto his shirt and strode over to me. He set the bag on the coffee table and looked me over. "Where's the ailment?" he asked me.

  I tapped my hip and winced. "Right there."

  "I'll need you to take off your pants," Doc told me.

  I frowned, glanced behind him, and noticed Alex's eager face. I sighed and nodded. "Just let me get on some shorts."

  "That will do," the doc agreed. Alex's face fell and he looked like a disappointed puppy.

  I went into my bedroom and came back in a pair of old elastic-waist shorts. The bottom of the new clothes showed off the beginning of the bruise that traveled over my hip to just above my hip bone. Doctor Jarvis pulled my shorts down enough to get a look at the bruise, and he tested the skin. I flinched, winced, whimpered, cringed, and all the other adjectives for feeling pain without running away or whacking his hand away from me.

  The doc set back my shorts and there was a frown on his face. "Nothing's broken, but it's a good bruise. You'll have to take it easy for a few weeks. No jostling around."

  I felt the color drain from my face. "What about driving a forklift?" I asked him.

  He shook his head. "Unless the forklifts they use today are equipped with sofa chairs then no."

  "That's fine, Doc. Does she need any medicine?" I whipped my head around the doctor and glared at Alex. Nothing was fine. My livelihood depending on me getting bounced around in a forklift, and since I didn't report the accident to save his hide I couldn't get any time off or compensation.

  "Just something for the pain and by the looks she's giving you I'd say she wants a knife or a chainsaw," the doctor quipped.

  "I'd appreciate if you didn't supply her with the later two," Alex pleaded.

  Doctor Jarvis chuckled and stood. "All right, but I think this young lady's resourceful enough to find what she needs," he commented. He dug around in his large black bag and pulled out a plastic bottle of pills. "These are just over the counter pain killers. If you need anything more for the pain have Alex call me up. I have a feeling he'll be here pretty often," the doctor instructed.

  I took the bottle from him and glared at Alex. "We'll see about that," I muttered.

  "On that high note, I will excuse myself before the fireworks begins," Doctor Jarvis replied. He closed his bag and Alex showed him to the door.

  "Thanks for coming, Doc," Alex told him.

  The doctor smirked. "Don't thank me yet. You haven't seen the bill." He turned to me and bowed his head. "A pleasure meeting you, miss."

  I smiled and returned the bow. "Ditto."

  The doctor left, and Alex turned to me with a smile on his face. "That turned out better than expected," he commented. He just barely ducked the plastic bottle of pills I threw at him. The container harmlessly hit the wall and fell to the floor. Mr. Smith pounced on it and started to play the bottle. Alex looked at the bottle and then me. "What was that for?"

  "For being an idiot. What am I supposed to do for a few weeks if I can't drive a forklift?" I bit back.

  "You're going to be my assistant and help me learn the back room, remember?" he replied. He strode over and sat on the other end of the couch. "If you don't help me then the upper management will find out I'm an idiot, my family will toss me out of the deal, the merger will take place, and a lot of your friends will lose their jobs."

  I crossed my arms and turned away from him. The worst part of what he said was every part of what he'd said because it was all true. This lovable, dangerous goofball was all that stood between the department store and almost-oblivion. "Don't think this gets you off the hook. The minute we fool management and your family into believing you're competent-"

  "-proving I'm competent," he interrupted.

  "-then I get to run you over with a forklift."

  He cringed, but I was surprised when he nodded. "I suppose that's fair enough, but you can only graze me."

  An evil smile slipped onto my lips and I turned to him. "Oh no. I dodged your forklift, so you have to dodge mine."

  I didn't like it when a mischievous gleam entered his alluring eyes. "I'll gladly toss myself in front of a forklift if you be my nurse and wear one of those white uniforms."

  My face fell. "Out."

  "Huh?"

  "Get out. I want to take a nap and you're not helping," I told him.

  "All right, you don't have to wear the nurse outfit."

  "Out."

  "Did you need me to carry you to your bed?" he offered.

  I pointed at the door behind him. "I need you out so I can take my nap," I insisted.

  He reluctantly stood, but planted his feet to the ground. "All right, but you have to promise to call me if you start feeling worse," he countered.

  "Out."

  "Promise me."

  "I promise nothing, now-" Alex strode over, plopped himself beside me, and grasped my hands in hi
s. He caught my attention with those beautiful eyes of his.

  "I care about you more than you'll admit to yourself, and you wouldn't be lying here if it wasn't for my stupidity. If you feel worse, please call me," he pleaded.

  "A-all right," I stuttered. At that moment I would have agreed to anything he asked me which meant it was a good thing he didn't ask me to marry him.

  Alex leaned forward and planted a chaste kiss on my lips. "That's my girl." He stood and smiled down at me. "Stay."

  I rolled my eyes. "I don't think that word means what you think it means," I quipped.

  He chuckled. "Maybe not the first time, but definitely this time." He strode to the door and glanced over his shoulder. "I'll be back to check on you later." He left, and I was left with a glow on my cheeks and wedding bells chiming in my head.

  Chapter 5

  I frowned and knocked my palm against my head. The chimes stopped but I couldn't get the glow off my cheeks. "Damn him and his stupid good lucks," I grumbled.

  I stretched out on the couch, grabbed a pillow, and started counting sheep. I was dead to the world until someone tossed a resurrection spell on me by pounding their fist on my front door. My eyes creaked open and I glared at the entrance.

  "What?" I yelled to the knocker.

  "It's me, Jamie," a voice called back.

  I groaned and pulled the blanket over my face. "I'm dead, go away."

  "Then how come you're talking to me?" she countered.

  "This is the answering machine of my soul. Please leave a message after the silence." I lay my head back down and wondered how long it'd take her to figure that out.

  It didn't take her that long. A minute later she was back to pounding on the door and my eardrums. "You're not going to end the silence, so let me in. I have food."

  My eyes shot open and my empty stomach gurgled to attention. I swung my legs over the front of the couch and winced when a sharp pain reminded me of my ordeal. The aching wasn't as bad as before, but one peak under the hood told me that bruise was going to hurt for a few days. I stood, shuffled over to the door, and swung it open.

  Jamie stood there with empty arms. I glared at her. "Where's the food?" I demanded.

  She sheepishly shrugged. "Well, I don't have food on me, but I can offer you food," she told me. I stepped back and got the door closed halfway before she grabbed the sides and slipped inside. "Besides, I wanted to know how you were feeling."

  "Like I got hit by a forklift," I replied. I shuffled back to my couch-bed and plopped down. "But you were saying something about food?"

  "Yeah, I didn't think you'd want to be cooking and cleaning up after yourself, so I thought maybe you'd want to go with me to one of the fancy pasta restaurants," she explained.

  At an invitation like that I suddenly felt like a new, and hungry, woman. "When do we go?"

  An hour later found the two of us seated across from each other in a posh restaurant. Dresses and ties were required, and I squirmed and winced in my fancy red one. It was my sole stock of high-quality high society camo wear. No one would be able to recognize me as a plebeian in that thing.

  Jamie looked across the table and tried to cover her grin with a fork full of pasta. "Problems?" she wondered.

  "Only if you count a bruised hip with a tight dress a problem," I replied. I glanced over my shoulder. Only the usual posh people with the penguin-suited waiters.

  "I might call it a small problem," she teased.

  I shoveled in a couple of forks of linguine between efforts to breathe without moving my dress and annoying my injury. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," I gasped. I'd taken the time to talk during one of my breathes.

  "You needed a night out on the town without aspiring fiances and the risk of getting into a brawl fight," Jamie insisted.

  I glanced over my shoulder again. "But I have a bad feeling about this place," I mumbled.

  "Maybe it's the noodles. They give me gas, too," Jamie suggested.

  I shook my head. "No, it's a creeping sensation in the back of my head. You know, like you get the feeling you're being watched and turn around to find the cat's staring at you."

  "I don't think they'd let a cat into this fancy a restaurant. It'd break a couple of health codes," she pointed out. She also pointed at a roll on my plate. "Are you going to eat that?"

  I rolled my eyes and pushed the plate over to her. She gobbled the food down while I glanced around the room. The suits and dresses seated around us looked normal enough. Well, as normal as people dressed that fancy always looked. I squirmed in my chair, and heard Jamie sigh. I turned to her and saw she was staring at me.

  "You want to leave?" she guessed.

  "I want to leave," I replied.

  "All right. Let me empty my bank account to pay the bill and we can go."

  Her bank account was duly emptied, and we walked out the front doors onto the dark street. More suits and dresses passed by us as we wound and looped our way to Jamie's car. She'd parked my car a couple of blocks down for lack of parking spots and the willingness to pay the meter the extortionist price to sit my car on a public road. We'd hardly gone half a block before someone walking past me from behind knocked my shoulder, and my bruised hip.

  I yelped and crashed into Jamie, who somehow managed to hold my squirming-in-agony self up. My eyes whipped over to the culprit to give them a good talking to. It was a young, beautiful, thin woman of about thirty with thin, sharp eyes that assessed me like a predator assessed a wounded prey. Her dress was a tight-fitting black thing that showed off her luscious curves that caught the eye of every man, and the scorn of every woman. She had dark hair and a smile that not even botox could tighten further.

  "I'm so sorry. Are you all right?" she asked me. Her voice was soft, calm, and confident. Everything I wasn't.

  I steadied myself and broke from Jamie's helpful arms. "I'm fine, but you should watch what you're doing," I advised her.

  Somehow her smile tightened and she bowed her head. "I will remember to do that," she promised, and then walked away.

  We walked her stroll down the sidewalk and disappear into the herd of people.

  "I bet those high heels cost more than my car," I commented.

  "More than two of your cars," Jamie teased.

  "And speaking of that old wreck, we should get to it," I told her. We reached the car without any more collisions and Jamie drove me back home. She parked the car in the parking garage and went around to the other side to help me out, but I waved her off. "I'm just fine," I assured her.

  "I don't know. I might have to buy you a cane," she teased.

  "The only thing I'd use it for is to knock you upside the head," I warned.

  She raised her hands in front of her and stepped back. "And on that note, I should go. Work and all tomorrow. You going to be coming or play sick?"

  I straightened and winced when my hip muscles were stretched. "Not sure yet. I'll see how many times I wake up screaming in the middle of the night because I rolled onto my side," I told her.

  "Fair enough. Happy dreams, unless it's about a forklift," she replied.

  "Thanks," I grumbled.

  We split up and I went upstairs to my significant other. Mr. Smith preferred the name of High Lord and Master, but I wasn't about to admit our relationship had progressed that far. I opened the door, stepped inside and my foot slipped on something on the floor. I went down hard on my wide load and felt something crumple beneath me. My hip pulsed with anger and my dress wrinkled nearly beyond repair.

  Whatever I landed on had pointy edges, and I grabbed one of them and pulled it out. The assassination device was a small envelope with my name on the back in an unknown cursive hand. I ripped open the side and pulled out a small slip of paper. It was a letter.

  "Dear Miss Trammel. Please don't fool yourself. Mr. Brenton will not be seduced by your wiles." I snorted. I had as much wiles as a rhino. "It would be best to take a long vacation until he comes to his senses. Signed, A Concerned Samaritan
." I rolled my eyes and tossed aside the envelope. Mr. Smith walked around the rear of the couch and rubbed himself against my legs. I jerked my head toward the envelope. "You see who did that?" I asked him.

  He meowed.

  "Uh-huh, you were in the litter box at the time. Likely story." I stood and brushed myself off. "Well, whoever it was doesn't want me around Alex. To tell you the truth, if he's behind the sticks of a forklift, leaving him alone would probably be healthy for me."

  Mr. Smith meowed and wandered over to the kitchen.

  I sighed and struggled to my feet. "The story of my life. Talking about my troubles to a cat when all he wants is to be fed." I glanced down at the envelope. "And I think my not-so-secret admirer might cause me more trouble if I don't listen to her." Mr. Smith yowled. "Yeah, I know who it is. Who else but his sister would be sending me love letters? Well, if she's back from Asia yet." I stooped and picked up the letter. "But I don't know if it'd be a good idea if I let the brother know what the sister is doing to his aspiring wife."

  "Meow," Mr. Smith replied.

  "Why? I think there's enough trouble between them. Besides, I don't have proof it's her. Maybe she stopped off at the Bahamas for a short vacation and hasn't gotten up here yet," I pointed out.

  I was about to get my answer in a few moments.

  Chapter 6

  I heard a knock on my door and opened it to find trouble. That is, Alex. I frowned at the stubborn, but reliable, man. He'd kept his word to look in on me later. I hid the letter behind me and glared at him.

  "What are you doing here?" I questioned him.

  He shrugged and leaned against my doorway, thereby eliminating my option of slamming the door in his face. I'd have to slam it on his shoulder now. "I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by."

  I rolled my eyes. "I doubt you have any friends living anywhere near this far downtown and I know where you live, and it isn't anywhere near here, either."

  "Maybe I got lost and followed the scent of love," he cooed.

  I sniffed the air and wrinkled my nose. "Are you drunk?"

  "No." He hiccuped and I crossed my arms over my chest. "Okay, maybe a little." I raised an eyebrow and he threw up his arms. "All right, I'm more than a little drunk. I'm a tall drunk."

  "I suppose you can't be that drunk if you're able to make puns that awful," I quipped.