Anyone but You

Chapter 5

"Do you ever think about just dating one woman?" Alex asked Max the next night over his coffee table and their beers. "Move in with her? Commit?"

Max choked and spit out his beer. "God, no. Don't say terrible things like that to me while I'm drinking." He mopped at the beer on his black shirt. "Oh, hell, and this was a good shirt, too."

"I was just thinking it would be nice," Alex said. "You know, knowing you were coming home every night to the same woman. Comfortable."

Max stopped mopping and squinted at him. "It can't be Tricia the weeper, and Debbie's long gone, and even you're not dumb enough to move in with Deirdre.'' He shuddered at the thought.

"Dated Deirdre, did you?"

"Only once," Max said. "You wouldn't believe what she did to me at dinner."

"Sure I would," Alex said.

"You, too, huh?" Max shook his head. "I believe in safe sex, but not in the middle of the appetizer. Our waiter almost had heart failure."

"Hell," Alex said, "I almost had heart failure."

"So if it's not Deirdre, who is it?"

"Nina," Alex said.

Max raised his eyebrows. "Still Nina? You hadn't said anything for a while, so I thought you'd given up on her."

Alex shook his head. "Nope. Nina is not the kind of woman it is possible to give up on."

Max took another drink. "You've been holding out on me. I didn't even know you'd started dating her."

"I haven't." Alex leaned forward and picked up his second beer. "I'm afraid to ask her out."

Max frowned at him. "I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but if you're afraid to ask her to commit for dinner, how in the hell are you ever going to ask her to move in with you?"

Alex leaned his head back against the couch. "I'm not. At least, not right now. She'd spit on me." He stared miserably at the ceiling. "She was married to Guy Adams."

Max whistled. ''Big bucks."

Alex nodded. "Dad's got an opening in the cardiac unit."

Max stopped with his beer halfway to his mouth. "You told me you liked the ER."

Alex closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to meet Max's. "I do. But as you keep pointing out, cardiology is more money. And as Dad keeps pointing out, it's a real career."

"So's the ER," Max said.

"I know." Alex felt miserable. "I know. But I'm thinking about cardiology anyway."

"Yeah, but you're thinking about it as a way to get the money to get Nina." Max shook his head and took a drink. "Bad idea," he said when he'd swallowed. "Never plan a career around a woman."

"You're probably right," Alex said, and then the doorbell rang.

When he answered it, Charity was standing there, all wild red hair and impossibly long legs in a hot pink dress so short he thought for a minute it was a T-shirt.

"I came to ask a favor," she said, and Alex thought of all the men in the world who would love to be in his shoes, and of how much he'd love it if it was Nina in front of him in hot pink asking him for something. Anything. Preferably something that required him touching her. Lying down and touching her. Lying down naked and touching her.

"Alex?" Charity said, and he said, "Sure. Come on in."

She stepped inside the living room, and Max stood up, looking poleaxed as his eyes made the trip from her ankle-strapped heels and thigh-high black stockings to her tangled red hair tied on top of her head with what Alex thought might be another black stocking.

"This is my brother, Max," Alex said.

Max held out his hand and beamed at her. "More than happy to meet you."

Charity scowled at him. "I'm a lesbian."

Max pulled his hand back. "Did I ask?"

Alex stepped between them. "Can I get you something to drink?" he asked Charity. "Some milk? An Oreo?"

"No." Charity lost her scowl. "Listen, Norma's reading group is going to read my book next Friday." She opened her black vinyl bag, a purse large enough to stock a small country, and pulled out a thick stack of papers held together with a rubber band. "And I thought that maybe you'd read it, too, and come to the group next Friday and give us a guy's opinion of it." She smiled up at him, anxious, coaxing, and Alex thought again what a waste it was for her to be smiling at him. "Nina's coming, too," she told him, and he took the manuscript and said, "I'll be there."

Charity's smile widened. "Thank you. I appreciate it. Truly." Her smile dimmed to about five watts as she looked over his shoulder at Max. "Nice meeting you."

Max nodded. "Give my regards to the rest of the girls."

Charity closed her eyes.

"He's kidding," Alex said. "Knock it off, Max."

Charity ignored Max to turn to Alex. "I'll see you Friday then. And thank you!"

When she was gone, Alex glared at his brother. "Did you have to say that?"

Max shrugged and went back to his chair. "She started it. Boy, that is one scary woman."

Alex followed him. "She's Nina's best friend. If I become a cardiologist, we can double-date."

Max picked up his last beer. "Not in this lifetime. Remember Deirdre? Well, that one would hand you four condoms." He shuddered. "What's wrong with women these days?"

"You should know," Alex said, stretching out in his chair. "You're the gynecologist."

Nina grew more nervous for Charity as the next Friday drew closer, but when she and Charity got to Norma's, the reading group turned out to be small: Norma; Rich; Mary Theresa, a lovely young editor; Walter, a weedy plumber; Steve, a burly accountant; and Alex; all sitting relaxed on Norma's bentwood chairs in Norma's airy living room, sipping Norma's mint lemonade.

"I thought you didn't come to these," Nina whispered to him when she'd joined him after he'd patted the chair beside him.

"Charity asked me," he whispered back, and she thought, And when did you talk to Charity? and then shoved the thought out of her mind because it was unworthy and because she had more important things to think about. Like whether Charity would make it through the evening without cutting her throat.

"I told Norma not to tell them I'm the writer," she'd told Nina before they'd walked up the stairs. "I want to hear it all, no matter how bad."

"Good," Nina said, and prayed it wouldn't be bad.

It wasn't good.

First of all, they assumed it was fiction. "Much too episodic," Steve said. Steve looked a lot like a construction worker, bulky and tanned, but Norma had introduced him as "the best damn accountant in Riverbend," so Nina mentally thwapped herself for making assumptions. "Every chapter is a story on its own," Steve went on. "There's no continuity. It makes it hard to follow the story. It's a funny story, but it's easy to put the book down between chapters."

"She needs a through line," Mary Theresa agreed. "A spine to hold the story together until the end. But it's funny, really funny, so maybe the humor will carry it."

"Nope." Walter the plumber looked like an accountant. "It's funny, but it's kind of mean funny. I felt sorry for some of these guys."

Great, Nina thought. This didn't bode well for Charity. Or for Howard Press, for that matter.

"I didn't feel sorry for them," Mary Theresa said. "I've dated guys like these."

"No, you haven't." Rich stretched out his legs and sipped his lemonade. "No guy is all bad. Maybe these guys had limits, but they were human beings, too."

So it was a gender thing. Nina thought fast. Women would understand it, but men would feel defensive. Most book buyers were female, but that didn't mean Charity could afford to offend men. She was going to have to do some rethinking on her male characterization.

Rich was still talking. "I think the author sacrificed character for humor. You know, like she didn't have to make them real as long as they were funny. So they all have one thing that she focuses on and makes fun of. Like they're too anal retentive. Or they're too preoccupied with sex." He looked at Nina and smiled. "Or they're too young."

Nina's face burned, and Rich went on. "So she never sees the real man. She obsesses on this one character trait, and she never sees anything else."

Very funny, Rich. Nina stole a sideways look to see if Alex had noticed, but he seemed to be concentrating on what Rick was saying about Charity's book. Thank God.

And what Rich was saying was important. Charity was going to have to rethink her approach.

Nina, however, was not going to rethink hers about younger men.

Rich went on, dissecting Charity's male characters, and Nina watched Charity, prepared to carry her out the door if she looked as if she was going to scream.

Charity sat on the edge of her chair, frowning as she concentrated. "But won't it ruin the story if the men are nice?" she asked Rich. "Won't that make it boring?"

"No." Rich leaned forward. "Because then there will be some suspense. The way this is written now, you know each chapter is going to end in disaster. But if they're nice guys with flaws-"

"Okay, that's a problem I saw," Steve broke in. "Each chapter is a disaster bit. It gets depressing because, you know, you like Jane when you read about her. She's funny and she's sexy. You want her to be happy. And she keeps dating Godzilla. Over and over and over."

"Right," Mary Theresa said. "It's like, why is she so dumb? I wanted her to be smart. She's so funny and she's so smart about other things, why is she so dumb about these guys? There should be something about them that's attractive so you understand why she's going out with them. She's so blind."

"You're right," Alex said, and Mary Theresa smiled at him. Well, that was good, Nina thought. Mary Theresa was very pretty and a lot closer to his age. See, Rich? He's not nterested in me, anyway.

Alex was still talking to Mary Theresa. "You do expect Jane to learn something after each date. You want her to do better every time."

"Yeah, I wanted her to win in the end," Steve said. "I wanted her to get her act together and end up with some guy, a good guy. I got tired of reading about losers, and then it ends and she's alone and you know she's going to hook up with another loser. So, what's the point?"

Nina couldn't look at Charity. Steve had pretty much just summed up the overwhelming problem of the book, right there. More than that, he'd summed up the problem of Charity's entire life.

Nina leaned forward to get Steve's attention. "How about if she learns something from every relationship so at the end she's ready to start again, and you know she'll succeed this time, even though there's not a happily-ever-after chapter? Would that do it?"

"No," Mary Theresa said. "I like the idea of her learning something and things getting better, but I want to see her make it. That's the payoff. If I've suffered with her through all those dates, and I've got to tell you, you really do suffer through those dates, then I ought to get the pay-off, too. I want to see her win."

Norma stirred. "You're all right, I think," she said, looking directly at Charity, "but what bothered me the most was that Jane didn't seem emotionally involved with any of them. It seemed as though she went through all the relationships knowing they were going to fail, so she prepared herself by making wisecracks and making conditions for herself. If she lost ten pounds, the relationship would work. If she wore the right clothes, the relationship would work. She never believed any of the men could love her for herself, no matter what she looked like or what she said." Norma looked at Nina. "Or how old she was. She didn't believe in unconditional love."

Nina closed her eyes and vowed never to come back to Norma's again. At least not with Alex beside her. She didn't dare look at him. He was probably embarrassed. She sure as hell was.

Mary Theresa said, "Did I miss a chapter about a younger guy?" and Nina wanted to groan, but Charity nodded at Norma, caught up in the conversation.

"You're right," she said. "You're absolutely right. I'll fix it in the rewrite."

"Did you write this?" Mary Theresa asked her, incredulous.

Charity flushed and sat back. "Yeah. Sorry it was such a waste of your time."

Mary Theresa beamed at her. "But it wasn't. It was funny. And sexy. We didn't talk about that, but the sex scenes were terrific."

"Yeah, they were," Steve said, looking at Charity with new eyes. "Really good."

"I think it's going to be an excellent book," Norma told her. "Once you rewrite it to get some of the kinks out of it-"

"No, leave the kinks," Steve said.

"-it's going to be a terrific novel."

"Do you think so?" Charity said.

"I do," Walter said. "Do we get to see the rewrite?"

Charity's face lit up, and Nina relaxed, more relieved than she'd realized that Charity was okay with the criticism. "You'd read it again?" Charity asked them. "You really would?"

"You bet," Alex said. "It's good stuff."

"I think we deserve to see it again," Rich said. "We want to see what happens."

Nina smiled at him and thought, Thank you, Rich, I forgive you for the age crack.

Charity nodded, beaming on them all. "Yes. Thank you, I'd love to have you read the rewrite."

"That was NOT a help," Alex told Norma and Rich when Charity had dragged Nina out the door to talk about revisions, and everyone else had left. "Beating Nina up in public is not going to make her want to go out with me."

Norma patted his shoulder. "She just needs to wake up. You'll see. She just needs to be nudged a little."

Alex tried to look quelling. "I'd rather do my own nudging, Norma."

"Well, yes, but you're not," Rich said as he put the last chair back against the wall. "You're just standing there with your finger up your nose waiting for a miracle." He shook his head. "You've got to make your own miracles with women, boy."

Great. Now he was getting his technique with women critiqued. He tried to look unwounded. "Thank you, Rich. I'll try to remember that. As a matter of fact, I'm working on the problem."

"You've been working on it for three months," Rich said. "It only took me half an hour to ask Norma out." He grinned at the woman he loved. "And two weeks to spend the night."

Norma raised an eyebrow. "That was my decision, not yours," she told him before she turned back to Alex. "And it'll be Nina's decision, too. We were just pointing out to her tonight how blind she's being in not making that decision."

"Well, don't do it again," Alex said. "You keep it up, she won't even watch movies with me."

Rich rolled his eyes and took the tray of glasses out to the kitchen.

"He has a point," Norma said, and Alex gave up and went downstairs to his own apartment where nobody did postmortems on his seduction technique, no matter how much it needed them.

Charity called Sunday afternoon while Nina was cleaning the kitchen after lunch and trying not to think about Alex.

"That was something Friday night," Charity said.

"Listen, Char, don't get discouraged." Nina cradled the phone on her shoulder so she could put the milk back in the fridge with her free hand. "I looked at the book again last night, and it's not going to take that much to fix it."

"I know," Charity said. "I'm not discouraged. But I've been thinking. And I think Norma's right, about both of us."

"Us?" Nina echoed, butter in hand.

"Us," Charity said, and Nina sighed and slid the butter in the fridge before she shut the door. "We don't believe in unconditional love," Charity went on. "I keep thinking I have to be sexy and funny and sweet, and then I get mad because I'm never myself, and I figure out some flaw in the guys I'm with and use that to get out so I can be myself for a while. And then I get lonely and go out and play that dumb game again."

"Wait a minute." Nina stopped with a bowl of macaroni and cheese in her hands. "That's not true. Look at some of these guys, the ones who cheated or who had mother complexes or-"

"I know," Charity said. "I know some of them deserved to be left. But some of them didn't. Like Alex."

Nina shoved the mac and cheese bowl in the fridge and slammed the door. "How did Alex get into your book?"

"The only thing wrong with Alex is that he's ten years younger than you are," Charity said. "That's a stupid reason not to love him, Neen."

"There are a lot of other things wrong with Alex," Nina said. "He's immature and unfocused and-"

"You're making up excuses," Charity said. "The real problem is that you don't believe Alex could love you because your body is forty years old and your face has some wrinkles. Norma hit it right. You don't believe in unconditional love."

Nina swallowed. "It's not that easy."

"Just because you don't believe in yourself doesn't mean that Alex doesn't believe in you," Charity said. "And you won't even give him a chance."

"He doesn't want a chance," Nina said. "He-"

"Trust me," Charity said. "I've seen the two of you together. He wants a chance."

"Charity, you're being romantic," Nina said. "This is real life."

"Real life doesn't have to suck," Charity said. "And that's how I'm going to rewrite this book. I feel good about the book, Neen. I'm excited about this. And I believe things will work out for us if we just believe in ourselves."

"Good." Nina closed her eyes and wished she believed that, too. "I'm glad, Char. I can't wait to read the rewrite."

"That's what I'm working on now," Charity said. "I just wanted to let you know that I was okay. And that I think you should give Alex a chance.''

"Goodbye, Charity," Nina said, and Charity sighed and hung up.

Give Alex a chance. Alex had had plenty of chances and he hadn't taken them. All right, she hadn't been exactly welcoming, but he'd had his chances.

He just hadn't wanted them.

Nina got a glass out of the cupboard and jerked the refrigerator door open to get some ice. The door stuck, and she jerked again, annoyed and frustrated over more than the door, and then it opened at the same time the Crock-Pot fell off the top of the fridge and onto the glass in her hand, breaking it neatly into four jagged pieces before it crashed onto the floor, the glass lid smashing in a million pieces at her feet.

Nina stared at her hand, nonplussed, still holding the largest bottom piece of the glass. Her hand hurt, but there were no marks on it. How had she managed to drop a Crock-Pot on a glass and not cut herself? She shut the door and moved slowly to the counter, crunching glass underfoot, to put the rest of the glass down. She swept the glass up one-handed, moving it into a corner and dropping a towel over it so that Fred couldn't wander into it accidentally. Then she flexed her hand, and a thin red line appeared, running down the side of her thumb and into her palm.

She'd cut herself, after all. It couldn't be too bad, though; it was barely bleeding. Just that thin red line. Even as she had the thought, blood began to seep from under the cut, and she realized that it wasn't a cut as much as a slice, and that it was deep, and that there was going to be a lot more blood. She moved to the sink as her palm turned red and watched in stunned disbelief as the blood began to ooze from her hand, slow, but steadier than she believed possible.

Blotting it with a towel didn't help. Pressure made it bleed faster. There weren't enough Band-Aids in the world to help this cut. Still too stunned to think, Nina looked in the sink and saw red splashed everywhere. She was going to have to get help.

She grabbed a clean blue-checked dish towel and wrapped it around her aching hand. "You stay here," she said to Fred, and grabbed her keys and headed downstairs to see Alex.

She knocked twice, but there was no answer, and she realized he was on duty. At the hospital. Two blocks away. The towel was stained red now, and her hand ached harder, and she pressed it into her stomach, hoping the pressure would slow the bleeding until she figured out what to do. Call 911 and say what? "I cut my hand?" Not for 911. That was for emergencies. Heart attacks. Car accidents.

All she had was a cut on her hand. The hospital was only two blocks away.

Pulling her scattered thoughts together, Nina headed for the stairs.

Later, Nina couldn't remember much of the walk except the ache and the throbbing and the dizziness mixed in with how pretty Riverbend was in the twilight. If she had to bleed to death, at least it would be on a nice evening. But once she was at Riverbend General's ER, elbowing her way in the door, trying not to get blood on everything she touched, the calm evening turned into a madhouse filled with more people than she'd ever seen in her life, all talking at once. She found her way to the admitting desk and leaned against the counter, keeping her hand low and tight to her stomach so she didn't get blood on anything, hoping the pressure would ease the sharp ache that was turning into pain, a little overwhelmed and a lot woozy and very close to throwing up.

"I cut myself,'' she told the weedy little desk clerk when he asked what she needed. She meant to show him her hand, but she would have had to raise it above the counter to do that, and it seemed like a bad idea.

"Do you have insurance?" he asked.

Nina blinked. "I don't even have my purse." She bit her lip. "I know a doctor here. Alex Moore. He can vouch for me."

The desk clerk sniffed. "We'll see. Wait here. I'll get a nurse." He marched off, and a minute later a little dark nurse came down the hall and stopped to stare at Nina's stomach.

"What happened?" she asked, gently pulling Nina's throbbing hand away from her T-shirt.

"I cut my hand," Nina said.

"Not your stomach?" the nurse said, still supporting Nina's hand, and Nina looked down and saw that her T-shirt was soaked with blood.

"No," she said. "Just my hand."

"Don't move," the nurse said, and grabbed a wheelchair. "Sit."

"I can walk," Nina protested. "I just need a few stitches."

"Humor me," the nurse said, and Nina collapsed into the chair, suddenly grateful.

Her head was swimming a little, and her hand hurt, and when the nurse unwrapped the towel, it hurt more.

"It'll be okay," the nurse told her. "It's deep and it hurts, but you'll be fine."

"Oh, good," Nina said, and sat dazed while the nurse helped her put her bloody hand in a bowl of disinfectant and pulled out a tray with evil-looking things on it. Nina wanted to say, "Is this going to hurt more?" but she didn't have the energy and she didn't want to seem like a wimp. It was bad enough she'd cut herself in such a dumb way. Alex had told her over and over-Then she heard his voice in the hall. The desk clerk said, "Some woman was asking for you. Zandy has her in two," and Alex's lazy voice said, "All the women ask for me, Andrew. When will you learn?" He came through the door, somehow taller and broader in his doctor's greens, and said, "What have we got, Zan?" and then he saw her and stopped and said, "Nina!"

"I'm okay," she said, but he was beside her, his hand on her stomach, gently peeling up her T-shirt while she tried to tug it down. "It's not my stomach, it's my hand," she told him. "I just bled all over myself."

He stopped and swallowed and said, "Nice job, dummy," and the nurse looked at him oddly, which was the way she'd been looking at him ever since he'd said, "Nina!"

He turned to the nurse and said, "Let me see it, Zan," and she stepped back while Alex took Nina's hand from the disinfectant. He sighed and said, "Very nice job," and sat down, pulling the tray closer to him. "Flex your fingers for me," he told her, and she did, wincing. "I know, it hurts. Can you make a fist?" She did, and he put his hand against her fingers, and she was comforted by the warmth there. Then he told her to push against his hand, and it hurt again, but she did it anyway because this Alex, this new Alex, wasn't someone anyone would say no to.

"You're all right," he told her. "No nerve injury. We can put you back together here."

Nina nodded, tired from the pain. "Oh. Good."

Alex touched her cheek. "It's almost over. Hang in there." Then Zandy handed him a syringe full of something and Nina closed her eyes. "It's going to sting like hell, babe," she heard him say, and then her hand stung with the needle prick just the way he'd said, and a few moments later, the pain eased away.

She opened her eyes, and Alex said, "You don't want to watch this," so she closed them again, and tried to ignore the tugging sensation on her hand that she was pretty sure was thread being pulled through her skin. Instead, she concentrated on the pressure of Alex's fingers on her hand and the sound of his voice and the warmth of his body close to hers.

"How'd you do it?" he asked her while he tugged at her hand.

Nina winced, knowing she was going to hear "I told you so." Well, she deserved it. "The Crock-Pot fell on a glass I was holding."

Alex let his breath out. "That's my fault."

Nina's eyes flew open. "How is that your fault?"

He kept his eyes on her hand. "I knew that damn thing was going to fall, and I didn't move it."

Nina rolled her eyes, exasperated. "I could have moved it, too, you know."

"Yeah, but you're dumb," Alex said, and she leaned forward to glare at him and caught sight of what he was doing.

What he was doing was pulling the edges of the wound back together, quietly, efficiently, almost without paying attention, she thought, until she looked up at him and realized he was intent even while he teased her. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"You're good at this," she said, and the surprise was in her voice.

He put the last suture in and sat back. "Don't sound so amazed. I have a med-school diploma and everything."

"I'm sorry," Nina said hastily. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

He turned to her and looked down at her T-shirt and closed his eyes for a moment. "You look like you've been in a knife fight," he told her. "Get rid of that, will you? Zan will give you a scrub shirt."

"Sure," Zandy said, looking surprised again.

Alex stood up. "I can't stand looking at that. You scared the hell out of me, woman. Next time you show up here, break a leg or something. The sight of all that blood on you makes me want to throw up."

"I thought doctors weren't supposed to get sick at the sight of blood," Nina said.

"That depends on whose blood they're seeing," Alex said. He opened his mouth to say more, but then there was commotion in the hall, and he and Zandy went to look, and then he was gone.

"I'll be back," Zandy told her. "Don't move out of that chair. You could still be woozy from the blood loss."

"I'm fine," Nina said, but Zandy was already gone, so Nina stood up and moved to the doorway to see what was wrong.

The girl on the gurney that an orderly was shoving down the hall made Nina look like a piker in the spilt-blood department. She was sobbing, and there were people all around her, but all Nina could see was Alex, striding along beside her, giving orders that sounded like Greek in a voice that carried without shouting, calm, focused, completely in control while people scattered to do what he'd said. The whole time, he smiled down at the injured girl, interspersing comfort with command. "You're going to be all right," he told her as the gurney went past Nina's doorway. "We've got you now. I know you're scared, but you're going to be all right."

By the time the gurney was out of Nina's sight, the girl had stopped crying, and Nina felt like starting.

She went back and sat down, trying not to cry, close to it anyway because he'd been so wonderful, first to her and then to that girl, feeling stupid because all she'd ever seen him as was a good time and a body to fantasize about. She'd been as bad as Tricia. Norma was right; she'd been blind. She might be too old for Alex, but Alex was definitely not too young for her.

Zandy came back in a few minutes later.

"Is that girl going to be all right?" Nina asked her.

"Sure." Zandy picked up Nina's hand and began to swab the bloodstains off. "She's on her way to surgery now, and they'll put her back together."

Nina swallowed. "Alex is good, isn't he?"

Zandy stopped swabbing. "He's the best. Are you okay?"

Nina nodded. "I'm a little rocky. It's been a rough night."

"I brought you a shirt." Zandy handed her a green bundle. "Alex was right about that. You'll be back to normal as soon as that T-shirt is history."

Nina looked down at the gore that covered her shirt. "Right," she said, but she knew she'd never be back to normal again.

Norma would be so pleased.