Triple Shot (16 page)
Josiah relaxed his fingers from Susan’s
hips, both ashamed and gratified that he’d left marks where they dug into her
skin, and leaned over her without releasing himself to kiss her lightly on the
shoulder. There were no words in the moment he could offer her that would
convey what he truly felt. What would he say? Thank you? That was great for me,
how was it for you? Shaking his head, he slowly pulled his cock from the
deepest part of her and wrapped his arms around her waist to steady her as she
pushed herself up from the table. Brushing away the strands of hair from her
neck, he smiled as several clung relentlessly to her sweat slickened skin, while
he placed gentle kisses from her ear to her shoulder. They stood for some time
before either of them made a move. Josiah was uncertain of how long they
lingered, and quite honestly, uncaring. Standing with his jeans around his
ankles while Susan’s naked ass pressed to his once again growing cock felt more
right than anything he’d experienced in his life. With one swift motion, he
yanked up his pants and lifted her up into his arms. He made his way in the
direction that was the only logical place for her bedroom to make due on the
silent promise. If things went as he wished, this night would be filled with
much pleasure on both their parts.
Susan reached over and hit the snooze
button several times with no luck of shutting the damn thing off. The ringing
wouldn’t stop and it wasn’t until she felt a puff of air against her shoulder
followed by a husky groan that she realized several oddities, beginning with
the knowledge that she wasn’t alone in her bed. That had been quickly followed
by the realization that it was nowhere near time for her to wake up, a quick
glance at the clock that had just taken a undeserved beating revealing that it
was only three am, and the flush of her body reminding her of all the delicious
acts Josiah and her performed on each before they both succumbed to exhaustion.
The ringing continued as she fought to push away at the haze clouding her mind
and body.
“It’s the phone, not the alarm,” Josiah
whispered against her bare shoulder as he draped his arm across her bare waist.
Damn it. She was naked in bed with him.
Well, at least he hadn’t just
screwed her and left
, she thought. Waking up alone would have been much
worse than feeling that ever increasing erection pressed against her ass.
Susan snatched up her cell phone as she
pushed Josiah’s arm from her waist, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed. A
quick look at the screen, through blurred eyes, had her making quick steps to
the bathroom as she answered the phone, closing the door behind her.
“Hello,” she said with a shaky voice.
“Sue?” Only one person ever called her
that. Her father, and if he were calling this late at night, or rather this
early, it wasn’t good news.
“Dad? What’s going on? Is mom okay?” She
asked without giving pause.
“You need to come to the hospital,” his
weary voice barely a whisper over the phone.
“You mean the nursing facility?”
“No the hospital. Right away.”
“Okay, I’m on my way. Dad? Is mom okay?”
she asked again. The silence grew with the exception of his breathing and it
was in that moment that Susan realized that the prayers she never should have
prayed could possibly have come true tonight. Could it be that while she had
finally given it to the pleasures of her own life that her mother had been
fighting for hers? Guilt quickly flooded her mind and she felt ashamed that
she’d enjoyed not only a dinner with Josiah, but dessert as well. She should
have been with her parents. She shouldn’t have called and cancelled meeting him
at the nursing facility earlier, lying to him that she had to work late. “I’ll
be there as soon as I can.”
Susan hung up the phone and numbly
stumbled into the bedroom. The room was illuminated by the small lamp on her
nightstand and Josiah sat with his back to the headboard and the sheet pulled
up to his waist. Without acknowledging him, she mindlessly grabbed at her
clothes on the floor, not bothering with a fresh set and pulled a pair of clean
panties and a bra from her bureau, dressing haphazardly.
“Is everything okay?” Josiah said as he
reached for his clothes and began to dress also.
“Um, yeah, I just need to go meet
someone. Sorry to have to kick you out so early in the morning,” she said as
she snatched a pair of tan sandals from underneath her bed.
Josiah stopped her as she moved about
the room almost aimlessly. “Susan, who do you have to meet at three in the
morning?”
Susan sat on the bed, her sandals
slipping from the grip she had on them. “I can’t, Josiah.”
“You can’t what? Go see this person? Are
you in some kind of trouble? If so, Susan I’ll go with you.”
“No. I can’t talk to you about this. I’m
sorry, but I need to leave now,” she said as she pushed her feet into her
sandals and sluggishly raised herself from the bed tucking her phone into her
back pocket.
Josiah finished buttoning up his jeans
as he followed Susan down the hall to the living room to retrieve his shirt and
boots along with his other belongings. “Look, I don’t know who that was, but
apparently it’s not good news, so let me just go with you,” he said as Susan
ushered them out the door, locking it behind them.
“Josiah, please don’t. I don’t want you
coming with me. I’ll call you if I get a chance.”
“Today?”
Susan just shook her head as they made
their way to the parking lot. Without so much as even a hug goodbye, she left
Josiah standing next to his car as she rushed to hers and drove from the
parking lot faster than the fifteen miles per hour allotted to vehicles. Twenty
minutes later, she pulled into the well lit parking lot of Long Beach’s
Emergency Room. The last time she’d been here, Madison had been sick and Josiah
had driven her home. That had been the first time she allowed herself to cry
and now she had a feeling she’d be having a repeat of that night.
Letting out a deep breath, she pulled
into an empty parking space, threw the car in park, and sat while her mind
tried to grasp what awaited her.
If her mother was okay, her father would
have told her over the phone
, she reasoned. Most likely, he would have
waited until a decent time in the morning to call her and fill her in. But he
hadn’t waited, and he’d barely had the voice to tell her to come to the
hospital.
Shutting off the car and willing herself
to exit, she pushed her keys into her front pocket after locking it and made
the short trek across the lot. The swish of the sliding glass doors to the
emergency room welcomed her with the heaviness of the sick and dying. The
weight of sadness that encompassed her came not from the way she’d just entered,
but from within herself. Knowing that tonight may be the end of what she and
her father had endured for so long. She rushed over to the nurse’s station to
get the information needed as to her mother’s whereabouts; she glanced to her
right into the waiting room surprised that so many people were sitting in
chairs waiting at such an ungodly hour. With a quick scan of the room, she
noticed that several small children were wrapped in their mother’s arms,
waiting their turn to be seen by the medical staff. Apparently sickness had no
regard for time or person.
The young nurse, who sat behind the
counter littered with clipboards awaiting the next patient, couldn’t be any
older than twenty-two or twenty-three. Susan found it odd that someone so young
could work in such a depressing environment. She had her red hair pulled up
into a tight ponytail, and stared at a computer screen as her fingers glided
over the keyboard. The clicking sound of her fingernails against the keys
echoed in the open space. She paused a moment from her work and looked at
Susan.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, I need to find out what room
Sharon Lismore is in. I’m her daughter,” Susan added before the inevitable
question of what her relationship to the patient was asked.
The redhead’s fingers quickly went to
work on the keyboard then just as quickly came to a halt. “Wait here, I’ll be
right back,” she said as she hurried off behind the secured doors to the
examining rooms without any explanation to Susan.
It seemed as if time had stood still
with no sight of the nurse or anyone else, when in reality after Susan checked
her watch again, it had been less than five minutes between the time the nurse
left her seat to when her father shuffled his feet in her direction. His aged
faced had been pulled down further than she thought possible while his
shoulders rolled forward making him look as if he were physically unable to
straighten himself at the waist. The last spark of hope that she’d seen the
last time she’d been with him had now been replaced with a void that Susan had
been dreading seeing for months. She didn’t need to hear him say the words, his
body spoke volumes to the news he bore. In all honesty, she didn’t want to hear
him say anything. She wanted to get in her car and drive until she had no place
to drive. She wanted to turn back the hands of time and get all the months that
had been taken from her, all the time that had been snatched from her mother as
her mind and body deteriorated. But Susan knew that wouldn’t happen and she
needed to face the reality of it now.
“Daddy,” she whispered as she placed her
palm in his outstretched hand. “Where’s mom?”
“Gone,” was the only word he uttered
before he pulled Susan into his embrace.
A barrage of emotions flooded her. Relief
that her mother no longer would suffer and her father would finally be able to
start taking care of himself properly. But mostly she felt guilt. Guilt that what
she’d wished for so long had finally come true and no longer would she have to
watch her mother wither away. Guilt because instead of being with her mother
when she took her last breath, she found herself naked in the arms of man she
barely knew. And sadness, because she’d never spend another weekend with her
mother, even if it had only been to sit with little conversation with a woman
who couldn’t even remember giving birth to her. Susan welcomed her father’s
embrace both disgraced by her own desires and relieved that neither she nor her
father would carry the burden of her mother’s sickness any longer.
Chapter 23
Susan pulled the quilt that had been her
mother’s while at the nursing facility up to her chin as she lay on her couch. With
her knees pulled up to her chest, she lay on her side focusing on nothing in
particular. The sofa had become her place of comfort, at least the little
comfort she did find, since the night her mother died. It didn’t feel right
sleeping in the bed she’d spent the night in with Josiah as her father sat by
her mother’s side in the emergency room watching as she slipped from this
world. The bed had been a constant reminder to Susan of her selfishness,
knowing that she should have been with her mother that night, not in the arms
of some man. The shame she felt for her allowing her own self-interest to shuck
her duties to her family on a night that should have found her in their company
unnerved her like nothing before. She would never be able to go back and right
the wrong against her family, and Josiah would always be a reminder to her that
she failed them terribly.
The funeral didn’t take place right
away, although Susan wanted it to be done quickly. They’d had to put if off so
her Aunt Marjorie, her mother’s sister, could fly in from Italy to be present
for the service. Her aunt wanted to speak at the funeral and so Susan put aside
her own wants once again to accommodate her family. Since her aunt had arrived
yesterday, the funeral was scheduled to take place in two days and Susan found
herself counting down the forty-eight hours until she could put some closure on
her mother’s passing.
****
For the past week, Susan had avoided all
contact with the outside world, other than her father along with the funeral
home staff as they made arrangements and, of course, Tessa. After several
unanswered and unreturned calls, Tessa had stood on the other side of Susan’s
door demanding she open it because, as she so adamantly put it, she wasn’t
going anywhere. Susan was thankful for Tessa’s tenacity because despite the
fact that Susan kept telling herself she didn’t want the company, having Tessa
there eased her pain somewhat. Apparently the morning Susan had left Josiah
standing in front of her apartment complex, he’d called Tessa right away to let
her know about the phone call and her quick exit. She should have known he
wouldn’t have let her odd behavior go on without filling Tessa in on the
situation as he perceived it.
Josiah had spent the first couple days
after her mother’s passing calling and texting, but Susan couldn’t bring
herself to answer any of them. She’d already let him become a diversion from so
much and she couldn’t afford any more distractions from him. Her father needed
her more than any other time and she had to stay focused on him now. The grief
he bore made it almost impossible for him to even function. Susan had taken on
the task of making all the arrangements for the funeral. She set up an account
at the bank for donations to the nursing facility’s Alzheimer’s unit her mother
had been in, and made sure all out of town family members had a place to stay
or at least had the information needed for local hotels. Susan had her hands
full and adding Josiah to the mix wasn’t something she was prepared to handle.