Just Right: The Bradfords, Book 1 Read online

  Jessica was thrown off for a moment by her brother using the word noncommittal.

  Showing off her own impressive vocabulary, she replied again, “So?”

  “I need your help. It should be enough that I say it’s important,” Sam said, moving on from the “busy” conversation, probably bored by now with the topic that wasn’t directly about him.

  Of course, important could mean almost anything with Sam.

  It could mean he was a few dollars short of getting in on a poker game. It could mean that he needed a place for a couple of buddies from out of town to crash for the weekend. It could mean that one of the girls he’d flirted with had taken him too seriously and he needed an emergency wife to get the girl off his back. Jessica sighed. She hated playing Sam’s wife. He always wanted her to be bitchy and she always ended up feeling bad for the girl.

  “It was a really long day at work.”

  And it was all because of Ben Torres.

  Rumor had it he had been suspended by the Chief of Staff and the hospital attorneys were riled up trying to figure out how to troubleshoot the situation. There were charges pending as well. Manslaughter for Ted. Assault for Ben.

  Not that any of it affected Jessica directly. She was an ER nurse. There were more surgeons, there would be more accidents and more patients. But she couldn’t get Ben out of her mind…or suppress her insane urge to make sure he was all right.

  “I heard,” Sam said.

  Of course he had. Sam was the head paramedic on the best ambulance crew in the city and he not only worked with the ER staff regularly, he was also friends with many of them, including Ben. Matt Taylor, the ER doctor on Ted Blake’s case, was a poker buddy of Sam’s.

  “I’m tired and—”

  “Shame on you, Jessica Leigh Bradford,” Sam broke in. “I’m your little brother. Your only brother.”

  The only part was right. The little part not so much. Sam was younger than Jessica by five years, but she didn’t even come up to his chin.

  “I’m not in the mood for this.” But she knew that she didn’t sound convincing. She’d always been a sucker for the little brother bit. Because he was right. He was her younger brother and she felt responsible, even now when he was twenty-five and definitely a big boy.

  “Too bad.”

  “What is it?” she asked, trying to soak a cotton ball with skin toner with one hand while holding the phone with the other.

  “A babysitting job.”

  She frowned, forgetting the cotton ball for a moment. “Did you say babysitting?”

  “Well, first, do you have a sexy dress?”

  Jessica forgot about the toner, cotton ball and everything else. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re going to need to borrow one then,” Sam said. “And high heels. Do you have high heels?”

  His tone suggested that he sincerely doubted it.

  “Of course I do.” They were way in the back of the closet somewhere, but she was pretty sure she still had them.

  “What about the dress?”

  “I have a dress, Sam.”

  “But is it sexy? It will have to be sexy. Maybe you should call Marcy.”

  This called for a dress from her friend Marcy? Marcy didn’t dress in anything that didn’t reveal cleavage and lots of it. What in the hell was going on?

  “Sam, maybe you’d better define babysitting,” Jessica said grimly.

  Jessica tugged at the dress where it hugged her hips so closely that she hadn’t been able to put even a pair of panties between it and her skin. The scrap of black material that was supposed to be a dress was ridiculous. It wasn’t practical for any purpose whatsoever.

  She frowned. That wasn’t completely accurate. It was useful for one purpose: to attract attention.

  And it was a good thing she was trying to get Ben Torres’ attention. He was the only man she would ever consider wearing the thing for.

  She hiked the too-large-to-be-fashionable red purse that she’d needed to bring along back up onto her shoulder, sighed and squinted up at the neon sign above the door to the tavern she now stood beside. As a C and an E were the only letters that still worked, Jessica wasn’t even sure of the name of the bar where Ben was supposedly getting drunk and stupid. But she paused long enough to give one last attempt at getting the dress down to at least mid-thigh.

  It was futile.

  There simply wasn’t enough material.

  “It’s for Ben. It’s for Ben,” she muttered as she walked over the pieces of broken concrete that she supposed had been a sidewalk at one time.

  It took about two steps to figure out that broken concrete and high heels didn’t go well together.

  Jessica was swearing under her breath by the time she crossed in front of the big, black SUV parked facing the sidewalk. As she passed, the headlights flashed on and off three times.

  Jessica wobbled once, but kept walking…and swearing under her breath.

  She was a woman, alone in a strange part of town. Avoiding trouble was always easier than fighting it off.

  As she reached for the thick, wooden door handle to the bar, however, the SUV’s horn blasted.

  She jumped nearly a foot and swung around to face the truck. The lights came on again, spotlighting her up against the door. A man leaned out of the driver’s side window.

  “Damn, girl, you look like a wet dream in that dress.”

  Her breath whooshed out. “Dooley, what are you trying to do to me?”

  She approached the side of the truck walking gingerly on the gravel in the heels that simply refused to provide a stable platform for her to move on. She heard male laughter from inside the cab as she arrived at the window and glared at Dooley, one of her brother’s best friends. He grinned unapologetically, his tan skin and shaggy blond hair making him look more like a California surfer dude than an ace paramedic who’d grown up on a farm in Nebraska.

  “Jessica, if I’d known that you had that underneath your clothes I would never have agreed to send you in to Ben.” Mac Gordon, head shaved bald, sat in the backseat behind Dooley, grinning widely over his goatee.

  “Hi, Mac,” Jessica greeted the big ex-firefighter turned EMT. She had always thought of these guys as brothers, but she couldn’t help but feel good about the compliment. And she knew it was sincere, though none of these guys would ever make a move on her.

  She met her brother’s eyes, then looked at Kevin Campbell, the dark-haired paramedic sitting behind Sam.

  “What are you guys doing here?”

  “Making sure Dumbass Torres didn’t try to drive himself home before you got here,” Kevin said, turning to look at her. He was holding an ice pack against his right eye.

  Her eyes widened. “What happened to you?”

  “Dumbass Torres,” he grunted.

  “He hit you?” Jessica couldn’t believe it.

  Had Ben lost his mind? First a patient, now one of his best friends. And a big friend at that. Ben was solid, but Kevin was NCAA-Division-I-Defensive-Lineman solid. He was bigger, taller and a more experienced fighter than Ben. Hitting Kevin would have been stupid. For anyone.

  “If he’d hit me, he’d be the one black and blue,” Kevin said with a scowl.

  Sam grinned at his disgruntled friend. “I was trying to get Ben’s car keys away from him and an elbow ended up in Kevin’s eye.”

  Kevin muttered something under his breath and Sam chuckled.

  “Ben wasn’t real apologetic, though, so Kevin’s bent out of shape.”

  “Why did you guys bring him here?”

  Mac coughed and grinned. “Uh, we didn’t exactly bring him. We followed him here.”

  Sam nodded, his mouth now set in a grim line. “He’s been trying to lose us. Unsuccessfully.”

  “Lose you?”

  “He took us to a country dance club. He knew Dooley would hate it.”

  Dooley shuddered and Jessica laughed. “You okay?”

  “Barely.”

  “The hot cowgirls in
short skirts helped,” Mac said.

  “And he brought you here because?” Jess asked.

  Dooley gestured to the flashing pink neon female silhouette in the window. “Exotic dancers.”

  Jessica looked quickly at Kevin, who definitely looked unenthusiastic. In spite of his willingness to bruise Ben if he started a real fight, Kevin had become a Christian two years ago and now tried to live an upright, moral life. Including avoiding nearly naked dancing girls. In fact, Kevin’s only reason for going out to bars with his buddies was to serve as a designated driver, and he was likely with the guys tonight out of true concern for Ben.

  Jessica hid her smile by turning her face away from the dim glow of the streetlight. Kevin was a good guy, but she could imagine the mini-sermon he’d given the guys to keep them in the truck and out of the bar.

  “So, you’re sitting out here waiting for me?”

  “Pretty much,” Dooley said with a shrug.

  “It’s interesting that you call in one woman to do something that four guys couldn’t.”

  “It ain’t our fault that you got the boobs, honey,” Mac said from the back seat.

  “Well, if boobs are Ben’s thing, I can compete.” She laughed. “I’ve got them even if I haven’t used them like this in a while.”

  Mac and Dooley both laughed and even Kevin spoke up with an, “I’m not worried.”

  “Speaking of boobs,” Sam said, definitely not laughing. “Is that one of Marcy’s dresses?”

  “No, it’s mine.”

  “Of course it is,” Sam muttered. He looked over his shoulder at Mac. “This is why I didn’t ask Sara. She doesn’t even have that kind of a dress.”

  Jessica’s eyebrows rose at the mention of her and Sam’s little sister. She was not only concerned about Sam sending Sara into a bar like this, but the idea of any other woman trying to entice Ben didn’t sit well with Jessica, even if the other woman was Sara. “You were going to ask Sara to do this?”

  “No,” Sam said firmly. “You were definitely the one.”

  Dooley laughed. “He said—”

  “Never mind,” Sam interrupted.

  “What?” Jessica asked. “What did Sam say?”

  “Nothing.” Sam gave Dooley a firm look.

  Which Dooley ignored.

  “Sam said you could definitely hold your own in a place like this.”

  Jessica raised her eyebrows at her brother. It had been ten years since she’d been in a bar, period.

  None of these guys had known her prior to her dad’s death, so they only knew the in-charge, bossy, dependable ER nurse and big sister side of her. That was who she was now. But there had been a time when she’d been a regular in places worse than this, wearing less.

  “He also said you’d be very interested in where Ben spends the night.”

  Jessica felt her cheeks heat. She glared at the brother who never seemed to be paying attention, but knew her too well.

  “Yeah, because I need to know where to drop him off,” she said, meeting Dooley’s eyes directly, challenging him to make more of it than that.

  Until an hour ago, she never would have guessed that there would be a chance for her to make more of it than that. And she was certainly nervous about the fact that Ben might not want to turn it into anything more.

  Dooley grinned and said, “His apartment. I don’t want him puking on my couch.”

  Jessica shook her head. “If he starts puking, you guys are getting a phone call.”

  “You clean up worse than that every day in the ER,” Kevin said, his tone still grumpy. “You’re a nurse. Why do you think we called you?”

  “Because you would look stupid in this dress,” she shot back. “He’s your friend.”

  “I bet he gets pretty friendly with you when he sees that dress,” Mac said.

  Jessica hoped so. Not just because she had a major thing for Ben, but also because it would make convincing him to let her drive him home a lot easier.

  “Unless she stays out here all night talking to us,” Sam broke in. “And Blondie takes him home.”

  “Blondie?” Jess asked.

  “One of the hot cowgirls who drove him over here,” Dooley said.

  “One of them?” Jessica repeated.

  Dooley’s grin grew. “The other one’s a redhead.”

  Jessica pulled her purse up on her shoulder determinedly. “I’d better add a brunette to the mix.”

  There were no exotic dancers in the bar.

  In fact, there were only two other females in the place besides Jessica, and they occupied the tall stools on either side of Ben. The dilapidated stage in one corner may at one time have had a pole with half-naked women wrapped around it, but those women were now undergoing hip replacements and playing Canasta at the nursing home. The hunch-backed, gray-haired bartender, who barely spared her a glance away from the tiny black-and-white TV he was watching, was older than the stage. And about as good-looking.

  The smell, a combination of cigarette smoke, mildew and beer, was the most distinct characteristic of the bar. But it was only the first thing Jessica hated about the place.

  The beautiful blonde and heavily made-up redhead with Ben were easily the next two things. The tall table in front of them was littered with beer mugs, bottles and shot glasses. The pool table nearby was surrounded by large, hygiene-deficient men, its perimeter covered with dollar bills and ashtrays with cigarette butts and still-smoking stubs.

  Ben stood out in khaki pants and a black, knit shirt, while everyone else was dressed in worn denim and T-shirts with various tasteless slogans. But the pool cue he balanced against his knee and the half-full mug of beer he held fondly did give him something in common with the other patrons.

  She watched as the biggest, sweatiest of the men crossed the space between the pool

  table and where Ben sat.

  “That’s the third time you lost. Pay up.”

  Ben passed the man a huge wad of bills with nothing more than a smile. The man

  chuckled as he quickly counted the money, then pocketed it. He called out, “That’s two hundred bucks off of him so far. Who’s up next?”

  Jessica shook her head. Obviously Ben’s skills were limited to the OR.

  Her eyes narrowed when the blonde leaned in, pressing her breasts against Ben’s bicep as she reached for the pretzel bowl at the edge of the table. Jealousy, worry, impatience and just the tiniest bit of doubt hit Jessica in a wave that stopped her feet.

  She frowned. It was very possible that this whole thing was just another of her brother’s bad ideas.

  She wasn’t worried about how she filled the dress out. That was one of the few things that hadn’t changed in the past ten years. But push-up bras and high heels were only part of strutting in a bar. The other, bigger part was the attitude. Jessica was afraid that she’d lost the attitude somewhere in the midst of her crash-course in planning a funeral, attending parent-teacher conferences at age twenty and learning to pack a lunchbox, call the electric company and unclog the shower drain all at the same time.

  Becoming an overnight orphan and mother to her two younger siblings had definitely taken a bit out of her strut.

  Jessica scowled at Ben harder as he leaned in and said something near the redhead’s ear, causing her to seductively toss her hair over her shoulder and laugh.

  This was all Ben’s fault.

  The blonde leaned in again, brushed her fingers through his hair and pressed her lips against the side of his neck.

  Quick, hot, irrational anger coursed through Jessica at the sight…and at Ben not pushing her away.

  Ben was a doctor, a surgeon for heaven’s sake. He saved lives. He was the best trauma surgeon in three states, probably in the entire Midwest. He was sharp, responsible, well-respected; practically a Boy Scout.

  In spite of current evidence to the contrary, she thought grimly as she watched Ben throw back a shot and set the glass on the table with an audible thunk.

  She wanted to
stomp up to him, grab him by the ear and drag him out of here.

  But if the direct physical approach would work with Ben, Sam wouldn’t have needed to call her.

  She headed for Ben, not bothering to pull her skirt down this time.

  “Ben? Wow, it’s great to see you!” Jessica slid in between him and the redhead, rose on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek, inhaling the scent of him the way she’d been wanting to for almost six months. She flashed back to the surprising, full-on French kiss from earlier that day. She had wished ever since that she hadn’t been quite so shocked. She’d barely had time to enjoy the kiss itself.

  Ben met her eyes, no sign of surprise evident at all in his face or body language. Then, slowly, his eyes roamed from the top of her head, over her bare shoulders, lingered on her black-satin-hugged breasts, then continued past her waist and hips and down the length of her legs to the tips of her deep burgundy-painted toenails.

  She ignored the tingly places—though it was hard to ignore pretty much her whole body—and went on with her charade. She gestured at the two girls he was sitting with. “I guess you’re doing well in spite of the problem with the surgery.” She smiled at the two other women and rounded the table to the only unoccupied stool, determined to make it clear she was here to stay. “I told him that he would eventually find a woman who wouldn’t mind.”

  “Wouldn’t mind what?” the blonde asked in exactly the sweet voice that Jessica had guessed she would have.

  The stool was directly across from Ben. Jess slid up, aware of his gaze on her. She kept her eyes on the blonde. “Oh, you know. That the implant didn’t turn out.”

  The redhead frowned. “Implant?”

  Jessica dropped her voice to an exaggerated whisper. “Penile.”

  “Penile?” the blonde repeated, frowning hard enough in confusion that Jessica was afraid she was going to hurt herself.

  “As in penis,” Jessica clarified before the girl’s brain cramped. She turned to Ben. “You didn’t tell them?”

  Ben was watching the conversation as if he was an uninterested third party. He kept his arm along the back of the blonde’s chair and his other hand wrapped around his beer mug. He met Jessica’s eyes, one eyebrow going up.