Heart's Desire Ch 13

Chapter 13

“Come in.” I heard him call from the other side of the door. The sound of his voice causing flutters in my stomach.

I took a deep breath and pushed the door open. I walked in to find Eric sitting up at the small table in the corner of his room. He was sitting a wheelchair with his legs extended in front, practically concealed under the table. A laptop was open in front of him and he was busy studying something on the screen and had not looked up to acknowledge me yet. My heart increased its pace as I stood there mesmerized by the perfection before me. He had donned a set of scrubs and was wearing a pair of glasses that I had to admit produced an immediate fantasy that caused me to shudder. Even with the borrowed attire, I doubted he could look any better than he did right at that moment, but suddenly he looked up at me and I was proven wrong. Instantly a smile broke out across his face as he removed his glasses and spoke.

“Hey.” His said his voice barely above a whisper.

“How are you?” I smiled.

“Better now that you’re here.” Oh snap!

He held his arms out to me as if to ask for a hug. I walked over to his chair and placed one arm around him trying to limit the amount of contact between our bodies and quickly turned my head so that the kiss he was offering landed on my cheek rather than my lips. My little maneuver didn’t go unnoticed.

“Sookie, what’s wrong?” His voice sounding worried.

“Nothing.” I tried to smile. “I guess I’m just tired from the last few days of work. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now and I still have several things I need to do today, so I won’t be able to stay long. Things are beginning to get busier at work and I have several projects I have been putting off, so I probably won’t be around as often. But I just wanted to check in on you and see how you were doing” I was rambling to cover my lies, I knew it and he knew it.

“Love, sit down. Is this because of Selah’s stunt?”

“No. Well, I was a little confused as to why your girlfriend was there to discuss business, but you needed your privacy, I understood that.”

“Girlfriend? She’s not my girlfriend, Sookie. Is that what you thought?” He seemed a little amused by the notion.

“Well that’s how she introduced herself to me, so apparently it was what she wanted me to think.”

“SHE DID WHAT?” He was no longer amused. “Sookie, are you telling me she told you she was my girlfriend, not my assistant?”

“Eric, she never mentioned anything about working with you. When she came in, I obviously thought she was lost. No one has been to visit you the entire time I’ve known you, so naturally I thought she was in the wrong room. I asked her if I could help her, she asked if this was your room and I told her it was and that you were in radiology and would be back soon. She then asked who I was so I introduced myself and told her I was a friend of yours. When I asked who she was she gave me her name and said that she was your girlfriend. You rolled in the room immediately after that, so the rest you know.”

“Oh God, I can imagine what you must have thought right then. No wonder you ran out of the room. Sookie, I can promise you Selah Pumphrey is not my girlfriend. Never has been, never will be. I can also promise you that like her last inappropriate comment, this matter will be addressed with her. I would fire her right this minute if not for the fact that she has been handling so much of my responsibilities while I’ve been gone. There is a lot of information in her head that I need before I could let her go. You understand that don’t you?”

“Eric, I’m not asking you to fire Selah. I doubt you would have kept her around so long if she wasn’t a good assistant. It didn’t take me long to realize she wasn’t really your girlfriend, if she was then where the hell had she been for the last few weeks? No, I recognize wishful thinking when I see it.”

He looked confused. “Then why did you leave?”

I decided now was probably a good time to take the seat he had offered me earlier. I sat down, crossed my legs and began playing with the hem of my shorts trying to find the right words.

“Well, first of all I wasn’t supposed to be there remember?” He nodded.

“Yes, someone has a hard time keeping her promises.” He said with a smirk.

“Well, um…anyway since I wasn’t supposed to be there, and you had company… well, I left.” I shrugged my shoulders and tried to sound as nonchalant as I could.

He wasn’t buying it. “Sookie, do you expect me to believe that you ran out of my room, ignored my yells for you to wait and all because you “weren’t supposed to be there”? I don’t think so. How ‘bout we try this again?”

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I took a deep breath, but I couldn’t hold back my emotions any longer as the tears began to fall down my cheeks.

“I’ve just realized how hard it is going to be to say good bye to you and..” He cut me off.

“Say good bye to me? Why are you saying good bye to me?” He said, his voice sounding shocked and getting louder.

“Eric, you know what I mean. We knew this was temporary, that soon you wouldn’t need me and before long you would be returning to Shreveport. I guess the other day just brought that to the front of my mind.”

“So, I’m temporary to you?” His question was full of sadness and doubt.

“Please don’t make this any harder for me, you know what I mean. You have a life to get back to.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Am I temporary to you?” His voice slightly elevated again.

“Eric no! Of course not…it’s just…” I couldn’t finish my sentence; sobs consumed me and prevented any more words to escape.

Eric reached across the table and gently grasped my arm to pull me to him. I stood up stepped closer to him as he pushed his chair back away from the table. His arms circled my waist and he began to pull me into his lap. I hesitated for a second being mindful of his injured legs, but he tightened his grip and continued to set me on his lap.

“Shhhh, Sookie, please don’t cry.” He said softly while wrapping his arms around me and pulling me to his chest.

“Why would you think this was temporary?” His voice still barely above a whisper when he spoke.

“I don’t know.” I continued through my tears. “You don’t need my help anymore and soon you will be leaving to return to Shreveport, so I just thought…”

“You’re right, I really don’t need your help any more and I guess will be returning to Shreveport soon.”

I lost it at that point. I tried to pull myself up off of his lap. I had to go; I had to get out of that room. He wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know, but hearing him say it aloud was my undoing. I tried again to get up but clearly his upper body strength was returning, his arms just held me tighter.

“But just because I don’t need you, doesn’t mean I don’t want you. And as far as Shreveport goes, you act like it’s somewhere near Bangladesh; Sookie, it’s not that far from here.” I stopped crying and pulled back from him so I could see his face.

“So are you saying we could still be friends after you go home?” Damn Sookie, you sound like you’re five.

“Friends?” He asked somewhat surprised. “Do you kiss all your friends like you kissed me the other night?”

“Um, no.” I could feel the pink tint my cheeks as I thought back to that kiss. Five my ass!

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. Look I’m not sure exactly how you define what we have between us right now, but I need for you to understand some things.” I braced myself as he continued to speak, nothing good ever followed an opening line like that.

“This is all very new to me; don’t get me wrong, I’ve dated…A LOT.” OK thanks, we could have done without the adverb! “But it was always out of necessity for things such as business functions, charity events and those kinds of occasions. And please don’t think I’m being arrogant when I say this, but not once have I ever pursued someone, they always came to me.” Now why would I think that was arrogant?? Apparently my body reflected what my mind was thinking as he began to defend his comment.

“Sookie, you do not understand. For years now I’ve been focused on nothing but my company and before that, my education. I was content with being alone. Any time I required a date there was always a colleague available and or occasionally Pam would feel the need to try and set me up with someone. But I’ve never been interested in anyone enough to want to pursue them until now. Sookie, the other day when you left out of the room and I could not run after you it almost crushed me.”

“Oh Eric, you’ll be up walking again soon, just look how far you have come. You can’t let that get you down.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. It wasn’t that I couldn’t walk; it was the possibility that you could walk out of my life as easily as you walked out of my room. Sookie, I couldn’t fuckin’ bear that.” I grabbed his face with my hands and crushed my lips to his. With the same urgency he tightened one arm around my waist as the other came up to the back of my head and grasped my hair. It was as though we could not get close enough to each other. Our passionate kiss continued until the need for air won out and we reluctantly pulled back from one another. Eric gently kissed my forehead and pulled me back to his chest, my head tucked snuggly by his neck.

“So what exactly does this mean…for us I mean?” I asked.

He pushed me away to look at my face. “Well for me it means that I care about you very deeply and I do not want you doing with anyone else what you just did with me. I really don’t share well with others.” He was smiling, but I could see that he was completely serious. “How about you?”

I could feel the heat returning to my cheeks. In my experience, getting men to discuss there feelings was harder than pushing a rope. His frankness and honesty had caught me off guard.

“Wow, I wasn’t quite expecting such a direct answer.” I said trying to buy myself time to gather my thoughts.

“Sookie, I don’t play games, I don’t see the purpose it serves. I will never lie to you; if you want to know how I feel about something, ask me. But once again you have avoided the question. I’ve told you how I feel now what about you?”

“Oh Eric I’m sorry. Of course I feel the same way I figure all the tears were a dead give away. You mean a great deal to me as well and I don’t want your lips or any other part of your body for that matter on anyone else.” I offered a sexy smile before kissing him again.

I attempted to get up off his lap but his arms held me in place. “Eric, me cutting off the blood flow to your lower extremities is not going to help your healing process, I need to get up.” I protested as I shifted to try to get up.

“I think the blood is flowing just fine to my lower extremities.” He said with a smirk and instantly my face flushed crimson as my change in position revealed how crowded it was getting in his wheelchair. Well at least we know that wasn’t injured in the accident. Yea! My girly parts did the happy dance at the revelation.

“Let’s don’t over do it Dr. Feelgood.” I said while finally removing myself from his lap.

“Dr. Feelgood, huh? Sookie, do we have a little doctor fantasy you want to talk about?”

“Well I noticed the scrubs, so I figured you had been here so long they’d promoted you to doctor.”

“Nah, I couldn’t handle the cut in pay.” Huh? I looked back at him to question his remark and he just shrugged his shoulders. “I just couldn’t tolerate sitting in the chair wearing a damn hospital gown with my ass shining in all its glory. I have sent for some clothes but until then they are loaning me these to wear.”

“Well that was decent of them.”

“Yeah, I’m sure donating the money to remodel the doctor’s lounge had nothing to do with it.”

TBC