Chapter 11

FRIDAY 1PM

Dad is still working his contacts at the CDC to get you out of there, but it might take some time. Looks like we'll have to postpone the wedding after all. Love, Steve

JANINE'S SHOULDERS dropped in relief as she stared at the handwritten note, then she raised a smile to the messenger standing in the hallway.

Manny seemed surprised at her reaction. "Gee, the message didn't sound like such great news when I took it over the phone."

"Oh, but it is," she assured him. She glanced guiltily over her shoulder where she'd left the room door slightly ajar. She pulled the door closed and lowered her voice. "I, um... could use some time to sort through a few things."

He nodded thoughtfully, then crossed his arms. "Since I've been away from Atlanta for a couple of years, I didn't connect with the name Larsen at first. Your future father-in-law is the vice-mayor."

She nodded. "Lance Larsen."

"The champion of the Morality Movement."

"Right." The Morality Movement was a group of ultra-conservatives who'd formed to banish prostitution and drug dens in a particularly seedy part of town. But once they'd made headway, the group had moved on to more controversial practices, and in the process, had propelled Lance Larsen to one of the most recognizable personalities in the city. Steve's father had run on the platform of being a family man with solid southern values and had won the election by a nose.

"I know the man," Manny said, reclaiming her from her muse. "He and I clashed a time or two during rallies in my youth." He smiled, although the mirth didn't quite reach his eyes. "Is the son anything like the senior Mr. Larsen?"

Janine shook her head. "Steve's much more open-minded." But she stopped before the echo of her own words had died. Was he really, or was it simply the persona he'd perfected? "He's... a surgeon," she murmured, then caught Manny's gaze, which reflected her own revelation. What did Steve being a surgeon have to do with anything that truly mattered?

But her new friend let her off the hook, his mouth softening into a smile. "A surgeon, huh? Sounds like a real catch."

She nodded slowly.

"And I understand now why you wouldn't want word of your accidental sleeping arrangement to get back to the Larsen family." His tone was light and breezy. "After all, they might jump to some crazy conclusion about you and Mr. Stillman."

Janine blinked once, twice. "Manny, I... I think I'm in over my head and I don't know what to do."

He exhaled, then smiled sadly. "There's only one thing you can do when you're in over your head, sweetheart."

"What?"

"You have to cut anchor." He gave her an encouraging wink, then turned on his heel.

"Manny," she called after him. He looked back, and she gestured to the shopping bag of goodies he'd brought her. "Thanks. For everything."

He inclined his fair head, then disappeared around the corner.

Janine hesitated long enough to scan the bright yellow tag on the doorknob which indicated an occupant remained symptomatic. From her point of view, she could see only one additional yellow tag, on a door at the end of the hall. She sighed at Maureen Jiles's empty doorknob. Apparently the woman was still kicking.

Uneasy about returning to the tension-fraught room, she nonetheless picked up the shopping bag and elbowed open the door. Derek glanced up from the desk where he'd been sitting for the past several hours, but immediately turned his attention back to his laptop computer screen.

Janine set the shopping bag on the end of the bed, trying to quiet the emotions warring within her. Since she'd talked to Steve this morning, she and Derek had retreated to separate areas of the room and, except for a few words exchanged when their lunch had been delivered, they'd maintained conversational silence by mutual consent.

She'd passed the time playing solitaire and doing yoga. To her exasperation, he was just as handsome upside down. She pretended to watch television, when in fact she'd absorbed little of what flashed across the screen. Instead, she had replayed in her mind scenes from her relationship with Steve, from meeting him on her first P.A. job to his romantic proposal six months later at the most exclusive restaurant in Atlanta. All told, she'd known him for one year.

Had she been so swept away by Steve's charming good looks and his position and name that she'd fallen in love with the image of him? A stone of disappointment thudded to the bottom of her stomach. Not disappointment in Steve, of course, but in herself. Was she so anxious to share her life with someone that she'd sacrificed the chance of finding a man who moved her?

Involuntarily, her eyes slid to Derek, who looked cramped and uncomfortable sitting at the froufrou desk and jammed into the stiff chair. Frustration lined his face, and his dark hair looked mussed by repeated finger-combing. He winced, then ripped yet another sheet of paper from a legal pad, wadded it into a ball and tossed it toward the overflowing waste can at his knee. His face contorted, then he snagged a tissue from a box and sneezed twice, his shoulders shaking from the force. The crumpled tissue landed in the trash, displacing more yellow balls of paper. When he rubbed at his temples and groaned, a pang of sympathy zipped through her.

"You're feeling worse, aren't you?"

With head in hands, he glanced over at her, then closed his eyes and nodded.

"Have you been taking the antibiotics Dr. Pedro gave you?"

He nodded again without lifting his head.

She crossed to the desk, itching to touch him, but determined not to. "Are you running a fever?"

Straightening, Derek said, "No, my temperature is fine. It's the congestion that's so annoying." He massaged the bridge of his nose and winced.

Janine peered closer at his face, his red nose, his bloodshot eyes, and a thought struck her. "Derek, do you have allergies?"

His mouth worked side to side. "None that I know of."

She glanced around the room, at the vases of resort wildflowers on the desk, the dresser, the entertainment center. Thanks to her claustrophobia, every window was flung wide to allow a cool breeze to flow through the room. She walked to the balcony door and pushed aside the curtain, then squinted into the sun. Sure enough, tiny particles floated and zipped along on the wind. On the concrete floor of the small balcony, sticky yellow granules had accumulated in the corners. Pollen.

Every flower and tree in Georgia was having sex—visitors' noses beware.

When she looked back to Derek, he was reaching for another tissue. And she was starting to think his symptoms were completely unrelated to those of the guests who were hospitalized. Circling the room, she closed and secured every window and glass door.

"I thought you said the open windows would help prevent your panic attacks," he said.

"Maybe so," she replied. "But we have to get the pollen out of this room, or you'll never feel better."

He scoffed. "I told you, I've never had allergies."

"Have you ever been to Atlanta in June?"

"No."

"Then there could be something seasonal in the air, or a combination of somethings, that might have triggered unknown allergies. Especially if your immunity is down from stress."

"Stress? What's that?"

She smirked and picked up the phone, then called the front desk. "Mr. Oliver, please. This is Janine Murphy." A minute or two passed, during which Derek leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes. "You really shouldn't do that," she admonished.

He stopped and frowned in her direction, but he stopped rubbing.

Manny's voice came on the line. "Janine?"

"Manny, hi. I need another favor."

"Anything within my power."

"Would you send someone up with a vacuum cleaner—I'll need all the attachments—and ask them to take away the vases of flowers I set in the hall?"

"Sure thing. What's going on up there?"

"Well, I'm not certain, but I think Derek's symptoms are more related to our resident foliage than our resident bacteria."

"Allergies?"

"Maybe. His blood tests should be back by now and would rule out the bacteria the other guests acquired. Would you ask Dr. Pedro to come back and reexamine him when he gets a chance?"

"Will do."

Janine thanked him and hung up the phone, then turned the air-conditioner fan on high.

Derek folded his hands behind his head and made an amused noise. "So you think I'm not afflicted with the plague after all?"

"Some people with allergies say it's almost as bad." With a vase of flowers in either hand, she headed toward the door.

He stood and crossed to open the door for her. She set the flowers on the floor in the hallway. At a noise behind her, Janine turned to see to see Maureen Jiles setting a food tray on the floor. The woman straightened and beamed in Derek's direction. "We meet again."

Janine observed Maureen with a smirk. The woman's generous curves were barely contained in a red bikini top. A sheer black wrap miniskirt laughingly covered the matching bottoms. Her deeply tanned legs were so long, they appeared to extend down through the carpeted floor. Next to the shapely sun diva, Janine felt like a pale boy.

Beside her, Derek had apparently been struck mute.

"I see you haven't fallen ill," Janine offered.

Maureen finally looked her way. "Surely you're not getting rid of all those lovely flowers!"

"Derek seems to be allergic," she replied.

"Would you like them for your room?" Derek asked, rankling Janine, although she couldn't identify why. After all, the flowers would otherwise be wasted.

Maureen devoured Derek with her eyes. "That would be lovely. Won't you bring them inside?"

"We're not supposed to be in each other's rooms," Janine interjected.

"Just for a minute," the woman pleaded to Derek. "And I'm having trouble with a stuck window."

He looked at Janine and shrugged. "Allergies aren't contagious."

Janine handed him the flowers and managed a smile. "Take your time."

He carried the vases into the woman's room. Maureen gave her a little wave through the opening in the door before she closed it behind them.

Absurdly unsettled, Janine returned to the room and gathered up two more vases of flowers, then set them in front of the woman's door. On the other side, Maureen's throaty laugh sounded. Unable to stem her curiosity, Janine leaned over and pressed her ear against the door.

The low rumble of Derek's voice floated to her, then Maureen's voice, then his own surprisingly deep laugh. The phony—he'd barely cracked a smile since she'd met him, much less out and out laughed.

"It works better if you have a glass."

Janine jumped, then looked around to see Manny watching her with an amused expression, holding a vacuum cleaner.

She straightened. "I was just, um, checking to see if Maureen is okay."

Another burst of his and her laughter sounded from behind the door.

One side of Manny's mouth drew up. "She sounds fine to me."

Janine lifted her chin. "Well... good." With cheeks burning, she crossed to her own door that she'd left propped open, and awkwardly waved him inside. "You didn't have to bring up the vacuum yourself."

He set the vacuum in the middle of the floor. "I might have sent someone from housekeeping, but there just isn't enough staff to go around."

A pang of regret stabbed her. "You probably haven't had a minute's peace since the quarantine was lowered."

"Not much," he admitted, then gave her a teasing grin. "But your little situation is the most entertaining distraction."

She frowned. "Don't be enjoying this, please."

"I'm sorry, I simply can't help it. This is such a feeling of déjà vu."

"Oh? You have another friend whose wedding was postponed when she was quarantined with her Best Man?"

"No, each of my female friends have gotten into their own little scrapes."

Untangling the hose-and-brush attachment, she gave him a wry look. "And where are they now?"

He ticked off on his long fingers. "Ellie is married with two impossibly gorgeous little girls, Pamela is married, and her toddler son is a musical prodigy, and Cindy got her happily ever after a couple of months ago—no kids yet."

Janine bent to the vacuum and unwound the cord, shooting him a dubious smile. "Are you saying you had something to do with all that marital bliss?"

"Well—" he splayed his hands "—I do have a perfect record to date."

"Then maybe you should rub my head," she said with a little sigh.

He laughed and helped her untangle the machinery. "May I ask if the handsome Mr. Stillman has anything to do with you needing some time to sort things out?"

Fighting with the stiff cord, she broke a nail into the quick, then sucked on the end of her finger. "No."

"No? Or no, I shouldn't ask?"

Her heart galloped in her chest as she reconsidered her response. How much of her sudden uncertainty had to do with Steve's reaction to her final attempt to consummate their marriage, and how much of it had to do with her inexplicable attraction to Derek?

Misinterpreting her silence, Manny moved quietly toward the door.

"Manny."

He turned, his hand on the doorknob.

"Do you see something here that I don't?"

He pressed his lips together and his gaze floated around the perimeter of the room, then landed on her. "I see a woman who's willing to sanitize a room for a man who's being entertained across the hall." His smile softened his words. "You should at least consider retrieving the beast." Then he was gone.

Confounded by his words, she plugged in the vacuum and flipped the switch. She'd always enjoyed the monotonous, thought-blocking chore, but today as she decontaminated every surface within reach, her mind was far from blank. Images of Derek cavorting across the hall with Maureen kept rising to taunt her. So that was the sort of man he was—chasing down any female within range. Their kiss had meant nothing to him, she realized. Not that it should, considering their respective relationships with Steve. But admittedly it galled her to think that what had been such a momentous lapse of character for her had left him unfazed.

Her na?veté didn't embarrass her—she would never be able to take sexual intimacy as lightly as most of the people in her generation seemed to, but she did recognize how her virginal perspective could put her at a slight disadvantage. After all, if any part of her decision to marry Steve was based on unrealized sexual curiosity, wasn't that just as misguided as rushing into a relationship founded purely on good sex?

Janine sighed and extended the reach on the brush she was running over the curtains. Would she even be having this bewildering conversation with herself if Steve's Best Man had been a chuffy married fellow instead of the "handsome" Derek Stillman?

A tap on her shoulder would have sent her out of her shoes if she'd been wearing any. She whirled to see that Derek had returned, and he did not look happy. A flip of a switch reduced the noise of the vacuum to a fading whine.

"Gay?" he asked, arms crossed. "You told that woman I'm gay? "

"It seemed like the prudent thing to say at the time."

"The prudent thing to say?" His voice had risen a couple of octaves, and his face was the color of roasted tomatoes. "For whom?"

"Watch your blood pressure," she warned, bending to re-wrap the cord. "I told Maureen you were gay for the sake of both our reputations—and for Steve's."

"Really?" He pursed his mouth, his body rigid. "Well, it seems to me that your and Steve's reputations are safe, and now I'm a gay man."

She laughed at his histrionics. "There's nothing wrong with being gay."

"No," he said crisply, "But I'm not. "

She rolled the cleaner over to the wall. "So if you wanted to get it on with Maureen, why didn't you just tell her you weren't gay?"

"Well, funny thing about denying you're gay after someone else has already told the person you are gay—" He threw his hands in the air. "They don't believe you!"

"The woman made it clear to me she doesn't care if you're gay."

"But I'm not gay!"

"But it doesn't matter to her!"

"That's another funny thing. When a woman thinks you're gay, it kind of changes the dynamics."

She was irritated at herself for trying to make the room more comfortable for him. "If I'd known you were so hot for her, I would've told her you were bisexual."

"Whoa," he said, holding up his hand. "I am not bi. And I'm not hot for that man eater. I just wanted to get away from you for a few minutes!"

She frowned. "Well, it was a mini-vacation for me, too!"

* * *

DEREK STALKED across the room and dropped into the stiff chair in front of the desk, bewildered that this woman could so easily provoke him. He sighed, then pressed out his entwined fingers to the tune of ten cracking knuckles.

"You really shouldn't do that."

He pressed his lips together, then shot a weary look in her direction. "And why not?"

"It's not a natural movement for your body."

"Oh, but I suppose standing on your head in a yoga pose is a natural movement."

She upended a shopping bag on the bed. "Several other species hang upside down, but none that I know of crack their knuckles."

Derek stared at her. The woman was absolutely relentless, not to mention oblivious to how she affected him.

"I had Manny bring you some shaving cream," she said, waving a small can.

"I hope he brought you a razor."

"You," she said, pointing, "need to relax."

At the sight of that little finger wagging, his blood pressure spiked again. "Well, excuse me," he said, tapping a key to bring his blank laptop screen back to life. "I'm sort of stuck in a quarantine in Atlanta, with a friend of mine's accident-prone bride, for God only knows how long, while an important client in Kentucky sits waiting for a brilliant ad campaign that I don't have." He shoved both hands into his hair, leaned his elbows on the desk and stared at the trio of honey and bee by-products that were supposed to save his firm. "I'm a little stressed here," he croaked.

Suddenly his antagonist was behind him, her sweet breath on his neck. "You know, Derek," she murmured. "I just might be able to help."