The Last First Kiss

“You were just the opposite.” Almost to the point where she’d stick her head in the ground, he recalled.

She flashed him an irritating smile. “And pleasingly so.”

He needed to get back to work before they were literally drowning in patients, and he knew from experience that Kara could keep up the bantering responses all afternoon.

“So, you didn’t tell me,” he reminded her, taking out his wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

Right, the game. She still hadn’t given it to him. Kara dug into her purse again. This time, she pulled out the copy of the video game she’d brought for him. The cellophane around it crinkled as she said, “Your immortal soul.”

He pinned her with a look. “Exactly how much is that in cash?”

“I’ll let you know.” She had no intentions of selling him the game. That made her too much like a lackey. Giving it to him was far better. Besides, she liked the idea of having him indebted to her. “Maybe I’ll take it out in trade sometime. I might need something stitched up someday.”

He suddenly had an image of her sitting on a rock by the lake, blood running down her leg. The wound had appeared a lot worse than it actually was. That was the summer he’d made up his mind to become a doctor. “You mean like that time at the lake?”

She knew he was referring to that last summer at the lake before he and his family had moved away. She’d been eleven at the time and had slipped on the rocks, trying to elude him after playing some prank. She’d gotten a huge cut on her knee and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. She’d valiantly struggled not to cry.

“Those weren’t stitches. That was a butterfly bandage you put on it.”

The point was that it had done the trick and had held until her father could get her to the emergency room. “Would you have let me come at you with a needle?” he asked.

A rueful smile curved one corner of her mouth. “Point taken, Davy.”

He stopped the cringe before it could surface. “No one’s called me that in years.” She had been the only one to ever do it. Dave looked at her pointedly. “I hate being called Davy.”

She grinned, her eyes laughing at him. “I know.” She had to get going, and from the sound of the noise in the next room, so did he. “Forget about owing me anything for the game,” she told him. “It’s on the house. For old times’ sake,” Kara added.

If she was making restitution for things she’d done to him all those years, this didn’t begin to make a dent. But he saw no point in saying anything. After all, Ryan really wanted the game, and she had been nice to Gary, who had enough hard knocks against him. Besides, saying anything remotely adversarial to Kara would only embroil him in another no-win verbal match. She was probably still a master at that and he wasn’t up to one at the moment.

“Thanks.” As he said the word, his stomach growled, as if adding a coda.

She stared at him. He couldn’t begin to read her expression. Some things never changed, he thought.

“I had no idea you were a ventriloquist.”

His stomach growled again, a little softer this time. This was getting embarrassing. “I am on the days I don’t get to eat breakfast—or lunch.”

She cocked her head, as if she found the information fascinating. “You haven’t eaten yet?”

He knew her well enough to wonder what she was up to now. “No.”

“But you will.”

What kind of a question was that? Everyone had to eat—or expire. “Eventually.” He could feel her eyes delving into his skin. Just what did she expect him to say? “Someday,” he allowed, then amended his answer to, “Yes,” as he brushed past her to get back into the tiny hallway that was desperately in need of a paint job. “Right now there’s no time to go get something.”

She could see how he couldn’t leave, but that didn’t mean he had to go hungry. “Why don’t you send out Ms. Personality?” When Dave looked at her blankly, she nodded toward the reception room. “The anaconda at the front desk.”

“We’re shorthanded. Clarice’s my backup nurse—and the only one manning the front desk. I can’t spare her, either.”

Dave always did make things more complicated than they were, she recalled. Resigned, she dug into her purse yet a third time. “In that case, take this.”

Though he would have preferred not to admit it, Dave stared in fascination as the woman from his past pulled out what appeared to be an entire foot-long sandwich from her purse. It was cut into two equal halves.

What else did she have in there?

“Is that your equivalent to a clown car?” he asked. “Do you just put your hand in, then pluck an endless amount of things out?”

She didn’t feel like being on the receiving end of what he might call wit. She had traffic to face and a game with her name on it waiting to be further deconstructed. Holding it out to him, she asked, “You want this roast beef sandwich or not?”

He’d always thought of her as being rather unusual, but he had a feeling she wasn’t given to arbitrarily carrying food in her purse. There was only one other explanation for it. “Isn’t that your lunch?”

“Well, if you take it, it becomes yours,” she pointed out with a trace of impatience. And then she sighed. “Look, it’s not like I can’t buy myself another one on my way back to the office. You, on the other hand, look like you haven’t a prayer of making it out the door without that gestapo agent throwing a net over you and stopping you before you take three steps.”

He felt honor bound to defend the woman working with him. “Clarice’s okay.”

“I’m sure. For a gargoyle,” Kara agreed. She raised the sandwich a little higher, into his line of vision. “You want this or not?”

She might be annoying, but that was no reason to deprive himself in order to show her he didn’t need her help. “I’ll take it.”

She placed the wax-paper-wrapped sandwich into his hand. “Very kind of you.” With that, she turned on her heel to leave.

“Kara?” he called after her.

Pausing, she looked expectantly at Dave over her shoulder. “Yes?”

He still really hadn’t thanked her—and found that it was difficult to form the words where she was involved. He settled for: “Tell your mom I said thanks.”

Amused, Kara inclined her head and said, “Sure.”

That, he knew, was a cop-out on his part. He was better than that, Dave reminded himself. Just because this was Kara shouldn’t mean that he reverted back to behaving like an adolescent. “And thanks for bringing it by.”

She gave him a quick two-finger salute. “I live to serve.”

Same old Kara, same old sarcastic remarks, he thought as he walked out behind her.

“You look good.”

The words had slipped out without his permission, going directly from his gut to his tongue without pausing to clear it with his brain. His brain would have definitely vetoed having the words said aloud.

Surprised, Kara stopped abruptly and turned around, causing a near collision between them. He immediately took a step back.

“Are you addressing that assessment to me in general or just to the back of me?” she asked, an amused smile on her lips.

She could still fluster him, Dave thought. He’d assumed that reaction was years behind him. After all, he’d graduated at the top of his class, been voted into all sorts of positions of honor and had, in general, become confident in not just his abilities but in himself, as well.

Five minutes around Kara and he turned into that gangly, tongue-tied geek whose physique was all but concave the last summer their families had vacationed together.

“Let me think about it,” he said evasively.