Swept Away (The Escape Series Novellas Book 1) Read online

Petite Gem: I bet! What hospital are you at?

  Then silence.

  Which Cassie thought was odd. Here they were having a great conversation and his profile goes blank. Like he clicked on ‘end’ super-fast.

  What the heck was going on?

  Chapter Four

  Cassie could not believe it, but she was starting to miss chatting with Dr. Love.

  She hated feeling like this. A slave to Tinder. Running to her laptop or cell phone every time she heard a ‘ding’.

  Four days later without any news from the elusive doctor, Cassie gave up and shut down all electronics for one week.

  Yep, one whole week.

  She needed some relaxation and decided to give her girlfriends, Rayna and Liz a call.

  Let’s all go out, have some fun! Always up for a good time those two. Yes, they’re in. Always in, and the three girls went out on a Friday night afterwork and had a great time.

  “We’ll have another round,” Liz instructs the waiter who was there to clean up the residual of their meals.

  “Margarita, vodka and soda, and another house white?” He asked all three.

  Cassie peered at her girlfriends. Should they drink some more? Oh, why not. “Yes, thank you.”

  Rayna watched the waiter leave before she said, “So, what does Dr. Love look like anyway?”

  Cassie played with her frayed napkin. “The only photo I saw of him was on his profile. Some shirtless pic of him posing at the beach.”

  “So, he’s good-looking then?” Liz asked her friend, jiggling the ice that remained at the bottom of her glass.

  “Very,” Cassie sighed, fully gazing at Liz. “Do you think he’s being sincere?”

  “Don’t know,” Liz said with a shrug. “But I’ve chatted with a few guys lately who blew me off. I bet he’s married, and his wife came in forcing him to shut down really fast.”

  Cassie smirked, “Not likely, he claimed he was divorced and had twin boys, both in college on football scholarships.”

  Rayna nodded her head. “Not bad. Who can make up a story like that? And why would someone lie about kids? Seems like a genuine response.”

  Cassie regarded her friend’s disposition, “And this coming from a girl who trusts no one.”

  Rayna smiled. “So true,” she laughed, bringing up her empty glass in an imaginary toast.

  “Where’s our drinks?” Liz suddenly asked, gazing around at all the other patrons.

  “Maybe he got lost,” Cassie quipped, looking across at the opposite table and watching the family eat.

  Liz stared at Cassie for a moment. “Are you hung up on this Dr. Love?”

  Cassie’s head whipped around, “What? Are you crazy? I only chatted with him once on Tinder.”

  Liz raised her eyebrow, “I know, but you’ve got that woebegone look on your silly face again. Like the time you had a crush on Jay Miller and he didn’t ask you to junior prom.”

  Cassie laughed out loud, “Oh wow, I totally forgot about Jay Miller! I wonder if he’s single?”

  Rayna snickered as well, “He’s not. My ex was friends with his cousin and they played on some rec softball team together and he’s still married. I think going on twenty years now.”

  The threesome quieted down when the waiter arrived. He handed the margarita to Cassie, the vodka and tonic to Liz and the white wine to Rayna.

  Cassie sipped her margarita before saying, “We were all once married twenty years. I think thirty years is quite an accomplishment.”

  Liz took a sip of her drink before declaring, “I agree. But none of our gang made it past twenty-five years. I think yours was the longest with twenty-two, Cass.”

  Cassie shrugged her head, “I dunno, who’s that girl who got married the day after graduation? Didn’t we all think she was just insane to rush?”

  “Was she pregnant? I don’t remember,” Rayna, questioned, stirring her ice cubes around in her glass.

  “I don’t think so,” Cassie replied, laying down her margarita on the table. “I think she was born again and waiting for her wedding night.”

  “I think you’re right,” Liz agreed. She slumped back into the booth. “Why aren’t there any good guys out there? I mean, they’re either gay, married or non-committal.”

  Cassie leaned back on the back of the booth as well. “You’re talking about your latest dates, those don’t count.”

  Rayna continued to stir her ice cubes in her drink. “I think if I met my husband again and he was single, I wouldn’t date him.”

  Cassie grinned, “That’s because he’s a schmuck.”

  Rayna sighed.

  Cassie had to remember that her dear friend was still hung up on her ex, even though the degenerate cheated on her with their nanny.

  “You need to get over that man,” Liz plainly put it.

  “I agree,” Cassie chimed in. “He never did deserve you.”

  Rayna shrugged her shoulders. She had been married for twenty years. Having dropped out of college to get married to a pre-law student, she worked two jobs to put her ex through law school. Now he’s a practicing personal injury attorney, making over seven figures and driving an Aston Martin. Even though they shared joint custody of their son, she wished to God she didn’t have to see him every weekend. She rather he dropped off the face of the earth than drop their son off.

  Liz leaned over and grabbed her friends’ hand. “It’s been five years hon, it’s time to move on.”

  Rayna nodded her head.

  Cassie brought her margarita up to her mouth and licked the salt off the rim before saying, “We all need to move on, especially you missy.” She then eyed Liz directly, but Liz turned her head just in time.

  “I have moved on,” Liz let go, guzzling down the rest of her drink, not looking at Cassie. “It’s just working out of the house is what traps me there.”

  Cassie smirked, “Well, working at all hours of the night doesn’t help either. There has to be days where you at least put on makeup and shave those legs.”

  Liz lifted her arms, “I shaved my armpits today!”

  Cassie and Rayna both laugh.

  Cassie giggled, “And your friends thank you for that.”

  Liz regarded her best friends. She had been married for nineteen years and one month short of their twentieth anniversary. Her ex suddenly declared he was unhappy--had been unhappy, for the last five years of their marriage. He told her if it wasn’t for their two kids, he would have left a long time ago. Affected by some kind of midlife crisis, he swore up and down that it wasn’t about another woman, but all about being alone. He wanted to--checkout--be irresponsible. Carefree. Now he’s a fifty-year-old bum living off the royalties of his one published novel. “What can I say? I work a lot.”

  Cassie smiled and rested eyes on Liz. She met the brown-eyed blond in junior high. Sitting next to her in homeroom, they became fast friends and best friends ever since. “Fifteen hours too much,” she let go, now gazing over at Rayna. Rayna, she met in elementary. She would say Rayna was her oldest, dearest friend. More like a sister, she could tell Rayna anything and nothing would faze her. Rayna was also an open, loving person who was so trusting, she hated to see her hurt. Rayna was a ginger, with beautiful strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes.

  She loved them both. Wouldn’t know where she would be in life without the help of her two best friends. In high school. In marriage. During motherhood. Career. Now divorced and single. They helped ground her.

  Ding

  Chapter Five

  Was that her phone?

  Cassie shushed everyone down.

  Liz and Rayna started to laugh. “Dr. Love!” they cried in unison.

  Cassie grabbed her purse and started to fumble through it.

  Ding

  Her heart beat faster. This was ridiculous! The match looked good on paper but what if Dr. Love was just as short as she was? His profile pic looked great, but what if that wasn’t truly him? She had already heard stories of other women falling for the p
rofile pic only to find out later that the photo was fake. Did Dr. Love have a hairy black mole on the tip of his nose?

  She pulled out her phone and eyed the message on her cell’s display:

  Message from Dr. Love

  Cassie looked up at her two friends then brought in her cell phone to her chest.

  Both women rolled their eyes.

  “It’s him,” Cassie gushed, celebrating in her seat.

  “We can see that,” Liz replied. “What does it say?”

  Cassie brought down her cell and laid it on the table. “I don’t know, I haven’t opened up the chat yet.”

  Rayna shook her head, “Well girl, what are you waiting for?”

  Cassie pressed on her phone to open it and swiped towards the Tinder app to open that. Inside the app were several messages and she scrolled down to weed through all the unwanted ones to get to his. Tapping with her finger to open, it read:

  Hi Cassie, sorry about the other day. Are you available on Saturday for brunch? I blocked out some time on the weekend and was wondering if you enjoy BBQ? Say we meet around 11:30 at Carl’s BBQ on Vineland?

  Cassie was beside herself. She couldn’t believe how excited she was about meeting him. She wanted to reply immediately.

  “What are you doing?” Liz asked, watching her friend starting to thumb type on her cell.

  Cassie looked up from her phone. “Why?”

  “Are you replying?” Rayna asked, half-smiling.

  Cassie stopped and laid down her cell. “I was, why? I want to meet him, I’m excited about meeting him.”

  Liz rolled her eyes, “I need another drink, where’s our waiter?”

  Rayna takes another swig of her wine, “I hope it works out.”

  Liz quipped, “You’re forgetting about the thirty-minute rule. You need to wait thirty minutes before replying.”

  Cassie gave her friends her best evil stare down.

  Later that night, Cassie couldn’t wait to open her laptop to respond to Dr. Love.

  But first, she had to make sure her kids were okay. Tristan was out with his friends and had a midnight curfew. It was half past twelve and Cassie was getting anxious. Kendra was with her dad at the movies and she gave Damon the weekend to spend with her. When the children were little, they were not given any choice on whether they saw their dad, now that they were both teenagers, she thought it easier to grant them that vote.

  Cassie was in the kitchen washing a few leftover dishes from the afternoon when she heard her front door open. “Tristan?”

  “Ya.”

  Cassie smiled inwardly. Twenty minutes late. She was glad he was safe and wouldn’t give him any grief. “Did you have a good time?”

  Tristan came into the kitchen, “My friend Millie is throwing a party next Friday, I wanna go after the football game, is that OK?”

  Cassie squinted her eyes. Why ask right now? Why not ask during the week? He must really want to go. “You getting a ride from Aaron?”

  “Yah...So I can go then?”

  Cassie closed her mouth and hesitated for a moment. Except for a few mishaps, a C in Math and a door slam every now and then, he was a good kid. She began to walk away from him after placing down her kitchen towel. “Yep, remind me Thursday so I don’t worry.”

  She headed towards her bedroom and switched on the light. Eyeing her laptop already placed on the nightstand beside her bed she headed towards it. Opening it up, she scrolled to Tinder and opened Dr. Love’s chat message. She had made him wait two hours. It was long enough:

  Hi, how are you? I enjoyed our chat the other day and would be interested in a BBQ brunch. I can meet you next Saturday at 11:30, see you then. Can I ask what happened the other day?

  Cassie hit ‘send’ and then placed her laptop on top of her comforter while she waited for a reply. It was already a quarter till one o’clock in the morning and assumed he was not up, but then she heard the ‘ding’.

  Pulling her nightgown down over head she rushed towards her laptop and read his reply:

  Looking forward to seeing you next Saturday. I will wear red.

  Even though the comment made her smile, Cassie thought it strange. No response to why he stopped his chat so abruptly the other day. Why not just come clean? What does he have to hide? Maybe he wanted to tell her in person. Maybe he was not a writer but more of a talker. He was a doctor after all, maybe he was used to speaking out loud rather than explaining things on the computer. Was she overthinking all this? Should she just move on? Too many questions, she thought. Tired. It was time for bed.

  She closed her laptop, placed it on the side of her bed and then got in under her covers.

  All was well, she was happy, joyful, floating on cloud nine until the Friday morning before her date, Cassie woke up to another ‘ding’. She wasn’t going to look until she heard the ding again. She sat up in bed and then grabbed her laptop from the side. Opening it up she immediately saw two messages from Dr. Love:

  I hate to do this, but I need to reschedule. Something came up which pulls me back to the hospital. Can you meet me on Thursday instead?

  Cassie was going to reply to the first message until she scrolled down to his second one:

  I won’t be able to meet you next week after all. I’m truly sorry about all this. Take care.

  What the heck just happened?

  Was it something that she did? That she said?

  They made plans on meeting one another, then on the day before their date an emergency comes up? OK, she thought, no big deal, we will plan on meeting again. But Dr. Love shut down meeting her all together. Nothing. Nada. Finito. After all that hype of wanting to meet her, couldn’t wait to establish contact, looking forward to our meeting and at the eleventh hour they get an emergency and then you don’t hear from them ever again? Can’t these men just text the next day? Send another chat, plan for the following weekend?

  Chapter Six

  It had happened so quickly, if she wasn’t paying attention, she might have missed the opportunity.

  Or was it fate?

  It had been a few hours since the last school bell rang, and Cassie was tasked to do some filing. Normally, she would object to staying after school, but the overtime would help with having to purchase some upcoming soccer jerseys for Tristan.

  Casually passing the time thinking about her past two crummy dates, she was in the filing office nearly falling asleep from boredom when she heard a commotion coming from the hallway. A bang of sorts, sort a BIG BANG, echoing up the hallway. Alarmed by the noise, she threw down her paperwork and hurried out the doorway. To her shock--buckets, mops and a broken water pail sent liquid flying everywhere--on the linoleum floor, up the wall and on every side wall partition.

  Going into Mom Mode she grabbed one of the cleaning cloths off the janitorial cart and squatted down to her knees to help the afternoon janitor--who was already on his--remove the mess. “You OK?” She asked, wiping, then soaking up the water with her towel.

  “Yeah,” he quickly let out, peeved with himself. “The damn thing broke on me.”

  Cassie felt the tingling sensation on her neck first, then nearly went numb. His voice was like violins to her ears. A low, magnetic timbre sent shivers down her spine. She didn’t dare look up and continued with the task. “It happens.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she heard him say in a raspy voice.

  “I know, but I hate filing.”

  She heard his laugh deep in his throat. Closing her eyes, she allowed her heart to calm down when she finally looked up. Like a thunderbolt, she was instantly attracted to him. Big and muscular, her type, with long wavy brown hair tied back in a ponytail that rested down his back.

  Y. E. S.

  When he finally looked up after rinsing out a rag, her eyes caught hold of his and the invasion was electrifying.

  Oh My God...

  She was in big trouble--the guy was gorgeous! With browns everywhere: Deep dark chestnut hair, a nice shapely beard, and sensuous war
m brown eyes. And when he smiled at her, she had to blink twice because she knew she was making a complete fool of herself over just him standing there. She was practically gawking at the man.

  They stared at one another for longest time, she couldn’t tell how long when he turned away and then stood back up. Extending his hand out to her still on the floor, he offered her help back up onto her feet.

  A very bad thing to do...she knows that now because pulling her up also meant, jolting her near him, so close in fact, they were inches apart.

  Bad to worse, Cassie’s mouth watered, his look was hypnotic.

  He lowered his eyes to her lips and she could see him trying to fight the gravitation to her as well.

  “Hey,” he let go, clearing his throat. “Have we met before?”

  Having been on quite a few bad dates lately, the line was cliché and she let go a chuckle. “No,” she replied, gazing away slightly, “I would have remembered you.”

  His grin widened, he liked what he heard and gruffly rejoined, “Do you often work this late? I haven’t seen you around here.”

  Cassie gathered back her thoughts and stepped away from him. The chemistry for him was unnerving. She took the wet towel still in her hand and threw it back onto the cart. “No, I’m on overtime this week, we have a lot of paperwork to file.”

  “Oh,” he smiled again. “Need any help?”

  Cassie laughed and then flipped her hair. Oh God, THAT was definitely a bad thing to do. “No,” she smiled graciously, “I can handle it.”

  They stood awkwardly staring at one another when he declared, “Is it wrong of me to not want you to go back to filing?"

  Cassie rolled her eyes. Damn, this place! She was starting to feel like a silly school girl back in high school. She was all a glow. “No,” she admitted, looking away from his mesmerizing grin. “What do you have in mind?” As soon as she said it, she closed her eyes. Oh, Good Lord, what the fuck was that? Just lie down now why don’t you? Unzip your jeans, pull them down to your ankles and let him ride you from behind right there on the shiny wet floor.