Chapter One
Pain whittles lessons into the soul.
Morgan read the plaque beneath the painting repeatedly until the words jumbled together. Or maybe her eyes were just stinging with tears. Maybe she couldn’t see because her vision was so blurry with those damn waterworks showing up unannounced every fucking hour.
Crying had always seemed so irrelevant, something she was proudly immune to. She could watch a movie where a baby fish lost its mother and felt nothing. Death was inevitable.
But over the last two weeks, her body had become as fragile as a porcelain cup, her tear ducts as active as the Niagara Falls.
Even this morning, when Morgan had walked into her new kitchen and couldn’t find the drawer where she kept her teaspoons, she had been overcome with wet, shuddering tears.
It was that raw, ugly kind of cry that made people look away to avoid feeling embarrassed.
That exact ugly cry she could never bear to look at.
Morgan blinked fast, checked around the softly lit exhibition where artists and patrons alike sipped thin flutes of champagne while concentrating on the paintings up for display.
At least if someone saw her crying, they would think she was an overly emotional patron sympathizing with the painting.
A good excuse if there were any. The painting was heartbreaking, after all.
A woman stood on the shores of a beach, her face to the viewer, mascara dragging down her cheeks.
Her chest and arms were out as if she had been hit by a force from behind.
Above her head were heavy storm clouds swirling dangerously.
Her body was made of stone. Cracks ran through it.
Delicate golden light poured through those cracks, brightening the surrounding darkness.
Everything about the painting shouted pain… and then healing.
Morgan knew a thing or two about pain, loss, despair, and hopelessness. She had experienced it first-hand. In fact, she had felt it like a punch in the gut, a twist of a blade. But she knew very little about healing, particularly in the emotional sense.
Yes, she could tell anyone who listened how long it would take to heal from a craniotomy to remove a meningioma—three to six months or longer if radiation is required.
And the recovery time after a clipping of an aneurysm was eight weeks or several months depending on the severity.
But she couldn’t figure out how long it took to heal from losing a patient. Especially when it had been—
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said a woman. She slid up beside Morgan, standing so close her elbow brushed against hers. She had a glass of bubbly in her left hand and a pamphlet with the gallery’s name in her other.
Morgan glimpsed her out of the corner of her eye but refused to look at her directly, just in case the woman took it as an invitation to stay.
Even from the side, it was obvious the woman was gorgeous. Blonde hair the color of wet sand fell effortlessly over her shoulders. Freckles on her tanned shoulders—the one Morgan could see. Soft bee-stung kind of lips and a soft, yet strong jawline.
“The artist really knows how to capture the idea of pain,” said the woman, entirely oblivious to Morgan’s inner turmoil. “It’s almost as if you can feel it just by looking at the painting. Don’t you think?”
Morgan said nothing, only clenched her teeth, wishing the woman would just leave. The whole idea of coming to an art gallery in Monterey—where the art scene was nothing like it was in the bigger cities—was for the peace and quiet, to be completely alone.
“All that raw emotion.” She waved a hand over the painting. Morgan noticed rings on every finger. Who on earth wore rings on every finger?
“It’s incredible how art can convey such depth,” the woman added, her voice like warm molasses.
Before Morgan got caught up in that voice, she sidestepped, moving on to the next painting. This one was not nearly as emotional as the one before. It was bright and flamboyant, and she wondered why the art coordinator would put two such glaringly different paintings side by side.
“You know, it’s rather rude to ignore someone when they’re talking to you.
” The woman came to stand in between Morgan and the painting.
She had her arms folded over her chest, one hand still holding onto the flute.
Morgan got a better look at her—eyes the color of an ocean, a nose that looked like the perfect nose, cheekbones both soft and sharp, and arms dotted with tattoos.
She wore a white dress that flowed like a bag over her tanned body, except the bag somehow still hugged her soft curves, like the way Greek statues made marble look insanely soft.
If ‘gorgeous’ had a face and a body, it would be hers.
Not that it mattered that Morgan could imagine kissing her, brushing her tongue along those full lips, or that she’d probably spend the night thinking about her, wondering how she tasted. She would consider if sex with the gorgeous stranger would numb Morgan’s pain like a soothing balm.
None of that mattered.
Morgan was punishing herself. She was standing there in that gallery, forcing herself to act like a normal human being, when all she wanted was to shrivel up like a raisin on the couch while her world unraveled around her.
It was a sick form of punishment. Nothing more.
Nothing less. Sleeping with the woman was the opposite of what she wanted, even though it was probably the exact thing she needed. A perfect reprieve.
Morgan held the woman’s gaze. “It’s quite rude to bother someone when they clearly don’t want to be bothered,” she said icily.
She then turned to walk away, but this time, fingers suddenly wrapped around her wrist. Morgan’s breath caught in her throat. Her chest felt like it was about to be shattered by her fervently beating heart.
She whipped her head back, a scowl properly in place, glanced down at the hand around her wrist, and lifted her eyes up to meet the woman’s. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“My name’s Sydney,” said the woman, unbothered by the glower, or the way Morgan’s body had tensed, her shoulders rigid, posture coiled, ready to spring into fight or flight. “And I only came up to you because I think you’re very attractive, and I hoped I could persuade you to get a drink with me.”
One strap of the woman’s white dress fell down her shoulder when she dropped her arms to her sides. Morgan fought the urge to pull it back up into place… or slide it down even further… or smooth her palms down those silky-looking arms.
Maybe sleeping with the woman was like a punishment in itself.
With everything going on, Morgan couldn’t possibly enjoy it.
Just the opposite. She would spend the orgasm reminding herself that she still got to feel when her patient, the one who had died during a complicated surgery, could never feel anything again.
That reminder would claw at her like nails and flail her alive. It was punishment enough.
“Your place or mine?” said Morgan, her gaze unblinking, unwavering.
~~
“Maybe we should go inside your house,” Morgan muttered, aware of how exposed they were. Even the tree-lined street, the sliver of a waxing moon, and the two busted street lamps didn’t offer enough darkness to make her feel at ease.
What if a neighbor decided to walk their dog at ten p.m.? What if a police officer cruised along the neighborhood and arrested them both for public indecency?
But Sydney didn’t seem to mind. She had her lips pressed against Morgan’s neck, her one hand weaved in Morgan’s black curls, and the other roamed down Morgan’s stomach, cinching the fabric of her dress up to her hips.
They were still in the driveway, leaning against Morgan’s sleek, silver Mercedes, which she had insisted on driving from Monterey to Sydney’s place in Carmel-by-the-sea for no other reason than she needed a clear exit strategy.
She was bound to come to her senses and realize that sleeping with this stranger was a terrible mistake. Thus, she would need a getaway car.
So far, her senses were no help at all.
“In just a minute.” Sydney’s other hand glided up along Morgan’s chest, squeezed her breast, and then she moved it down to the inside of Morgan’s thigh, stopping short of the start of her panties.
Thank goodness she had gone with the lace.
“Or how about now?” Morgan said, more firmly this time, not because she had heard a dog bark and worried it might come running their way, but because she was aching for the woman.
She wanted Sydney on her back with her clothes off.
She wanted the woman’s face between her legs.
She wanted five minutes of forgetting that her world was falling apart, piece by piece. “Before I get in my car and leave.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” said Sydney, stepping back. Her lovely, full lips tilted up. She dropped her arms to her side, that strap falling down her shoulder again, and then reached out, interlacing her fingers with Morgan’s. “The last thing I want is for you to leave.”
“Then how about we take this to your bedroom?”
Sydney’s bedroom was dark and quiet. Their breaths and the scrape of their fingers against their skin were the only sounds filling the silence.
Morgan didn’t mind the dark, never did, not even when she was a kid.
But she would’ve preferred to see the woman.
All of her. She sighed softly in relief when the switch flicked on, bathing the room in warm yellow light.
“I’m really glad you didn’t get in your car and leave,” said Sydney teasingly, pulling on the delicate string that held Morgan’s dress together until it fell to her feet.
“Me too.” Morgan smoothed both thumbs down Sydney’s shoulders, tugging at the straps, grateful the dress wasn’t difficult to take off.
She swallowed hard when the woman’s pillowy breasts bounced free from her bra and then again when Sydney stepped closer, her fingers ghosting up along Morgan’s back.