Just One Night, Part 1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Other Books by Elle Casey

  Dedication

  Note about serial romances

  Part 6

  CHAPTER One - Jennifer

  CHAPTER Two - William

  CHAPTER Three - Jennifer

  CHAPTER Four - William

  CHAPTER Five - Jennifer

  CHAPTER Six - William

  CHAPTER Seven - Jennifer

  CHAPTER Eight - William

  CHAPTER Nine - Jennifer

  CHAPTER Ten - William

  CHAPTER Eleven - Jennifer

  CHAPTER Twelve - William

  CHAPTER Thirteen - Jennifer

  CHAPTER Fourteen - William

  CHAPTER Fifteen - EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER Sixteen - BONUS CHAPTER : A conversation between William and Edward

  About the Author

  Other Books by Elle Casey

  just one night

  A Serial Romance

  Part 6

  +

  Bonus Chapter

  ELLE CASEY

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  © 2014 Elle Casey, all rights reserved, worldwide.

  Elle Casey thanks you deeply for your understanding and support.

  Want to get an email when my next book is released?

  Sign up here: http://eepurl.com/h3aYM

  OTHER BOOKS BY ELLE CASEY

  NEW ADULT ROMANCE

  Shine Not Burn & MacKenzie Fire (2-book series)

  By Degrees

  Don’t Make Me Beautiful

  Rebel (3-book series)

  ADULT CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

  Full Measure (written as Kat Lee)

  Just One Night (romantic serial)

  YA PARANORMAL ROMANCE

  Duality (2-book series)

  YA URBAN FANTASY

  War of the Fae (4-book series)

  Clash of the Otherworlds (3-book series, follows War of the Fae)

  My Vampire Summer

  Aces High

  YA DYSTOPIAN

  Apocalypsis (4-book series)

  YA ACTION ADVENTURE

  Wrecked (2-book series)

  DEDICATION

  To the confident, sexy girl inside all of us.

  A note about serial romances…

  This book is what’s called a serial romance. Most readers are familiar with full-length novels, novellas, and short stories, but many are not so familiar with serialized fiction. With the advent of self-publishing has come many different innovations, but believe it or not, a serial novel is not one of them. Serials have been around since the seventeenth century! They became especially popular in Britain’s Victorian Era (nineteenth century), “due to a combination of the rise of literacy, technological advances in printing, and improved economics of distribution.”* The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens may be a serial you’re familiar with. The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers were also serials, as were Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, among many others. Use of this format started to die down when periodicals fell out of favor and were then replaced by the Internet, but thanks to indie authors, it’s coming back! As a reader, I’ve found it a fun way to follow a story that’s always evolving while the anticipation builds between episodes or parts, and in the case of my serials it will be a story that evolves according to reader feedback. Please join the conversation about this book on my website at: http://www.ellecasey.com/just-one-night.

  You can read more about serialized fiction on Wikipedia.

  *[Law, Graham (2000). Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press. New York & Hampshire, UK: Palgrave. p. 34. ISBN 0-312-23574-7. Retrieved October 23, 2011.]

  Part 6

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jennifer

  WHEN I OPEN MY EYES I find William sitting in a chair next to me, sleeping with his head resting on his fist. He’s way too big for the seat and looks extremely uncomfortable. I hate to wake him so instead I silently take stock of my situation.

  There’s an IV coming out of my hand, and a couple bags of clear liquid hanging above me. There’s a regular beeping that I’m pretty sure is my heartbeat being monitored by someone at a nurses’ station. A glance down at my chest shows me nothing. I’m in a hospital gown patterned in light blue squares. I’m thirsty as hell and my mouth feels like I’ve eaten a jar of paste.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake,” says a cheerful lady in pink walking through the door. She notices William asleep and starts tiptoeing. Her voice shifts to a whisper. “I’ll just check your vitals and leave you be.” She wheels a little cart over and puts a blood pressure cuff around my arm.

  I stare into her warm brown eyes. “I’m in the hospital,” I say.

  She lifts an eyebrow. “Very perceptive.” Her smile takes the sting out of her words.

  “How did I get here?”

  She lifts a chin in William’s direction. “I’m guessing he had something to do with it.” When she sees my eyes bug out, she amends her answer. “Not in a bad way. He didn’t do any of this to you.” She gestures in the direction of my head.

  I reach up, trying to figure out what she could be talking about. There’s gauze above my ears. I must look terrible.

  Apparently, my face is an open book.

  “Oh, don’t worry. You’re fine. It’s just a little cut and some stitches. You’ll be back to your old self, right as rain, in just a week or so.”

  I look over at William and wince at the pain I feel at the back of my head. “Has he been here a long time?”

  “Since you came in a few hours ago.”

  “Can I go home?” I ask. For some reason all I’m worried about is the brunch. I can’t miss the brunch tomorrow at Frank’s house.

  The nurse shrugs. “That’s up to the doctor. He should be in within the next hour.” She pauses as she looks at her machine and then types some things into a computer that’s sitting in my room. When she’s done she smiles at me and pushes the blood pressure robot into a corner. “You don’t need to worry about a thing. We’re taking good care of you.”

  “Okay,” I say, not wanting to be rude by acting as if I doubt what she’s saying. I know from her nametag that she’s Gladys and I’m at Memorial Hospital, but the rest is a mystery. And William looks so pitiful scrunched up in that chair, I don’t want to wake him up to ask him any questions. All I can remember is arguing with the twat monster and then nothing else. When did William get there? How did I get hurt?

  “Just press the red button here if you need me,” Gladys says. She turns to leave the room. “And if you need to get up to use the toilet, be sure you call me first. I don’t want you falling down.”

  “Okay.” I nod until she leaves. Then I sit up, swing my legs over to the side of the bed, and move as close to the edge as I can. My head is throbbing, but I have to get into that bathroom and see what happened to me before William wakes up. What if I look like a complete train wreck? It’s bad enough he had to rescue me from what I can only assume turned into a full-on chick fight.

  I slide off the side of the bed and take some slow, tentative steps towards the bathroom, wheeling my IV cart thingy along with me. It’s not far, so I’m not worried about calling for help. I get almost to the door before I hear a rustling from William’s direction.

  “You’re awake,” he says.

  I don’t turn around. “I just have to … go in here. I’ll be out in a second.”

  “Let me help you,” he says, coming over to my side.

  Is it possible to die of embarrassment? There’s a weird odor of antiseptic and … tape around me. I don’t want him to smell it, so I bristle at his attention. “No! I’m fine.” I hold ou
t my arm so he can’t get too close. “I just need to use the bathroom.”

  “Darling, let me help. You’ve had a bad knock to the head. You shouldn’t be on your feet yet.”

  On one hand I’m thrilled that he’s so good with sick people. That’s a rare quality in a man. On the other hand, I can’t think of a time I was ever less attractive. This has to be pushing our new relationship to the edge of a cliff.

  “I’m fine, I’m totally fine.” I reach for the door handle. Unfortunately it moves, and I miss completely.

  “Right. You’re totally fine,” he says, putting one hand on my waist and the other on my opposite wrist. “That’s why you’re slapping at phantoms.”

  “I wasn’t slapping at phantoms, I was grabbing the door handle.”

  “Remind me never to choose you for my team when we have a company cricket game.”

  “What are you talking about?” All I can focus on is getting away from him and into the bathroom by myself. Why is he making this so difficult?

  “I have a reputation to uphold. I can’t let you hold me back with your terrible aim. I’m sorry, darling, but there are limits to my affections.”

  I slap him away, not in the mood for his jokes. “Go away. I have to pee and I want to do it in private.”

  The door to the room opens, interrupting William’s response.

  “Hello,” says a preoccupied voice.

  I look over my shoulder at the man standing in the entrance to my room. He’s wearing a polo shirt with a stethoscope hanging around his neck.

  “Who are you?” I ask, annoyed that there’s another person standing in the way of me and the mirror.

  “Doctor Gravins.” He’s too busy staring at my chart to say anything to my face and way younger than a doctor probably should be. Did he say his name is Gravins or Howser? “Just checking in to see how your vitals look and so on.” He walks over and looks up at my IV bag and then at the chart again. He makes some notes.

  I’m suddenly very irritated by the fact that he hasn’t actually looked at me, the patient, once yet. I clear my throat to get his attention, but it doesn’t work. He just keeps on writing. His handwriting is probably terrible.

  William speaks up. “Sorry to bother, doctor, but I wonder if we might have a moment of your time.”

  “Sure … just hold on … a second…” The doctor dots a couple Is and slashes a couple Ts and then looks up. His face is as bland as a bowl of unsweetened oatmeal. His mouth turns up at the ends in an imitation of a smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “Perhaps you could start with a greeting.” William gives him a tight smile.

  The doctor stares at him confused for a couple seconds and then suddenly loosens up, holding out his hand. “John Gravins, nice to meet you. And you are …?”

  William takes his hand off my wrist to shake the doctor’s hand. “William Stratford. And this is my partner, your lovely patient, Jennifer Moorehouse.”

  The doctor looks up at my head and then shares an awkward smile. “Nice to meet you both.”

  Now I’m mad and embarrassed. It must be pretty bad if my doctor is grimacing at it.

  “So what is the verdict?” William asks. “Will she live?”

  I elbow him in the gut, a tiny bit tempted to laugh at his cavalier attitude about my mortality but not wanting him to think he can go into the bathroom with me now.

  The doctor looks back at his notes. “Yes, she’ll live. She’s got a contusion and some swelling along with it, but that’s to be expected.” He shifts his gaze to me. “They tried to shave as little hair off as possible in the ER for the stitches, and your other hair should hide the bald spot, so that’s good.”

  I roll my eyes. “Thank God for small favors.”

  “My concern is the meds,” the doctor says.

  “The meds,” William says, staring at the clipboard as if his x-ray vision will make that statement easier to understand. I’m just as lost as he is, but I stare at the doctor instead.

  “Yes, the meds.” He looks at both of us and then frowns. “Ms. Moorehouse, I would like to speak to you about something in private.” He waits for my response, clicking his pen in and out, in and out, in and out.

  I grind my teeth in frustration. That clicking sound is making me want to jam that pen into his eyeball. “Whatever you have to say to me you can say around him.” I poke a thumb in William’s direction.

  My memory strays to the last thing he and I did together in the parking lot of the Goodmans’ property. I have no more shame left where he’s concerned, so there’s nothing this doctor can say that will embarrass me now. I don’t know why I was in such an all-fired hurry to get to that mirror, actually. If William hasn’t run yet, he probably never will.

  The doctor looks at his notes again. “Based on your condition, I’m concerned about the effect of the medications that were administered in the ambulance before you arrived.”

  “Why?” I ask, completely mystified. “What condition? My head?”

  He sighs out heavily and gives me a dirty look. “You told the EMTs you weren’t pregnant so they gave you Mannitol.”

  The ringing in my ears becomes too loud, and I can’t hear anything else. William is talking to me, I can tell by the way his mouth is moving, but the sound isn’t coming through.

  The doctor points to the bed and puts his notes down. The two of them herd me to the edge of it like I’m some kind of cow.

  “I don’t understand,” I say, hoping someone will hear me because I can’t hear myself. “I don’t understand!”

  William’s expression tells me he’s in full-on panic mode. His hands are flying towards me and then up in the air and then waving at the doctor. He’s got plenty to say, but none of it is penetrating my brain.

  “I don’t get it!” I yell.

  Suddenly my ears are working perfectly and I realize as everyone jumps that I’m talking way too loudly.

  The room becomes totally silent, but I no longer have that ringing in my ears to keep my brain busy. “Uhhh, sorry about that,” I say, trying to smile with my apology. “I think I had a minor hearing loss problem there.”

  “Could be a symptom of the head injury,” the doctor says, his face a bit flushed.

  “Or…,” William holds up a finger, “…perhaps it could be the shock of hearing a certain word. The P-word. I know I am feeling a little light-headed myself.” He tilts his head and blinks his eyes a few times at the doctor. “Perhaps you could repeat what you said once more? Slowly, if you will, for those of us having difficulty processing the information.”

  The doctor looks from William to me and then back to William. “You didn’t know?”

  “Didn’t know what, pray tell?” William is staring at the guy so intently I’m worried the doctor will run out of the room before he says what I’m afraid he’s about to say.

  “That Jennifer is pregnant,” Dr. Gavins says. “That’s she’s having a baby.”

  “No.” I look at him and then William. “No.” I shake my head a few times until the pain becomes too much. Then I stop and look at the ceiling instead. “No, no, no, no, NO!” This cannot be happening. This is one of those crazy, awful dreams that seems real but isn’t. It has to be.

  William puts his hand on my arm. “Easy, love. Easy.”

  I pull my arm away. “Easy? Easy?!” I back away until my butt hits the edge of the bed. “I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine.” I try to laugh, but the sound is more like a crazy woman’s shriek. I climb up into the bed and lie down on my side, facing away from the two men. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.” The thin sheet is nothing to hide under, but I try anyway. It only comes up to my shoulder so I scoot down in the bed so it will cover half of my face.

  No, no, no, no, no. This is not happening.

  I hear mumbling behind me, but I ignore it. I’m going to close my eyes, fall asleep, and then wake up not in this ridiculous nightmare anymore. I’ve had some crazy dreams in the past, but this one takes the cake.

>   Imagine. Being in a hospital, wrapped up like a mummy, being told I’m … Gah. I’m not even going to think that word. I just need to sleep…

  CHAPTER TWO

  William

  “OH, GOD, THIS IS DEFINITELY happening,” Jennifer says, her face hovering over the loo. “It’s totally psychosomatic. He tells me I’m pregnant, and a day later I’m barfing. No. This is bullshit.” She slides back onto her bum and rests her head against the cabinet.

  I squat down to my heels next to her and pat her shoulder. I’m afraid to touch anything else, lest I injure her more. “The nurse said it will only last three months.”

  She looks up at me, cold-blooded murder in her eyes. “Three months? Months? Do you hear yourself? That’s a quarter of a year!”

  We stare at each other¸ and I can’t help but feel pity for her. Yes, our lives are turned upside down and inside out, but I’m just watching, a mere spectator in this crazy world we’ve made together. She’s the one doing all the work.

  “What can I do for you?” I ask as gently as I can. “Draw you a bath? Rub your feet? Brush your hair?”

  Her lips quiver and her eyes go sparkling with tears. “Stop being so nice to me.”

  I close my eyes for a moment and nod sagely. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I should be cruel. You’re pregnant with stitches in your head, so the best thing for you is disregard and insensitivity.” I stand and hold out my hand. “Come on, then. Off to your bed of nails.”

  She laughs and takes my hand, probably too exhausted to fight me off. “I think I’m sick in the head. You’re nice and it makes me mad. You’re mean and it makes me happy. I think someone gave me a lobotomy or something when I was in that hospital.”