Free Red (Close Contact Book 3) by Megan Mitcham Page A

expletive on her lips. The large hand that stilled hers did.
    Distracted by Mona’s pitching voice, her own tardiness and the inner turmoil wrenching her mind and body, Lexie looked up only enough to see four gold bars against the black of the pilot’s uniform sleeve before nodding her appreciation and turning away. Eyes closed, Lexie forced her attention back to her friend. She arrested Mona’s tirade with one sad sentence.
    “I killed a man today.”
    Finally, there was stillness. On the line, Mona was quiet. Behind her, the pilot didn’t move. They passed a hushed minute together.
    Mona broke first, as Lexi had known she would. “Hun, two million three hundred thousand to one are crappy odds for anyone, even a miracle worker like you. I tried so hard to talk you out of it, not because I didn’t believe in you, but because sometimes things aren’t meant to be.”
    Lexi swatted the tiny tear from her cheek. “I need to get away, Mona.”
    “I know it’s hard. I know you work so hard. I’ll try and schedule something for you around the first of the year. Maybe, February.”
    “Four months,” she croaked. “No. Now. I need to get away today. I can’t do this right now. Not any of it.”
    “Alexis McCrae, you can’t bail on the American Academy of Neurology.”
    “I have to.”
    “What?” her friend asked, awe making the word airy. “You’ve never shirked on a job. Not a surgery. Not a conference. Not a bi-annual teeth cleaning. Not that stupid theology paper where we were supposed to choose an ancient civilization's philosophies and defend them as necessary to present day’s society.”
    An unexpected chuckle shook Lexie’s shoulders. “Hedonism should have gotten you booted from the class.”
    Mona sighed, “The professor was six years older than us, not too hard on the eyes, and after a closed door session he conceded. But all this is beside the point, you’re hosting two dystonia skills workshops, not simply attending the conference. Plus, you’re a keynote speaker.”
    “It has been a quintuple shit kind of day, Mona.”
    “Geez, you didn’t even cuss when Sharon Lee stole your prom date, the day before the dance.” A loud huff came through the receiver. “Fine. I’ll clean up the mess. You get four days. Make them count.”
    Lexie’s breath was ragged, when she said, “Thank you.”
    After depressing the power button, she stared in amazement at the black screen and the blank schedule before her. Neither had happened since she’d been marked as “the” neurosurgeon of the northeast. It had been years, eighteen years, she quickly calculated, since she had taken any form of vacation. Literally, half her lifetime ago at age eighteen Lexie had gone on spring break with her college friends. The memory of tequila burned the back of her throat. Bleary visions of bar-top dancing made her hips sway just a little.
    Lexie stood at the top of the mountain she’d been climbing all her life. There on the tarmac with three crew members, The American Academy of Neurology and hundreds of colleagues waiting on her, Lexie took a figurative look around. She had money which Mona adored spending for her. She had two homes, both of which she frequented with all her travel between New York Presbyterian University Hospital and Johns Hopkins. She had the respect of her esteemed peer group. Most importantly, she had a job she loved and, on most days, allowed her to help people.
    A hop away from forty and Lexie had no regrets. What she did have was a sudden hankering to toss back tequila shots, dance for hours in a sea of gyrating bodies and... Yes, she wanted to fuck until she could only name three, maybe four, parts of the body. A thrill, typically reserved for the most challenging surgeries, shot up her spine.
    She turned to thank Silent Pilot Stan for his help with the trunk and tell him about their change of course. Her typical portly, grey, yet sweet pilot had apparently gotten the vacation memo and