Free My Everything by Julia Barrett Page B

fact that the topics of discussion were quite serious.
    Let’s see, death and dying. Pain management. Cancer. Chemotherapy. Bereavement. Couldn’t get much more serious than that. Boy, talk about intrusive thoughts.
    Ben was a very intrusive man indeed.
    Grace knew to all outward appearances she behaved normally. But beneath her nurse face, her stomach churned, her breasts ached, and her thighs quivered with desire. She wanted to wrap her body tightly around Ben and never let him go. Yet, he hadn’t called and she knew he might not be at the hotel when she got back. Regardless of how she felt about him or what she wanted, he could very easily disappear from her life again without a single word.
    That notion, now that it had reared its ugly head, had her practically shaking with the urge to speed back to the hotel, running every red light and stop sign along the way, so she could pound on his door and demand he give her the reassurance she craved.
    She told herself to suck it up. There was no way in hell she’d do that to Ben. If necessary she’d go on with her life and be grateful for one morning. Because life was like that, sometimes you only got one shot. Sometimes you got a single day.
    Grace repeated the mantra she taught her patients. Although we come into this world without guarantees, we live our lives the best we can. In Grace’s view, there really was no other option. What she wanted didn’t always matter. Things happened or didn’t happen regardless of her opinion on the subject.
    Once again every parking space in the hotel’s lot was occupied. Annoyed as hell, Grace headed to the back. The old van from the previous night was still parked near the hedge, but it had been moved. Once again the asshole driver had taken up two parking spots, and this time, he’d backed in diagonally, leaving no space for her sub-compact.
    What a jerk.
    Grace stopped her car and pulled a pen and a piece of paper from her purse. She wrote down the license plate number, folded up the sheet of paper and shoved it into her dress pocket. As soon as she had a chance, she would call the front desk. If the van’s owner was a registered guest, they’d make him park his damn van like a normal person. If he wasn’t a registered guest, then he could get his van out of the parking lot.
    Grace pulled away and drove around the hotel. She finally parked in a separate lot beyond the hedge. There were plenty of slots available, but it meant she’d have to backtrack in the dark all the way around the fence and the bushes between the two lots to get to an entrance. Not pleasant at this time of night.
    Irritated, Grace grabbed her purse and slung it across her chest. She pulled out her room keycard so she could let herself into the hotel. She locked the car and held her car key stiffly between her index finger and her middle finger just in case she needed to use it as a weapon. Self Defense 101. College. Freshman year. A car key could poke an eye out.
    She laughed at the thought. It was actually pretty disgusting. Her mother’s favorite words of wisdom when Grace was young were, “Don’t run with sharp sticks. You’ll fall and poke your eye out.”
    Grace had never once considered running with a sharp stick until her mother put the notion into her head. She immediately searched high and low for the sharpest stick she could find, and the minute she found it, ran around and around the yard clutching it in her hand for almost an hour until she fell and knocked out a tooth on a rock.
    Her mother had been accurate the day she warned Grace not to stick her tongue on a lamp post when the wind chill index was thirty below. She said her tongue would stick to it. The very first thing Grace did when she got outside was lick the nearest lamp post. Her mom had been right. Grace was stuck there for ten minutes before she got the courage to rip her tongue off, leaving all the skin behind. She’d bled like a stuck pig.
    As she strode determinedly through