Baby, It's Cold Outside: An Enemies to Lovers Holiday Medical Romance

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “You do,” she pointed out, and ha! Now it was his turn to go all wide-eyed in surprise.

  “I know I can get pretty confident sometimes, but is that really how I come across? Like an asshole who knows everything?”

  He looked so stunned that Sofia had no choice but to shake her head, the ends of her ponytail swaying over her shoulders. “Not like that. I mean, maybe a little,” she qualified, because that Dr. Cocky thing? Definitely real. But he’d never been so arrogant that he didn’t at least listen to the other doctors, and she’d never once seen him dismiss a patient’s concerns, even when those concerns were unfounded or over the top. “For the record, though, I never called you an asshole.”

  “Just cocky,” he said, and here, she couldn’t disagree.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know that it’s such a bad thing overall. You just…you make your cases look so easy that I feel like an idiot because ortho is so hard for me.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re absolutely not an idiot.” At this, Mallory put the book down, his knee nearly brushing against hers as he angled himself to look at her more fully. Good Lord, he was serious. “Do you remember when Evie Connoly came in to the clinic last summer with that ortho trauma?”

  Sofia winced. Evie’s injuries had been both brutal and delivered by an abusive ex-boyfriend. She wouldn’t forget the young woman’s case for a long time. Probably ever.

  “Of course.”

  “Then you remember who did her exam and treated her.”

  “That doesn’t count,” Sofia protested. “All I did was help Dr. Michaelson perform the exam and take X-rays.”

  But Mallory shook his head, adamant. “It absolutely counts. You handled the ortho consult by yourself.”

  “Under special circumstances,” she pointed out, and she wasn’t wrong. Evie had been so overwhelmed from her assault that Sofia, who had already been treating her at the wellness clinic across the street from the hospital, had performed the exam and relayed everything to Mallory over the phone and via the hospital’s secure system, rather than add another doctor to the mix.

  “The circumstances don’t lessen the care you gave. You did everything necessary for me to make a diagnosis remotely,” he said, “and then you treated the patient per my direction. Yes, Dr. Michaelson supervised you. No, it wasn’t a complicated case, and no, Evie didn’t require surgery. But you were still exactly the doctor she needed that day.”

  Sofia remained unconvinced. “Okay, but what if she had needed surgery?”

  “Then you’d have kept her calm and prepped her, and learned how to place pins in someone’s wrist when you assisted me in the OR. It’s a process, Vasquez. One every doctor learns.” One corner of Mallory’s mouth drifted up into a half-smile that made her belly do a little backflip. “Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t born knowing how to surgically fuse vertebrae or reconstruct a crushed femur.”

  Exhaling a soft laugh, she said, “I know. But I feel like I’m never going to get it, and I promised…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I just want to be the best doctor I can be.”

  An emotion Sofia couldn’t quite identify flickered through Mallory’s stare, making a different emotion she couldn’t identify move through her chest as he spoke.

  “It’s my job to get you there as much as it’s your job to try and learn. I know my delivery is a little, ah, unorthodox, with all the teasing and quizzes. I might’ve laid it on a little thicker with you than with the other residents.” He paused to run a palm over the back of his neck. “But I only meant to get you to ease up on being so serious all the time so you don’t burn out. It’s a real danger with residents, and it can sneak up on you.”

  Oh. Oh. “That’s why you tease me so much?”

  “Yeah. And I challenge you because you’re smart as hell and clearly passionate about general surgery. I was trying to get you to apply that to ortho, too, but I didn’t realize the joking around bothered you. To be honest, I didn’t think anything bothered you.”

  Sofia blinked, certain she’d either misheard him or he’d been taken over by some sort of sweet, sincere, totally charming body snatcher. “Wait. You think I’m smart?”

  “Nope.” But before she could throttle him—and she was one hundred-percent ready to for teasing her so meanly—he leaned in and said, “I know you’re smart as hell. And you’re not bad at ortho. You just need better guidance. That’s on me.”

  “Oh.” The word was mostly sound as she sighed it away, a thread of guilt taking its place in her rib cage. “Well, I haven’t been the best student, really. Avoiding you, and all.”

  One black brow rose. “You’re admitting that?”

  “You already knew,” she pointed out, losing the battle with her laugh, and Mallory laughed along with her.

  “Fair enough. I did. But I mean it, Vasquez. I never meant to make you feel like a bad doctor. I apologize.”

  “And I’m sorry for being kind of prickly.”

  “Kind of?” He pinned her with a mock frown, but to Sofia’s surprise, her ego didn’t cut her laughter short.

  Instead, she laughed harder. “Okay, okay! I was a cactus. But it’s only because I want to be the best.”

  Extending his hand, Mallory said, “Nothing wrong with that. Truce?”

  “Truce.”

  He fit her palm against hers, holding firmly. After a beat, she knew she should let go, that any second now, he would let go, and this moment would be over. But then his fingers tightened, his calluses rubbing against her wrist and lighting up something deep inside of her, and Sofia wanted nothing more than to find out how he tasted. What sounds he’d make if she slid her tongue along the seam of his sexy, smirky mouth in a bid to go deeper. What his body would feel like, hard in all the places she ached, pressed up against her, and holy crap, was she nuts?

  Mallory was an attending. She was a resident. She needed to focus on her career, and right now, that career hinged on her passing her boards.

  And there was only one way she could do that.

  Sofia dropped his hand and rooted herself to the far end of the couch, forcing herself to think of a nice, long, subarctic shower as she said, “Now that we’ve got that settled, I guess we should study.”

  4

  There were plenty of phrases Sofia was certain she’d never, ever utter. No, I don’t want coffee this morning. You know what would be fun? Karaoke! And sure, I’ll take the night shift again, no problem.

  Except that last one was exactly how she’d answered her fellow intern, Christopher Boldin, when he’d asked her if she’d swap with him so he could go to a pre-holiday dinner with his live-in girlfriend/their fellow resident and her parents. Sofia wanted to tell herself that it had nothing to do with the study session she’d had with Mallory during their last shift together, or how she’d learned more from him in one night than she had in a month of struggling on her own. But that was a Grand Canyon-sized lie, because as soon as she’d seen Mallory’s name on the schedule for tonight, the no-can-do she’d been ready to give Boldin had turned into a big, fat yes.

  Coincidentally, the same answer Mallory had given her when she’d forked over her pride (again) and asked him if he’d help her study (again).

  “Okay!” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them with glee as he closed the careworn copy of Orthopedic Traumatology he’d let her borrow after their last session. “I think that’s a pretty good overview of lower extremity traumas. We’ll have to cover pelvic and acetabular traumas separately, of course. So much ground there. But this is a great start.”

  “Mmm. Fabulous,” Sofia murmured, unable to keep her sarcasm corralled. She might be doing a little better with ortho, but it was still a struggle more often than not.

  “Sorry.” Mallory’s smile turned sheepish, and he sat back against the couch in the attendings’ lounge, which was once again deserted in the late hour. “I get a little carried away sometimes.”

  Ugh, she was a jerk. This brain block was on her, not him. “Don’
t apologize. I mean, I may not get your obsession with ortho,” she qualified, because she’d probably only stop being brutally honest when she was pulse-free. “But that’s how I feel about general surgery, so in a way, I do get it.”

  “What made you choose general?” Mallory asked, genuine interest showing in his dark green stare. Sofia knew she could pop off with her standard-issue answer of wanting to help people with a variety of ailments. It was, after all, not untrue. But the way his eyes had glowed like the Christmas lights draped over every window in the city made her loosen the deeper truth.

  “Honestly, I think general chose me. I just feel…I don’t know, right when I work on those cases. Right here.” Her hand brushed over the center of her scrubs, resting on the ease that had suddenly spread out there. “They always make sense to me. Like general surgery is exactly what I was meant to do.”

  A beat later, she realized—oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit—that he was full-on staring, and she clamped down on her bottom lip even though she was far too late to shut up. “You, know what, that was—”

  “Perfect,” Mallory said. “And I feel the exact same way about ortho.”

  His smile contained nothing but honesty, and somehow it was even sexier than the smirk that always made her want to climb him like a twelve-foot ladder.

  Still, her face flushed. “It doesn’t sound…I don’t know, cheesy to you?”

  “Nope. Not at all.” He tacked on a shrug. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter if it sounds cheesy to me. Hell, it could sound cheesy to every last person on the planet. But if it’s your truth, you’ve gotta live it without apology, you know?”

  “I guess I never thought of it that way,” Sofia said slowly, although she couldn’t deny that it made a shitload of sense.

  Mallory grinned and passed over the next textbook in the stack. “Lucky for you, you can start any time you want.”

  They fell into a back and forth that surprised Sofia with its effectiveness and ease. Even though the information was dense as hell and she still didn’t have a great handle on much of it, Mallory was patient, walking her through symptoms and diagnoses and procedures with just enough care for her to understand and internalize without feeling holy-shit overwhelmed. His passion for the topic showed in his ease, and before she realized it, the digital clock on the wall read—

  “Oh, my God. It’s 3:30?”

  Mallory shrugged. “Looks that way. You want to take a break?”

  “No,” Sofia said honestly. She was finally starting to make measurable headway. She didn’t want to stop until she got paged or passed out. In that order.

  But of course, her traitorous stomach let loose with a growl too loud to deny or ignore, and Mallory laughed.

  “We probably should, just for a minute. You know, so neither one of us keels over.” He pressed to his feet, moving over to the kitchenette. “Let’s see, we’ve got protein bars, fruit leather—which so should not be a thing—and peanut butter crackers. Pick your poison.”

  She weighed her options. “Ah, protein bar. Please.”

  Snagging one from the cupboard and two bottles of water from the fridge, Mallory returned to the sofa. “It’s allegedly ‘carrot cake’ flavored, but I have a feeling the pastry chefs on Cake Showdown wouldn’t agree.”

  No. Way. “You watch Cake Showdown? As in, the show where pastry chefs from all over the world duke it out in crazy cake-baking contests?” A.K.A. the show Sofia had been utterly and unrepentantly addicted to since its debut two years ago.

  An expression crossed Mallory’s face, and for a second, she couldn’t place it. Then she realized with a start that it was self-consciousness.

  “Yeah,” he admitted, his cheeks flushing beneath the cover of his stubble. “Actually, if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t, uh, missed an episode.”

  “Oh, my God! I’ve seen nearly all of them, too.” Unable to cage her excitement, Sofia shifted toward him. “When they did that birthday cake extravaganza thing for the host’s thirtieth birthday last month? I legit wanted to crawl through my iPad just to get to those root beer float cupcakes. So good!”

  “Stop.” He flattened a palm over his chest, his knee bumping hers as he leaned in. “I craved that German chocolate cake with salted caramel buttercream for like, two full weeks after that episode aired.”

  “Oh, nice pick,” she murmured. She’d have sold a kidney for a bite of that thing.

  “Have you seen the holiday battles that started airing a couple of weeks ago?” he asked, his eyes glinting as he grinned. “They’re—”

  “No.” Just like that, Sofia’s happiness fizzled. Damn it. “I don’t watch any holiday shows. At all.”

  If Mallory was offended by her abruptness, he didn’t let it show. “So, no holiday parties and no holiday shows,” he said quietly. “I sense a theme, here.”

  Surprisingly, he didn’t push, and something about the way he was looking at her made Sofia think he’d let her get away with a brush off. But they’d been talking so easily for hours, and whether it was the 3 a.m. fatigue or the bone-deep sadness of the impending holidays or the way Mallory’s eyes still held that no-nonsense ease they’d been rocking all night, Sofia didn’t know.

  She simply heard herself say the thing she hadn’t even told her fellow residents, or anyone else at Remington Mem.

  “My father was killed by a drunk driver the day after Christmas six years ago.”

  The oddest sensation was firing off in Emmett’s chest. But he’d have to ponder what the hell it was later, because right now, he was powerless to do anything other than shift forward and put a hand on Vasquez’s forearm.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. Christ, her anti-holiday cheer made so much sense now.

  She nodded, the vulnerability that had replaced her normally fierce demeanor taking another jab at his solar plexus. “Thanks. I don’t normally talk about it. To be honest, I’m not really sure why I’m talking about it now.”

  “We don’t have to. I didn’t mean to push—”

  “No,” Vasquez said, her free hand moving to cover the one he’d wrapped around her forearm, so easily that he wondered if she realized she’d made the move. “It’s okay. It’s not a secret. I just…I have a hard time feeling festive at the holidays, is all.”

  “I take it you two were close?” he ventured, knowing she might shut down the conversation—and him along with it—in an instant.

  Only she didn’t. “Close is an understatement. My parents divorced when I was ten, and my mother moved to Brazil to be with her family. So it was just me and my Papi. He was always there with me. For me.”

  She trailed off, and Emmett said the only thing he could think of. “You must miss him.”

  “I really do.” Her dark eyes regained that spark of determination Emmett had always found so appealing. “He’s the reason I work so hard. I mean, I always wanted to be a surgeon, but when I got into medical school, he was ridiculously proud. Even though he never got to see me become a doctor, I still just want to do right by him. Which probably sounds a little crazy, since he’s gone, but…”

  “It doesn’t.”

  Vasquez’s brows lifted in surprise, but that didn’t dissuade Emmett from continuing. If she was willing to lower her guard and share something that personal, the least he could do was give her a tiny bit of comfort. She was clearly missing her old man.

  “I feel the same way about my parents,” Emmett said, and it was true. “They supported me all the way through medical school. During residency. Even now. So, no, I don’t think that sounds crazy at all.”

  “Wow, really? You’re close with you parents?”

  “Yeah, really.” He smiled just enough to make her smile back, scattering the sadness that had built in her stare. “What, did you think I was raised by wolves?”

  She laughed, softly, but it was enough. “No. It’s just that not a lot of adults are close with their parents. Most of the people I know roll their eyes and send their parents to voicemail whenever
they call. I get that some of them are justified. People can be…”

  “Challenging?” Emmett supplied.

  “I was going to say pains in the ass,” Vasquez said past the wry twist of her lips. “Some people avoid their parents for good reason. But I’d give anything to see my dad just one more time, so he could know I became a doctor, just like we’d both always dreamed.”

  Emmett knew he could let the conversation lull, or swerve the subject, or even gloss over things with some clichéd horse shit about everything happening for a reason. Any one of those things would be the smart play. He and Vasquez were getting pretty freaking personal, and he already liked her far more than he should. What he really needed to do was shut things down, and fast.

  But then he saw the hurt in her eyes, the vulnerability she never let anyone see, yet here she was, sharing it with him so openly, and screw playing it safe.

  She deserved better.

  “It’s true that some people aren’t close with their parents, and it’s also true that there are sometimes good reasons for that. But we’re not talking about some people. We’re talking about you. It’s not crazy that Christmas is hard for you because you miss your father, and it’s definitely not crazy for you to want to honor him by being a great doctor.”

  “Everyone in med school called me The Grinch,” Vasquez said, her laugh falling far short of joy. “I never told any of them why I hate Christmas so much. I guess it felt too personal.”

  “The stuff that hurts usually does,” Emmett said.

  She nodded. “Yeah. But it’s not so bad saying it now.” After a beat, she said, “You’re really easy to talk to, you know that?” and it prompted a soft laugh past his lips.

  “You’re not so bad yourself. Tell you what”—Emmett turned to face her more fully, his heart beginning to beat faster beneath his scrubs—“I’m going to do all that I can to help you pass your boards. And when you do, we’ll go to The Plaza and order every single thing on the dessert menu to celebrate, and then we can toast you and your dad. Deal?”