“The old guy called him Colt,” said Beckett.
Earl mouthed the name, frowning. “I swear I’ve seen him somewhere before.” He shook his head and waddled off, Lloyd following behind him.
The interruption bought me just enough time to get myself together. To bring that other me back. I pushed the past down deep where it belonged and by the time Beckett looked at me again, I’d clawed that cocky, I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude back into place. It was a layer of armor that would ward off questions.
If they think you’re shallow, no one tries to dig deep.
I saw Beckett cock her head to one side, confused. She knew something had changed. I’d just have to convince her that the cocky me was the real me. The only me. No more slips.
But now that I’d buried those deeper feelings, the raw attraction took over. I looked at her and I couldn’t stop, my breathing coming quicker and my heart starting to race.
I leaned infinitesimally towards her, close enough that I could smell the clean, warm scent of her. My breath caught as I looked down at her soft lower lip, already dreaming about how it would feel as I crushed my lips against hers. My eyes flicked to the little semicircle of pale skin at the neckline of her scrubs. That mystery, almost nothing showing...she was sexier, to me, than some stripper in a G-string. God, I wanted to know what her breasts looked like. Wanted to ram that top up to her neck and fill my hands with them. Wanted to jerk down the pants and cup her pussy in my hand, let her rock against me as my fingers explored her. Then I’d spin her around and bend her over the bed….
The blood was thundering in my ears. One hand was still on her waist and the press of her against my palm was the best thing I’d ever felt.
I was getting addicted to this woman.
Our eyes were locked on each other. Our breathing had fallen into time. She gave the tiniest shake of her head: not a no, a disbelieving why?
I frowned. Are you serious? Didn’t she know how gorgeous she was? Then I remembered a doctor’s reaction, when I’d asked about her. Beckett? he’d asked me, mystified. The surgeon, Beckett? As if no one would ever be interested in her. I wanted to punch the guy. It wasn’t right, that everyone overlooked her.
I stared right back at her and let her see how certain I was.
And those blue eyes slowly filled with heat. That was what really drove me crazy about her, I realized. Not the pale skin or the copper hair, but the hint that deep down, underneath all that shyness, there was a woman with a lust to match mine, who’d grab my ass to urge me deeper, who’d claw my back and scream my name until her throat was raw. All I had to do was free her.
I could still hear that warning voice in the back of my mind. She was different. We had something together, something that would make it hard to say goodbye in the morning.
But I drowned the voice out. I couldn’t fight this: it was too strong. I had to have her.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m taking everyone out for drinks tonight,” I told her. “New guy buys the beers, and all that.”
She immediately shook her head. I could see her trying to retreat back into her safe little burrow. “I don’t really….”
“Beckett.” She froze, when I said it like that. Interesting. “I already told you, you need to get out more. You saved a little girl’s life and you survived nearly getting stabbed. That deserves a drink.”
She looked away. Looked back. Looked away again. But every time her eyes came back to me, I was waiting for her. Challenging her to deny what was building between us.
“One drink,” she said at last in a small voice. I hadn’t picked up on her Colorado accent before because it was so soft and somehow shy. You know how big and confident a Texas accent is, herding all the syllables into line? This was the opposite of that. It suited her perfectly.
“One drink,” I agreed. And stepped back. She hopped off the table and hurried off and I watched her until she was out of sight. I could feel that cocky attitude hardening, strengthening into a protective shell around me. I told myself that I’d get her into bed and that would be the end of it.
9
Amy
FOR A FULL half hour after work, the doctors’ locker room was packed out. Every woman in the hospital was preparing to head to the town’s one bar to drink with Corrigan.
Almost every woman. I waited in the hallway, pretending to study the notice board, until they all flooded out in a clatter of heels and confidence. Only then did I creep in. The place was a battlezone: hair dryers dangling from tangled cables, lipsticks rolling across the tiles, the air acrid with hairspray and clashing perfumes. They weren’t taking any prisoners. And I was going to walk into that same bar? Me?
I changed into the street clothes I’d arrived in that morning: my favorite blue jeans, ragged on one ankle, a thick green roll-neck sweater I wore because it kept the wind out and a black leather biker jacket I’d picked up on a whim from a yard sale. My hair was still pinned up and I was wearing barely any makeup. Unlike most of the women, I didn’t keep a pair of heels at work for nights out. On the rare occasions Krista managed to drag me out to be sociable, I went like this and then hid in the corner.
At high school, without a mom to talk me through teen romance and heartbreak, I’d just stayed away from guys. So I hadn’t learned the flirting that seems to come so effortlessly to all the other women. I was clunky and awkward. I’d only had two brief relationships since I’d come to Mount Mercy, one with a guy from the mining company, one with a guy who planned to open a hardware store here. Both had fizzled out after a few weeks. I was shy, sexually, and they hadn’t known how to bring me out of myself so they’d thought I was cold.
With Corrigan, it was different. I only had to hear that accent or look into those eyes and it was like a switch had been thrown inside me. He said my name and I got wet.
But I knew his reputation. All he wanted was a one-night stand and I didn’t want that. I couldn’t think of anything worse than going to bed with him and then seeing him move onto the next woman. And the hospital gossip machine would go crazy. Everyone would be talking about me. The thought was terrifying: it took me straight back to high school and everyone teasing me. The only safe thing to do was to stay away from him.
But he’d protected me—maybe even saved my life. And he’d helped me when I was trying to reassure Rebecca.
I was going to have to work with him. I couldn’t just blank him.
One drink. I’d have one drink.
I headed for the exit. Just as I was about to step outside, a blast of heat warmed the side of my face. I turned to see Maggie emerging from the door that led down to the basement, wiping her hands on a rag. “Been working on the furnace,” she explained. “There might be some bad weather heading our way and I don’t want it dying on us.”
Maggie is our maintenance chief and she’s been with the hospital so long, she’s almost part of the building. She can fix anything, from a worn-out ECG machine to a leaking oxygen pipe, and without her the whole place would have fallen down years ago. She’s in her fifties, with a close-cropped afro dyed golden blonde. She can come across as sort of gruff, especially when someone breaks something, and I was intimidated by her for about a year, until I realized she’s just fiercely protective of the hospital. She lost her husband some years back and it’s almost like looking after the hospital is a replacement.
“I’m heading to the tavern,” I told her. “Want to come along?”
“Nope,” she said, and walked past me without breaking her stride. But a few feet further on, she stopped. “... thanks,” she said, without turning around. “But I’ve got a fuse box up on the third floor to rewire.”
At nine in the evening? I bit my lip, staring at her back. I could hear the pain in her voice. Staying here, working late into the night, was safe. Safer than being around people, and remembering how lonely she was. “Some other time?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Maggie. “Sure.” And she set off down the hallway. She needs
to find someone, I thought sadly.
Outside, the air was gloriously fresh and just cold enough to make me catch my breath, and there was still only an inch of snow on the ground. Krista, who was a local girl, had told me stories about the blizzards that sometimes hit the area but it looked like my second winter here was going to be as mild as my first.
Mount Mercy’s main street looks incredible at night. There are very few street lights: the town preservation committee doesn’t like them and so instead we have ball-shaped lanterns and strings of fairy lights bathing the sidewalks in a soft, warm light. A lot of the buildings are over a hundred years old, so it still feels like a frontier town. And the fact we’re so isolated, with so few lights, means the sky at night is amazing, deep blue with a billion points of shining light. We’d get star gazers here, if we weren’t so far from a highway.
I’d always loved living there, but that night, it felt different. I kept thinking about Corrigan, traveling the world on a whim. I’d never even been anywhere hot: not proper, soak-it-up, warm-your-bones hot. I could feel my life ticking away, each day spent in the same room of the same hospital in the same town. I’d found a cozy burrow, but was I sheltered... or hiding?
Midway down Main Street is Krüger’s Tavern, our one bar. For a while, we didn’t even have one: the bar closed down and fell into disrepair for about six months. Then a guy from Germany passed through the town, fell in love with a local and bought the place. He’d modeled it on German beer cellars, combined with a bit of alpine hunting lodge: there were thick furs on the wooden benches and a huge open fire, and they specialized in oversize tankards of cold beer and bowls of fries dripping with melted cheese.
I hauled open the door and was hit by a solid wall of warmth, light and noise: clinking glasses and laughter and, above it all, a silver-edged accent. I slipped inside.
Corrigan was at the very center of the room, his chair rocked back and teetering on two legs, a frosty beer in his hand. The whole bar was listening to him tell a story, the crowd three deep around his table. I was in awe. How does he have so many friends, so fast? I’d been in Mount Mercy two years and I still only knew a handful of people well.
I moved closer, listening to him talk about Africa and the time he and two other doctors had hidden on a farm to escape a local warlord. “So I’m crouching there, eye-to-eye with this goat….” He was a natural speaker: confident but disarmingly friendly, infectiously fun and with just the right amount of cursing. And that glorious accent, all lilting silver vowels and hard, rumbly consonants... I could have listened to him for hours. It was warm in the tavern and he’d stripped down to a white t-shirt that set off his tan, tight enough that it hugged his biceps and those magnificent pecs. Suddenly, I was imagining running my hand over that firm slab of muscle, feeling the cotton rasp against my palm, the warmth of him soaking into me….
I flushed and looked away. And when I looked again, I saw who’d secured the best seats in the house, right at his table. Five women from the hospital, effortlessly sexy and seductive. Two were throwing back their heads, laughing at his joke. Another was leaning forward to touch his hand. Two more were just gazing at him, lashes heavy with mascara, each trying to pretend the other didn’t exist. No way could I go over there.
I stepped back. And at that second, Corrigan glanced up and looked right at me.
I froze for a second and then took a step towards the door. He frowned, confused. Then he cocked his head as if to say, you should know better, Beckett.
I hurried away, slipping through the crowd towards the door. Behind me, the story suddenly stopped. There was a disappointed chorus of female voices: Aw….
Panicking now, I reached the door, wrenched it open—
A foot slammed it closed. An arm hooked around my waist and spun me around. I looked up—
Our faces were less than a foot apart. My chest, rising and falling as I panted, was a hair’s breadth from brushing his. Those blue eyes burned down into me, frustrated and lusty and just a little amused. “You can run, Beckett,” he told me. “But I’ll chase you.”
10
Dominic
SHE JUST STOOD THERE, astonished, glancing down at my hand on her waist... but not asking me to move it. Has no one ever chased her before? Not fucking possible. God, she looked even better, out of those scrubs. I’d been dreaming about her body and now I could fill in all of the details the shapeless scrubs had hidden. Tight, dark denim clung to long legs and a ripe peach of an ass that I wanted to grab with both hands. Her cute little biker jacket hung open over a soft sweater that showed the outline of her breasts and God, they were glorious. Full and heavy, two perfect mounds I needed to lift in my palms and bring my tongue to. I was already imagining what they looked like. Given her creamy skin, I was guessing at delicate pink nipples that would crinkle and strain as I rubbed them.
All of the other women had put on little strappy tops and skirts. A few had even changed into dresses. I like cleavage and sequins as much as the next guy but the weird thing was, the combination of tight jeans or leggings on the bottom half, outlining a woman’s ass and hips, and the softness of a sweater covering her breasts...it’s my favorite thing for a woman to wear.
It’s not a seduction outfit. It’s a relationship outfit, for when you’re crazy about someone and can’t keep your hands off them. You can run your hands over the denim and feel the woman’s thighs and ass, squeezing and pressing in just the right places to make her gasp and buck. You can stand behind her, her head twisted around as you kiss, and smooth your palms over the soft wool, working it over the smoothness of her breasts. You can dive underneath it with your hands, skin on skin, and feel her up even though everything’s hidden.
I caught myself. A relationship outfit. I hadn’t thought that way since—
I pushed the idea away before it could form. Back to the plan.
I grabbed Beckett’s wrist and led her through the bar, looking for a place quiet enough to talk. It was rammed: it’s amazing how many people show up when they hear drinks on me. But I didn’t care how many of them came or how many of the women were now glaring at me, pissed that I’d abandoned them. All I cared about was her.
She was hanging back as I led her, but not actually trying to break free. And every time I checked over my shoulder and caught her eye, I could see that heat flaring for a second before she looked away. She wants to. But she doesn’t want to want to. The idea of that had me rock-hard in my jeans.
I grabbed a couple of bottles of beer from the bartender and then turned and pressed the cool glass into her hand as we reached a dark corner. Before she could argue, I clinked our bottles together and glugged some of mine back. She lifted her bottle too and suddenly I was lost, my eyes locked on her soft lips as they nuzzled the hard mouth of the bottle. Fuck! What was it about her? Every other woman here was trying to get me to look at her and I couldn’t take my eyes off this one.
I moved closer, our bodies almost touching.
I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted to know whether anyone had ever massaged warm oil into those amazing breasts and what noises she made when she came. I especially wanted to know whether, under that dark denim, there was a little patch of that copper hair waiting for me between her thighs or if she was more of a dark brown. But I had to be patient. I had to start slow. “So why surgery?” I asked.
She blinked at me, confused for a second, but that was an answer in itself. She can’t imagine doing anything else. She loved it, the way I love the chaos of the ER. “Medical family?” I asked. Medicine runs in families a lot. My dad and granddad were both docs in Belfast. Hell, I would have been, if I hadn’t met Chrissy and come to the US.
Beckett shook her head, her pinned-up copper hair catching the light. “But my dad was a biologist. He discovered all kinds of stuff about the internal anatomy of insects.” She did one of those adorable blushes. “He was... like me.”
“Smart?”
She blushed again, even though I’d mea
nt it sincerely. “Weird.”
I frowned. If she was weird, it was a weird I liked. Maybe because she was so utterly different to anyone else I’d known. “You’re wasted up in the OR. You could save a lot of lives downstairs.”
“The ER scares the hell out of me,” she muttered, looking at the floor.
I leaned forward and put my lips to her ear. “But when you had to, you got in there and did it anyway. Rachel would be dead if not for you.”
She jerked her head up and I got the full effect of those glittering, pale blue eyes. What? What’d I say? I reran my words in my head. Rachel? Shit. How the hell had that happened? I never slipped up like that. I quickly changed the subject. “You should let your hair down.”
She touched her pinned up hair. “Oh. No, I don’t think—”
“I bet it’d look amazing down.” I’d started this as a way to change the subject but I was serious, I really did want to see it down. I came even closer and reached out a hand to grab her hair clip. She twisted her head. I reached from the other side. She twisted again. “Beckett!”
I was only playing but it didn’t come out like playing at all. I was too fucking horny. It came out as a growl with a warning spank on the end as I hit that final t. She went utterly still, looking up at me with huge eyes. I gazed down at her, both of us breathing faster, and suddenly the mood changed completely. I’d been trying to get things back on track, to make this into a simple one-night stand. But I’d forgotten how strong this thing was. She only had to look at me like that and I was completely out of control.
I opened the hair clip. Her hair cascaded down in copper waves, spilling over her shoulders and midway down her back. It changed her whole look: she was wilder, more sexual. Freed. I’d never wanted to see a woman naked more.
Without thinking, I put my hand on her cheek. She was soft against me, her skin still cool from the night air but heating as she flushed. Her mouth worked as she tried to say something. My gaze locked on her lips again and I felt my eyes narrow. I was imagining the feel of those lips under mine, how it would feel to open and spread her, plunge my tongue between them and own her mouth. But I had just enough rational thought left to know that’d send her running. So I settled for running my thumb over her lips instead, both of us catching our breath as I touched that silken flesh for the first time.
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