by Cara McKenna
“That’s a shame. Want me to sing to you?” This was a strange hybrid version of Kelly, a mix of the cool, civil man I passed on the ward, and the more mischievous one who’d proclaimed himself a controlling hothead in the neon intimacy of the bar.
“That’s all right.” I put the flowers on my dresser, disreputable bits of me still clinging to the hope that he was here to seduce me. Getting trounced by a gigantic orderly seemed a great way to kick off my twenty-ninth year. Except for . . . well, he was my coworker, for one. And nearly a stranger, and a bit of a chauvinist. But only a bit, my pussy pointed out. And he brought me flowers. Valid points.
I cleared my throat and nodded to the vase. “They’re lovely, thanks.”
“They’re secondhand. I nabbed them from the party.”
Aaannnd . . . seduction ruined. “You stole someone’s going-away flowers?”
“With permission. She had plenty more where those came from.”
Okay, so he hadn’t driven into town and back to get me a gift, but what in the fuck did I expect? Who did I think this guy was to me?
“It’s the thought that counts,” he pointed out.
“You’re right.” I wandered to my bed and took a seat, weariness redoubled. Kelly must have sensed it, as he said, “Excited to spend your first morning off practicing choke holds?”
“Oh yes, thrilled. Though I’d rather do it with you than a patient.”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame.
“You can come in, if you want.” I pointed to a chair that didn’t match its desk, all the furniture secondhand, castoffs like my flowers. Like every stitch of clothing I’d owned growing up, even the shirt I wore now, inherited from some ex-boyfriend whose face I could barely conjure.
Kelly’s gaze flicked around the room, but after a pause he shut the door behind him and pulled out the chair. My room was small to begin with, but stick Kelly Robak in the middle and it seemed all at once tight and hot. My womanhood suddenly felt much the same.
I cleared my throat.
“Seems like you’re finding your feet,” he said. I thought I could smell him, behind the lilies, but it was probably a delusion.
“I’m starting to get the routine. I know where stuff is, know some people’s names. Thanks, for letting me tail you at the party. It’s the least square-peggish I’ve felt so far. Overdressed or not.”
His eyes darted around again, and not in a sexy, Which wall shall I nail her to? kind of way.
“Is my room creeping you out?”
“Nah, not quite. It’s just weird. It’s so much like one of the rooms from the locked ward, but a different color and without the bars, and with like, stuff on the walls. I keep thinking, ‘slashing hazard,’” he pointed to a framed photograph that’d been there when I moved in. “Suicide risk.” He nodded to a belt of mine, draped around a bedpost, then to a bottle of perfume on my dresser. “Accelerant. Search the room for matches.”
I smirked. “You haven’t clocked out yet.”
“After four years, I never really do. Not ’til I’m through those gates and halfway to Darren.”
What a grim thought. Happy frigging birthday.
Kelly stood and strolled around my cell, taking stock of what little there was to note. He stopped before my bed, staring out my window with his hands clasped behind his back. “Nice view,” he said, gaze on the dark woods.
“Even better when the sun’s out,” I said dryly.
He looked down at me and smiled—the first real smile I’d seen from him all day, even during the party. It heated me just as it had at the bar, filled me with bad ideas.
“What?”
He took a seat beside me, dipping the mattress. “We got a little something between us, don’t we?”
Caught off guard, I deflected. “How little?”
Another smile, a deeper one with a flash of teeth. “Cute. But I’m not imagining it, am I? There’s something here,” he said, wiggling his fingers between our chests. He stared pointedly at the Red Wings logo on my shirt. “Plus you clearly dressed to seduce me.”
“If you say so.”
He winced like I’d just tried to knee him in the balls. “Okay, we can be like that.”
Behind whatever blank expression I’d managed to slap on my face, my common sense and my libido were rolling around, pulling each other’s hair, slapping and spitting and fighting to come out on top. Or to come out underneath Kelly Robak, in the case of my libido. Luckily it ended in a draw.
“No, there might be something,” I admitted. “But not the kind of something I want to do anything about with a colleague. Not my first week at a new job.” My pussy had added the caveat, opportunist that it was.
Kelly’s expression went cool, more calm acceptance than bruised ego, I hoped. He nodded. “Understood.”
And with that, what could have been quite a memorable twenty-eighth birthday present rose and headed for the exit, bouncing the mattress beneath my butt.
“Enjoy your flowers.”
I followed, frowning. “Wait. Did you really come here thinking you’d get laid? Off some stolen lilies and thirty seconds’ smooth-talking?”
Another smile. “Haven’t known you long enough to have expectations. Maybe I’ll try back again with roses sometime. I’ll be sure to bring a receipt.”
“Oh, fuck you,” I said through a laugh. The fucking nerve. But I was only half-insulted, the rest a mixture of flattered and amused.
He opened the door and I held it. With the possibility of witnesses strolling past in the hall, we both shrugged into semblances of friendly professionalism.
“Happy birthday.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He gripped the door frame and leaned in real, real close, close enough to kiss. But his lips offered nothing but a smarmy-ass grin. “This is your room, so I’m letting you get your way—”
“Letting me?”
“Come by my place some weekend and maybe I’ll show you mine.”
“Your way doesn’t sound like it takes no for an answer.”
“You’re welcome to find out.”
“Good night, Kelly.”
He straightened. “See you beneath me on the gym floor tomorrow.”
Eyes narrowed, I watched him disappear around the corner, listening until the sound of his boots clomping down the steps faded to the thrum of my thumping pulse.
I shut the door, opening and closing my fists to quell a faint shaking.
He’d just said all that, hadn’t he? Not those cocky parting quips—that there was something between us. Something he wasn’t opposed to acting on.
Was I opposed? Yes. Definitely. Probably.
I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure what Larkhaven’s policy was, on office romance or whatever. Ward romance. Not that Kelly Robak seemed the type to let institutional mandates dictate whom he may or may not deign to make his conquest.
And he so was the conquesty sort.
That settled it—I would not be acting on anything with Kelly. No contact beyond the bounds of restraint training. From what he’d told me at the bar and just now by the door, he probably treated women like gas stations, in and out and on his way, thanks for the lube job. I glared at the flowers he’d left behind, annoyed that he’d taken me for someone whose professional dignity could be bought for a secondhand bouquet.
“Nice try, Robak,” I told the flowers.
I went down the hall to scrub my face and brush my teeth, deciding it had been one of my lousier birthdays. And if I went to sleep imagining Kelly restraining me with his shirt off, it was entirely by accident.
Chapter Four
I slept. Didn’t feel like it, but I must have, since I’d shut my eyes and when I opened them again it was light outside my window. Every
joint creaked as I left my warm bed, and when I stripped for my shower I discovered a garden of ugly blossoms smudged all over my arms, a bruise for every color of the rainbow. I covered them with a long-sleeved shirt and hiked yoga pants up my achy legs, chugged cold coffee left behind in the machine in the common kitchen, and headed out to earn myself some fresh war wounds.
I didn’t see Kelly when I entered the gym, and prayed maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t show. I needed a day with no booze, no Kelly, no intoxication of any kind. Clarity.
“Good morning, Erin!” Audra must have been the only senior staffer who hadn’t gotten plastered at the party, as she seemed her usual boisterous self, her booming greeting ricocheting around my skull like a dodge ball.
“Morning.”
“You’re early. Want to help me out and spread these mats?”
“Sure.” The mere effort of dragging the first one from a pile by the wall had me sweating and flushed. The other attendees arrived shortly, and I straightened from squaring up the final mat just as Kelly appeared, blocking all the sunlight coming in from the hall with his big, ridiculous body.
Don’t even look at him, I told myself. Not his face or his snarky-ass smile or those stupid arms.
Of course that was a promise that couldn’t be kept. Within a half hour we were paired up, and I acknowledged him with a weary wave.
“Morning,” he said, oh-so casual.
“Yeah, morning.”
“Sleep well?”
“Very well. And all by myself, just how I like.”
He nearly grinned. I could see his lips straining to hold it in.
Audra told everyone to improvise techniques for single-man restraints, stalling would-be attackers as best we could while we waited for theoretical backup. After a sloppy, slow-motion struggle, I wound up straddling Kelly’s ribs, pushing down on his arms with all my might. He smiled up at me. “You’ve done this before.”
“Oh sure,” I panted. “All the time.”
“Not last night.”
I shot him a withering look. “I reserve my man-pinning skills for deserving parties. Not just whoever turns up with some old lady’s stolen lilies.”
“Ooh, you go right for the groin, don’t you?”
“In your dreams.”
My wrist hurt and I shifted my weight. Kelly took the opportunity to grab my arms and flip us over, him suddenly pinning me, though surely not in the way he’d prefer. I tried using the arm-hold-escape trick, but it was useless in this position. In an instant I felt angry and helpless, my face burning, sinuses welling.
Kelly must have seen the tears glossing my eyes. He let me go and I sat up, rubbing my arms where he’d grasped them. I eyed Kelly’s biceps, at the unmistakable finger marks there and a faint, shiny scar. Would my arms look like his after a few years here? I didn’t know how I’d ever make it that long. Not as a nurse. Maybe as a patient, if I kept up this exhausting pace and gave myself a nervous breakdown. I felt real tears brewing and stood, dusting myself off and praying Kelly hadn’t noticed. He was the last person I needed catching me crying, twice in my first week.
“That’s why prone’s always better than face-up,” he said mildly, getting to his feet.
“Clearly.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He leaned close, poised to impart some wisdom.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, stepping back when he went to touch my shoulder. Just a minute ago we’d been borderline flirting, now I was a panicky mess again. Big men made me feel weak and unsure, and with Kelly the sensation seemed to fluctuate wildly between distress and . . . well, some kind of perverse attraction. The man gave me mood swings. Clinical strength.
Audra began explaining the next drill, the perfect excuse to ignore him.
“Rotate!” Audra called, and I made my escape.
* * *
To his credit, Kelly behaved after that. Leave it to female tears to accomplish what a perfectly articulate rebuffing hadn’t. The next day at training he didn’t toss a single provocative murmur my way, not even when he had me on my knees in a headlock.
I spent the afternoon at my sister’s, playing on the floor with Jack, enjoying more than my share of belated birthday cupcakes, and hearing all about how Amber’s ex was late with his child support payment and apparently “banging some total skank from the lake who must be, like, seventeen.”
That’s what you got, chasing after meatheads with big arms. I pictured Kelly’s big arms, and told myself I was completely over the temporary insanity known as lust.
If Kelly had been suffering from a similar lapse in good judgment, it seemed he was over it as well. We were both back at work on Friday, and though he didn’t ignore me, if felt like we’d never met before. Certainly not like we’d ever flirted, or like he’d ever shown up at my apartment, hoping to get laid.
The infatuation had been fun while it lasted, but this was better. Wiser. Safer.
In the late afternoon, Don had some kind of incident, Jenny told me, and I didn’t see Kelly for the rest of our shift. By the time I was signing out, I’d started to wonder if maybe I’d dreamed all that sexual tension. Dreamed that he’d smiled at me at the bar, sat on my bed and informed me there was something brewing between us, and that I’d once been fool enough to agree with him. Whether it was a dream or not, I was awake now. Wide fucking awake, and steering way clear of Kelly lest I ever lose my mind again. My sister and mom were welcome to his type, and all the pleasurable mistakes those men offered. As for me, no thank you. All set. If you want me, I’ll be at the coffee shop, looking for a nice boy of manageable proportions with no scars and a basic grasp of feminism.
And if you’d asked me at eight o’clock that evening if I still had the hots for Kelly Robak, I’d have told you with perfect conviction that no, I did not.
I was rereading a book from one of my certification courses, cramming for an imaginary quiz on the various disorders of Starling’s patients. My patients. I wasn’t learning anything new, but going through the motions of preparation soothed me. Kelly was the furthest thing from my mind, until a curt knock jerked my head up from the page.
I yanked on a cardigan over my tee to hide the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra. I opened the door, and there he was. All tall and huge and with a dark, fresh gash on one temple.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey.”
How regular a thing was this going to be, his turning up at my door unannounced? I probably needed to invest in a less-dumpy sleep wardrobe.
I stepped aside and he stalked past me, moving in a way that told me his brain was still firmly clocked in. “You okay? What happened?”
“Don,” he said.
“Jenny said there was an incident.” I stepped closer, examining his cut and counting six stitches. “He attacked you, huh?”
He nodded. “Got ahold of a letter opener from someplace.”
I shut the door behind him. “Shit.” Don was his favorite patient; everyone knew that. But why was Kelly here? “Is he stable now?”
“They tranqed him—asleep before I even got sewn up.”
I glanced again at his wound, black with blood. “Jesus. Thank goodness he didn’t get you in the eye.” What can I do for you? I wanted to ask, but it felt like I already knew the answer, and the answer was, he didn’t know any better than I did why he was here.
We got a little something between us, don’t we? The words trickled cool foreboding down my back, chased by a dangerous warmth. All that lust I thought I’d gotten over . . . It’d gone dormant, that was all. Now it was wide-awake, hungrier than ever.
I asked a different question. “Would you like to go out for a beer?” It was what he’d done for me when I’d been upset, and it wasn’t terribly late. We needed to go somewhere—anyplace that
wasn’t my bedroom.
“Nah.”
“You look like you could use a drink. I wish I had something exciting to offer,” I said, and he took a step closer. “But I’ve only got iced-tea mix . . .” I trailed off, took a step back as he took another forward. My gaze dropped from his eyes to his mouth.
His big, warm hand touched my side beneath my cardigan, and I made a soft noise, the sound of sense being knocked from my skull, a tiny ooah. As we took another step together, his palm slid around my ribs to my back, fingers strong and bossy, just as I’d known they’d feel.
Push him away, my brain coached. Then, Oh shit, my breath must be awful. My libido elbowed it aside, reaching for the wheel.
I mumbled his name, having no clue if it was the sound of a protest or a swoon. Like a nineteen-sixties secretary fielding a pass from her boss, fingering her pearls, breathless. Mr. Robak, we really mustn’t.
The back of my knee hit the mattress, but his hold kept me from falling. He put his other hand to my arm, that intense gaze watching as he pushed the sweater from my shoulder.
My heart stopped. He’d peel me like a banana if I let him. I couldn’t remember a man ever looking at me like that, like there was a Very Important Message printed on the bare skin under my clothes, and that reading it was a matter of life and death. Then Kelly’s gaze hopped to my face and I got frozen in those cold eyes. He touched my collarbone, my throat, my cheek and ear; then he cupped the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair.
He’s going to kiss you. Better decide if you want that or not.
I’d pretty much told him after the party that I didn’t want it—or didn’t want to act on it—and the fact that he was here, coming on to me this hard, should have been enough to piss me off.
But my sex drive had clubbed my better judgment unconscious and locked it in a trunk, and all that came back was, Jesus, he’s got big hands, coupled with an irrational urge to suck on his fingers.
His pale irises had grown as dark as his intentions, lids heavy. I felt my lips part in invitation, but the look he gave wasn’t one that sought permission. More a warning than a request, and I remembered again what he’d told me, about how controlling he was. I want what I want, the way I want it, my memory echoed, and my brain translated.