The Beat and The Pulse Box Set 1

by Amity Cross

  She was a beautiful woman, striking and unique, highly intelligent—she’d have to be to be a surgeon—with a confident exterior. Knowing she’d have to deal with a lot of life and death situations in her position made her even more intimidating.

  Yeah, I said it. I found Sparks intimidating as fuck. She seemed to have her life all worked out and knew where it was going. She had a career and money, and from the American twang in among her Aussie accent, I assumed she’d taken it global, as well. She had all the things that had always been out of my reach. She had a purpose.

  Why would a woman like that ever look at a guy like me and think he was long-term material? She wouldn’t.

  I closed my eyes, my thoughts lingering on the hopelessness that waited for me outside the hospital, and it wasn’t long before I drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  The house was quiet. It was usually full of yelling and screaming, the sounds of smashing glass and crockery, and the smack of flesh hitting flesh.

  It was the quiet before the chaos. Lightning flashed outside as a summer storm pulsed in the distance, the light illuminating the darkness. Then the screaming began, getting worse and worse as the thunder grew louder overhead. Metal pressed against my head, and I cowered on the floor, too terrified to move.

  Don’t you move, boy.

  My eyes snapped open, and I was back in the hospital. Fuck.

  I thumped my finger on the call button by the bed and got the nurse to pump me full of meds.

  I couldn’t deal with this shit anymore.

  7

  Holly

  When my morning rounds took me past Josh Caplin’s room, I was surprised to find my skin was tingling.

  Tingling as in the way it zinged from head to toe when a girl had a crush on a guy.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the room and got on with it. I was a full-grown woman—a surgeon—and not some prepubescent teenager.

  He glanced up as I entered, and I was surprised to find he was just watching the world go by out the window. He didn’t have the television on, and he didn’t have a phone or newspaper. He was just sitting there amusing himself. I wondered what he thought about all day.

  “Hey,” he drawled. “It’s Sparks.”

  Stepping forward, I drew the curtain closed behind me and tried not to think about the fact that we were pretty much alone…and hidden from the goings on just outside.

  “I need to check those ribs,” I said before swallowing hard.

  His lips quirked, and he said, “Sure thing, Sparks.” He didn’t miss a trick.

  Not hesitating, he rolled up his hospital gown and thank God for all involved he had underwear on.

  My gaze ran over his abs, and I felt my cheeks begin to heat. I knew he had really good muscle definition underneath his clothing, but seeing it was another thing. His six-pack and that v shape that led down to the point of no return… I wanted to reach out and run my palm over his skin. Was it hot in here?

  They were just the external oblique muscles. Good going, Holly. Think sexy thoughts in scientific terms. Great job.

  Placing my tablet on the bedside table, I stood over him, and he stared up at me with a pleased expression on his handsome face. He really needed to shave—his stubble was getting to the point it was a borderline beard, but it suited his rough, bad boy exterior. His mousy brown hair was sticking up all over the place, but that suited him, too. Thinking about my own unruly hair, I actually envied him. People who looked good without any added effort bugged the hell out of me.

  “So what sport do you play?” I asked, trying to cover up my ogling as genuine doctorly interest.

  He smirked, his eyebrow raising. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Stop flirting,” I scolded him. “What sport do you play?”

  “Why?”

  “You have excellent muscle definition. Most people don’t have the motivation to go to the gym that much unless there’s something in it for them.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t play sport.”

  He still wasn’t talking. Fair enough. I was confident I’d get him to open up at least a little bit before he was discharged.

  “I noticed nobody has been to see you,” I said carefully as I pressed my fingers against his ribs. His skin was warm, and as soon as I touched him, my thighs attempted to clench together, but I held steady.

  “Don’t care,” he muttered.

  “What about your Mum?” I asked as I moved onto the next rib. “Does she live close by?”

  His brow began to crease, and he glanced out the window, giving away the fact that I’d hit a sore spot.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean… It’s just you spoke about her yesterday, and I thought you might want her to know.”

  “There’s no one to tell,” he muttered, and I wondered if they were estranged.

  “What about your job?” There had to be some employer out there who was wondering where he was, right?

  “No.”

  “There has—”

  He turned his gaze back to mine. It was full of anger, and I knew I’d pushed too hard. The flirty guy was gone, and in his place, the beast that surfaced the day he woke had returned.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped, shoving my hands away and pulling his gown back down.

  Feeling like I’d been slapped in the face, I sucked in a sharp breath and turned on my doctor mode. Cool, aloof, and professional.

  “Well, your injuries are healing as expected. Your bruising is fading, and your ribs will need a little rest for the next few weeks. Your arm will need to be x-rayed again, but the cast should hopefully come off in about four weeks from now.” I snatched my tablet from the table, checked off some items in his patient file, and tapped in a note. Rounding the end of the bed, I double-checked his chart.

  “You didn’t get your medication until late last night,” I said, glancing up at him.

  “I thought I didn’t need it,” he replied coolly.

  I raised my eyebrows and put the chart back, resisting the urge to slam it back into place.

  “What? No lecture?” he asked petulantly.

  My lips thinned, and I shook my head. “I can give you all the professional advice I want. You’re the one who has to decide if you want to take it or not.” I pursed my lips and shook my head. “I strongly suggest you take it.”

  His upper lip curled slightly.

  “The nurses downstairs tell me your therapy is going excellently. I expect you’ll be discharged soon. Two days at most.”

  He grunted, which wasn’t the reaction I was expecting, but none of the things Josh Caplin did were. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised. Maybe that was the wrong word. Perhaps disappointed was more apt.

  I stared at him for a moment, trying to work out why he was so hell-bent on not giving a crap about his life. He certainly cared about going to the gym, but why? Anger issues, probably. But more importantly, why did I care so much about it? He wasn’t some lost puppy. He was a fully grown man who didn’t need some woman he didn’t know telling him what to do. I was his doctor, and my advice should stick to his health and nothing more.

  He blinked once, breaking our mini staring competition, and I sighed in defeat. If he wanted to be a child, then he could stamp his foot all he liked. I wasn’t going to entertain it anymore.

  Turning on my heel, I threw back at him, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Caplin.”

  I continued my rounds, positively fuming. Mostly at myself for developing a crush on a patient. There were professional lines you didn’t cross, and getting involved with the people you treated was one you just didn’t mess with. From now on, it would be professionalism all the way.

  I so didn’t need another guy messing with my heart. It’d been messed with enough to last a lifetime.

  Striding into Mr. Simons’s room, I brought up his information on my tablet.

  “Mr. Simons,” I announced as I entered the room like a whirlwind, still zinging from my verbal slanging match with J
osh. “How are you feeling this afternoon?”

  “Look out,” he declared. “She’s all wound up like a two bob watch. Whoever was on the receiving end of that wrath, I pity the poor bastard.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Simons,” I said with a sigh.

  He winked. “Got a live one, huh?”

  Leaning close, I whispered, “Kicking and screaming.”

  He laughed, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Tell me about it.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You want to hear about my grumpy patients?”

  “Look around you, lass,” he said, waving his gnarled hands about the room. “The most exciting thing that happens in this joint is when the pretty doctor comes to visit. Make an old man with a broken ass happy and tell him a story.”

  “Your ass isn’t broken,” I retorted.

  “May as well be.” He gestured for me to lean in, and when I was in reach, he whispered, “I promise to keep it a secret.”

  “What?” I asked, playing along.

  “Your story! Give me some gossip. I’m fading away to a shadow.”

  I laughed. “You’re worse than an old woman.”

  “Who’s the grumpy one? A handsome fellow?”

  Unfortunately, he was right on the money, and at the thought of Josh, I felt my heart do a somersault. I didn’t need it, but I was drawn to the mysterious bad boy and any mention of him had me spinning.

  “Yeah… He was found out on the footpath outside of Emergency,” I explained. “He was out for a few days and couldn’t walk for another three.”

  “Sounds like he was done over pretty bad, lass. Lucky you found him and fixed him up.”

  I sighed and shook my head. ”It’s just…nobody comes to see him.”

  “You’re a good girl,” he declared, looking pleased. “You’re worried about him.”

  “He doesn’t seem to appreciate the notion.” I grimaced, thinking about the way he’d snapped at me.

  “Is he handsome?” Mr. Simons asked, and I instantly turned red. “I knew it!”

  “I’m not meant to get involved with patients,” I replied, using the tone in my voice to tell him off. “It’s my fault for butting in where I wasn’t needed.”

  Mr. Simons didn’t seem to be convinced. “Sometimes you can’t help it.” He thumped his weathered fist over his heart.

  I chose not to incriminate myself further even though he was only trying to cheer me up. Instead, we went through the same routine we did every day during rounds. I checked his lungs and his heart before checking his surgical incisions. Everything was healing nicely. There were no abnormal sounds in his chest, and pending his therapy and home visit, Mr. Simons would probably be headed home soon.

  “All good,” I told him as I gathered my stethoscope and tablet.

  “You can’t make him tell you anything, lass. He will or he won’t. We can be a stubborn lot.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I retorted with a half-hearted smile.

  “Give him some time. Grease him up a little.”

  I gasped in shock, but a laugh burst out at the end. “Mr. Simons!”

  He gave me a wicked wink. “Men aren’t complicated, lass. I might be an old bastard, but I was young once, you know.”

  “You’re a bit of a Casanova, Mr. Simons.” I arranged his blanket around his waist and pulled the table back into position.

  “If he don’t try when he sees you’re only caring for him, then he ain’t worth a thing. In my day, a man protected his woman above everything no matter what. These young bucks don’t know a damn thing about treating a woman with respect. They’ve all got tiny penises.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Mr. Simons, I think I’m going to have to wash your mouth out with soap.”

  He began to laugh, and it was this big bellow that had me giggling right along with him.

  “Thank you,” I said once I’d calmed down. “I needed that. Same time tomorrow?”

  “It’s a date,” he replied cheerfully.

  As I left his room, I felt the familiar buzz my job usually gave me rush through my veins. The rush of being a surgeon and fixing broken people.

  “Any more trouble, you send him to me,” Mr. Simons called out after me. “I’ll box his ears.”

  Laughing to myself, I went about finishing my rounds. If only Mr. Simons were about fifty years younger.

  8

  Josh

  I’d had a lot of time to think about my life the last few days.

  I’d been training flat out for seven years and fighting for five. Almost two of those being at The Underground.

  Guys and girls showed up wanting to draw blood at the rundown warehouse in Abbotsford for a lot of reasons—to forget things, for the money or the glory, sometimes it was just for kicks, and then other times it was just wanting to feel powerful. Dangerous people crammed into that place, making it a hotbed for trouble. If you kept your head down and did what you went there for, no harm no foul. Fuck with the ecosystem and you’d be dealt with.

  Thinking about Charlie and her double life as a cop, I wondered how she could do it knowing so much illegal shit was going down. Gambling, violence, threats, money laundering, drugs, solicitation… All kinds of fucked up shit.

  After the way they had left me to rot in the street, I wasn’t surprised. All things considered, they’d gone above and beyond to make sure I at least didn’t kick the bucket. Didn’t matter the condition I came out in on the other side.

  Despite all of it, the injuries and my dented pride, could I go back and fight? Did I want to? I didn’t have anywhere else to go after they let me out of here.

  I’d spent almost every day of the last seven years training for a fight that was already over—like the harder I worked, the more I could redeem myself. Like muscles turned back time or some shit.

  Don’t you move, boy.

  Closing my eyes, I decided I hated being in the hospital more than I hated not knowing where I was going to go after they let me out. There was too much time to think. The only time the tirade of bullshit rolling around in my brain was quiet was when Sparks came to visit—even when she was poking around where she wasn’t wanted. Her minion Harper didn’t count.

  The sound of footsteps echoing in my room prompted me to open my eyes and look up. My chest tightened, and I held my breath, but I didn’t recognize my visitor at all. It wasn’t Sparks, and I scowled like a pissed off teenager.

  A woman in blue scrubs and a white coat stood by the end of the bed and began flipping through my chart. She was tall and slender, her olive skin and big brown eyes making her look exotic and beautiful. Her long brown hair was tied up in a tight ponytail, every strand combed to perfection. Probably too perfect if you asked me.

  “Who are you?” I asked, giving her the once over.

  “I’m Dr. Gunner,” she replied, looking pleased that I’d taken the time to check her out.

  She was pretty and all—the kind of pretty any guy would go for and the kind I’d played with in the past—but she wasn’t Sparks. The realization that I’d been thinking about that little firecracker more than I should made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  “Dr. Walsh is indisposed today and asked me to come make sure you were doing okay,” she explained, placing the chart back in its place. “I’m usually manning the ER downstairs.”

  “Is it the kid with the tumor?” I asked, and she paused, glancing at me like I’d told her a dirty little secret. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She shrugged in that infuriating way women did when they knew more than they let on. Like when they wanted you to do something for them, and they told you it didn’t matter but it really fucking did.

  “Well?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “Is it the kid?”

  Dr. Gunner nodded. “She’s working on a surgical plan with Dr. Archer.”

  Dr. Archer… The name was familiar, and I realized it was the guy who’d been assigned to check out my spine. Clean-cut dude who instantly rubbed me the wrong way. Guys like him
never got along with guys like me. He was from the right side of the tracks. On paper, he was the right kind of man for a woman like Sparks.

  “Can you sit up for me?” she asked, and I maneuvered myself so my legs dangled over the side of the bed. “How is the sensation in your legs?”

  “Pretty great,” I replied. I watched her closely as she stood in front of me, making no effort to hide the fact she was taking in every inch of me. Probably filling the female version of her spank bank with fodder.

  “Walsh has done an excellent job patching you up. She was the one who found you, did she tell you?”

  I shook my head. No, she hadn’t, but there was no reason to think that made me special.

  “I thought she was a bone doctor,” I said. “Do they work in the ER?”

  “Yeah,” Dr. Gunner replied. “I specialize in Emergency Medicine, but it’s hospital policy that all doctors and surgeons on staff do a rotation in other departments as part of their residency.”

  I had no idea how all that doctor shit worked, but after watching all those episodes of Grey’s Anatomy when I was younger, I knew at least a little. I was pretty sure it went medical school, intern, resident, attending. I didn’t know if it was just an American thing or not.

  “So you’re both residents?” I asked as she made me go through some of the exercises I’d been using to get my legs moving again.

  “Yep. Final year, then she can apply for an attending role. With her qualifications, she could go anywhere.”

  It didn’t escape me that Dr. Gunner was trying to talk up her friend, but all it made me feel was inferior. Her whole ‘visit’ was an excuse for her to check me out. She wasn’t fooling anyone, but I let it go so I could see what else I could find out about the illusive, shy, and petite Dr. Holly Walsh.

  “Is she American?” I asked, taking advantage of Dr. Gunner’s loose lips.

  “Nope. She’s Australian, but she lived there a long time. She was working in a big-time hospital in New York City before she came here.”