by Carly Keene
“Fix it now. Ask him out, June.”
June. What is so rare as a day in June?
She holds out her hand, her face red. “June Rose Parker. Named after my grandmother.”
“I was named after my grandfathers,” I say. “Both of them.”
“Did their mothers hate them too?” Apollo asks.
“Shut up, Wade,” June says. “God, you are so drunk.”
“It’s really hitting me now,” he says in a pitiful tone of voice. “Wouldn’t be so bad if my stomach didn’t fucking hurt so much.”
“About that,” I say. “If it gets a lot worse, very suddenly, yell. We’d want to get you into surgery regardless of your BAC if rupture is imminent.”
“Shit,” he says.
I’d better go. “Let me know if I can do anything for you, okay?”
“Okay.” June Rose Parker and I stare into each other’s eyes for three full seconds, long enough for my dick to start making escape plans again. I shake myself out of it, and make tracks for the door.
Not her boyfriend. Thank god.
FIVE
June
OMG.
This is my real-life Dr. McDreamy, and I’m more than a little bit smitten.
The first doctor who came in to help Wade seemed to know what she was doing, even though she’s only a little older than us. But then my kissing buddy from Lonnie’s last weekend came in, and I swear my ovaries are begging for mercy now.
Tall, dark, and handsome. No big bodybuilder muscles, but like I said, he’s tall and he looks really strong. I like his face. And those wicked, amused, sinful, hot eyes. They’re very dark brown, almost black, and they always look like he’s either laughing or thinking deliciously naughty thoughts.
Of course I’m probably not his type. I’m not tall, I’m not elegant, and I don’t have eight million college degrees or whatever it takes to be a doctor.
But he keeps staring at me.
Like he’s starving and I’m a whole plate of tiramisu. It’s very unnerving.
OMG OMG OMG. My body is responding to that look in a way that normally takes lots of kissing and hands in the right spots. But Hot Doctor’s bold eyes are making my nipples hard and my ladyparts sweat. Seriously, my panties are damp already. I’m so overheated that I pull my scarf off, waving my hands to get some air to my face.
The second he’s out the door, I turn on my bestie.
“I’m going to kill you,” I hiss at him. “I’ll wait until you’re feeling better, but could you be any more embarrassing?”
“Sure.”
“That was not a challenge!”
“Ha. You like him. June and Fin-lay, sittin’ in a tree,” he sing-songs, and I smack his shoulder. “Ow! Don’t hit me.”
“Don’t make me look stupid,” I snap.
“He’s interested,” Wade says. “Probably because you were swabbing each other’s tonsils like champs last weekend.”
“Oh, he is not interested!” If he was, he wouldn’t have let me get away. “Please can we just stop talking about it?”
Because he’s Wade, he manages about six minutes of quiet before he says, “Did you check out his ass?” My face gets hot, because of course I tried.
“Unfortunately, his doctor coat was too long,” I admit.
“But you looked.”
“I thought we weren’t talking about this.”
“I’m talking. You don’t have to talk,” Wade says.
I roll my eyes. Good thing Wade has no idea what’s been going on inside my panties.
Then Hot Doctor comes back in with the girl doctor from before. “Got your labs back. We’re admitting you,” she says. “We’ll send you upstairs to the surgical ward, and they’ll monitor your blood alcohol and get that appendix out as soon as they can.” Then she starts explaining to Wade exactly what they’re going to do to him, something about laparoscopic this and anesthesia that, and I tune it out to stare into Hot Doctor’s eyes again.
They’re so dark. And hot. I’m too young for hot flashes, but damn, I’m having one now.
Somebody says my name. “What?” I mumble, tearing my gaze away from those naughty eyes.
“I said you would take care of me when they let me go home after the surgery,” Wade says.
I blink, trying to refocus. “Oh. Yes. We’re roommates so I’ll be there anyway.”
“You sure?” Girl Doctor asks.
I reach over to hold Wade’s hand. Hot Doctor or not, Wade’s my best friend to infinity and beyond. “’Course I’m sure. I wouldn’t just leave him.”
“She’s my ride-or-die,” Wade says.
“That’s right. Thick and thin, besties forever, no matter what.” We squeeze each other’s hands.
Girl doctor says they’ll tell me about aftercare upstairs in surgical. I nod. I look back over to Hot Doctor, just to get another hit of his eyes on me, and my knees get weak again.
I’ve got to quit doing that.
And then a bunch of nurses or whatever come into the room and they’re making plans to move Wade up to the surgical floor right now. I grab Wade’s clothes and my purse, and follow them down the hall.
Hot Doctor follows me. Somebody says, “Fin, what are you doing?” and I realize that this is not standard procedure. My whole face feels hot and red, but I don’t dare let Wade’s gurney get so far ahead of me that I lose it. I keep walking fast.
Hot Doctor stops, and lets me go. Again. Dammit.
SIX
Finlay
Surgical takes my beautiful girl’s friend Apollo upstairs, and she follows. So do I.
That stuff she said, about “ride or die” and “no matter what” and “best friends forever” sounded real. Given what Apollo said about his personal interests, they’re not together-together, thank god, but that kind of loyalty has just sliced me open, straight to the heart. If they’re that tight, no wonder she just went with him last weekend. I want that kind of loyalty, so much. I want her.
She drops that rose-print scarf and doesn’t notice. I stop to pick it up, but Alison grabs my arm in time to keep me following them onto the elevator. “What the hell?” she mutters under her breath to me, and I suddenly get another view on what this looks like, me having the hots for somebody I just met while I was being a doctor. It’s ethically gray, I guess. Well, shit. I have to pull it back a little.
“I don’t know,” I say to her. “I have lost my damn mind.”
She stops grabbing me and pats my shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s not like she’s your patient.”
“At least you noticed that part.”
Alison laughs. “Come on, we got work to do. Friday night, remember.”
Oh yeah. Right, the job. Right.
Get your shit together, Fin.
I shove the rose-print scarf in the pocket of my lab coat, and then I think better of it and stick it in my locker. I ignore the raised eyebrows. And then I get right back into the Friday night rush. It’s late enough now that the waiting room is packed full, and it’s super busy.
Every time I have a second to myself, I think about June.
When things finally slow down, sometime after 4 a.m., I get into Mr. Wade Howell’s chart and see the latest notes in his chart. He’s out of surgery. Back in his room, vitals good, sleeping as of ten minutes ago. I tell Noah and Alison I’m taking a break.
In the elevator, I’m alone. So I can take that girly rose scarf and hold it up to my nose and inhale . . .
It smells so good. It smells like June: like a whole garden of flowers plus cake and something really fucking sexy. I don’t know this perfume, but I feel like I know her from smelling it.
June.
June Rose, with her old-fashioned name and her squeezable ass. Her adorable puppy eyes. Her shiny hair and her soft full mouth and her rose-tipped fingers and her unshakable loyalty. Her damn sexy mouth.
I’m so fucking dead.
Elevator stops on the fourth floor and I’m out, stopping briefly at the nurses’ stati
on to tell them I’m checking in on a patient I saw earlier in the ER. Sure, no problem. At Room 427, I ease the door open. The person sleeping in the reclining chair beside the bed stirs. It’s June, of course. I hate letting go of her scarf, but I reach over and place it on her lap.
“More meds?” June mumbles, and then I see her really wake up. “Oh. You.”
“It’s me. McKnife.” She laughs softly. “Just checking in. The info in his chart says he’s doing well.”
“Good to know.” She stretches. “What—oh, my scarf.”
“You dropped it earlier.”
We’re whispering. It’s dark. She smells good. I sit on the windowsill and tell my damn dick to calm down.
“You sure you’re okay to do the aftercare?” I ask. “You looked a little confused earlier.”
“I’m good. I was . . . You distracted me earlier.”
I distracted her. I grin to myself in the dark.
“He’s gonna be so pissed at me,” June sighs. “I called his mom.”
“Sounds like a reasonable thing to do. Why wouldn’t you?”
“He doesn’t really talk to his parents anymore. His dad kicked him out of the house after he caught Wade with a guy.”
I take that in. “That’s pretty ugly.”
“But Wade’s mom calls me every week to ask how he is, and she always tells me not to let him know. I think I’m ready to break that rule, though. She cares about him, and I feel like he ought to know that.”
“I’d want to know too.”
“I don’t understand his dad,” she says. “Family is family. You never turn your back on family.”
“You close to yours?” I ask her.
“Tight. I see my parents every week. My sister’s in Boston, or I’d see her every week too.”
“My family’s in Florida,” I offer. “I try to get down there every couple of months.” There’s a little pause. Maybe I should let her get back to sleep.
“Thanks for bringing my scarf.”
“No problem, June Rose.” Another little pause. Should I ask for her number? “I guess I’ll get out of your hair. But if you have any questions, I’d be happy to give you my number. You know, like if his incisions get inflamed or anything.”
“I’d love to have your number,” she says shyly.
Hallelujah.
“Give me your phone and I’ll put it in.” I hold my hand out.
Her phone’s warm from her pocket, and my dick starts pushing against my scrubs again. Damn, I want to be in her pocket. In her pants, in her bed, shit, Fin, get a fucking hold of yourself. It’s a good thing it’s dark and she can’t see what she does to me. I enter my phone number and start to give her phone back.
Except that, trying to hide my stupid hard-on, I drop her stupid phone.
I lean over to get it, she leans over to get it, and in the dark we bump heads. “Ow,” she says.
“I’m so sorry!” I whisper-yell, rubbing my own forehead.
“Kiss it better?” she says, and my poor prick starts having a pep rally in my pants. Finlay, Finlay, you’re our man, if you can’t kiss her, no one can . . .
(Look, I never said I was a grown up. I said I was old.)
I touch her forehead. “That the spot?”
“Uh-huh.”
I drop a feathery kiss there. “Better?”
“Well . . . It hurts a little lower down too.”
“Oh?” I touch the bridge of her nose. “There? I don’t think it’s broken,” I tease.
“No, a little lower.”
“Show me where,” I whisper.
She takes my chin in her hand and pulls my mouth to hers, for the second time in our lives. And we start a fire.
She tastes delicious. Sweet and hot, a taste all hers. I take half a second to worry that I taste like leftover pizza, and then I can’t think at all. She’s too much, she’s so incredible, it’s too deep, it’s too intoxicating, it’s like striking a match and throwing it into a barrel of gasoline. I kiss her, and she kisses me back, and at some point when I’m starting to reach for her breast, my phone beeps with the five quick tones it uses when I get a message coded “emergency” from any of the ER phones.
“Oh, fucking hell,” I say, gasping for breath and pulling back.
She’s panting too.
“I gotta go.” I check the phone; it’s a message from Noah: MVA multiple casualties due in 4 min get yr ass downhere now Fin!! “Car wreck coming into the ER. I’m sorry.”
“Call me,” she says.
“You call me,” I say on the way out the door, buttoning my lab coat over the frustrated hard-on in my pants, and running for the stairs. My phone buzzes again, and I pull up text messages to see an unfamiliar number. I open the message.
It’s June. Now you’ve got me.
I take the rest of the stairs three at a time, humming.
SEVEN
June
I’ve just gotten out of the shower the following afternoon when my phone starts ringing. I’m in my bathrobe trying to dry my hair, but it might be Wade. Or his mom. I’d better go into the bedroom and pick it up.
My phone says Finlay Gunn.
OMG. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s your friendly ER doc. How’s the patient?”
“Um. He was fine last time I checked.”
“Oh. Good. And how are you?” His voice is so sexy when it dips low in his chest like that, and I shiver.
“I just got up a little while ago, actually.”
“I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m not usually conked out late on a Saturday afternoon, but I didn’t get much sleep last night.” I think a second. “I guess you didn’t either, since you were working.”
“Yeah, but I went home and got some shut-eye this morning. Listen, I thought I’d come by and have a look at your buddy, just make sure he’s recovering well.”
“You’re out of luck,” I explain. “He’s not here. I called his mom this morning, and she insisted on coming by to take him home. Said he would recover much better there.”
“That is—unexpected,” Fin says. “But maybe the best thing that could happen.” He sounds pleased.
“I know, right? I was in shock. But apparently Wade’s dad wanted him to come home, too, so—” I sniffle a little. “So he went. It was really emotional. His mom cried, he cried. I cried.”
“So,” he says, and lets the pause linger. “I guess there’s no point in my coming by your place?”
My heart rate picks up. “Um, not if you’re here to see Wade. Like as a doctor, I mean.”
“What if I’m here to see you?”
My heart speeds up even more, and my voice cracks a little. “I . . . I’d love that.”
“Good. Because I’m at your door.”
“What?” I hurl myself through the apartment to check the peephole. I have to stand on tiptoe to get my eye up to the thing, but it shows me his chest. Damn, he’s so tall! “OMG. You’re at my door.”
He steps back so I can see his face. He’s smiling, and those hot dark eyes of his give me goose bumps even through two inches of steel door. “Toldja.”
He looks yummy in regular clothes. The faded jeans fit him, and the green henley shirt clings to his torso, and he just looks so good in them that I want to peel him out of them. I shake my head to clear it.
“But how did you get—how do you know where I live?” I ask, confused, and I can see his smile fade a little.
“I did something slightly unethical,” he admits, looking chagrined. “And by ‘slightly unethical’ I mean more unethical than kissing you in a hospital room last night.” He shrugs uncomfortably. “I looked up the info on Wade’s chart,” he says. “I realize that’s a little bit stalkery, so if you want me to leave you alone, just say so.”
“I don’t want you to leave me alone.” My voice cracks again.
“Well, good. Let me in, then.” He smiles one of those wicked smiles at me, and I go melty in the middle
.
I end the call and let him in. His eyes go all over me, top to bottom. I feel extra naked, but in a sexy-naked sort of way. “You look great,” he says, almost whispering.
We stand there falling into each other’s eyes for a long, long, moment, and then somehow we just move toward each other, like we’re magnets. I’m in his arms, and I realize that although his chest isn’t packed with gym muscles, he’s really solidly built. Next to him, I feel almost delicate.
The kissing is as good as it was before. He tastes like coffee and mint toothpaste, and he smells wonderful, and his big hands feel so good cupping my butt. I mean, given the amount of ass I’m packing, it’s a good thing his hands are so big. And those big hands are pulling me so close to him that I can feel his arousal pressing against my belly. Speaking of packing, ZOMGAH, he’s huge. Long and thick, and just the thought of being naked next to that beast does good things to me.
Under the robe, I feel like a flower opening to the sun, everything sort of blooming out, opening up. Nipples perked. Ladyparts going juicy. Stomach quivering with anticipation.
He kisses around to the skin of my neck under my ear, where I’m so sensitive, and my knees pretty much just quit working. I have to grab his arms to keep from falling over, while his lips and tongue are making me liquid inside my skin. I moan.
“Whoa,” he says into my ear. “Maybe we should sit down before you fall. Is there a couch in here?”
Maybe it’s a bad decision, maybe I’ll regret it later. But some part of me has been wanting to do this ever since I saw those hot, dark, wicked eyes on me last night through the glass door. I say, “There’s a bed.”
His breathing gets ragged, and he stops kissing my neck. He talks into it, his voice all low and breathless and beyond sexy. “You know, I really didn’t come over here to seduce you. I wanted to take you to dinner.”
“Dinner first, you mean?” I say into his chest.
“Okay, busted.” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Come on,” I say, and pull him down the little hall into my bedroom.