by Lilly Atlas
She really didn’t know Striker, but the idea of the tough-looking biker wanting a picket fence and two point five kids was almost laughable. Lila could admire the attractive packaging from afar, but she shouldn’t be thinking about the desire that shone in his eyes, as she did far too often. There was nothing but trouble down that road. Especially since he probably spent much of his time on the wrong side of the law.
“So, Doc, I hear you have a big presentation coming up,” he said.
Pride swelled with the knowledge that there was talk around town about her program. It was her baby. She’d seen too many high school athletes come through the ER with serious head injuries due to the school’s ignorance about concussions and equipment safety.
“I do! I’m presenting my idea in front of the school board Monday night. If all goes well, I’ll form a committee and begin putting a program together. It’s so important. Did you know that the majority of the sports equipment at the high school is over ten years old? There is no way it is in any condition to keep the kids protected.”
Her face heated. She was passionate about this project, and could talk about it for hours, to anyone apparently, even sexy bikers who normally had her tongue-tied. “Sorry. I can ramble on about this until your ears fall off. I’m sure you’re not interested, so I should probably go tend to the bleeding man.”
She turned to flee toward the treatment rooms, but stopped when Striker’s voice sounded behind her. “Actually, Doc, some of my guys have kids in the high school. A few of them play football. I think it’s great what you’re doing.”
And damn if her heart didn’t do a happy dance at the look of admiration on his face. With a nod in his direction, she turned and headed down the hall.
Cammie, her friend and one of the best ER nurses she’d ever worked with, came up the hall as Lila went down it. “Cammie, can you grab a suture kit and meet me in room four? I’ll also need lidocaine and saline to irrigate the wound. Looks like Gumby took quite a shot to the face.”
At the mention of Gumby’s name, Cammie paled a bit, but she nodded and walked straight toward the supply room. Lila wasn’t sure what that was about, and didn’t want to waste time speculating.
She pushed the door to exam room four open and walked in. The minuscule room was even smaller than usual with two very large males filling the space. Gumby sat on the treatment table directly opposite the door, the blood soaked cloth still pressed to his face. Jester was off to the side, sitting in a plastic chair that was built for a man half his size. Striker hadn’t followed her into the room, and she breathed a small sigh of relief at the lack of distraction.
“Hi, Doc. Miss me?” Gumby asked. He tried to smile but winced when the action caused the skin around his still expanding eye to crinkle.
“Hey there, Gumby, I see you’re here for our standing Friday night date. I gotta tell you, it wouldn’t hurt to bring a girl flowers every once in a while,” she said with a wink.
Jester laughed. “You may want to take it easy on Gumb tonight, Stitch. Not only is his pretty face all busted, he got his ass handed to him in the ring. He’s been a tad cranky ever since.”
“Fuck off, Jest,” grumbled Gumby. “Fucker got in a few lucky shots.”
“Sure he did, Gumb.” Jester patted him on the back like he might a petulant child, and shot a quick wink Lila’s way.
“Lie down on your back for me please, you are way too tall for me to reach your face all the way up there.” She adjusted the angle on the treatment table as she spoke, so he wouldn’t be flat, but would lay at about a thirty-degree incline.
Gumby did as she asked while Lila donned a pair of nitrile gloves. Before she moved to assess him, she opened a drawer beneath the table, and pulled out a few four-by-fours of gauze and ripped the packages open. When Gumby was in position, Lila placed her gloved hand over his to remove the saturated cloth.
His eye was badly contused and swollen shut. The color palette was spectacular. Various shades of purple and blue mottled the skin surrounding his entire orbit. A two-inch laceration stretched across Gumby’s cheekbone as well. The gash cut deep, but not jagged, so it would be easy to approximate the edges and he’d have minimal scarring. She pressed the clean gauze over his eye while she waited for Cammie to bring the suture kit.
“Did you get knocked out, Gumby? If so I’ll need to do a CT scan of your head.”
“I’m good, Stitch. Just need my face sewn up so it will stop fucking bleeding.”
“Well, I’d really like to—”
“Doc.” A gruff voice came from over her shoulder. “He’s fine, just do your thing, and put his face back together so we can get out of your way.”
She’d heard him approach and had tried to ignore the star of too many of her late night fantasies, but apparently Striker wasn’t going to let that happen. A dueling sizzle of awareness and annoyance struck her as he stepped in between her and her patient.
“Thank you, Striker. As usual I’d be lost in my job without your sound medical input.”
“Man, I love coming here.” Jester laughed. “Too bad one of us needs to get all jacked up or I’d be here every day to be on the receiving end of your charms, Stitch.”
Lila turned her attention back to Striker, and narrowed her eyes to let him know she was serious when she expressed her dislike of his interference. Once again she was met with a one-sided smirk she would like to smack off his face. Okay, there was a chance she’d like to kiss the smirk off his face, but she wasn’t ready to admit that out loud.
Cammie knocked on the door before she entered, and wheeled in a cart with the supplies Lila had requested. Lila often teased her about her curly red hair and how it bounced as she walked, mimicking her bubbly personality, but tonight she was stiff and rigid as though she was being walked to her doom. “I have your suture kit, Dr. Emerson. What can I do to help you?” she asked.
“Thanks, Cammie, I can take it from here.”
Cammie shot Lila a grateful smile, and was out of the room in a flash, apparently not wanting to miss out on the reprieve she was given. Lila made a mental note to ask Cammie why she seemed so uncomfortable when Jester mumbled. “Yeah, Gumby, probably shouldn’t have climbed on that ride, knowing how often you end up here.”
Well, that explained why Cammie lit out of there like the floor was caving in. Given how the members of the MC flirted with any female staff between ages nineteen and fifty, she was surprised there weren’t more awkward encounters.
Lila gifted Gumby with an innocent grin. “Oh crap! I’m so sorry, Gumby, I forgot I have a meeting to get to. I’m just going to call Cammie back and have her stitch you up. I’m sure she won’t forget to numb you, and she’ll be very gentle.” Her snarky statement would have been better believed if she hadn’t burst out laughing halfway through at the look of horror on Gumby’s face.
Behind her, Striker laughed. “Ouch, Doc, way to hit the man when he’s down.”
Lila chuckled. She always had fun when these guys were here. “Okay let’s get down to business so you can get out of here, and ignore my instructions by mixing your pain killers with booze.” She grabbed the bottle of sterile saline off the cart, and irrigated the wound. Gumby hissed out a curse. “Sorry, Gumby. I can’t see exactly how deep it is unless I clean out the blood. There’s a chance you have an orbital fracture. I recommend a CT.”
He shook his head. “Just close it up.”
Surprise, surprise. “Sometimes you guys are very annoying.”
They all laughed, and she used the lidocaine to deaden the area around the wound. When he was numb, she ripped open the suture kit and got to work. Lila could feel Striker’s eyes on her back and she had to concentrate to keep her hands from quivering like a third year medical student. Thankfully they remained quiet, allowing her to focus, and in ten minutes Gumby’s wound was closed, the stitch job quite impressive, if she did say so herself.
“Okay, Gumby, you are the proud new recipient of fifteen stitches. I’ll have a nurs
e bring you something for the pain. It will hurt like a bitch when the lidocaine wears off. The nurse will also have your discharge instructions. You can leave when she’s done.”
Lila knew how they operated, and didn’t expect a single instruction to be followed, but protocol was protocol and she’d obey it. As she turned to leave the room, her gaze collided with Striker’s. His heated stare affected her more than she was prepared to admit so she shifted her gaze and broke the connection. Neither said anything as she left the room, but she felt the lingering effects of having him so near in her racing heart and wobbly legs.
Her shift was officially over, and she could go home as soon as Gumby’s paperwork was complete. Now she just needed to get Striker off her mind long enough to finish her proposal and still get some sleep tonight.
Chapter Two
Striker prowled the half-full waiting room while he waited for Gumby to emerge. He spotted Lila behind a desk to the right of the admissions counter, typing away on a computer that looked like it should have been replaced ten years ago.
He should leave. Jester could stay with Gumby, and he could go meet up with the rest of his brothers at the party he was missing. The only reason he stuck around was because Lila drew him like a junkie to the needle.
It was pointless. Lila was the marrying type, not the type to fuck a biker once or twice. And that’s all it would be. Striker didn’t do anything more than that. As vice president of the MC there was no shortage of women eager to bang him, and that’s exactly how he liked it. Someday he’d be president, and maybe he’d consider getting an ol’ lady then, but there was no point in it now. He had all the easy pussy he wanted, but he had to admit the challenge of getting into Lila’s pants was appealing.
The emergency room at Desert Community Hospital was often surprisingly busy for such a small town, but tonight was a pretty slow night. Taking a rare moment to study the doctor without her knowledge, he wondered, not for the first time, what the hell she was doing in his Podunk town.
Lila seemed so much…bigger than Crystal Rock, Arizona, a tiny, off the grid desert town known for its one percenter motorcycle gang. True, a portion of the town rested along a gorgeous lake, an oasis in the hot desert that was a tourist attraction. But for whatever reason, possibly the MC, their town wasn’t included in the area where tourists flocked. Hell, Crystal Rock didn’t even boast a motel for travelers to stay.
The first word that popped into his head whenever he looked at Lila was, classy. Her clothes gave the impression they cost her a good few bucks, and even in her scrubs she gave off an air of sophistication. When she was working, she kept her long dark hair neatly pulled into a tight bun at the top of her head. The look was supposed to be professional, but it exposed the smooth skin of her neck, and Striker wished he could lean in and nibble her elegant jaw. Striker’s fantasies about the sexy doctor often began with him yanking that bun out and tangling his fingers in her thick dark hair so he could pull her head back and feast on her mouth.
Jester strode into the waiting area, and Striker lifted a hand to catch his attention. Conversation among the five or so patients waiting to be seen came to a dead halt, similar to when he and his brothers first arrived. Jester often had that effect on a room.
“Should be about fifteen minutes. Nurse Cammie got stuck bringing Gumby his pills and showing him how to take care of his boo-boo. I figured I’d step out and give them a few minutes alone.” He grinned and rubbed his hands together as though Gumby’s further discomfort pleased him.
“Not sure who will hate you more for that one, Gumby or the redhead.”
Jester snorted. “Gonna go out and have a smoke. You coming?”
“Nah, I’ll hang here.”
After shooting him a curious look, Jester shrugged and made his way outside. Striker saw him through the window, near the bikes.
Striker turned his attention back to Lila. Damn she was just plain hot as fuck. There hadn’t been a legitimate reason to stay in the room while she stitched up Gumby, yet as soon as she bent over the table to work on his face, Striker got a close up view of her tight ass and decided to stay for the show.
Even the baggy lab coat and scrubs couldn’t disguise what a luscious ass it was. Lila was tiny, couldn’t have been more than a few inches above five feet. They teased her often about her minuscule stature when she was fixing up one of his guys. Most of them were fairly big men, and she looked like a child when she was surrounded by them.
Maybe child wasn’t the right word, seeing as how he never failed to notice she was all woman. Despite the fact that she was short, she had a banging body, with a tight, curvy figure he wanted to run his hands, and mouth, over. The few times he’d seen her out of scrubs, he’d had to clench his teeth to keep his tongue from lolling out and panting after her like the dog he was.
What was new for him was the fact that he admired her, as a person, not just her body. She was intelligent, quick witted, and, in the few months she’d lived in Crystal Rock, her combination of compassion and skill as a physician had earned her the respect of the entire town. Striker didn’t meet many women of her caliber; the ones he met were in the market for a good party and a good fuck.
From where he sat, Striker could see Lila’s face, drawn in concentration. She shook her head at the computer before a smile lit her features, and she increased the speed of her hands on the keyboard. She was probably putting the finishing touches on her upcoming proposal for the school board.
As he watched her type, he couldn’t help but check out her breasts in the snug black shirt she had on. It was warm in the ER, and she had shed her white coat and rested it on the seat back behind her. For some reason tonight she had scrub pants on, but not a scrub top. Her breasts were just the size he preferred, slightly more than a generous handful, and he had to bite back a groan as he imagined what she had on under her professional attire.
Fuck, another second of those thoughts and he’d be stuck standing in the waiting area with a telltale tent in his jeans. Striker decided he’d stroll over to the desk, and see what trouble he could get into with the doc.
“So, Doc, you think my boy’s gonna live?”
Lila jumped when the deep voice rumbled above her. She was two sentences away from completing the in-depth proposal documents, and had been so focused on her task, the rest of the room blurred into background noise. Concentration broken, she peered up at Striker, and there was no way to miss where his gaze was directed. He slowly lifted his eyes to meet hers. Not an ounce of repentance showed on his face for the fact that she’d caught him blatantly checking her out.
Unfortunately, instead of feeling insulted, her body reacted to him as it always did, growing warm and flushed. Her breath caught as she looked at his handsome face, and his question fled her brain.
Lila saved her document and closed out the program, using the task to buy her a moment to remember what it was he asked her.
“Doc?” Striker lifted one eyebrow and smirked. “You okay?”
She coughed in an attempt hide the chuckle that escaped at her teenage behavior. Thankfully Anna was focused on assisting a patient with their paperwork, and didn’t seem to be aware of the awkward conversation taking place just ten feet away. Lila could feel her face heating, and knew it had to be red. The way she flushed was the bane of her existence, always betraying her emotions. “Oh, um, yes,” she sputtered. Smooth, very smooth. He’d find her inarticulate ramblings attractive for sure, not that she was trying to attract him. “Gumby will be fine. Back to normal in no time, and ready to have his face smashed in all over again.”
Striker barked out a laugh. “Bit of a smartass there, aren’t you, Doc?”
“Well, I call it as I—”
An eager voice Lila knew well interrupted them. “Oh, Doctor Emerson, I’m so glad you’re working tonight.”
She sighed, and couldn’t hold back a tiny groan of annoyance. Would she ever get out of here tonight? Embarrassed by the unprofessional reaction, she glanced a
t Striker to see if he’d noticed her blunder. If the grin on his face was any indication, he had. There probably wasn’t much that slipped by him.
Lila slid her professional mask on, and looked at the man who had stepped up to the desk holding a bag of ice and a towel over his left hand. Mr. White was about forty, average height for a man, which was much taller than Lila’s five-foot-two, and he was a bit overweight. Despite his larger size, his clothing always looked too big for him. Greasy, mud-brown hair sat atop his head, and thick glasses rimmed his eyes.
White was a frequent flyer, a patient who visited the ER nearly once a week for myriad complaints, many of which proved to be benign. Each time he came in he refused to be treated by any doctor other than Lila. In fact, he basically refused to speak to anyone in the ER aside from her, including the receptionist. Everyone who worked there was familiar with him, and gave his eccentricities a pass. He may have a little crush on her, and Lila tried to be sweet to the man who was often so alone.
The problem was, his visits often proved to be a waste of her time and he tended to drag out each encounter, adding extra concerns to his initial complaint once she was ready to discharge him. It was almost always a Friday or a Saturday night that he came in, and she had the impression the poor man used the hospital as a way to have the attention and social interaction he probably lacked otherwise.
“Yes, Mr. White, I’m working tonight. Looks like you hurt yourself there.” Lila tried to be patient and keep the frustration out of her voice. The evening had been pleasant so far, and she just wasn’t in the mood to deal with what had the potential to be hours of Mr. White. As usual, he’d avoided the receptionist and ignored the other staff in the hospital.
“Oh yes, Dr. Emerson, I did indeed. I was making dinner for my mother—you know how I do that every Friday because her hands aren’t what they used to be—and the knife slipped.” His green eyes welled and his lower lip quivered. “I think it needs stitches, and I’m so worried they’ll hurt, but now that I see you’re here I can relax. You’re the best, and I know you’ll take good care of me. I’ve never been to a doctor as gentle and skilled as you are.”