In His Angel's Arms

by Lynne Marshall

  He lifted her and she kept her legs firmly wrapped about his waist. Still securely connected at their core, he walked.

  “So where’s your bedroom?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “DO YOU realize what just happened?” Mallory said from the comfort of her bed, still glowing from their love-making.

  “We had great sex?” JT rose up onto his elbow and played with the ends of her hair.

  “You carried me from the living room to my bedroom without your cane!”

  “So I did.” He grinned down at her. “You see? You bring out the best in me.”

  She cuffed his arm. “Oh, you. It must have been the adrenaline.”

  “Or the testosterone.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer. “Come here. We’ve got a lot of making up to do. Only this time we’re going to take it nice and slow…”

  *

  Just before dawn, Mallory lifted her head from JT’s firm, broad chest. She’d drifted off for a brief nap. So had he, after he’d taken her out of the stratosphere and back another time or two with more great sex. My God, the man had stamina. But, like he’d said, they had a lot of making up to do.

  Grinning, she pushed her matted hair away from her eyes and studied his face. His angular features were silhouetted by early morning light dappled with the last stealthy patches of night. He looked at peace, a faint smile on his lips. So different from the man she’d first discovered sick and in self-exile. He’d put on more weight and bulked up in his chest and arms from all of his rehab. An indented scar remained where his tracheostomy had been. She couldn’t watch him enough after the four months they’d been apart.

  And she couldn’t ignore the fact that she loved him.

  Sensing her shift in position, his warm hand found her shoulder and rubbed it. He turned his head and cracked open his eyes. “Whatever you want, madam. I’m yours for the night.” He grinned, waxing dramatic, more sparkle in his gaze.

  Mallory stretched with satisfaction.

  He hugged her with both arms then flipped her over him and continued rolling until he looked down into her face. “There’s something you should know.”

  She tensed at the words. Their night together had been a supreme fantasy and here came the old “reality” bomb. Mallory braced herself.

  “I’m crazy about you,” he said.

  Her eyes flew wide. She tried not to gasp, but the tiniest catch in her breath escaped.

  “You’re surprised?” he asked.

  “Pretty much. Especially after the way you were so nonchalant at work today.”

  He kissed her cheek and nibbled her neck while she tried to piece together where and how they fit in each other’s life.

  “I wasn’t sure what you were thinking. A guy needs clues, you know?”

  How could she begin to explain the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions that had blown through her mind that morning at work? She’d start with the last day they’d seen each other.

  “You let me get fired.”

  “No, I didn’t. There was no winning with Berger that afternoon. I had other plans. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I had to act like you didn’t matter to me.” He held her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Please, forgive me.”

  She inhaled on a quiver. “OK.” She’d already forgiven him the minute they’d made love.

  He nipped her nose. “Did you know, from the first time I ever saw you I knew you were special.”

  She sputtered a laugh. “Come on. You never gave me a second glance when we worked in the hospital together all those years. It wasn’t until I was the only game in town that you started to notice me.”

  “I’m a sneaky one. Trust me, you got lots of second glances. But I was a married man. Flirting with the nurses wasn’t my style. And I would never categorize you as ‘the only game in town.’ It would be too hard on my ego.”

  She knew flirting wouldn’t be like him. Still, it was nice to know she’d at least been on his radar for all the years he’d been at Mercy Hospital. Having gotten to know him better now, she knew he’d have been more direct. If he’d wanted anyone, he’d just have told them. And he’d just told her he was crazy about her!

  Dared she tell him how she felt?

  JT took each of her wrists in his hands and stretched her arms above her head. He grew intent on his mission and lifted a brow at the sight, nuzzled and sampled the closest breast. She shuddered and grew taut.

  “I consider myself extremely lucky.” He kissed her neck and shoulder. Chills spread across her chest tightening her breasts more. “Things are different now. I definitely want you in my life.”

  His mouth covered hers, and she welcomed the warmth and thrill, but knowing they were going to be late if they kept this up she bucked beneath him. He kissed harder, and she bucked again, this time making a noise in her throat.

  Finally reading her body language, he lifted his head. “What?”

  “We’ve got to get up and go to work.”

  He cast a hooded glance at the clock and frowned. “Damn. That does spoil the moment, doesn’t it?”

  She tapped his rib cage with her finger, gathered the sheet and covered herself to her neck. “You know we should probably set up some ground rules. I mean, for one thing, how are we going to handle this?”

  “Daily. With full samples of you.” He reached over and swatted her hip then grinned.

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” Devilish eyes stared back, and a lock of thick black hair hung over his brow. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to touch him. Looking sinfully great with his one-day growth of beard and blue eyes, he wasn’t going to make things easy.

  Mallory plopped onto her back and sighed. His hand nestled in her hair.

  “Actually, you’ve brought up a very good point. I’m on the verge of getting full custody of Corey.”

  She sat bolt upright. “You are?”

  “Come back here,” he said, gently pulling her by the hair down to the bed.

  “That’s wonderful news.” She smiled and turned onto her side, facing him. Both with bent elbows and resting their heads on their hands—a mirror image—they studied each other.

  “I look forward to seeing you like this every morning in my bed,” he said, as one hand gently tugged down the sheet, revealing her breasts again. “But we’ve got to wait a little longer.”

  Ah, here it comes. She blinked, bit her tongue and, rather than force the subject, thought of something else to say. “How have you gotten Samantha to agree?”

  “She’s a smart woman. Always has been. She knows it’s too hard on a child to be shuffled one week on, one week off between two households. And since my lawyer and Jake helped me expose her underhanded attempts at setting me up and stealing Corey from me while I was ill…well, let’s just say she’s open to suggestions.”

  “Oh, my God. That’s wonderful.”

  “As Wayne didn’t get the Medical Director position…”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. Joel Hersh did.”

  She covered her eyes with both hands and shook her head. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “Tell me about it. So, anyway, I’m taking over half of Joel’s patient panel so he can be Medical Director. Combined with my own patients, I’ll be a full-time doctor again.”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  “Yeah, I’m glad about that, too. And Wayne has applied for a position at Mercy’s San Francisco hospital. I’m not sure if Samantha is going with him or not. If she’s serious about fighting for Corey, she can’t very well plan on pulling him out of school and taking him away from his friends to follow some schmuck to San Francisco. How would that look if I challenged her in court?”

  “Have the two of you sat down and discussed all this?”

  “Yes. She’s on the verge of seeing the light.”

  With that, the alarm sounded, reminding them they had other responsibilities and needed to get moving.

  *
/>   Two nurses had called in sick, and as usual Administration couldn’t spare another one from any other wards. A tight budget to help fund the new hospital construction for the rehab wing kept Mercy hospital from using a nursing registry. At least, that was what the supervisor had told them.

  Mallory, Jenny, and another nurse had to divide eighteen patients between them. The newly hired nurse from JT’s nursing staff study agreed at the last minute to work an extra shift when the supervisor had called and pleaded with her. But they’d have to wait a couple hours before she could come in.

  Trying desperately to stay on top of things without any sleep, and still reeling from her night of making love with JT, was almost impossible. At 8.30 and already exhausted, she blinked her eyes and trudged on with patient care. Morning vital signs. Patient assessment. Meds for six. Two blood-sugar checks and insulin injections before breakfast got served. Checking all the IVs to make sure they were patent. Three IV piggy-backs to hang before 9 a.m. Help with, or give full bed baths. Send one patient to Radiology for an upper GI series. Draw up a pain shot for another. The list went on and on as she checked her clipboard.

  And now Dr. Berger insisted she help him with a bedside procedure on one of his patients. His pursed lips and a disdainful stare made her want to tell him to take a flying jump but she restrained herself from making an emotional outburst.

  “Sure. Let me gather the equipment from the supply room. I’ll meet you there in a couple of minutes.”

  And patient call lights never stopped. The ward clerk tried to buzz in to each patient room to find out if it was an emergency or if it could wait. But that was still little help.

  Today linen changes would simply have to be postponed until help arrived.

  Fortunately, everything she’d need for the thoracentesis procedure was neatly packaged in a sterile tray. The only additional items she needed to find were a couple of large evacuation bottles, in case the patient had a lot of pleural fluid. And as she knew the patient Dr. Berger wanted to tap was a lung-cancer patient, and she’d glanced at the X-rays on the ward’s view box, she was certain there would be a lot.

  She swept out of the supply room with equipment in hand and two bottles, one under each arm, almost running head on into JT and two other doctors arriving for morning rounds.

  One hand in the pocket of his white doctor’s jacket, the other gripping the snappy black cane, he wore the same dark slacks he’d burst into her house wearing the night before. Yesterday’s shirt had obvious wrinkles from being left in a heap on her floor.

  She smiled and could feel the twinkle in her eyes, but he only returned her adoring gaze with a solemn nod and walked on, deep in conversation with his colleagues. The odd interaction jolted her senses, embarrassing her until a blush engulfed her neck and cheeks. They’d just performed every sexual position imaginable, in her limited experience anyway, over the course of several blissful hours. They’d been hot and sticky together, reeking of sex, and all he could do when he saw her at work was nod and walk on? Not even a “Good morning, Mallory?” What the hell was that about? Her embarrassed blush turned to anger.

  She’d forgiven him for abandoning her the day she’d gotton fired, and had now been shot down with little more than a glance at work. Who did JT Prescott think he was?

  She tossed her head and entered the patient’s room, where an impatient Dr. Berger had his patient sitting with forearms leaning on the bedside table.

  She bit her tongue and forced down the festering anger, refusing to stoop to strike out at an unlucky substitute.

  “Let me get another table to set everything up for you.” Bedside procedures could never be completely sterile, but being aseptic was a must. She snatched the tray from the empty patient bed across the room and rolled it over.

  Mallory covered the table with blue absorbent towels, washed her hands and donned gloves, trying her best to let go of the hurt and anger JT had just caused. She opened the thoracentesis tray, careful not to touch anything sterile inside the package.

  Dr. Berger rolled up his sleeves, palpated and percussed the torso area he planned to tap on his patient, searching for a dull or muffled sound at the site.

  “Have you signed the consent, Mr. Owens?” she asked.

  The patient nodded his head.

  “You’ll feel a little prick when Dr. Berger injects some numbing medication, then we’ll wait until you won’t feel anything but pressure when he inserts the needle between your ribs.”

  Mr. Owens listened intently. Evidently Dr. Berger hadn’t thoroughly explained to him what to expect. “Dr. Berger will only insert the needle into the thin sac that covers your lung. That is where the fluid has built up. He won’t be perforating your lung tissue.” She glanced up at the doctor with a cautionary look that said, You’d better not. He glared at her with impatient eyes—how dared she take time to explain things to a patient? She ignored him and reached for the oxygen tubing on the wall, reinserting the cannulas inside each nostril of her patient. “Are you allergic to any medication?”

  He shook his head. A stoic stare indicated he knew it wouldn’t be a picnic, but he was willing to proceed.

  Once Dr. Berger had made an “X” where he intended to insert the thoracentesis needle, he opened and put on the sterile gloves from the kit and waited for Mallory to pour germicide into the trough for the cleansing sponge. He grabbed the handle and wiped the skin in concentric circles, tossed away that sponge and used another to repeat the process of cleaning the skin.

  Mallory worked diligently, anticipating the doctor’s needs by handing him sterile syringes and vials or exchanging smaller needles with larger-bore ones as the topical numbing agent took effect and he needed to go deeper each time he injected.

  Dr. Berger tapped into the fluid easily—he was a skilled doctor, she’d give him that, just sorely lacking in a bedside manner and too full of ambition.

  Once Mallory had collected a small sample in a specimen jar for the lab, she inserted the tubing into the evacuation bottle, using a stopcock to control the flow. She moved the bottle to the floor, using gravity to help speed up the process.

  Fortunately, the fluid she collected looked straw-colored without blood. She hoped it was a good sign for Mr. Owens, but only the lab report would tell for sure.

  She patted her patient’s hand and smiled. “You’re doing great.”

  He almost smiled back.

  While waiting for the rest of the fluid to drain, Dr. Berger got a snooty look on his face and said under his breath, just loud enough for Mallory to hear, “He’s way out of your league, you know. He’s probably already moved on.”

  Mallory tried her best not to react to his cruel taunt. The latest report from her bedroom gave any impression but that. Yet he’d managed to plant a seed of insecurity. Especially after what had just happened in the hall. Was she being used by JT? Not about to let Dr. Berger get the best of her, she resorted to undercover—well under bedcovers anyway—tactics.

  “Dr. Berger? So sorry to hear about the move to San Francisco,” she said with a feigned sugar-sweet voice.

  He grunted. Satisfied she’d hit a home run with her sarcasm, she focused back on the job at hand.

  Once the procedure had ended, and Mallory had applied a pressure dressing and cleaned up her patient, she helped position him back on the bed so he could rest. With so much fluid removed, he could lie flat and breathe easier. She took his vital signs. His breathing seemed much less labored, and she was satisfied that the 500 ccs of fluid they’d removed had helped him.

  She gathered the used equipment and headed for the biohazardous waste container. Her hands were full and her mind was distracted when she caught JT’s glance from across the nurses’ station. He looked away quicker than she could blink.

  Her suppressed anger came to a rolling boil.

  After dumping her bundle in the trash, she let the lid clank shut. She looked over her shoulder and saw JT head for the exit to the stairwell. The rescue nurse had arr
ived. Mallory whizzed past her and said, “Watch my patients for a sec. OK?”

  Without giving the nurse a chance to answer, she rushed toward the exit and pushed through the door. She scurried down the steps to catch up with JT.

  “Hey!” she called, not the least bit worried about anyone hearing her. “What on earth was that all about?”

  JT stopped and turned with a wide-eyed look. “Mallory, what’s wrong?”

  “You know what’s wrong. You acted like you’d never seen me before in there.” She pointed back toward the ward.

  He returned up the steps to meet her halfway. “I thought I’d made it pretty clear when I told you about getting custody of Corey.”

  “What are you talking about? We have to act like strangers?”

  “Yes. We’ll need to keep things to ourselves for a while longer.”

  She’d been speeding down a smooth highway lined with new love and beautiful thoughts until now, when she’d hit a log littering the road to her happiness. “What do you mean? You told me that you were crazy about me.”

  “Surely you understand. You practically got fired because of me.”

  “That was when you were my patient. We just became lovers. That’s different.”

  “But it could blow my whole deal with Samantha.”

  “Why do you give her such power? Your son isn’t a bargaining chip. He’s a person! She has no right to complain about anything you do on your own time. For goodness’ sake, she was dating Wayne and still expected to have Corey.”

  “Mallory, listen. I can’t lose my son. I can’t risk it by exposing our relationship. Can’t you wait a bit longer?”

  “You come to my house, practically break in, take me, and now you don’t want to let anyone know? What do you think I am?”

  “Hold on. You’re mixing everything up.”

  “No, I’m not. If you were so concerned about appearances, why couldn’t you have waited until everything was all settled before you barged into my life again?”

  He reached for her hand and kissed her fingers.

  “Because I couldn’t stay away. I need you too much.”

  She yanked away her hand. “You sure have a strange way of showing it.”