by Julia Kent
This was the other dad, what was his name? Mike? Mike—who stared at the display before him and he, too, looked at Dylan’s naked form and shook his head. “There is a time and place for this and this is neither the time nor the place,” Mike told Dylan.
“She wanted me to get in the jacuzzi tub with her!” Dylan protested. “We didn’t pack a bathing suit. We didn’t figure it would be a big deal.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Josie said. “I’m sure people here have heard that a million times.”
“Actually, no,” Alex and Sherri said in unison.
Laura’s contraction was over and she stood, completely naked and utterly oblivious to her nude form, which Alex found charming. So many mothers added to the tension, and the difficulty, and the pain of the labor by being self-conscious. Of all the times in your life when you should be able to do whatever you want, isn’t labor and delivery one of them?
“Out,” she said calmly, pointing to Alex and the two nurses. She pointed to Josie, Dylan, Mike, and Sherri. “You can stay. Everybody else, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think about what’s going on here. I am having a baby!” she shouted. “I want my fucking birthing tub!” And with that she waddled over to the tub and slowly lifted one leg to get in, Dylan supporting her as Mike scrambled into the room to help out.
Alex backed away, admiring her fortitude and wondering if she was always like this. He and Sherri exchanged a look and she just shrugged, waving him out. Crisis averted—back to charting.
Now that Dylan’s brown starfish crisis was over, Josie found herself flagging, needing coffee. It was 4 a.m. And while Laura’s body was blossoming nicely, now at about six centimeters, without broken waters this could take quite a bit longer. Dylan snoozed in a very uncomfortable-looking pose in a chair in the room while Mike curled around Laura, spooning her while pressing his hands deeply into the aching muscles of her back. Laura, desperate for sleep, was grabbing whatever few seconds and minutes she could get between rippling contractions.
Josie knew that popping the waters would be the next suggestion Sherri would make, and that Laura would probably comply, but do so with hesitation. Exhaustion had set in, and that meant her mind wasn’t as sharp as it normally would be. Add in raging hormones, abject terror, and the whispers of a new uptight nurse and you had one big mess.
Coffee. She needed coffee. She shook Dylan, who jumped up and shouted, “What? Push?” He was as dog tired as Josie.
She leaned down. “I’m getting coffee. Want some?”
He just shook his head and closed his eyes, curling himself into a barefooted ball on the wooden legs of the visitor’s chair, head shoved against a pillow. The chair folded out into a little bed, but he’d rejected that option for reasons known only to him. She wasn’t about to pry.
The elevator ride down was eerie, the sounds of groaning women in labor and beeping machines cut short as soon as the elevator doors shut. Downstairs, she found a 24/7 coffee shop and grabbed a horrible cup of java that would at least buy her a little alert time. On impulse she bought two. She’d find Alex and offer him one as a prize. Anyone who came face to face with Dylan’s naked ass—no matter how strong and hot it was—needed a little something else strong and hot to get over it.
Finding Alex proved remarkably simple, for as she waited for the elevator doors she heard that steady baritone behind her. “Josie?”
She turned to find him standing there, holding two cups of coffee. Uncertainty clouded his features, and then his eyes twinkled with mirth. “You just got coffee,” he said, pretending to toast her with the cup in his right hand. “I was coming up with this to give you.”
Could he be even more perfect? Apparently. “And,” she answered, gently knocking her own cup against his, “this is for you.” Eyes locked, they smiled at each other, the coffee burning her hand as they just stared. Maybe that burning sensation wasn’t only from the hot liquid in the cup in her hand. Hot fluids were pooling in other places, too.
“Great minds think alike and all that,” he said, not breaking the look.
She knew he had a handful of hours left of his twenty-four-hour shift, and he looked tired, but there was an energy in him that she admired. Competence and decency emanated from him, even in the blue scrubs. His name tag was askew, hanging from his shirt pocket like an afterthought, and his messy hair made her want to see it in bed, sunlight streaming behind him, naked and sleepy next to her, covered in their scent.
If he could read minds she was in trouble.
She had a feeling she was in trouble no matter what, though, because as their look deepened she felt herself falling, unsure where or how far, but definitely falling into a state she’d never been in before, her body and mind ready to leap right into something that should be carefully thought out.
And the last thing she needed to do right now was tear any of her attention away from her best friend. Laura, trying to sleep, and about to experience the worst pain of her entire life. In the middle of all that, what was Josie doing?
Flirting.
Bad friend. Bad, bad friend.
“We have a coffee surplus. Want to go sit down and get wired and jittery together?”
“Get some Mountain Dew and NoDoz and we could cure cancer in two days.”
“We could do great things with two uninterrupted days together,” he said, nodding solemnly.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Alex gestured for her to get on first, and she fumbled to push the button for the fourth floor, hands full of coffee cups, but she made it.
“You can tell you’re a nurse.”
She snickered. “A real nurse would make out with you between floors.” Did she just say that? Her mouth wasn’t supposed to blurt that out. It was a thought! A thought! The line between thinking and speaking eroded after 1 a.m.
“Is that an offer?”
“Do you want it to be?” Stall. Buy time. Stop inhaling his scent. Stop watching his arms flex with those coffees.
What was he doing? Alex bent down and set the coffees on the floor, then approached her, two steps into her personal space, making her breath so hard to manage she worried she’d faint from lack of oxygen. Autonomous body functions continued, to her surprise, including a decidedly distressing flood of blood to her nether regions, which engorged and flowed, making her wet for him. How could she get out of this with her dignity intact, without throwing herself all over him?
“I don’t play games, Josie.” His eyes bored into her and she gasped, confirming that her respiratory system really was functioning right now, thank goodness. His hands reached for the cups she held and he placed them on the floor, too. Alex touched her shoulders as the elevator crept up, slowly, the seconds feeling like minutes. “Games are for people who don’t know what they want.”
Alex showed her exactly what he wanted next, arms wrapping around her shoulders, one hand sliding against the throbbing skin of her neck, his soft palm caressing her pulse at the jawline, mouth bending to her, upper body curling down to take her with impossibly lush lips that met hers with a sense of welcoming that was almost unbearable in its simplicity and grace.
He didn’t push. This wasn’t a kiss of overriding passion, which she expected, but instead one of invitation, of orientation, even. Rather than saying “take your pants off”—a sentiment with which she was all too familiar—his kiss said “hello.” Which was so unfamiliar it confused her. The former she knew all too well. And then it shifted, moving decidedly into pants territory. As his lips explored her, her hands splayed against his shoulders, feet standing on tiptoes to embrace him better, the distant ding! of the elevator’s ascent registered and interrupted their embrace as the doors began to open.
Feeling like an errant schoolgirl, Josie pressed her fingers to her lips as he pulled back, a smile creasing his face and making those damn eyes even more appealing. The look he gave her pierced her heart, as if he really cared for her and this wasn’t just some strange attraction that came at the worst possible tim
e—ever—in her life.
No one entered the elevator, thank God, and she nearly kicked over two of the coffees in her haste to pull away and make sure no one caught them. Why she felt the need to hide this, to be discreet, was beyond her. Habit? Fear? Embarrassment? Nothing computed as she watched him, effortlessly, dip to one knee on the floor like a man about to propose, except his hand held java instead of a diamond ring.
Likewise, she bent down to retrieve her coffees and looked to him for reassurance, for direction, to know what to do next. His fixed stare made her smile, the grin a reflex that came from a deeper look at the relaxed calm, the knowing joy in him that he somehow transmitted to her.
That look she knew, but not personally. A touch of it was in the way Mike smiled when he talked about Laura.
It was becoming increasingly clear that the coffee had been some sort of cosmic sign. Not that the kiss wasn’t also, but why were they so comfortable with each other so quickly? Eager to reach out and be so kind and thoughtful? Knowing that her entire life was about to change, and how important such a seemingly insignificant thing—coffee—was in her relationship with Laura, it made sense that Josie would offer him a cup as a gesture. But to have Alex think of her that way, too, was a kind of kismet that warmed her heart.
What next? She followed him off the elevator and stood there dumbly, the quiet hush of sleep at 4 a.m. and the occasional groans from women not on traditional timelines (babies in utero have a remarkable disdain for modern American temporal convention) were the only major sounds.
Even Laura seemed to still be asleep, the room’s door closed, no sounds coming from behind it. What next?
Alex’s hand, holding a cup of coffee, made a flailing, circular gesture toward her. Huh? Then she realized he wanted her to follow him. As she ambled behind, she got a good look at him. How could scrubs fit so well? Seriously? Muscled and full, his ass was like some kind of trophy for Best Ass Ever contests. Seeing it naked would be heavenly. Her mind flashed to the most recent naked ass she’d seen, and she wished for brain bleach. Who wanted to think about naked Dylan right now?
Not her.
A small door with a tiny nameplate next to it and a covered window was Alex’s destination. Ah. Now she understood.
The dreaded On-Call Room.
On-call rooms were notorious among medical professionals in hospitals. Meant to be a place for overworked interns, residents, attendings, and nurses to catch up on sleep, they were really little more than free-sex rooms. The amount of amorous, ugly bumping that went on in those tiny bunk beds ought to have triggered a Board of Health alert. If Alex was bringing her there, it meant only one thing.
And God, did she want that one, big thing she imagined was waiting for her under those scrub pants.
“Hold on,” he said, setting both his cups on the floor and grabbing the two she held. Marching past her to a nurse’s station, he set down the two spares. “Free for the first person who grabs them!” he announced quietly. “Just milk.” Two nurses snatched them up and murmured their thanks to Alex’s back as he strode with great, sensual purpose toward Josie, making her wish she’d worn something more sexually attractive than a hoodie and yoga pants. Who knew she’d meet a hot doctor at Laura’s birth?
And who would have thought that she’d be standing in the threshold of an on-call room as her friend labored nearby? All moral ambiguity went out the window as he playfully wrapped his arms around her waist and dragged her into the room, kicking the door shut.
“It sounds so crazy,” he said, his mouth against her neck, hands riding up her back and sinking into her hair, the scent of him making her want to lick his skin just to have it in her forever, “but I don’t think you mind my being this forward.” He pulled back, eyes suddenly serious. “And this isn’t your average on-call romp.”
“I’m not average anything in an on-call room.”
That made him pause, making Josie regret the words instantly. Instead of disapproval, mirth shone in those deep brown eyes. “So I’m not your first?”
Snort. “You’re my first today.” Ugh! Why did she do that? Say the most heinous thing possible that would make him walk away, turn from her, and not want to be with her? If the tables had been turned and Alex had made that joke right now, she’d have been deeply grossed out. And yet here she was, stupid, sarcastic crap pouring forth in a highly intimate setting. An extremely attractive, sensual man wanted to get naked with her and—
She said what?
Ferocious with need, he moved like a panther to her, taking her with a kiss that spoke of want and desire and heady sexuality. His mouth was on her and his hands everywhere. Dr. Octopus might not be her first on-call room jaunt, but he damn well could be her last.
Wherever that thought came from, it seemed matched by him. Breathless, he pulled back, leaving her mouth cold with air and abandonment, and said, “This isn’t just sex.”
How incongruous. Of course it was just sex. Men didn’t meet Josie and do this. Not even the casual sex part. She wasn’t the pick-up girl type. Sure, she had her share of one-night stands and on-call room quickies, but she wasn’t That Kind of Woman. Plenty of nurses and female medical professionals were that kind of woman, but she wasn’t. Guys didn’t fall for her at first sight; neither lust nor love drove men to her. She was an afterthought, or a friend with benefits. Not the hot chick you felt a connection to and just had to have.
Why, then, was Dr. Coffee doing this?
And telling her it was more than sex?
“Can it at least be sex?” With that, she pulled her hoodie up over her head in one fluid motion, then eagerly reached for his shirt, helping him to wiggle out, his broad, muscled chest on display, a nicely distributed smattering of dark hair covering his well-defined pecs. Her fingertips caressed the six-pack she’d hoped was under those scrubs, trailing down to the navel, where the hair thickened, and his sharp intake of breath told her that a few more inches and she’d pass the point of no return.
Who was she kidding? They’d passed that the second she made that comment about nurses and elevators.
And she was right.
Hot palms made their slow way up her back, practiced hands unclasping her thin wisp of a bra, freeing small, pert breasts from their nylon encasing. Endowment had never been a problem for her—if anything, her figure was boyish, though gaining twenty pounds along with Laura’s sixty or so had given her new curves no man had yet explored. In his hands, her hips felt womanly. The bottoms of his palms cupped her flesh, thumbs brushing with intent to make her nipples stand at attention. Oh, he had her attention, all right. No need for more.
More, though, was what she wanted, her hands riding from his waist up to his shoulders, until she looked up into smoky eyes, darkened with need, his face serious and mature.
“I mean it,” he said in a raspy voice infused with desire. “I don’t understand why or how, but this isn’t just about what we’re doing right now, Josie. Not for me.”
The world’s best come-on line.
“You make me want to do naughty things,” he said, and bent down, his body over hers, his lips next to her ear, the lines of his arms and legs pressed against hers decidedly not-protectively and not-tender. There was an animal instinct to him, something calm that assumed that what he wanted was what she wanted, too. Her head fell back a bit on her neck as she yielded to him. Yes, yes, yes, she thought.
Then a different animal instinct pierced the air. A sound that only a mother in the final stages of labor could produce came around the corner from Laura’s room. They each jerked their heads up at the sound, eyes popped wide, comically frozen for a heartbeat. Adrenaline, like a bucket of cold water splashed over them, snapped them back to reality.
Instantly, she shoved her body into her clothes. Unencumbered by the twisty aggravation of putting on a bra, Alex finished dressing ahead of her, and sprinted out the door.
Josie bolted after him seconds later, running as fast as possible back to Laura’s room, her vie
w of Alex’s strong body in motion driving her forward. He had reacted like her, moving into instinctive action and dropping their amorous involvement in a split second to attend to Laura. It made her feel more connected to him, even as her heart raced and she entered the room disheveled and in chaos on the inside.
And outside.
“So soon?” she asked Mike, whose eyes were the first she could catch. He had his hands up in a helpless gesture as Laura crouched in an impossible twisting of her limbs over the bed, pulling on Dylan’s shoulders for support. The grunt that came from her tore Josie in two, just as she imagined Laura was being torn in two right now.
“The waters broke,” Alex said. “When did—”
“They just popped them,” Dylan explained, standing next to Laura now as Mike tried to catch her eyes and help her to breathe through the pain. Dylan checked the machines, the heart rate, pulse oxygen, all of it from Josie’s quick glance looking fine. “Sherri used that long hook thing, put a bunch of towels down, and a ton of fluid poured out.”
Sherri calmly, steadily strode into the room, hands tucked neatly in her scrubs as if Laura were the only person in the tiny hospital setting. “It looks like we’re ready to meet your daughter.”
She and Alex exchanged a look and he backed away, hovering in the doorway, whispering, “Mind if I stay?”
Sherri shook her head imperceptibly and then winked at him and he winked back. He just loves births, Josie thought, even when he isn’t the one in charge.
Chapter Four
Josie noticed that Sherri had dispensed with formalities, not even bothering to cover Laura’s lower half with a sheet as she palpated her belly. A nurse’s assistant tried to cover Laura to give her some privacy, but Josie just shook her head slightly and then Laura shouted in the middle of the exam.
“Don’t bother,” she said, her voice labored, and then she arched her back to the extent that a pregnant woman in labor can arch anything and tipped her neck back in a strange, unnatural curve.