0373659504 (R)

by Brenda Harlen

  “This was worth the price of the ticket,” he said, the words whispered close to her ear, making her shiver. “Just being able to hold you like this.”

  “Don’t let Tilly hear you say that,” she responded lightly. “The fund-raising chair might decide to add ‘dances with the doctors’ to the list of auction items for next year.”

  “It will be our secret,” he promised her.

  “And speaking of fund-raising, I really do need to talk to some people.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  She stepped away from him as the song faded away.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  The Taj Mahal, Great Wall and Giza pyramid loomed over her again. She shook her head. “I’m making no plans for tomorrow—it’s my lazy day.”

  “We could be lazy together,” he suggested.

  “Why are you doing this, Justin?”

  “Because I tried the ‘back to normal’ thing you suggested and realized it wasn’t what I wanted. I want to be with you. I want a real relationship with you.”

  “You don’t do real relationships,” she reminded him.

  He linked their fingers together. “I think we faked it pretty well—imagine what we could do if we actually tried.”

  But she shook her head. “I don’t want to try.”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed. “Didn’t we have a similar discussion a couple of weeks ago and agree that I’m not your type?”

  “Apparently we remember that conversation differently,” he told her. “As well as what happened on New Year’s Eve.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with you again, Justin. Although what happened between us a few weeks ago might suggest otherwise, I have too much self-respect to let myself become the latest name in a long list of your sexual conquests.”

  “There isn’t a list,” he told her. “And maybe I haven’t had a long-term relationship in a lot of years, because I hear enough ‘Yes, Dr. Garrett’ at the hospital, I don’t want that in my personal life.

  “I want to be with someone who has her own thoughts and opinions, and who is willing to argue when she disagrees with mine. I want to be with someone who challenges me to think and entices me to try different things, someone who makes me a better person. I think you could be that someone.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not that someone.”

  “How do you know?” he challenged.

  “I like you,” she admitted. “You’re smart and funny and charming, and I admire your professional skills and abilities, but I have no interest in dating a doctor.”

  He looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. “Let me see if I’ve got this right—it’s okay that you’re a doctor...but you won’t go out with someone who’s a doctor?”

  “It’s not personal.”

  He laughed, but it was without humor. “I don’t think it could get much more personal than that.”

  “There’s Dr. Bristow,” she said. “I promised to introduce the Langdons to him if I had a chance.”

  Justin just nodded.

  Avery went after the chief of orthopedic surgery and steered him toward the couple that had been seated at her table for dinner.

  When she looked around again, Justin was gone.

  * * *

  Avery put a smile on her face and made her way through the crowd, talking to as many guests as possible to ensure they understood how important the coveted equipment would be to the hospital. Many of them wrote checks to the foundation before they left, making her feel good about the success of the event.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t feel good about the way she’d left things with Justin. But there was no way she could continue to spend time with him without falling for him, and that was a road she refused to go down.

  By the time she left the gala, she was exhausted and her stomach felt unsettled. Probably because the strawberry shortcake that had been her dinner had disappeared a long time ago. She stopped to grab a banana-nut muffin and a bottle of juice on her way home.

  The food didn’t make her feel any better and as soon as she opened her apartment door, she raced to the bathroom and threw up her late-night snack. After her stomach had finished heaving, she scrubbed her face with a cool cloth, brushed her teeth and fell into bed—and dreamed about Justin.

  She spent all of Sunday morning in bed, nibbling on saltines and sipping ginger ale to appease her still-queasy stomach. By midafternoon, she was feeling a little better. She went for a walk to the market, bought some chicken and broccoli to make her favorite casserole—and thought about Justin.

  Monday morning she was at Wellbrook early to meet with Amy before their patients started to arrive. She grabbed a cherry Danish from the box of pastries that their nurse habitually brought in and filled her favorite mug with coffee. When Amy came in, she filled a second mug and offered it to her friend.

  “So tell me,” she said, when they were both seated at the table. “How did the interview go?”

  Amy grinned. “So much better even than I expected. Olivia is only a third-year resident, but I think she’ll be a great addition to our staff. She has a wonderful demeanor—warm and reassuring—and she’s not afraid to ask questions when she doesn’t know what to do.”

  “When can she start?”

  “Well, I want all of you to meet her before I officially offer her the job. But if you agree, I’d love to get her on the schedule for the middle of February.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Avery agreed. “So why do you have that little furrow between your brows that you always get when you’re worried about something?”

  Her friend tore off a piece of doughnut. “It has nothing to do with Olivia.”

  “Okay,” she said cautiously.

  “It’s about...Justin.”

  “Okay,” she said again.

  Amy swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “You know what I think about hospital gossip,” she began.

  “Just tell me what you heard,” Avery suggested. Then she shook her head. “On second thought—don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Normally I would agree,” her friend said cautiously, “but I don’t want you to hear it from anyone else.”

  She sighed. “Okay—hear what?”

  “That he spent the weekend with Heather Delgado.”

  It took Avery a minute to match the name to a face. Heather had only started working at the hospital in the fall—probably not long after she’d graduated from nursing school—but she seemed competent enough. She was also a very attractive woman with dark curly hair and a bubbly personality.

  “Oh.” She’d have to be blind not to have seen the way Heather looked at Justin—the open admiration and blatant speculation that gleamed in the nurse’s dark eyes. She’d watched her flirt boldly with the sexy doctor—and witnessed him flirting right back.

  Of course, she hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, because Justin flirted with everyone. But the idea of him with the young nurse bothered her more than she wanted to admit, as the Danish and coffee churning in her stomach attested.

  “It might not be true,” her friend said now.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Avery said again.

  Amy squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no reason to be sorry. I told you—it was just a one-time thing. He can see whoever he wants to see, sleep with whoever he wants.”

  “But...weren’t you with him at the Storybook Ball on Saturday?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Amy shrugged. “Lucinda Singh told Gabbie Holtby who told Tess that you were dancing with him at the ball.”

  “It was one dance,” she said. “Yes, we were both there, but we weren’t together.”

  “But that proves he wasn’t with Heather all weekend.”

  “No, it only proves that he wasn’t with her for the few hours that he was at the ball,” she pointed out.

  Monica tapped on the door before poking her head into the sm
all kitchenette/staff room. “You’ve got a five-month prenatal in room one, a physical in two, ‘I’m not talking to anyone but the doctor’ in three and suspected chicken pox in six.”

  Amy nodded. “Thanks for keeping that one far away from the expectant mom.”

  “That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” Monica joked.

  “I guess we’d better get started,” Avery said, pushing away from the table.

  Amy caught her arm as she started to move past. “Give him a chance to explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. We talked last week, agreed that we were lucky to have dodged a bullet and happy to go our separate ways.”

  “That might have been what you said,” her friend acknowledged. “But how do you feel?”

  “Right now—I’m incredibly grateful that I’m not pregnant with his child.”

  But she also knew that if she wasn’t feeling better by the weekend, she would pick up a pregnancy test—just to be sure.

  * * *

  Justin didn’t see Avery again until Wednesday.

  He was still a little annoyed and frustrated with her prohibition against dating doctors, but he didn’t think she had any reason to be mad at him. But when he passed her in the ER corridor, she immediately dropped her gaze to the chart in her hand, and when she realized that he was in line ahead of her at the sandwich counter, she moved to the salad bar instead.

  He made sure he caught up with her as she was leaving the cafeteria and fell into step beside her.

  “What did I do?” he asked.

  She sent him a sideways glance, but her quick steps didn’t slow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, I know we’re not the best of friends, but I thought we’d progressed to the point where we could actually have a civil conversation.”

  “Isn’t this civil?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he agreed. “Except that I might get frostbite if I move any closer to you.”

  She pushed open the doors to the ER department. “So don’t move any closer.”

  “Come on, Avery. You’re pissed about something—just tell me what it is.”

  “I’m not pissed,” she denied. “And your new girlfriend’s trying to get your attention.”

  He scowled. “What?”

  She nodded her head in the direction of the nurses’ station and, when he glanced in that direction, he saw that Heather was gesturing for him to come over to the desk.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” he denied, even as he held up a finger, asking Heather to give him a minute.

  “Really? Because that’s been the hot topic of conversation at the coffee station for the past few days.”

  Despite the deliberately low pitch of her voice, the increasingly heated nature of their discussion was starting to draw some curious looks. Not wanting to generate yet more gossip, he took Avery’s arm and steered her down the hall and into the doctors’ lounge.

  “I don’t care what the latest gossip is,” he said, when the door had closed behind them. “She’s not my girlfriend—new or otherwise.”

  “So you didn’t go out with her Saturday night?” she challenged.

  “I was with you Saturday night,” he reminded her.

  “Only until I told you I wouldn’t sleep with you again—then you disappeared pretty quickly.”

  “I went home,” he told her. “But thanks for that confirmation of your lousy opinion of me.”

  “So when were you with her?” she asked. “Friday?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I did go out with her Wednesday night last week, but I didn’t sleep with her.”

  “Whether you did or not is none of my business.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “It’s not any of your business. You made it clear that you weren’t interested in going out with me, so you have no right to get all bent out of shape when I go out with someone else.”

  “I’m not bent out of shape,” she denied, though the flush in her cheeks suggested otherwise.

  “You seem pretty bent to me.”

  “Well, I’m not,” she said again.

  “And I wasn’t with Heather,” he said again. “Not on Saturday or any other night.”

  “Except Wednesday.”

  “I went out with her on Wednesday,” he acknowledged. “And then I said good-night to her at her door and went home to my own apartment.”

  “If that’s true—”

  “Dammit, Avery. Of course, it’s true.”

  “—she’s not going to want that information to get out. Especially when you slept with Madison, Emma and Brooke.”

  “I didn’t sleep with Madison or Emma. I did sleep with Brooke,” he admitted wearily. “Once. About four years ago.”

  “Apparently your legend lives on.”

  “And I only agreed to go out with Heather because you made it clear that you weren’t interested in a relationship with me,” he told her. “And even then, the whole time I was with her, I was thinking of you.

  “I’m not proud of that fact, but there it is,” he told her. “I’m not used to thinking about only one woman, wanting only one woman. But that’s the way it’s been since New Year’s Eve.” He shook his head. “No, the truth is, it’s been like that since long before New Year’s.”

  She backed away from him. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Say things that make me want to believe I’m different from every other woman who ever got naked with you.”

  “Because you are different,” he told her. “God knows you frustrate me a hell of a lot more than any other woman I’ve ever known.”

  He was furious with Heather for starting the rumors, but he was even more frustrated with Avery for believing them. And he was exasperated by her determination to ignore the attraction between them—especially after what had happened between them on New Year’s. And no matter what he did to prove himself to her, she wasn’t willing to give him or a relationship between them a chance because she had some ridiculous and arbitrary rule about not dating doctors.

  “In that case, you shouldn’t have any objections to me cutting this tête-à-tête short so I can get back to work,” she said, moving toward the door.

  He stepped in front of her. “What I object to is you walking away every time you don’t like the direction of a conversation.”

  “I can’t talk to you about this anymore.”

  “That’s fine,” he decided. “Because I’m done talking.”

  Instead, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  Chapter Eight

  Avery should have seen it coming. It was just the kind of high-handed macho move she should have expected from him. But he’d looked so sincerely frustrated to hear about the latest rumors churning through the hospital gossip mill, and when he’d looked into her eyes—damn, but she was a sucker for those deep green eyes—she’d felt every last ounce of her resistance melt.

  She heard a soft, needy moan and realized that it had come from her. She poured everything she was feeling into the kiss. Anger. Frustration. Hurt. Need. Any pretension that she didn’t want this—want him—was decimated by that sound.

  But still, there were so many reasons not to get involved with him. Even aside from the fact that he was a doctor, he was totally wrong for her. And completely out of her league. She believed he was telling the truth about Heather, so maybe he wasn’t quite the Casanova that his reputation implied, but he was still a major-league player and she was just learning the rules of rookie ball.

  With that thought in mind, she managed to draw away from him, pressing her lips together as if that might stop the exquisite tingling. But when she lifted her gaze to his, the heat and hunger in his eyes made her tremble inside.

  “What are we doing here, Justin?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to remember where the nearest supply closet is,” he told her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know how to do this—how to
play these games.”

  “I’m not playing games with you, Avery.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense to me,” she admitted. “None of this. I know all of the reasons that this is a bad idea. And then you touch me—or even just look at me—and I don’t seem to care.”

  “Despite your fondness to control everything, attraction doesn’t work that way. You can try to ignore it, but you can’t manipulate it.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to ignore it, then,” she decided.

  He smiled. “You can try.”

  * * *

  When his mother called to invite him for dinner and cake Saturday night, Justin was so frustrated and preoccupied by the situation with Avery, it never occurred to him that the simple invitation was anything more than that. Not until he turned onto the street and saw the long line of cars already in her driveway. Apparently “cake” was code for “party,” and he was the guest of honor.

  His cousin Lauryn met him in the foyer.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, brushing her lips against his cheek.

  “Thanks.” He rubbed her pregnant belly, where her second child currently resided, then asked about her firstborn. “Where’s Kylie?”

  “Off somewhere with Oliver, and I hope Harper’s got her eye on them, because I can’t keep up anymore.”

  “Harper and Ryan are here?”

  “Of course,” she said, as if it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for his brother and sister-in-law to make the trip from Miami, where Harper was the producer of a popular daytime television show. “If you’re going to be surprised by anything, it should be the presence of your other brother.”

  “I thought I recognized Braden’s car in the driveway.”

  She nodded. “Dana’s here, too.”

  “They haven’t both been to a family event since...I can’t remember,” he admitted.

  “Well, they’re here today,” she said.

  Then she hooked her arm through his and guided him to the family room where her middle sister, Jordyn, was snuggled up on the sofa with her new husband, Marco. Lauryn released his arm and squeezed onto the other end of the sofa. Her youngest and still-single sister, Tristyn, was across the room in conversation with their cousin Daniel. He didn’t see Daniel’s wife, Kenna, anywhere, so he suspected she was chasing around after their almost two-year-old son, Jacob. Andrew and Rachel’s daughter, Maura, was teaching her cousin Dylan—Nathan and Allison’s son—to play poker.