No one was that good a liar.
He let out a breath. “Did I blow any chance of you helping me with one more thing for Jessie?” he asked seriously. “Of us maybe being friends?”
“Of course I will do what I can to help you with Jessie,” she said. “She’s a good kid and doesn’t deserve to suffer for the transgressions of her father.”
He smiled, not at all offended by her remark. “Thank you for that,” he said.
“I’ll defer decision on the friends issue until I see how you do at keeping your lips to yourself when we’re together.” Because as each day passed with no progress in locating Holly’s family, Scarlet became more determined to keep baby Joey out of the hands of strangers and more excited about the idea of raising the tiny girl as her own. And as a single woman it would be hard enough to get approval to foster and hopefully adopt Joey. She couldn’t chance rumors of an illicit association with a known hospital player, tarnishing her stellar reputation.
“Deal.” He held out his hand.
But she kind of didn’t want to touch him since her body was just starting to return to normal.
“Don’t be a coward.” His smile was all dare.
She shook his hand.
His skin smooth and warm. His grip powerful.
Stop it!
“During our long talk the other night,” he said, seeming unaware of how the simple act of him touching her hand affected her. “Jessie told me she’s not happy sleeping in the loft.”
She’d mentioned that to Scarlet, too. “It has no door. And it’s the guestroom.” Jess had shared that it felt like he was keeping her there temporarily until he figured out what to do with her.
“It was the guestroom before Jessie came to live with me. I put her up there because the loft has a bed in it.”
Made perfect sense.
“But I want her to know she has a permanent place in my home with her very own bedroom and her very own door. I was hoping you’d help me make it happen while she’s away. As a surprise for when she comes home.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Scarlet said.
“If you’d discreetly find out what colors she likes and what her ideal bedroom would look like, maybe, if you have some time over the weekend, we could go shopping and you could come back to my place and help me put it all together.”
“Right,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster. And to add to her overall ‘don’t for one minute think I’m going to fall for your scheme’ body language, she crossed her arms over her chest, cocked her head and gave him ‘the look’. “Like I’m going to go over to your condo when Jessie isn’t there.” Not. Especially after that kiss. Only an insane woman would do that.
“I’d treat you to lunch.” His eyes met hers. “And a nice dinner.”
“So I’d feel indebted to you,” she said, shaking her head. “Not gonna work.”
“I will be the perfect gentleman.” He held up his right hand, again, as if that somehow made his words more believable. “Absolutely no kissing. I promise.”
“You know I think that holding up your right hand thing only works in court. And only when your left hand is resting on a bible.”
He smiled.
“And aren’t you supposed to be working all weekend?” she asked. “Isn’t that the reason you’re sending Jess on vacation without you?”
He turned away and let out a breath. “Call me a bad person, a bad parent. But I’m smart enough to know when I’ve reached my limit. I need a break from parenting so bad I lied, to my parents and my daughter.” His eyes met hers. “I will not apologize for taking a few much needed days for myself.”
“All parents deserve a break, Lewis,” Scarlet said, touching his arm to let him know she understood.
He covered her hand with his. “Please,” he said. “Will you help me?”
Scarlet was tempted to say she had to work all weekend.
“Perfect gentleman. I promise,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers. “Let’s go to the chapel. I’m sure I can find a bible in there.”
Scarlet smiled.
“Say you’ll help me.” Lewis tilted his head and made an innocent face. “For Jessie, who should not suffer for my transgressions.”
And Scarlet understood how he’d so successfully charmed so many women out of their panties. But after the year Jessie had endured, she deserved a beautiful bedroom in her father’s house. Scarlet was a grown woman, she could handle him for a few hours. “Fine. Call me after she leaves,” Scarlet said. “And we’ll set up a time to meet.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She looked at her watch. “If I don’t get back to my unit soon they’ll send out a search party.” Who would find her alone with a handsome doctor, in a quiet, cozy corridor, with a pair of swollen, red, thoroughly kissed lips.
She smoothed her hair, stepped back and spread her arms wide. “Presentable?”
He looked her up and down. “Perfect.” He did the same. “Me?”
Scarlet scanned his person, making sure to spend a little extra time on the most noticeably aroused part of him to enjoy a moment of satisfaction from her role in that arousal. “Button your lab coat.”
He did then he bent to pick up his now cold cup of coffee that he must have set down in the corner of their hiding spot at some point.
“I’ll pump Jessie for decorating ideas,” she said.
With a nod and a wave Lewis turned toward the ER and Scarlet headed in the opposite direction to see if Jessie was still waiting for her in the cafeteria.
Lewis walked back to the emergency department feeling out of sorts. In forty-eight hours he’d be dropping Jessie off at his parents’ house up in Westchester County, leaving him with four full nights and three full days to himself. To do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted. Yet he hadn’t made one phone call or sent one text message or one e-mail to any of the two dozen or so women he knew for a fact would jump at the chance to spend time with him—in and out of bed.
Because he wanted to fix up Jessie’s room.
Because he wanted to spend time with Scarlet, the woman who’d been occupying his mind way too often of late, the woman he’d just promised to be a perfect gentleman with. What the heck had he been thinking?
That kiss.
He adjusted his scrub pants. In his present state, one size did not fit all.
Okay, so Scarlet Miller had the good looks and trim figure he preferred. But he liked his women easy—emotionally and sexually. Did that make him shallow? Yes. But it also made him honest. With his schedule and work responsibilities, he hadn’t been looking for anything long term or challenging. And he had no doubt smart, quick, feisty Scarlet would be a challenge.
Lewis returned the flirty smile of a cute blonde woman he recognized from Respiratory Therapy as she walked toward him on the opposite side of the hallway. He considered a wink, decided against it, but glanced at her fingers anyway. No wedding ring. No engagement ring. It’d be so easy to ask her out, to do all the right things and to say what needed to be said to get her into bed.
He was, after all, a master of seduction.
Yet the idea of slipping into that role, of spouting insincere flattery, and having to tolerate uninspired, unwanted conversation for the sole purpose of getting laid no longer held an appeal. Lord help him, he’d lost his desire to play the game.
He took out his cell phone and pretended to read a message until he passed her by.
Scarlet pushed her way back into his thoughts. Her soft, plump lips. Her scent. Her taste. Her barely audible moan of surrender as she’d softened against him. He may have lost his desire to play the game, but he had not lost his desire for the opposite sex, more specifically, his desire for Scarlet Miller.
He turned the corner, getting closer to the familiar sounds of his busy department, looking forward to immersing himself in his work, of focusing his mind on something other than his daughter’s friend and confidante, a woman he could not have.
“Dr. Jackson,” one of his more experienced nurses called out when she saw him. “Your timing is excellent. The consult you requested for exam room four is being done as we speak. Dr. Griffin was able to come after all.”
Though quiet and a bit gruff with the nursing staff, Dr. John Griffin had an excellent rapport with children and was one of the finest orthopedic surgeons Lewis had ever worked with.
“And two ambulances are on the way,” she continued. “Three-year-old male fell from a subway platform. Numerous scrapes and bruises. A notable laceration above his left eyebrow. Alert and responsive.”
“What do we have open?” he asked, shifting back into work mode.
“Exam room two, bed three?”
“That works.” At the sound of sirens he hastened his pace. “And the second one?”
“Thirteen-month-old female. Possible drowning in the bathtub. Mom is inconsolable, says she got distracted by an important phone call.”
More important than her toddler? But Lewis had worked as a pediatrician long enough to know better than to make snap judgments about parents based on limited information. “Do we have a trauma bed available?”
She looked at the white board—which looked more like a red, green, and black board with all the writing it had on it—and said, “Trauma three, bed one.”
The electric doors opened. An EMT walked beside a fast-moving stretcher squeezing an ambu bag, manually ventilating his small patient. “Unable to intubate en route,” he reported.
“Trauma three, bed one,” Lewis told the female EMT pushing the stretcher, and he set his full cup of now cold coffee on the counter at the nurses’ station and got back to work.
Two hours later, finished for the day, he took the elevator to the NICU to pick up Jessie.
“Hi, Dad,” she greeted him and actually sounded glad to see him. Lewis wanted to run up and hug her and cement the moment in his memory. Luckily rational thought prevailed. “Is it okay if I stick around for a little while? Scarlet asked if I could watch Nikki for a few minutes.”
“Sure,” Lewis said, setting down his backpack and dropping onto the soft couch. “Who’s Nikki?”
The door opened and a little girl with red pigtails, a face full of freckles, wearing a pair of eyeglasses ran to hug Jessie. She really had a way with young children. Watching her, Lewis entertained the first inkling of a hope that maybe she’d follow in his footsteps and become a pediatrician.
“This is Nikki,” Jessie said.
“I’m four.” Nikki held up four fingers on her right hand.
She looked to be closer to three. “Nice to meet you, Nikki,” Lewis said. “I’m Dr. Jackson, Jessie’s dad.”
“She’s a NICU graduate,” Jessie explained. “That means she got big enough and healthy enough to go home with her parents.”
“And two,” Nikki held up two fingers, “big brothers.”
A woman with red hair similar to Nikki’s joined them. “Would you mind telling Scarlet that Erica Cole is waiting for her in the lounge? I don’t mind talking with new parents out here, but I can’t handle seeing all the sick babies.” She shuddered. “Brings back so many memories.”
“Of course.” Lewis stood. “Keep an eye on my bag, Jessie.” She nodded from where she knelt on the floor, setting out a bunch of dolls.
Lewis entered the darkened, quiet NICU, so unlike his bustling ER, and walked to the first of two nurses’ stations. “I’m looking for Scarlet Miller,” he said to a young secretary, keeping his voice low. An older nurse he recognized from the cafeteria when he and Scarlet had met to discuss Jessie walked up beside him. “May I ask what for?” the nurse, he looked at her name badge, Linda, asked.
“Erica Cole asked me to relay the message she’s waiting for Scarlet in the family lounge,” he said.
“She’s in with Joey Doe,” Linda said with a shake of her head. “If you ask me she is getting way too attached to that baby.”
“No one asked you,” a younger, nurse said to Linda. “Room forty-two,” she said to Lewis. “Come. I’ll show you the way.”
Lewis followed her. “It’s so quiet in here.”
“Not always.” The nurse smiled. “But we try to maintain a calm, soothing environment as premature infants are hypersensitive to their surroundings.” She stopped and pointed. “There she is.”
Through the half glass outer wall he saw Scarlet sitting in a rocker beside Joey’s incubator, feeding her from a special bottle, staring down at the tiny baby girl with a loving smile, looking very much like a mother caring for her own newborn. He walked to the doorway and cleared his throat to get her attention.
She looked up guiltily.
“How’s she doing?” he whispered.
“Still not taking the bottle, but we keep trying.” She lifted Joey to her shoulder and rubbed her back.
“Any news on her family?”
“No,” Scarlet answered. “Are you here about Joey or did something else bring you up?”
“I came to get Jessie and she said you asked her to watch Nikki.”
“Shoot.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “I lost track of time.”
“Erica Cole asked me to tell you she’s here.”
Scarlet stood.
“I’ll take over,” the nurse offered.
“Thank you.” She handed Joey into the other nurse’s care. “I changed one wet diaper. She’s taken next to nothing from the bottle.” Scarlet removed a disposable gown, balled it up, and pushed it into a waste bin.
“I have a couple in crisis,” Scarlet shared quietly as she exited the room. “Erica Cole is a member of a group I formed for moms of NICU graduates. There are about fifty of them who are willing to come in with their children to talk to new parents who are having difficulty adjusting to the NICU and bonding with their babies.” She looked up at him. “It gives new parents whose infants are struggling to survive a little hope. Sometimes it makes all the difference.”
“Yes it does,” he said from experience. Because Scarlet had given him that little hope that’d made all the difference with Jessie. She was a truly extraordinary woman.
He stood at the desk and watched her through the glass of a small private room as she spoke with a couple. Although he couldn’t hear her words, her small smile conveyed understanding and compassion, her gentle touch conveyed support and caring. The couple watched her as she spoke, trust evident in their eyes. The woman started to cry and Scarlet took her into her arms and hugged her while the man turned his head as if trying to hide his emotions.
“Our Scarlet is something special,” Linda said, coming to stand beside him. With such a big unit, did she have nothing better to do than hover?
“Yes she is,” Lewis said, not taking his eyes off of Scarlet as she handed the woman a box of tissues and led her out of the room.
“She deserves a good man who will appreciate all she has to offer and treat her right.”
Linda’s tone implied a better man than him.
“No argument there.”
But after eighteen years of riding the manic-depressive, passive-aggressive maternal roller coaster of emotions, Lewis had used up his lifetime supply of energy earmarked for understanding, appeasing, and striving to meet the ever-changing expectations of women. He preferred the ups of flirty banter, new acquaintances, and satisfying sex to the downs of compromise, arguments, and frustrating disappointments inherent in long term relationships.
After a childhood spent catering to the whims of a mentally ill mother, Lewis would not regress to allowing another woman any degree of control over his life. Ever.
He was his own man. He did what he wanted when he wanted and didn’t have to get approval from or justify his actions to anyone. At least that’d been his pre-Jessie modus operandi.
Now the waters of his life had gotten unrecognizably muddy.
He couldn’t bring various women home night after night, not with an impressionable young daughter watching his every move. Most unsettling, with f
our days of freedom ahead, was the fact he seemed to have lost the anticipatory thrill of the chase, catch, and release. Random, meaningless hookups with generic, unmemorable women no longer appealed to him. But neither did monogamy or marriage. So where did that leave him?
Lewis left the NICU without another word to Linda, entered the lounge to get his backpack, and told Jessie to meet him in his office when she was done. He needed time to think.
It’d taken a near successful suicide attempt for his mother to get his father to lift his head out of his prestigious surgical practice long enough to acknowledge the toxic level of dysfunction in their family. With renewed attention, love and support from her husband and some long-overdue treatment his mom’s condition had stabilized.
Unfortunately for Lewis, the damage to his ability to form lasting, trusting, positive relationships with women was done.
Instead of waiting for the elevator, he took the stairs down, needing to burn off some energy.
Supportive evidence of his lack of interpersonal finesse: The past nine months of torture with Jessie.
Although things were finally turning around thanks to Scarlet, his daughter’s friend and confidante, a woman who deserved more than a man like him, a woman whose appeal extended beyond good looks. A woman he could not have, who made him want with an intensity he’d never before experienced.
A problem not easily solved.
He exited the stairwell.
One thing was for certain, having her in his condo, with the two of them alone and hot for each other, would only complicate matters. After their kiss, he no longer trusted himself, despite his promise of perfect gentlemanly behavior, which meant he needed to figure out a way to get her help in designing Jessie’s new room without her actually stepping foot into his condo.
CHAPTER FIVE
ON THURSDAY MORNING Scarlet fought the urge to fling her arms out to the side and twirl. She tamped down the desire to skip through the halls of the hospital shouting, “I did it!” A manager needed to maintain some degree of decorum. But nothing could wipe the grin from her face as she walked toward the employee changing rooms to wash up and change into a pair of hospital scrubs—her standard work attire.
NYC Angels: Tempting Nurse Scarlet Page 6