A Nurse, a Surgeon, a Christmas Engagement

by Allie Kincheloe

  Dex merged onto the interstate and they began the longest part of the journey home to Westfield. They had a good four hours on the interstate before they got to Gatlinburg and then would begin the windy mountainous trek to the small town of Westfield, Tennessee.

  The excitement of going home was building. There was nothing better than Christmas in the Smoky Mountains. Most of the tourists would be gone after the last of the fall color had faded away for the season, leaving locals and a few random people seeking a quiet country holiday with a view.

  He hadn’t been home for Christmas in far too long. He’d told his parents he’d had to work because of being the low man on the totem pole. It had always been, “Next year should get better, and I’ll come home then.” The real truth was that he’d volunteered to work so that he could have a reason to avoid celebrating Christmas. That last Christmas with Jessie had spoiled him on the season.

  Then he’d met Lena. Her infectious Christmas spirit had managed to seep into his soul, and he found himself actually looking forward to Christmas this year. He glanced over at the woman in his passenger seat.

  Lena shifted around a bit as she found a comfortable position for the long drive. She dug a bag of pretzels out of her purse. “So, what do your parents do? I’m not sure you’ve ever said.”

  “My dad is the manager of the town bank and my mom runs the Westfield tourism board. They are pretty involved in all the local issues as a result. You want town gossip, ask my mom. And my dad knows the credit score of everyone in town, probably better than they do. They were so excited when I got into medical school.”

  “Were?” Lena caught his slip of the tongue and he groaned. He’d revealed more than he’d meant to.

  “Are.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” The palm of her hand settled over his forearm. “How much did it disappoint them that you didn’t come home and work in Westfield?”

  Telling his family that he was not coming back home after med school and residency had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. His family had always been super close. Tommy had graduated college and moved right back to teach science at the local high school. Jill, his future sister-in-law, had gotten a job at the insurance agency while still in high school, went full-time a minute after graduation and never left town. His youngest brother, Wade, would be right back in Westfield after graduating the next spring with his degree in finance, where his plans were to work at the bank and eventually take over from their dad.

  He had been the only one in the family who didn’t see a future in the cozy little town. And while his family had never really commented about it, he could see the look in their eyes that said they were hurt he didn’t come home to stay, and in the way his mom bit her tongue sometimes when they talked about the future, or his dad stopped midsentence and backtracked.

  No matter how much they wanted him home, he couldn’t return. It boiled down to one simple fact—there was no place for a general surgeon in his hometown. Westfield didn’t even have a proper hospital. It had an emergency room only, no inpatient rooms. It was really for stitches and broken arms. Any actual emergencies were taken to Gatlinburg or Knoxville.

  “They thought I would go into family practice and set up shop right on Main Street. But that was never what I wanted.” Exhaling slowly, he continued, “From the moment I decided on med school, I wanted to be a surgeon. I put off telling them, though, because I knew how they’d take it.”

  “I understand going against parental expectations.” The pressure her parents had put on her echoed in her words, and he truly believed she did understand.

  His parents had hoped he’d come home, yes, but they’d never pressured him to do so. And he knew they never would. However, he didn’t think Lena had the same on her end.

  “You don’t have the best relationship with your parents, do you?”

  “What gave it away?” she snarked in reply. “The number of times I’ve bit your head off for mentioning them or the fact that I hate talking about them?”

  “Both?”

  A snort came from Lena’s direction. “Well, now you know why I wouldn’t want to date a guy who is just like my dad, then. I won’t become my mother, standing in a man’s shadow, lapping up the tiniest scrap of his attention like a sun-starved plant would bask in rays of sunlight. I made that mistake once and refuse to go down that road again.”

  He looked briefly in her direction. Solid determination masked any other emotion her face might have shown. It told him a lot about who Lena was deep down.

  “I don’t see much chance of that, as outspoken as you are.”

  Lena reached over and took his hand in hers. Her fingers tangled with his. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “I meant it as one.” He rubbed his thumb over her hand. “I told them the truth on how we met, by the way. Well, I said we met at work shortly after you moved to Tennessee.”

  “That was true. We had that impossibly long surgery with all the peritoneal adhesions about two weeks after I moved here. We stood elbow to elbow for a good eight hours that day.”

  He remembered that day with perfect clarity. The surgery had taken a good three hours longer than he’d anticipated because of the patient’s condition, but he hadn’t really minded the extra time because he’d been fascinated by the sharpness of the new nurse at his side who’d known nearly as much about the surgery as he had. She’d impressed him. And when he sought her out later that day, he’d found out that not only was she intelligent, but beautiful as well.

  “I asked you out after that surgery.”

  “Ugh.” She scrunched up her nose. “I remember.”

  “The idea of me asking you out is that distasteful a memory?”

  That hurt. He shoved down the initial burst of anger that popped up. His ego was taking a real hit as they rehashed how wrong he’d been about asking Lena out.

  “Actually, I was pretty interested.” As she continued, her voice grew more confident. “Then I remembered the hospital gossip about you. I can’t be one in a line of bed partners for a cocky arrogant surgeon who doesn’t care for anything beyond his own needs. Been there, done that, got the heartbreak to prove it.”

  “Ouch.” He wanted to deny her description of him, but there was a grain of truth to her statements. He squeezed her fingers to remind her that she’d taken his hand in hers earlier. “And yet here we are, hand in hand anyways.”

  “We need to be more comfortable touching each other if we are going to pull this off,” she snapped and snatched her hand away. She rubbed it on the thigh of her jeans like he’d contaminated her. “That was your idea, if you remember.”

  After whatever idiot she’d been involved with had hurt her, prickliness had become her default setting. Each time he pushed too close emotionally, she bristled up like a cactus and went straight into defensive mode.

  When he glanced over at her, she was staring out the window and had that stubborn set to her jaw that he was quickly learning meant he wasn’t going to win.

  “For the record, Lena, I wasn’t complaining about holding your hand. In fact, it’s been the highlight of my day.”

  Her cheeks pinked, but she ignored the compliment like he’d expected she would. Trees and exit ramps rolled by as the SUV moved down the interstate. Their conversation trailed off a little, but when he switched on the radio and tuned it to a station playing only Christmas carols, Lena began to hum along.

  They passed a sign for a rest area and Lena perked up. “Do you mind if we stop?”

  “I could stand to stretch my legs myself.” Flipping his blinker on, Dex moved the SUV into the right lane and then onto the exit ramp. He eased to a stop in front of the rest area.

  They climbed out of the warm SUV into the brisk December air. A shiver coursed through him and he yanked his zipper up on his jacket to protect himself from the wind.

  A wom
an with two small children—a little girl skipping next to her with a doll in one hand and a tiny boy in head-to-toe blue who was barely keeping up—came out of the building housing the restrooms. They headed toward the parking lot.

  Dex nodded toward them. “Look how adorable they are. In case it comes up, someday I do want to have a couple kids.”

  “Me too,” Lena replied softly. A sadness in her voice when she’d said she wanted children pulled him up short.

  But before he could ask her why the thought of having children made her sad, Dex saw the toddler trip and could only watch in horror as the little guy fell face-first onto the concrete walkway.

  * * *

  The thought of how beautiful a baby with Dex’s eyes would be sprang to mind, but the image vanished when he suddenly sprinted away from her side. Where was he going in such a rush? She looked in the direction he’d run. The little boy he had just pointed out lay unmoving on the concrete walkway, blood just beginning to pool next to his face.

  “He’s unconscious,” Dex shouted. “Grab the first aid kit from the back of the SUV.”

  Digging her phone out of her coat pocket, she dialed 911 as she ran back to the car. When the operator answered, Lena quickly gave them what information she could remember. “We are at the rest stop on I-40 between Nashville and Knoxville. I don’t know the mile markers. A little boy about two years of age fell face-first onto the concrete walkway here at the rest stop. He’s unconscious with some apparent facial injuries based on the amount of blood.”

  When Lena ran back over, Dex sat on his knees next to the boy. He was trying to explain to the mother why she couldn’t pick the child up, because it could worsen his injuries. Despite how much it must be going against her natural instincts, the woman finally just sank to the ground crying. She pulled her daughter into her lap, and her sobs cut sharper than the cold winter wind swirling around them.

  “The ambulance is on the way.” Lena squatted next to him, opening up the first aid kit and pulling out a roll of gauze.

  “What can we do?” His eyes looked tortured as he met her gaze.

  “Slow the bleeding.” She took the gauze and pressed it to the gaping wound on the child’s head. “Here, hold this. We have no equipment. No facilities. All we can do is keep him as warm and as still as possible.”

  Dex shrugged out of his coat and covered the child with it.

  Lena leaned close to the child’s chest and listened to his breathing. “Airways seem clear. Breathing is a little rapid.” Her fingers felt along the boy’s throat. “His pulse is strong and color is still good despite the cold and blood loss.”

  The little one woke up and started moving, fighting their attempts at helping him and ignoring all their warnings to stay still. He wanted his mother and only barely tolerated them holding the gauze to his wound. It seemed an eternity before they heard the wail of sirens and the ambulance finally pulled up. The paramedics hopped out and hurried over where they took over the boy’s care.

  Lena and Dex stepped back out of their way.

  In moments, the paramedics got the boy loaded into the ambulance, while the boy’s mother followed behind with her little girl clinging to her, tears on both their faces.

  Dex went to run his hands through his hair as he watched the ambulance drive away, but Lena stopped him.

  “You should wash your hands first.”

  He looked down at his hands, at the blood now drying on his skin. “Good idea.”

  “Meet you back out here in five?”

  He nodded and stomped toward the door with the Men sign hanging overhead.

  Lena went the opposite direction to the ladies’ room. Random emotions and feelings swirled through her, whipping past her like that icy wind outside. Some fleeting, others lingering, like the desire to see Dex with his own child.

  When she was young, she’d dreamed of what it might be like to have a family. To be the mom she’d always wished she’d had, the kind of mom who made messes in the kitchen baking with her kids, and put soccer games before board meetings. And she’d pictured the father of those children as the kind of dad who would build forts and have snowball fights and teach his kids to fix things, not dismiss them to play another round of golf.

  Then she’d grown up and babies had become a “someday” thought for her, pushed off even more by the realization that a family meant trusting someone enough to risk a pregnancy. She’d almost considered it with Connor, but then he’d shown his true colors and she’d locked even the hope of ever having a child away in that “never gonna happen” box. But today, seeing the tender way Dex cared for that little boy had kicked the hint of wondering about what his children might look like into a full-blown need to mother the man’s children.

  After splashing some water on her face, she looked up at her reflection in the mirror. “Pull yourself together. You need to calm down before you go back out there and jump him in the parking lot.” She took several deep breaths and tried to put the idea of seeing Dex holding their child out of her mind.

  She walked outside, still trying to talk herself out of creating those imaginary babies right then and there. They would make beautiful babies, but she and Dex were so not to that point. She was barely tolerating a fake relationship. She didn’t trust him enough to go on a real date. Something was clearly wrong with her given her current line of thought.

  Dex hadn’t noticed her yet. She walked behind him, a few paces back, and the tight fit of his shirt across his shoulders and the snug way his jeans molded to his backside did not help her clear her mind.

  Why would that thought not go away?

  Dex picked up his jacket from the ground where it had been tossed aside by the paramedics. He shook it and bits of dirt and dust flew off it, floating away on the crisp breeze.

  Lena stopped next to him, nodding toward the bloodstained jacket in his hands. “Pretty sure that’s ruined.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Have to take it to the dry cleaner in the morning and see if they can do anything with it. I’m just glad it looks like the little guy will be okay. He had me worried.”

  “Me too.” She quickly stuffed the packets of medication she’d thrown out of the way while looking for gauze back into the first aid kit. She rolled the loose unused gauze into a ball to toss in the trash. “You’ll need to refill this soon. The rest of that gauze is unusable thanks to this wind.” She closed the plastic container and looked up at him carefully. “Are you okay to drive?”

  With a nod, he held a hand out to her. “Guess we need to get moving after our non-rest stop, don’t we? It’s going to be late by the time we get to Westfield now as it is.”

  They walked back to his SUV hand in hand. He tossed his jacket into the back before taking the first aid kit from her and placing it inside. Closing the back, he guided her around to the passenger side and opened her door. She was still getting used to the idea that he wanted to open doors for her. But it was another thing she had found that she really liked about Dexter Henry.

  “You were amazing out there. I was floundering, trying unsuccessfully to determine where to start outside of a sterile operating room. And you...you just stepped right up and took charge.” He brushed a strand of hair back away from her face. “I haven’t been this much in awe of someone’s medical skills since my first day of medical school.”

  His admiration sparked a fresh wave of interest in him. It had been a long time since anyone had given her such genuine, heartfelt praise and it felt really, really good. Before she could second-guess the impulse, she moved against him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Tugging his head down to hers, she rose up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.

  She might have initiated the kiss, but Dex controlled it. His lips moved over hers with a barely reined-in passion. His arms worked their way beneath her coat and behind her back. He held her close, his touch gentle but firm. The kiss held a realn
ess, a promise of something yet to come. Any hint of the relationship being fake flew away on the wind for the duration of their embrace.

  When he broke the kiss, they stared at each other, silent for a moment. His breath warmed her cheek. Her hand rested on his throat and his pulse beat beneath her fingers, rapid and strong.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked. “And that’s so not a complaint.”

  “I thought we should have our first kiss before we had to potentially kiss in front of your family.” A completely made-up answer slipped from her lips because she couldn’t—wouldn’t—admit to him that she’d been thinking about having his babies or that his compliments had been enough for her to throw caution to the wind for a brief moment. That would go over well, wouldn’t it? Sorry, I’m scared to date you but I can’t wait to see how adorable our children would be. He’d call her a lunatic.

  “One hell of a first kiss.”

  That was an understatement if she’d ever heard one. She’d known they had a strong physical attraction and she’d still been totally unprepared for the intensity of his lips pressed against her own. Her racing heart served as proof of that, still pounding against her ribs.

  He nuzzled against her throat. “How about a second? Wouldn’t want to look like amateurs, would we?”

  Before she could formulate a coherent response, his lips were on hers. His tongue asked for access and then delved into her mouth when she parted her lips in permission. He wasn’t just kissing her, he was savoring her.

  When they broke apart for the second time, he rested his forehead against hers while they both gasped for air. The chemistry between them had been exactly why Lena had been hesitant to get involved with Dex. Nothing short of magical, his kiss made her think stupid thoughts. Things a rational woman shouldn’t be thinking. Long-term, family planning, scary sorts of things.

  She swallowed hard, needing to put some distance between them and regain her perspective. “We should go before your mama sends out a search party.”