by Melody Anne
“I’m working,” she told him. “You should call up someone.”
He slumped down with another wince, and she began to wonder if he really was in pain. If he was, then she was being terrible.
“The nurse who was just in here said you were just about to get off shift,” he pointed out.
Damn. He was right. Her shift ended in about ten minutes. It would be better if he didn’t know that.
“I hate to put you out, though. I guess I could call a cab,” he said as he fumbled around with his good arm.
He moved quickly then, hopping down from the exam table, which put him directly in front of her with only about two inches separating them. Her breathing stopped, and she felt herself go a little dizzy. The effect he had on her was beyond confusing.
She tried to take a retreating step back, but his good hand shot out and steadied her. Panic filled Lindsey. She went immediately into fight or flight mode.
“It’s okay, sugar,” he said soothingly as his fingers loosened on her arm and he began to gently rub her bare skin.
Without trying to be too obvious about it, Lindsey stepped back, and was grateful when Maverick let her go. His touch wasn’t nearly as terrifying to her as other people’s were, but that thought scared her even more. She didn’t want to feel comforted by Maverick. That would only lead to very bad things.
“So . . .” he said, drawing the word out. “Should I call that cab?”
His voice was so deflated Lindsey found herself saying something she would surely regret.
“I’ll give you a ride home,” she told him.
The instant smile that lit up his face told her in no uncertain terms that she’d been played. But what could she do about it? It wasn’t as if she could take it back.
“Thanks, sug. I could be violated since the hospital has drugged me,” he told her as he moved over to the chair and picked up his shirt—not bothering to put it back on, just holding it with the good hand.
“I highly doubt that,” she muttered as she sent a glare his way. “Do you need help putting your shirt on?”
As much as she wanted that magnificent chest covered up, she didn’t want to be the one to help him put it on. There would be far too much contact in doing so, and she had a feeling Mav would really milk the situation.
“Nah. I’m a bit warm right now anyway,” he told her as he moved to the door and pulled it open. He was suddenly in a hurry to leave. “I’m sure you can clock out a few minutes early since you have a patient to deal with,” he added.
“Why don’t you go and wait in the lobby. I’ll meet you there,” she told him. In reality, she was thinking she could make a call to Stormy and see if her best friend would be willing to pick him up. She could claim an emergency at work to get out of it.
“I’d rather just stick with you,” he told her, not budging from his position in the doorway.
“You can’t be back in the ER,” she pointed out, wanting to get out of the room, which seemed to be getting smaller and smaller by the second, but not wanting to brush by him.
“I’m a patient,” he pointed out.
Blowing out a breath, she finally decided she needed out of the room. He still didn’t move when she reached him, and she had no choice but to squeeze by him. At the last second, he shifted, and her entire body slid along his for a few seconds as she stepped through the doorway.
Looking up, she saw the spark in his eyes that told her he was very aware of what he was doing, and though Lindsey was about the least violent person in the universe, she had a strong urge to smack the look off his face.
She just moved forward instead, with him closely on her heels. Lindsey didn’t fail to notice the look of her female peers as the two of them moved back to the nurses station. He leaned against the counter, engaging a few of the staff members in conversation as she finished up her paperwork for the day and then clocked out.
Taking longer than necessary didn’t seem to bother Maverick in the least. When she was all out of procrastination excuses, she sighed as she looked back up at the man only to find his intense eyes gazing directly at her.
“I’m ready,” she said before looking back down.
“Perfect. I’m starving,” he said, stepping right up to her side as she made her way to the break room.
“I’m going to grab my stuff and then take you directly home,” she said firmly. If he thought they were stopping for food, he was crazy.
“Oh, I’m not going home. Coop said I could crash at his house a few days. Doc said I can’t drive on the pain meds.”
Lindsey didn’t say a word as he followed her into the break room where she grabbed her jacket and purse. Her teeth were clenched as he walked from the hospital with her, not seeming to be under the influence of pain meds at all by his confident gait.
She really didn’t like the idea of him staying with Cooper. That was far too close to Lindsey’s temporary home for her liking. Just knowing he was sleeping up at the main house was going to make it difficult for her to get any rest at all.
Maverick tried engaging her in small talk on the drive home, but she gave him terse answers that didn’t aid in the conversation at all. Her rudeness didn’t diminish his good mood in the least.
The man was unshakeable.
When she drove past the gate at Cooper’s, she pulled up to the main house, but Mav just shook his head.
“Go ahead and park at the cottage. I’ll walk up,” he told her.
“That’s okay. Why don’t you get out here?” she urged.
“Nah, it’s a beautiful day and it’s not far at all.”
He didn’t budge from his seat, and Lindsey knew it was useless to continue the argument. With another long-suffering sigh, she backed out and then went around the house and down the short drive to the cottage, where she parked.
Lindsey was out of the car quickly, but still, Maverick was by her side almost instantly. She was ninety-nine percent sure the man wasn’t on any pain meds. He was moving far too stealthily.
“Okay, I’ll talk to you later,” she told him pointedly as she began moving to her cottage, where she planned on locking the door behind her.
“I need to talk to you about something before I head up to the house,” he said, striding easily alongside her.
“I’m really tired, Mav. I’ve had a long day,” she told him.
Most people wouldn’t push the issue. Mav certainly wasn’t most people.
“Then we can sit,” he said, grabbing her key right from her hand and moving to her front door. He had it unlocked and open before she could even blink. Then, without waiting for an invite, he stepped inside and moved to the kitchen.
Of course he knew her cottage well. It was owned by his brother, and he’d stayed in it many times.
“Good. Fresh lemonade,” he said as he pulled out the pitcher from the fridge. “I need to get something in my stomach. Those meds are starting to mess with my system,” he pointed out.
The nurse in Lindsey took over. Though she wanted to literally kick him in the butt all the way out her front door, she found herself pulling out sandwich fixings and setting them on the counter instead.
He poured them each a glass of lemonade, taking those and a bag of chips out to her small patio where she had a table with an umbrella set up. She was finished with the sandwiches when he got back, and he grabbed his, then waited for her to grab her own. They walked outside together and took a seat.
“I love this view,” he said as he leaned back, picking up his sandwich and sighing after taking a bite.
Lindsey gazed out at the water as she slowly ate her own food, trying to maintain her irritation with this insistent man, but finding it difficult to do. He was just always so dang happy and confident that to be in a bad mood with him around was nearly impossible.
“What do we need to talk about, Mav?” she asked. The sooner he got it out of the way, the better off she would be.
“You know I run a charity for veterans with PTSD, right?�
� he said.
His question startled her. It hadn’t been at all what she’d been expecting him to say.
“Yes,” she said with hesitation. She wasn’t sure where this was going.
“My chair had an emergency and had to leave.”
She waited, but he was quiet.
“I don’t understand where you’re going with this,” she said.
“I need someone to help organize the big fund-raiser coming up in a couple months. We earn most of our funding at this one event.”
Lindsey looked at him in horror. He couldn’t possibly be thinking of her to take over chairing the event. She knew nothing about fund-raisers. Besides, she could barely make it to work and back, let alone talk to the myriad people she would need to speak with in order to make this event happen. She’d been to one of his fund-raisers and it had been huge, with thousands of people there—very influential people—and a party that could rival a red-carpet event. There was no way she could pull that off.
“I don’t have any suggestions on who to recommend to you,” she finally said, carefully measuring her words.
“I already have someone in mind,” he told her with a wink.
“Then why are you talking to me about it?” she said, a bit of venom in her tone.
“Come on, Lins. You know you’d be perfect. You won’t be alone. I’ll be there every step of the way.”
She was sure that he meant those words to be reassuring, but they had the complete opposite effect. She was back into her fight or flight mode, and every instinct in her body was telling her to run as far away from this man as possible.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline,” she firmly told him.
He gave her that signature smile that made her grateful she was already sitting down. She had to get away from him, and she had to do it fast.
Maverick finished up his sandwich and then stood up.
“I’ll give you time to think about it. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be around for a while so we can talk and talk and talk.”
She now knew for sure that he was threatening her. Was he going to just keep on bugging her until she went insane? That might be his newest strategy.
“I’m working, Mav. I really don’t have time to do a charity,” she said, not wanting to admit to him how much panic the idea brought her.
“You’re back to work part time, only two days a week right now. And I’m out of work until this arm is all better,” he said.
How in the world did he know her schedule? He was much more aware of what was going on in her life than she was comfortable with him knowing.
“I’m going to get out of here. Think about it.”
With that, he turned and strode off, not bothering to go back inside the cabin, just taking off down the trail that would lead him up to the main house. Lindsey wanted to chase him down until he was convinced she wasn’t helping him with the dang charity, but she knew it would be a losing battle again.
The man was stronger than her. That was for dang sure. She decided her best and only option was avoidance. Even with him staying so close to her, she could avoid him. She was very good at that.
Grabbing their dishes, Lindsey took them inside, then shut and locked her back door. Next, she went and checked that the front was securely chained. She loved sitting outside in the afternoons and evenings, but not on this day.
No. She was in full-on evacuation mode right now.
Maverick was just too dangerous and smart for her to win any battle. Retreat was the only option.
CHAPTER SIX
The next day at work, Lindsey was dragging. She’d been right. Sleep hadn’t come easy to her knowing how close Maverick was to her place. And then she’d woken up too many times when she had finally managed to shut her mind off long enough to catch a bit of rest.
So when she rolled into the hospital, at what felt like far too early an hour, she had hoped the other staff members wouldn’t comment on the dark circles beneath her eyes. Of course, they were sort of used to those, since she’d sported them for months after the attack.
It also didn’t help that life in the ER wasn’t something a person could do at half-attention. ERs were full of hard-headed, controlling, stubborn egomaniacs and it took a lot of energy and patience to do her job. Maverick had once made a point about pilots having attitude because they could do something most of the world couldn’t. Doctors weren’t far behind them in that same way of thinking. Lindsey looked around the area that had been her home for years. There were so many stories she could tell, and some she did, leaving out patients’ names of course. But some instances were just too dang absurd not to share with a best friend. Sometimes she didn’t believe something had happened until she told another nonmedical friend about it.
There were the patients you knew on a first-name basis, who always seemed to have a menial problem of some sort, but in actuality were looking for drugs or for a familiar face and someone to be kind to them.
A good medical person learned the difference really quick between someone truly needing help and someone who wanted a fix.
Lindsey’s favorite patients were the seniors whom she’d grown attached to because they spent more time in the ER than she did. Some of them had nobody who cared about them but the medical personnel. She’d had many honorary grandparents in her years of nursing.
At one time, Lindsey had thrived in the hospital. Now, it brought her too much fear each time the doors opened. The charge nurse had put her on day shift, knowing she would need other staff members around her. But still, the hospital wasn’t the safety net it had once been.
There was a time she’d thought of no other place safer. It was where death was pushed back and lives that were tossed aside as a lost cause were miraculously saved. The hospital was comfort and love, open arms and escape.
But now, that feeling was gone. Now it was a place where attacks could turn deadly.
None of that should matter. She’d been back for months and she refused to let her fears keep kicking her back down. She refused to live her life in fear. She was a grown up, and having a career was what responsible people did. They didn’t quit when the going got rough.
Making it through the hard times and coming out a better person was what defined a human being. She wouldn’t be defined as a quitter, though tucking her tail and running had become a thing for her for too long. She certainly was running from Maverick—but that wasn’t something she would feel guilty about.
The man was lethal, after all, and part of being a responsible person was knowing when you couldn’t win a battle. Any type of skirmishes with Maverick were bound to go in his favor.
One thing she did love about being an ER nurse, though, was that she needed to be sharp, able to make decisions fast. Sometimes her decision would mean the difference between a patient living or dying. She also had to know when it was a true emergency and when it was somebody trying to take advantage of the system. She had to be confident.
There wasn’t time for her to be weak or afraid.
“Spill the beans, Lins. You’ve been rushing from one place to the other ever since you got here, and I want to know why that hunk of a man who was here yesterday was eyeing you like you were exclusively his,” Betty, the young blonde nurse said when Lindsey sat down to do some notes on her files.
Dang it. She’d been hoping the nosy nurse would be busy for a while, and she could slip in and out of the nurses’ station before she got cornered into talking about something she had no idea what to say to.
“He’s my best friend’s brother-in-law. That’s all. He broke his arm and needed a ride,” she said, trying to make her voice sound bored.
“You don’t think you’re really going to get away with that, do you?” Betty persisted.
“Really. That’s all he is.” She certainly wasn’t going to tell the hospital gossip that she’d slept with the man.
Maverick really was nothing to her. Yet each time she saw him, he was more appealing. It was
truly a shame, actually. There were so many men out there who didn’t have a thing going for them, yet God had seen fit to give this man every desirable feature anyone could ever want.
His piercing green eyes, broad shoulders, and dark hair made her want to have a redo of their one night together. That was saying something after what she’d been through. Maverick was the definition of the ultimate man-candy, plus he was absolutely noncommittal in relationships, which meant a fling with him would not lead to a lot of headaches. She wasn’t interested in a fling, though. But the fact that he always seemed to be around made her wonder.
Despite her wanting her privacy, it was hard to resist him.
“Fine. You don’t have to tell me anything,” she said, but then her eyes lit up. “I’ll stop bugging you if you agree to go out with us tonight.”
“What?”
It had been so long since any of the staff had tried to get her to go out with them. She’d made excuses for so long that they’d eventually given up. It appeared that with Mav’s appearance yesterday, they were starting their efforts again.
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to figure a way to get out of it without seeming rude about it.
“Come on, Lins. You haven’t gone out with us in a long time. We all miss you,” Betty persisted.
The guilt was working. She really had hibernated for long enough. Maybe if she began some of her old routines again, she would get over the one man she knew better than to get involved with.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to go out for a little while,” she conceded.
The way Betty’s face lit up made Lindsey feel bad that she had sort of abandoned all her friends. They had tried for so long to be there for her, but she had been determined to get through things her own way.
That way hadn’t been helping her, so maybe it really was time to try something new.
Betty got paged away and the rest of the day began to go by in a blur. As the afternoon began winding down, Lindsey even found herself looking forward to spending time with the girls.
It really did help that, as the staff found out she was going out with them, more girls joined in. It made her feel loved and comforted that no one had given up on her even if she had given up on herself.