MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance)

by Claire Branson

  “Olivia!”

  Olivia glanced at Dr. Kal, the surgeon who had been running the ER for the last six months. Even though it had to have been his twelfth hour on duty, his black hair was still perfectly slicked in place and not so much as a wrinkle of fatigue disturbed his marble-like olive skin.

  One look at his even, black stare tugged at Olivia’s nerves, but she ignored it because this woman, however stupid she apparently was, was eons more important than the ongoing feud she had with the man who had stolen her job. “It’s simple, Doc. One stab to the right lunch. One broken rib, two fractured ones. An obvious puncture to the lung and disruption of the cardio-thoracic cavity.”

  Dr. Kal gave her a curt nod before hastily delivering instructions to prep an OR and grabbing the second side of the stretcher. “We have to pull the knife out,” Olivia said as they lifted her onto a bed. “It moves every time she does.”

  But Dr. Kal just shook his head in that infuriatingly calm way and turned to the patient. “Hello, my lady. What’s your name?”

  The woman just stared stupidly back at Dr. Kal, fixated by his gaze.

  “Look, none of us have time for this.” Olivia reached over to the tray for a pair of scissors, using them to cut right down the middle of the sweater.

  The woman shot up. “That was a gift!”

  Kal placed his hands on either one of her shoulders. “Miss, you are very hurt. You need to relax.”

  Olivia couldn’t wait for Kal to make some kind of personal connection with this woman. She jumped in. “All right. I know this sounds crazy, but I am going to have to remove the knife from your chest.”

  Dr. Kal shot her a stern look, his black eyes piercing her. “You will do no such thing.”

  Her face flushed bright red at this. “Every time she moves, that blade digs deeper into her. After I take it out, you can take her to surgery.”

  Kal rounded the stretcher to face her, his jaw set. “An OR hasn’t been prepared.”

  “Well, if we don’t get one in time, we’ll just have to operate right here then,” Olivia said. Being an EMT and ER doctor for over eight years had given her plenty experience in unlikely conditions.

  “I don’t have to listen to you.”

  Olivia raised a brow. “Oh really?” Then, in one quick motion, she reached over and ripped the knife out of the woman. “Because I don’t have to listen to you.”

  “Olivia!” he hissed.

  The woman cried out in pain.

  “I’ve contained the damage. You’re welcome.”

  Dr. Kal shot her a glare before turning to the nearest nurse’s station. “Page Jeffries. I need an OR stat!”

  The nurse gave a hysterical nod before ripping the pager off her belt.

  Olivia turned to the woman and stuffed the wound with sterile towels, preventing blood flow. Kal took to the head of the stretcher and shoved it toward the double doors that led to the rest of the hospital.

  “I cannot believe you just defied me,” Dr. Kal said, leaning over the woman’s head.

  Something about his gaze made Olivia want to kiss him and punch him all at once. “Wow, would you look at the size of that ego.”

  Disbelief morphed his face. “You are a ridiculous person.”

  With that, he had reached the doors leading to the sterile chambers that surrounded the main amphitheaters. Three scrub nurses met him there, and he shoved the woman through the doors and let them slam behind him.

  ***

  Olivia straightened her posture at the sight of Dr. Kal approaching. It was always just that much harder to keep her focus around him, but she was determined not to let him jumble up her thoughts.

  “Well, she survived, no thanks to you.”

  Olivia scoffed. “Okay. Why do you have to do that?”

  Kal’s only response was that same even stare.

  Olivia nodded, a humorless smile on her face. “I guess you don’t have to answer that either.”

  “You could have killed her,” he said, resting his hand on the wall above Olivia’s head.

  She glowered at him. “I neutralized the threat and got you an OR. We’re constantly backed up; it could have been hours with your low priority.”

  “Why are you so dissident?”

  “Why do you expect me to blindly follow you just because of your arbitrary title?”

  Dr. Kal raised an eyebrow. “If it was so arbitrary, why did you want it so bad?”

  Olivia flexed her jaw. “You have no idea what I want.”

  His lips folded into a crooked smile. “You’re transparent.”

  Olivia broke her one rule: She breathed him in, scanning his body from head to toe, taking in everything about his essence, but somehow missing something vital. “But somehow, you’re not.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Not this again.”

  She let out a chuckle. “You can’t be surprised.”

  “Why are you obsessed with me?”

  Olivia’s hands clenched into fists. “Why are you so secretive?”

  Kal took his hand off of the wall and stepped away.

  “I mean it! You’ve worked here with me for six months and I don’t know anything about you. You don’t come to gatherings, you don’t really know anybody and yet you just boss everyone around.”

  “This isn’t about me. This is about your sour feelings.”

  “No, it is about you. Look at you. You can’t even meet my eye.”

  “I don’t owe you any information.”

  “Yes, you do. You stole my job.”

  “It was never yours!”

  Hearing someone discount what she had been working toward for months on end drove Olivia mad. “How dare you say that to me? You must have done something to bewitch the chief into making you head of the ER, because there’s no way this is fair.”

  He stepped away from her. “You keep thinking this way and you might actually kill someone one day.”

  But Olivia couldn’t just let him walk away. “I made the right decision.” She grabbed at his arm to stop him, but something like a spark shot up her spine. She dropped his arm.

  He stared back at her with eyes wide in an expression that showed he had felt the same thing. “What you did was reckless and immature.”

  “Well at least I MAKE decisions! You think about everything so much you never wind up doing anything.”

  Kal took a step toward her, towering over her. “I may be a little bit calculated, but that is only because I can recognize the true risks associated with every wrong turn. You lack the ability to take responsibility for anything you do.”

  “You don’t know a thing about me.”

  Kal scoffed. “No. You’re the one in the dark, remember? I would appreciate it if you didn’t make assumptions about my character or defy me in my ER, Olivia.”

  Frustration boiled in the pit of her stomach as he walked off. “It’s Dr. Jones!”

  He didn’t even turn at the sound of her voice.

  Chapter Two

  Olivia waited for Dr. Kal’s scheduled 2:30 surgery before she wandered into the hallway in the administrative wing that housed his office. None of this made any sense. Six months ago, she had been told that she had been promoted. Then, all of a sudden, the job was given to some outsider who had never worked in that hospital or any other one in the area for that matter. To make matters worse, he happened to be the most authoritative, arrogant person she had ever met.

  She tried the door to his office. Of course it was open. She stepped inside and shut it behind her, ignoring that warning flutter in the pit of her stomach, the one that told her there was something very wrong about how she was handling this whole thing. Nevertheless, already being in his office gave her no choice but to continue.

  She swept the familiar place with her eyes, scanning the robust bookshelf, the stacks of papers, clearly organized on his desk, the telephone and the mounted pictures that looked like they had been pulled right out of a JCPenny catalogue. None of this held any value.

&nb
sp; She went straight for his drawers. The top one held an in-drawer divider that kept his copy of Grey’s Anatomy, his collection of pens and his supply of paperclips and thumb-tacks separate. But she could see through the divisions and the clutter to something just underneath it. She lifted the organizer and slipped the piece of paper from under it, turning it over to its front.

  What she saw made her jaw drop. It looked like some kind of high resolution, three-part Polaroid picture…if that were at all possible. She peered into it.

  The first compartment held an image of what looked like Kal but wasn’t Kal. His skin looked different…almost green. He knelt on what looked like a desert or a canyon, she couldn’t tell which, tending to what looked like victims of a natural disaster. The middle compartment was an image of him, still a little green, standing with what she could only guess was some kind of Eastern European, Western Asian warlord, receiving a metal. And the last one was him in what looked like the control room of a submarine.

  Olivia’s heart fluttered in her chest. This wasn’t a lot, but if she could use it as grounds to get the chief to launch a more rigorous background check, they might find something they missed before.

  She was just about to return the organizer and jet out of there when she heard footsteps headed her way. She decided to leave it all, rushing to the threshold only to meet Dr. Kal halfway. She wracked her brain for any viable excuses but came up with none.

  “Wha—” But then his eyes fell on the photo in her hand.

  An unexpected wave of shame took hold of her. She didn’t even want to explain herself. Being faced with her calm adversary in his own office made her feel smaller than ever. “I could ask you the same question.”

  He brushed past her into the office. “Not in my office you can’t.”

  “You can’t say that when you’re the one hiding something.” Olivia followed him back inside.

  He sat down at his desk, irrationally calm. “I’m not hiding anything.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t stand it when people lie to me.”

  “No,” he said, looking up at her. “You can’t stand it when I lie to you.”

  “So you admit that you’re lying.” It was a small glimmer of hope. She stepped toward his desk, resting her hand on the chair.

  “Will this admission turn you off me?”

  Olivia gulped. “I could never be turned off you.” She cleared her throat. “Until this is fixed, of course.”

  He leaned toward her, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What is this?”

  Olivia threw the picture onto his desk. “You lied about who you are.” She expected him to deny this.

  But he didn’t.

  Triumph seized her, yet something held her back. “I’ll tell the chief.”

  His eyes went wide, those black irises consuming her. “You wouldn’t.”

  “How can you make that assumption?”

  “Because.” He stood up and rounded the desk. He didn’t stop moving until a mere three inches of air separated their two bodies. “You don’t want an investigation. You don’t want me to leave.”

  Olivia’s breath came fast and shallow. “Yes, I do.”

  He grabbed the hand she held the picture with.

  She licked her lips, some kind of pull coursing through her entire body, his eyes getting bigger and bigger. It wasn’t until his exhale that she even realized their lips were almost touching. “You like fighting me too much.”

  “No.” She ripped herself out of his grip. “You don’t deserve to be here.”

  He scanned her from head to toe, his default crooked smile falling, because he finally got it in his head that she meant business, even if she did like the fight. “I can’t explain everything right now. But I need to be here. You can’t tell him.”

  Olivia scoffed. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  He approached her again with such intensity in his eyes that she doubted she’d be able to resist letting it go. “Your eyes sparkle when we fight.”

  Her chest swelled. “If there’s a good explanation, then I’ll keep your secret.” She couldn’t deny that she wanted him to confide in her, but the dissidence was too much. One part of her screamed at her to get out of there and oust him goddamn it, and the other part yelled at her to seized this opportunity to explore something new.

  “I just can’t tell you.”

  It felt like a rejection.

  Olivia nodded. “Well,” she said, stepping away, “then I guess I’m just going have to find out myself.”

  “Olivia.” He grabbed her arm.

  There it was again. The pull, clear as day, impossible to ignore. But this time, when she looked into his eyes, all she could see was a giant, albeit good looking, roadblock to the future she had always wanted. “I’m telling you for the last time, its Dr. Jones.”

  With that, she left him standing alone in his office and went straight to the chief.

  She would be lying if she said she never considered turning back around and trying for the umpteenth time to get inside his head, but the fact of the matter was that she was exhausted. Everything from the fighting and the jealousy and the clinging to what might just be a small glimmer of a possibility of a connection gave her stress lines. By the time she got to the chief’s office, she hated that she had even hesitated to come forward with the information in the first place.

  She dropped the picture onto the chief’s desk.

  He looked up at her, his bushy brows furrowed in confusion. “What is this?”

  Olivia eyed the photos one more time. “I thought you should know that the person you hired out of nowhere is lying about his identity.”

  The chief ran a hand through his graying hair as he examined the photo. “Who is this person?”

  “Kal. Obviously.” Olivia tapped her foot as she waited for him to get it.

  “I don’t see the resemblance.”

  Olivia snatched the photo out of his hand and stared at it herself. “What do you mean? Look at these! It’s obviously Kal…I mean…what even is this? What kind of warlord…”

  The chief watched her fluster with a grimace.

  She nodded. “I know I sound like a hothead, but—”

  He chuckled. “There’s no but about it. You are a hothead, which is why I like you in an EMT van.”

  Her face fell. “You mean you weren’t—”

  He knew exactly what she was talking about. “No. I seriously considered it for a while. You are a good decision maker. You think on your feet and deal with the consequences later. That’s good for getting people into the ER and the OR safely. But as far as making calculated decisions when it’s not just one life but many others…I doubt you’re ability to do that.”

  Suddenly the picture didn’t feel so important. “But you know I’ve been working toward this…” She found it hard to talk around the lump in her throat.

  He nodded. “I know, and maybe one day.” He nudged the picture back toward her. “But until then, just try harder at working with Kal. You either hate him or love him. I can’t tell which and I don’t particularly care.”

  He returned his gaze to the files he had been looked it.

  Olivia stood there, struggling to come up with something else to say, anything to keep the argument alive. Her pager went off. She glanced at it, and then with a sigh she left the chief to his own devices.

  Chapter Three.

  In just a couple of hours, the ER had become alight with chaos all over again. Olivia suited up and made her way outside, a nurse following alongside her with instructions. “Now, we’ve got three units out there from Southwest, but they need backup.”

  Olivia climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door behind her.

  The nurse clasped the window, jabbing her head inside the cab of the truck. “It’s a gang fight, Olivia.”

  She glanced over, only to find Kal sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Seriously?” she whispered.

  “For God’s sake, just be careful
,” the nurse said as she let go of the window and scurried back into the ER.

  She gulped as Kal rushed off. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He shrugged before resting his right elbow on the window. “You heard the nurse. They need more help.”

  “But did you have to pick this vehicle?” Olivia wanted nothing more than to avoid him for the rest of eternity.

  “If I remember the last sixty seconds correctly, you joined me.”

  Olivia pressed her forehead against the window, watching the lights blur past. “It’s not even important.”

  Kal had to raise his voice to speak over the sound of the siren. “I’m assuming it didn’t go well with the chief?”

  “I don’t think that’s important right now.” The words practically fell out of her mouth.

  “The chief didn’t believe you?”

  “He didn’t care what I had to say.” Suddenly she wanted to pour out her heart to him.

  “I don’t understand.” There was a trace of tenderness in his voice, a slither of something that made her want to rest her head on his shoulder.

  “You just don’t have to worry about me trying to push you out, because even if your secret gets out, I’m not moving up. He doesn’t believe in me.” She loathed the burn in her eyes.

  “I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  She was bled from the inside out. “You’re not innocent.”

  He let out a deep sigh. “Not this again.”

  “You’re selfish.”

  Kal let out a humorless laugh. “Excuse me?”

  “You’d rather hide this from me than—” But she stopped herself, because she didn’t know what she was saying.

  “Than what?” He glanced over at her, a glare in his eye. “Did it ever occur to you that’s it’s not my secret to tell? What makes you think I owe you this?”

  Olivia frowned. It was a valid question, yet one she couldn’t answer. It felt obvious. “I don’t know. We’ve just known each other…and I…”

  And I feel something strong every time we touch.

  And when you look at me, I just…

  “I don’t know.”