by Lexi Whitlow
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Inspiration
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Excerpt from Long Shot
Other Books
About the author
A Bad Boy Romance
Lexi Whitlow
© 2016 Lexi Whitlow
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
Kindle Edition
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***
Dedication:
To Tracy and Mia.
Thank you for checking on me when I was at my lowest.
Thank you for repeatedly telling me this book is an awesome idea.
Thanks for being my Canadian romance author friends from the far north.
Acknowledgements:
A big shout out to Jessica, because she edits like she’s possessed by the ghost of Shakespeare.
And she checked on me as well.
Cover Design:
My highest praises go to Aria at Resplendent Media, who designed my cover in the midst of a battle with the flu.
May your cover orders be many, and your sexy romances sell millions of copies.
I will never take back
The words that I said then
I will always come back to you
Even in the meantime
I will always stand by
A mirror on the shelf
I will never take back
The words that I said then
I always knew I’d come back to you.
-St. Lucia, “All Eyes on You”
PROLOGUE
Three Years, Three Months Ago
“We’ll never get away with this. This is not going to work.”
“We’ve been through this. The other night, when we agreed.”
“We were—It was—”
“You were fucking phenomenal, Sunshine.” He winks at me and grabs me by the thigh. “And I’m not losing the best lay I’ve ever had.”
The priest has a blue folder in his hand and goes to stand at the pulpit. He looks at us both, impatient, possibly drunk. “Let’s get this bullshit over with,” he says, his voice as grizzled as he is. No courthouse for us. This shit is happening in a church.
My heart leaps. “Okay.”
He grabs my hand. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
CHAPTER ONE
Three Years, Six Months Ago
“Another,” I say. I nod to the bartender and slide my glass over to him. It’s not crowded in here yet, but it will be. My eye socket still hurts, and the stitches haven’t completely dissolved. The type of girl that comes in here won’t notice. Either that, or she won’t say anything.
The bartender delivers another whiskey and tries not to stare at my face.
That’s what I get for ending up with the family. If I were on my own, I might have more to show for it than a busted face and a stupid tattoo.
Just when I’m thinking about walking out of this stupid bar and finding a more appropriate use of my time, she walks in and sits down. She’s a spray of strawberry blond hair to my right, freckles on her arms, delicate wrists and light purple lacquered fingernails.
“Hit me,” she says to the bartender. “Whatever’s cheapest.” Her voice is raspy and low, and when she turns to me, her green eyes, sharp and intelligent, lock on mine. I take another sip of my whiskey and wonder at my luck. The girl sitting next to me is fucking stunning—and she’s wearing a silvery dress with a low-cut neckline and a high-cut skirt. Her skin is milky white, freckles that she was probably made fun of for across her neck and cheeks and shoulders. Her lips are a perfect, pink, cupid’s bow shape, her cheek-bones broad, a slight dimple in her chin.
“What are you looking at?” There’s a hard edge to her tone, but she laughs, throaty and deep. “You’re not the usual crowd in here, are you?” She lifts one perfectly manicured eyebrow and drinks the bartender’s cheap swill that passes for beer.
“You aren’t either,” I say. She’s the girl who’ll take my mind off of what I did this week, off of the fingers I broke, the faces I sliced up for Cullen.
“Who says?”
“I say. You’re too pretty for this type of place. Not a tourist, not a New York native, either.”
“Then what am I?” Her deep voice sends a thrill through me. There’s a blush right over the tops of her cheeks, like she’s thinking about something she shouldn’t be. Her eyes move over me, and she takes another sip of her beer.
“You’re the type of woman who should be coming home with me.”
“I think not—”
“Isn’t that what you came for? To land a good lay?”
The corners of her lips turn up into a smile, and she laughs. “And what makes you think you’re a good lay?”
“Every woman I’ve met in this damn place says so.”
Her blush intensifies. “You come here often for this kind of thing?”
“Often enough.”
“And these ladies—they say you’re good—”
“Excellent.”
“Excellent—”
“Only one way to find out,” I say, leaning in and brushing my hand against her cheek.
“Bartender—I’ll take the check.”
I grab her wrist and turn it over in my palm. Blue veins stand out against her creamy skin. I trace my finger over her wrist and into the flesh of her palm. She gasps.
I put a ten down on the bar and pull her up. “Only one way to find out, I said. You leave here with me now. Come back to my apartment. And I’ll show you what I’m about.”
She blushes deep red, the flush extending over her chest. “What if you’re a serial killer or something?”
I flash a grin at her. “Live dangerously.”
CHAPTER TWO
Present Day
“What fresh hell is this?” I look back and forth between Debbie and the other nurses I used to work with, back when I was a candy striper at Outer Banks hospital. They’re standing behind a card table set up in the residents’ locker room, and there’s a light blue cake on the middle of the table. My heart beats hard, and my hands start to sweat again. It’s only my second week back in town, and it’s my first day bac
k at the hospital after three years with Doctors Without Borders. One year in Syria before shit got bad, and two years in the Ukraine.
My therapist said that what’s making me nervous is being back home, that it’s so different from what I went through while I was over there. But I know better. It’s being back on solid soil, for sure. But it’s also being back in the same life I lead when I knew him, back in the same town I escaped to, back in the same place I saw him last.
“Surprise!” Debbie shouts, throwing her hands up. The other residents halfheartedly repeat after her, but I don’t know any of them. And one or two of them probably noted the angry red blush creeping over my cheeks and decided it was best to play it low key. It is, after all, six o’clock in the morning, and I’m betting nobody is in the mood for cake. I’ll be glad when Natalie starts in the fall. But for now, I’m just as alone as I have been for the past three years.
Debbie looks frantically around at the other people in the room—ten residents, two interns, and a nurse whose name I can’t remember. She wields a cake spatula, nearly hitting one of the interns in the face. The intern steps back and crosses her arms, rolling her eyes skyward. “Anyone want cake?”
Jesus Christ, no one wants cake before it’s light outside, Debbie.
That’s what I want to say.
“Sure, Debs. Thank you so much.” I walk up to her like the gracious Southern girl I am and draw her into an embrace. Hugging her makes my nerves ease just a little bit, and I relax even more when the interns and residents go about their business, wandering to either side of the room to check their phones and change their scrubs.
“It’s so good to have you back, sweetheart,” Deb says, kissing me on the cheek and squeezing my shoulder. She hustles and gets me a piece of cake, which looks like it could be a leftover baby shower cake from the Be-Low Foods in Manteo. But it’s not really worth mentioning. I sit down next to Debbie at the card table and eat the cake. It’s stale, and the icing is hard. But Deb is comforting in the sea of anxiety swirling around me. She’s a ballast in the storm, someone who means home. Her light blue eyes fill with tears as we sit there in the middle of the locker room, doctors and nurses filing past us without a second glance.
“What happened to you, honey? Why didn’t you come back?” Deb puts her hand on mine, and the warmth feels like a shock. After three years away, changing teams of doctors from one month to the next, I’m not exactly used to being touched unexpectedly.
I choke down a piece of cake. It’s dry in my throat, scratchy. “It was my calling,” I manage to say, looking down and to the side. It seems as good a lie as any for why the preppy girl obsessed with making money would live in the Ukraine in an apartment with spotty electricity—and even spottier running water. “It was an experience I needed to have.” I shove another bite of cake in my mouth.
“I mean, why didn’t you come back here after you graduated from med school, honey? Not even to visit?”
“Plane tickets,” I say, nodding, as if that explains it all. “The Doctors Without Borders flight left from Charlotte. My mom came with me—”
“Okay, Summer. We need you here, and you’re here.” She squeezes my hand, and I’m transported back in time to when I was fourteen, and Debs was twenty-three, a new nurse at the hospital showing me how to empty bedpans and change linens. The memory is tinged with the guilt and regret that comes from years of hiding, of avoiding this place and all of its truths.
“Where do you need me today, Debs?” I stand and brush a few cake crumbs off of my green scrubs and pick a piece of icing from a stray curl of hair.
“Emergency. Fight from last night sent us some sorry looking assholes.”
“God, that’s still going on?” Fights were cool when I was seventeen, but now… fighters and their scars are sexy, but they’re out of my life—forever. Hopefully, anyway. “Fine. I’ll go.” My hands shake a little as I put my coat on and drape the stethoscope around my neck.
It’ll get better. This is okay.
I chant the words to myself as I stroll down the hallway to the emergency room. I can be on call there and not waste my time sitting in the locker room, waiting for something to happen. I know the ropes just as well as anyone does around here.
A girl—or what looks like a girl—pops through the doors to the waiting room. Her dark eyes go wide when she sees me, and she flips her long, dark hair over her shoulder.
“You a new resident? Patient room one. We’ve got a cut that needs sutures. Dude’s got a nasty attitude.” Before I can get her name, she pulls me back to patient room one and pushes me inside. “I’ll bring him to you.” She nods to me before she walks out of the door. “Name’s Priya. Head resident. Glad to have you—Colington, right?”
I nod, and the swinging door to the patient room swings back and forth on its hinges, nearly hitting my in the face. My heart nearly leaps out of my chest, and I stumble backward toward the bed.
This Bambi deer-in-the-headlights shit won’t cut it for the job I’ve taken on, so I press the uneasy feeling in my gut down and away. I’m back here. It was my choice. And this is just the first day. What could go wrong?
Surely it can’t be too bad.
Since Syria, I don’t love hospitals. But I’ll learn to love this one. It’s my new life, my new home. The place where everything comes together and starts over again.
I fall into a rhythm as I prep the suture kit, getting the shit together I’ll need to patch up some idiot fighter. At least, I assume it’s a fighter. Besides stomach viruses, idiots who get beat up for a living are about all we see around here at this time of day.
The door opens behind me, and a rush of air comes into the room. I hear what must be Priya fumbling around with a wheelchair. “These fucking things,” she mutters. “I’m leaving you in good hands. It’s her first day, but she was in the field for three years. She can probably suture with one eye shut in the middle of a dust storm.” She directs her voice at me as I turn on the sink and wait for the water to get warm. “Doctor, we have a white male here, mid-thirties I’d guess, though he won’t tell me. Says he got into a bar fight but his blood alcohol is zero. I suspect it was quite a beat-down he took.”
The man groans in pain, that groan that signifies he’s on the cusp of passing out. I hear him try to get up, and Priya trying to calm him so that he falls back into his chair.
“Just a minute,” I mumble. “The nurse will be in shortly. Right, Priya?”
I turn around, and after that, everything happens in slow motion. The man in the chair looks at me and smirks, his eyes steely blue.
I fall back on the hospital bed as the nurse enters and wraps a blood pressure cuff around his huge, freckled bicep. I gulp, tasting salt and metal, and my heart pounds so loud I think that it might start echoing in the room.
“What—” I start, but the words won’t fully form, and Priya turns and stares at me over his chart.
“Mid-thirties male,” she repeats. “Laceration on the right arm, and another on his right cheek. Pretty nasty. Says it was a bar fight, but his blood alcohol level was—” She stops and looks between the two of us. “You two know each other or something?”
One corner of his lip turns up into a smile, making the gash on his cheek open slightly. “You could say that,” he says, his voice a growl, deep and gritty. He’s at once intimately familiar and totally foreign. His eyes are the same, but there are fine lines at the corners, and his smile isn’t quite as eager as it used to be. His reddish hair is cropped close so that I can see his scars. My stomach drops, and I wipe my palms against the green scrubs. I absently wonder if my makeup looks okay, and then I realize I’m not wearing any, and I blush, my cheeks growing uncontrollably hot. The nurse looks at me and raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t—I haven’t seen him in three years—” The words leave my mouth all at once. “I thought you were in New York.”
“I was, and then I came here. Cost of living, that kind of thing. Also,
I was looking for this girl...” He looks at me pointedly. “But I found out she was in Syria. Imagine my surprise. And I didn’t have a red cent for a plane ticket. Had to stay and work.”
Three years have left their mark. He looks older, but his muscles are broader and more defined, his presence even bigger than it once was. The white t-shirt he’s wearing stretches across his chest and biceps. Before, he only had one tattoo on his right forearm, the sword that signified his membership in the Irish mafia. Now, that’s covered. New tattoos run up the length of both arms.
As the nurse listens to his heart, Priya is still staring at me. Her eyes flick over to the man for a brief second. “You okay with him? I can get another resident—”
“Don’t bother,” he says, his grin growing wider. “I heard she was back in town. I knew she’d be coming to see me anyway.” The way he looks at me sends a chill through my body, and I suddenly remember why I agreed to what he offered. I stand up, and my knees instantly go weak. I knew I’d have to see him, but I had no damn idea it would be so soon.
“I’ll wait for Summer to respond,” Priya says, looking at me pointedly.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ve got this.”
“She’s been looking forward to seeing me,” he says. “She’s my—”
“Old friend. We’re old friends. I met him when I was in school.” I nearly bark the words out, and Ash smirks. Priya shrugs, but she looks back at me before she leaves.
I watch as the nurse takes his vitals, then she leaves us both alone. He goes to stand, but he’s unsteady on his feet and leans against the hospital bed. I don’t stop him.
“A little bird told me you were back in town, Sunshine. I’m offended you didn’t come straight to see me.” He crosses his muscled arms and leans against the bed. I can see the definition in his legs through his jeans. It was always a shame that the universe had given him such a good body and such a shitty soul. I’d wanted him with every fiber of my being. But I was younger then, what seems like so much younger. I know him better now. I know all the things he’s capable of.