Not the man who had unexpected depths and a touch she couldn’t seem to forget.
AND SHE DID MANAGE to bury herself in work. The emergency department was overloaded due to a strange and violent outbreak of a flu, which had severely dehydrated an older woman to the point that her kidneys failed. After that, they’d taken out an appendix from a hockey player, and then sewn a finger back on a carpenter who’d managed to cut it off with his table saw.
By the end of the shift she’d nearly managed to for get all about Ty. As she stood in front of a vending machine in the reception area of the hospital on her way out the door, her cell phone rang.
“Honey, I dropped off some food for you. Your nice landlady let me in, so I stuck it in your fridge.”
“Mom.” Nicole had to laugh. “I have food.”
“No, you had a rotting head of lettuce and two sodas. Now you have food. Taylor is very beautiful, isn’t she? Is she married? I didn’t see a ring, but-”
“Just say thank you, Nicole.”
“Thank you, Nicole.”
“Funny. Don’t forget to come to dinner this Sunday.”
“I’ll try.”
“Try harder than last Sunday. I’ll even shamelessly bribe you. I’ll make you brownies. Your favorite.”
“Mom-”
“
Nicole had to laugh. No matter how long and bloody her day had been, her mother never failed to bully a smile out of her. With her mom, she always felt warm and loved, even when she wasn’t warm and lovable at all.
And some people never had this in their life. Some people, like Ty. “I love you, Mom.”
“Well.” Her mother’s voice got thick, and she sniffed. “I love you, too, baby. See you soon.”
“See you soon,” she promised, then sighed. She would have to make sure she did before her mother showed up at her place with more food she wouldn’t eat.
Her eye on the chocolate caramel bar in the vending machine, she put a dollar in.
It ate the money and didn’t spit out the candy.
“Why you-” She kicked it. This had always worked in the past, but now the machine mocked her with silence.
“You have to have the right touch.” Dr. Lincoln Watts glided his body directly up behind hers, so close that she nearly choked on his expensive aftershave. His arms surrounded her as he reached past her to punch in the buttons on the machine.
The candy bar dropped.
Nicole stepped forward until she was practically kissing the machine before she turned in his arms. “Thank you.” He had until the count of three before she used her fists.
“Now you owe me.” There was a little smile on his lips that she was certain he considered sexy, but it creeped her out. No wonder all the nurses hated him.
She’d already changed back into her own clothes, and his eyes were eating her up. “Do you have any interesting tattoos to go with all those earrings of yours?” he asked a little huskily.
She stared at him. “Is that an official question?”
“Go out with me tonight.”
“Dr. Watts-”
“Linc,” he corrected gently, with a not-so-gentle look in his eye as he stroked her cheek.
She pushed his hand away, met his gaze to make sure he saw her anger, and spoke carefully so as to not confuse the idiot. “I don’t go out with people from work. I don’t mix work and my personal life. Ever.”
“I’m not ‘people.’ I’m a doctor.”
“I don’t care if you clean bedpans, my answer is the same.”
His jaw tightened. His eyes became distinctly not so friendly. “You’re turning me down again?”
What was it with too-smart, too-good-looking men? “Yes. I’m turning you down. Again.”
“That’s a bad plan, Nicole.”
“Dr. Mann.”
He looked her over for a long moment, then stepped back, his eyes ice. “I can make your life hell here. You know that.”
“No, I can make
She was the youngest doctor on board, the newest, and she wasn’t naive enough to forget there were hidden politics in force, or that Dr. Lincoln Watts had all the strings to pull and she had none.
Still, she kept her head up high as she walked past him and out the doors of the hospital. That she had just now remembered she didn’t have her car made a perfectly bad ending to a perfectly bad day. Spoiling for a fight, with no one to go nose-to-nose with, she stalked over to a pay phone to look for the number of a cab company.
6
DRAWING AND DESIGNING were what Ty had been born to do. Envision and create, and then move on.
He was good at it, especially the moving on part. He could do it right now, just pack up and go. Hell, he didn’t have anything he couldn’t buy again. In fact, he had moving down to a science. He could pack up and get out of anywhere within a half hour if he had to.
But Taylor’s building, while appearing to be a dump, had huge potential, and the job stirred his creative juices enough that he didn’t feel like thinking about moving on, not yet.
At the moment he stood on the roof, staring down at the third-floor living-room window-Nicole’s window to be exact-trying to figure out a way to pop it out a little to fit the early-1900s traditional facade of the place. The challenge excited him, and he retrieved his notepad from his pocket and hunkered down, yanking the cap off his pen with his teeth so that he could write. He was a page into it when he heard the screech of tires.
Nicole slammed out of a cab, which reminded him he’d fixed her car for her. He took one look at the strut in her walk, at the fury pouring off her in waves, and wondered what had happened to make her look as though she was spoiling for a fight.
Though he still had measurements to take in the rafters, he told himself he could come back later, and shimmied down from the roof to the mock balcony in front of her living-room window. He’d just landed on his feet when he saw her clearly through the glass, stalking in her front door. Slamming it. She saw him immediately, he could tell by the slight narrowing of her eyes-ah, how lovely to be so welcomed.
With a kick-ass attitude he couldn’t miss, she headed toward him, opening the window so fast he thought for a moment she meant to push him down three stories to his death.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Just thought I’d drop in.”
“Funny,” she said without a smile. “You hang outside windows often?”
“Just yours.” He cocked his head at the unmistakable unhappiness in her gaze. “You going to invite me in?”
“Nope.”
“What if I say please real nice?”
“Oh, fine.” She turned away. “Suit yourself, you’re going to anyway.”
Yes, he was. And her stress drew him like a magnet. He threw a leg over the sill, climbed through and straightened, studying her stiff spine. Coming up behind her, he put his hands on her shoulders.
“Shh,” he said when she flinched, and gently began to knead at the knots she had in her neck. There was a virtual rock quarry there, not to mention the heat of the rage she was so carefully controlling. Given how much of the world she took on her shoulders on a daily basis, her stress level had to be off the charts. He ached for her.
