Helping Dr. Hottie Read online

  So I’d taken the job. I’d lived abroad for a decade, never staying in the same place for longer than six months. It had been exhilarating. Eye-opening. And exhausting. I’d turned forty a few months ago, and that seemed like a good age to try something new. Or, rather, to try something old since I’d done my residency here and worked here up until I’d gone overseas.

  The place seemed the same. Mostly. Except no Greg. I didn’t even know what he looked like anymore. Though we’d been in the same classes in high school, Greg was a year older since I skipped a grade in middle school. Had he gone gray, like the hair at my temples was beginning to? Was he bald? Did he have a beer belly?

  Somehow I doubted that last one. Greg had always been dedicated to health, his own or anyone else’s. For a moment, I smiled at the thought of what he’d say if he knew how badly I wanted a cigarette, but then I remembered that he didn’t give a shit about me nowadays.

  And apparently, he didn’t give me cases, either.

  Not knowing what else to do, I headed downstairs to the gift shop, but it wasn’t where it used to be. Following the signs, I arrived at a small room the approximate size of an outhouse. Grabbing a pack of gum, I tossed it the counter. Gum had become my go-to replacement for nicotine. Living in the field surrounded by smokers, I’d let myself indulge from time to time. Almost everyone else had. Now that I was back, I knew it was a habit I needed to nix. Thus the gum.

  The cashier was a spry but elderly fellow who kept up a steady stream of small talk as he counted out my change. That was something else to get used to—inane chatter. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but it was a luxury for people who weren’t fleeing for their lives or fighting to save other people’s. I thanked the man and turned to leave only to stop short when a rather pathetic display on a countertop caught my eye.

  A few minutes later, I knocked on the door to Room 317. Normally, doctors didn’t knock, they just barged in, but I wasn’t here as a doctor. A soft voice said to come in, so I did.

  The young woman in the second bed was wearing a white blouse and a burgundy skirt, most of which was covered by a blanket. She didn’t have a wristband on, so it appeared she hadn’t been admitted. Most likely they’d just put her up here to keep an eye on her while she rested. That made me feel a little less guilty.

  As I neared, her green eyes went wide again, but time they didn’t roll back into her head, thankfully.

  She looked to be around twenty, which was young, but not as young as I’d initially feared when I’d flattened her with the heavy wooden door. Waves of honey-blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders. She ran her hand down the medium-length strands in an attempt to fix it up. In my experience, if patients were worried about how they looked, they were on the road to recovery.

  “Hi. I’m Dr. Hawthorne. These are for you.” I handed her flowers in clear cellophane wrap. It was the best bouquet the gift shop had to offer, which wasn’t saying much.

  She stared at me for a moment longer, and I wondered if maybe she had been more injured than anyone realized, but then a flush filled her face and she took them from me.

  Blushing—another good sign.

  “I’m sorry about before. Usually, I wait until my second day before knocking out a colleague.” For some reason that made her blush more. Was it my lame attempt at humor? Or my calling her a colleague? But she was, right? One of the nurses told me that she worked at the front desk in the Emergency Room. “How’re you feeling, miss?”

  She took a moment to bring the flowers to her face and inhale deeply. That made me pause. When was the last time I’d seen a beautiful woman truly enjoy something as simple as flowers?

  After a moment, she looked back up at me, placing the bouquet on the table next to the bed. “Okay. And it’s Becca.”

  Her voice was so soft it was hard to hear. “It’s better? Than what?”

  “No. My name. It’s Becca.” Her voice was a little louder that time. The doctor in me reasoned that she could still be feeling weak after the concussion, but the man in me suspected there was another reason for her shyness. Her reaction was a variation of the ones I’d been getting from the female staff members all day, but coming from her, it was different. Less forward. Less aggressive. More bashful.

  And completely adorable.

  “Becca. I like the sound of that. So, Becca, I’m very sorry I crushed you with a door.”

  She nodded, her cheeks still rose-colored. “It’s okay. How’s the patient?”

  Her question pleased me. She wasn’t part of the medical staff, but she was still concerned about someone else’s well-being while she herself was lying in a hospital bed. She was a sweet young woman. Again, I wondered how old she was. “She made it through surgery and is in stable condition.”

  “That’s good.” Her words were simple, but she closed her eyes briefly as if in relief.

  “Would you like me to put those flowers in some water for you?”

  She nodded, handing them to me. As I reached out, our fingers touched, and a jolt went through me. Jesus, what was this? I shouldn’t be losing my shit over a pretty young thing I just met. But she seemed so damn earnest. They’d told me what she’d done… how she’d scrambled to get the faulty door open so that the stretcher could pass through. Not everyone who helped save others wore scrubs.

  I plucked a plastic water jug off her bedside tray and filled it in the bathroom. After ditching the cellophane, I made a half-hearted attempt to arrange the flowers, but clearly, that wasn’t my forte.

  Back at her bedside, I set the pitcher of flowers on the windowsill where she could see them but they wouldn’t get knocked over.

  She smiled at them and then looked up at me. “Thank you, Dr. Hottie.” I stared at her in shock for a long moment, one eyebrow raised. Then one corner of my mouth twitched upward. It wouldn’t be gentlemanly to smirk—but damn, it was hard to resist.

  She froze, her face turning even redder as her gaze dipped to her hands. “Oh, God. I meant Dr. Hawthorne.”

  Still fighting back a grin, I contemplated what was apparently my new nickname. If the people at this hospital were calling me that, it was not exactly a ringing endorsement of my surgical skills. But who the hell knew… maybe this was progress. After years of males objectifying women, maybe it was their turn to objectify us?

  Amused at the thought, I glanced back at Becca who looked as if she wanted to disappear from the face of the earth. The poor young woman was mortified. As I watched, she reached up, grabbed the pillow behind her, and pulled it over her eyes. The resulting groan illustrated the point that she shouldn’t be making sudden movements like that.

  My smugness fled as I took the pillow from her hands and placed it back under her head. She needed to take it easy. As I leaned over her, I caught the scent of orange blossoms coming from her caramel-colored tresses. It was girly, but effective. She smelled a lot better than the anemic flowers from the gift shop. When she finally braved a quick peek at me, I saw that her green eyes had specks of gold in them.

  “You should get some rest,” I said, still messing with the position of the pillow. When I was done with that, I tugged on the edge of the blanket, pulling it up to her neck. Not because I particularly wanted her to be covered up—but just so I could buy more time. For some reason, I wasn’t ready to step away from her yet. When had I last met a woman who was such an intriguing mixture of innocence and beauty? Plus dedication. It was clear she took her role at the hospital seriously.

  She blinked up at me, her speckled eyes wide. Were they always like that or just after someone clocked her with a door? Whatever it was, they were gorgeous. Still stalling, I put my hand on her forehead, checking for a fever. Which the nurses had likely already done, but still, it let me touch her for a brief moment.

  “We may not be the biggest hospital around, but we do possess thermometers.”

  The clipped voice from the door made me jump and, for reasons I couldn’t fully explain, take a quick step backward.

>   Crap.

  “Greg. Good to see you.” And it was, in a way. He’d been my best friend for years, all through high school and the first few years of college. But we’d been out of touch for over a decade. And though he didn’t look that different—same old rigid posture, same old lean form—his eyes were cold.

  “Welcome back, Owen. I didn’t know you were assigned this case.” His tone indicated that he knew I wasn’t.

  “I’m not—I just came to apologize for flattening Becca earlier.” For some reason, I glanced at the flowers on the windowsill. Greg followed my gaze and his eyes narrowed.

  “And decided she needed a second opinion? Though we don’t have a pack of reporters updating the world every time we change a bandage, we still know how to take care of a concussion.”

  Hmm… I wondered if they had any surgeons who knew the procedure for removing the stick up his ass? But it was time for me to leave. There was no reason to stay—yet I was reluctant to go. I turned back to Becca. “I’ll be back a bit later to see how you’re doing.”

  A smile rose to her lips and then vanished just as quickly as she looked at Greg’s stern face. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “Yes, she will,” Greg added unnecessarily. Why was he even here? Surely the chief surgeon had better things to do? But he continued on in a pompous tone. Though his appearance hadn’t changed much, his disapproving voice sure had. “It’ll take more than a door to keep Rebecca down.”

  Rebecca?

  A memory surfaced, the image of a young girl skipping down a hospital hallway, holding a balloon. The girl was eight or nine years old and had waist-length blonde hair. She’d run up to a man in a white coat. The man standing across from me now. “Wait—this is…?”

  “That’s right. That’s my daughter you smashed into a wall.”

  My jaw dropped as I looked back and forth between my old friend and the young woman I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about all morning. Was she really Greg’s daughter?

  Oh shit.

  Becca

  How are you feeling?

  Andrea’s text came about thirty minutes after Dr. Hawthorne and my father left. I was pretty sure that my face was still red.

  God, that had been embarrassing. Well… at the end there. In the beginning, it had been wonderful. Up close, Dr. Hawthorne was every bit as gorgeous as he looked in pictures and videos. Perhaps even more so. None of the stuff I’d seen online had done justice to his endlessly deep blue eyes. They were the light kind that appeared to go right through you.

  And he’d brought flowers. For some reason that had touched me. I know he’d only done it because he’d been the one who inadvertently hurt me before, but still… when’s the last time a guy had brought me flowers? Probably not since Tony Adams, the high school boy who’d taken me to my senior prom. And even then, it had just been a corsage. Guys my age never thought about things like flowers. But apparently men like Dr. Hawthorne did.

  I glanced at them now. They were just from the gift shop, but still, they were pretty. Though now that I thought about it, if Dr. Hawthorne had given me a handful of tongue depressors, I probably would’ve thought those were pretty, too.

  But then a renewed wave of embarrassment made me cringe, which immediately made my head hurt. Ouch. Far worse than the physical pain was the mortification of how stupidly I’d behaved in front of him. He’d entered the room and it was like I forgot how to talk. All I could do was focus on how good he looked. How confident. How charismatic. How hot.

  And then I’d called him Dr. Hottie! God, I think I would’ve preferred to get smashed by the door another couple times than to have done that. He probably thought I was an idiotic school girl with a crush. Before today, I’d thought about what I might say to him when I met him. Hell, I’d even practiced this morning. Instead, I’d been a bumbling, blushing fool. I couldn’t even blame it on the concussion—I’d probably have been just as moronic without that. He was just too good-looking to exist—yet he did.

  My break is in five minutes, so I’ll be up then. Do you need anything?

  Andrea’s text broke into my embarrassing thoughts. Some tea, please.

  Her response was quick. Will do. But are you allowed to eat/drink stuff after a concussion?

  Fair point. I thought about it for a moment and then texted back: Better make it caffeine free. And a scone, please.

  I was fairly certain that carbs were okay after a concussion. Plus, baked goods were absolutely essential after humiliating yourself in front of a gorgeous man.

  As I waited for Andrea, I willed myself to act more natural the next time I saw Dr. Hawthorne. He was a doctor at this hospital now, so there was no way to avoid him. Not that I wanted to avoid him, but I was pretty sure that now, every time I saw him, I’d think about how dumb I’d been today.

  Funny, but I’d never really noticed him the first time he worked here. True, I’d only been a child, but I knew a lot of the doctors and nurses here. After my mom passed away, I’d come here every day after school. But I’d rarely seen Dr. Hawthorne.

  He and my Dad had gone to high school together, but I guess they hadn’t been close. Dad never mentioned Dr. Hawthorne, and he’d acted strange when he saw him in my room just now. Maybe they’d been rivals in school? It seemed like a plotline from the medical dramas I loved to watch on TV, but sometimes things like that happened in real life, too.

  There was a tap on the door and Andrea entered, handing me a cup of tea and a paper bag. “I got blueberry.”

  “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “Are you okay? Does your head still hurt?”

  I opened the bag and fished out the scone. “Yes… but not as much as my ego.”

  She raised an eyebrow and pulled a chair up next to my bed. I gave her half of the scone, and we both nibbled while I told her what happened.

  Afterward, her reaction startled me. “I can’t believe you got to meet him!”

  I frowned. “Weren’t you listening? I completely humiliated myself in front of him.”

  “Yeah, but you got to see him, too. Talk to him. What’s he like in person?”

  For a moment, I glared at her, even though she was my best friend at the hospital. Didn’t she understand how embarrassing that had been?

  But then I couldn’t help but breaking into a reluctant grin. “He’s abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous.”

  “Why Rebecca Miller, look at you using bad language! I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Maybe the concussion brought it out in me.”

  “Or maybe it was that handsome hunk wandering these very halls. I can’t wait to see him.”

  I grimaced, the mortifying memories surfacing again. “I hope your first meeting with him goes better than mine did.” Actually, my first two meetings with him hadn’t gone well since I’d ended up unconscious the first time. Hard to believe the second time was even worse.

  “Well, look on the bright side,” Andrea said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If I screw up and call him Dr. Hottie, too, then we can both run away and join the same convent.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  She smiled and squeezed my hand, and for a moment, I felt a little tearful. Andrea was a full-time employee and at least five years older than me. There’d been no real reason for her to befriend a temporary summer worker—especially one who was the daughter of her boss—but she had.

  After she left, I finished the scone in silence. Except for being mortified, I felt pretty good, but I understood why they were keeping me here. You didn’t mess around with a concussion.

  But being here by myself gave me too much time to think. I found a remote and turned on the TV, but after a few minutes I turned it back off again. There was no use trying to concentrate on anything besides Dr. Hawthorne.

  God, when he’d leaned over me, adjusting blanket and pillow, feeling my forehead, he’d smelled so good. Some kind of cologne with a bit of
spice to it, but also, I think part of it was just him. A delicious, natural, masculine scent.

  He’d been so close to me. Close enough to kiss.

  I wondered if he’d ever be that close again.

  Becca

  I spent most of the next week keeping an eye out for Dr. Hawthorne though I was perpetually nervous about what to do once I spotted him. Sometimes I ducked out of his line of sight and admired him from afar. Other times I stayed the course and nodded politely at him in the hallway. Thus far, I hadn’t been brave enough to initiate a conversation, but the same couldn’t be said for him.

  Each time he saw me, he asked how I was feeling. Or if things were busy in the ER. And each time I flushed as I answered. Why did he have to be both hot as hell and kind? The combination seemed a bit too much—and definitely made him out of my league. I just wasn’t good with men like that. Not that I’d ever known a man like that. But I wasn’t very good with normal guys, either.

  Sure, I’d dated a bit in high school. And I’d had a boyfriend for a grand total of three months last year at the university. He’d taken my virginity in a remarkably quick event that left me feeling that there had to be more to it than that. A few subsequent encounters had let me know that there wasn’t—at least not with him. Somehow, I had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case with Dr. Hawthorne.

  “Miss?”

  I looked up from my desk to see a woman in her early thirties on the other side of the counter. She had a pleasant, open face that currently looked strained. Holding her hand was a dark-haired boy. He looked to be about eight years old.

  “My son was playing soccer when he suddenly started feeling weak. He’s walking really slowly, too. That’s not like him—he normally runs everywhere. He needs to see a doctor.”

  “Of course. Please take a seat and fill out this form and someone will come for him soon.”