LITMIR.BIZ

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on a snake’s rattler but moving farther away would look as if she was every bit as intimidated as she felt, especially when he looked at her and those ice-shard eyes shouted at her.

       I see you.

       I know I’m interrupting.

       I don’t give a damn.

      It wasn’t that he reeked anger, but she couldn’t imagine anyone missing the cold, disdainful irritation that put him above, somehow. It was almost how she’d picture an angry king, forced to communicate with his lowly, and possibly scabby, subjects. Superior. Arrogant. Bothered.

      If the universe had any affection for her, this would be her only interaction with him. Ever. Even if she was intrigued by the accent. And his shoulders.

      “Isn’t Wolfe doing enough of this nonsense with Conley? I suppose it’s somewhat suiting to Pediatrics, but it’s beneath the other departments. This is Manhattan, not the North Pole Hospital.”

      “I’m sure your inclusion was a mistake, Dr. McKeag,” Masterson said, looking a little bit bored. “And there’s no need to be sarcastic.”

      Hands free of the offending paper, now propped onto his narrow hips, drawing her attention again to the breadth of his shoulders. The black scrubs stretched tight across his chest, defining everything. Impressive torso: one more shallow mark in his favor. Also, as inappropriate of her to dwell on as the man’s other attributes. Like his haircut: a strange mix of a carelessly natural, longish top and neckline razored to perfection. His hair should not matter.

      “I’m a Scot. It’s genetic.” He said this so precisely she wanted to believe him. She could see the title of the imaginary medical journal article now: Sarcasm Gene Discovered in Ancient Scottish Burial Site.

      The deadpan way he delivered it said he wasn’t done, no wrap-this-up inflection to his words, even though he’d just won. Masterson’s words were both admission and apology. The argument should be over. He should be going. Belle would like to get back to the business of finishing her paperwork, so she could get to the Emergency Department and get on with being out of her depth and out of her mind to take this position in the first place.

      “Good.” He looked at her again and the curiosity she didn’t want to feel bloomed into life, a sign Belle should sit back down so he would be out of her line of sight and less inclined to sexually harass him in her mind—something he’d surely see on her face if he had any intuition or experience with women, which he certainly did, looking like that.

      He wasn’t her type anyway, even if his attractiveness could counter his personality. Belle tended to date the kind of man who never stormed anywhere, outside video games. And, generally, only had the broad-shoulder thing happening in the avatars they selected. They were kind, quiet, intelligent and introverted, like her. Storming anywhere besides a digital castle to fight an electronic troll would never, ever occur to them.

      The mental comparison conjured him in a set of armor, a battered iron helmet, with a broadsword, and was somehow less laughable than she would’ve hoped. Instead, it made her think of the sexy Viking book she’d read the other day.

      Whatever. She was going to sit. Not stand there and stare at the man.

      Pretend he wasn’t standing close to the chair she was foolish to continue avoiding when he wasn’t a threat, just exceedingly cranky about a Christmas molehill. Irritating. Not dangerous. She’d moved to New York City and had to act like it. Have some gumption. Decide he could just take his impressive torso, enviably square jaw, and step to the side to avoid standing close to her.

      Yeah! Lie to herself. Might as well. Vigorous denial got her through everything else in her life, let her pretend she wasn’t the last Sabetta standing.

      She sighed before she could stop herself, but Masterson’s glance pushed those thoughts aside.

      She was usually better at putting away the misery she’d been avoiding for over a year, but since she’d arrived in New York her subconscious had waged a near constant assault.

      She took a breath, stepped right back to the chair and sat, keeping him and his dark, foreboding shoulders out of view.

      But not far enough away that she couldn’t still feel him, looming like a thundercloud in his black scrubs.

      She glanced down into the bag still sitting beside her chair where she’d stashed the three sets of departmental scrubs she’d been provided. The black scrubs.

      Her stomach dropped.

      Damn. He was from Emergency, and this rude showdown wasn’t even related to the job. Nothing to do with patient care. She liked to think of all medical professionals having the guts to go to the mat for their patients, but all this was about Christmas activities?

      One glance over her shoulder confirmed the sharp set of his clean-shaven jaw was not that of a happy man. The dissonance between his reaction to the event and the importance of it clanged like a gong in her ear.

      If anyone understood dreading the holidays, it was her. Thanksgiving had been bad enough the past couple of years, but Christmas was worse.

      Although her family had a history of service—starting with Nanna exchanging her white cap for fatigues to serve in the Korean War, continuing with Dad, a Scottsdale policeman until his death, to Belle becoming a nurse—Noelle had started her career as a flight attendant, then secured flight training and become one of the few female pilots in a major commercial airline. Her life had been flying around the world, gone most of the time, but she’d always come back home for Christmas. At least for long enough to fetch Belle for their traditional adventure.

      They were always together for Christmas, and that now made the season about two months of misery.

      Yet, even she—with her impossibly good reasons to dread the season—couldn’t drum up this level of irritation at being included by someone.

      The muscle at the corner of his ridiculously square jaw bunched and flexed, bunched and flexed, and could be doing nothing but gritting and grinding his back teeth. Not irritated. Angry.

      “Emergency, of all departments, is too busy and too critical for this kind of nonsense to take up space in anyone’s head. Lives are on the line.”

      This was him holding back? Boggled the mind.

      “This is a hospital. Lives are on the line in all departments.”

      “And in Emergency, the line is much narrower than most other departments. It’s the front line. People need to be focused, not distracted by and gossiping about orchestrated, compulsory...festivities.”

      The pause that lingered before he uttered the word festivities spoke to this civilized visage he projected to cover some of his anger, but her mind supplied several less civilized words that better expressed his vibe, and Nanna’s mantra sprang to mind right behind it: People who hurt others are suffering too. Suffering.

      No. Nope. Not thinking that today either. She didn’t have space left in her head to worry about a random, cranky doctor on her first day in a job that was probably too big for her anyway.

      “It’s just a holiday gift exchange.”

      “And it can occur without my participation, as can anything else that’s being planned. I hope the third time is the charm, as I’ve made this request twice, then found that slid into my locker this morning.”

      If anyone needed Christmas...

      “There’s nothing else planned as yet for Emergency.” Masterson smiled again, but the corners of her mouth barely lifted. It might not even be a smile, maybe it was an extremely pleasant grimace. Unpleasant smile, highly pleasant grimace.

      Sliding the offending invitation out of the way, Masterson moved on with a gesture to Belle, where she sat with McKeag still over her shoulder.

      “This

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