LITMIR.BIZ

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Dread. That was totally dread.

      “I was about to call down to get Dr. Backeljauw to send for her. We’ve agreed she’s to shadow you today, learn the ropes before she’s assigned her own patients.” By the time Masterson had gotten it out, Belle’s soul had sunk right through her body and seeped out of her toes, which was probably why it took so much effort to stand back up, but she had to stand. It was either that or implode like a socially awkward black hole and wink out of existence.

      She stuck her hand out, mustered a smile and waited.

      Although he looked at her hand, his attention shot back to Masterson. “I’ll take her down, but I don’t need a nurse practitioner.”

       Rejected.

      She let her hand fall, but he caught it before she got away.

      His hand was large and warm and drew attention to how cold her hands always were, now enfolded in his warmth. Another mark in the pleasant column for this unpleasant man. He didn’t shake right away. When she met his gaze, the coldness she’d seen in his pale blue eyes had dimmed a bit. Only a little and only for a second—so fleeting she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it—but it reappeared after the obligatory shake and withdrawal.

      “Have you just received your license?” The first time he’d spoken directly to her, and that was what he said? Maybe he didn’t have experience with women, even looking as if he did.

      She didn’t flinch, although it took a second for her to decide how to take his words.

      Kindly, she decided, with the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t mean to be rude, despite all she’d seen of him so far. Rude people, mean people, insufferable and just plain unpleasant people were the ones who needed kindness the most. They needed the greatest benefit of the doubt.

      The kind interpretation: his question was about how old she looked. She did look younger than her years and had heard so with annoying frequency since she actually was young.

      Normally, it didn’t bother her, but on the heels of everything that had gone on this morning—coupled with his tone—it took effort to take it kindly, and not as an insinuation she wasn’t up to the task.

      Which rankled.

      Even if she might not be up to the task and had been questioning that too since before he’d barged in.

      “Three years ago.” Words. An answer. Truthful, and not even said with the frustration making her forehead tight.

      “Three years,” he repeated, turning to Masterson. “She doesn’t need to shadow anyone. I’ll bring her down, but she’s not a child. She doesn’t need babysitting.”

      Another whiplash turn. Insults to expressions of faith? Or just getting out of spending more time with her specifically, for whatever reason.

      The idea of being lassoed to him for a day sounded about as appealing as a root canal, but she’d rather admit to possible inadequacy than risk patient lives, and they’d picked him for a reason—probably not because he was a bad doctor.

      “I usually work in small facilities—Urgent Cares and small-town emergency rooms, which send their critical patients to bigger cities with trauma wards, usually before they get to the hospital. I haven’t seen much, if any, intense, man-made trauma. Although I appreciate the vote of confidence, I haven’t earned it.”

      But she hoped to sort out the position and her capability before three months were up. The earlier the better, so if she needed to run, she could just go, no harm, no foul. They could fire her without much explanation in that time too, but she should be able to judge her inadequacy first, regardless of whoever got stuck babysitting her.

      It didn’t need to be him.

      It was still an insulting word, but she’d take whoever would allow her to shadow them.

      “Take it up with Backeljauw,” Masterson said, stepping neatly out of the discussion and standing up. “Good luck, Ms. Sabetta. Welcome again. Don’t let McKeag scare you off—he’s not the brother we use for PR for a reason.”

      McKeag gave a long-suffering eye-roll, looked at her clothes, then turned. “Come on. We’ll go to the locker room, you can quickly change, and we’ll continue to Emergency.”

       CHAPTER TWO

      LYONS STRODE OUT of Masterson’s office, his spine nearly creaking from the tightness that had seized every muscle in his body since he’d found that ridiculous Christmas assignment.

      Despite the carpet inside the office of Human Resources, he could make out the sound of movement behind him. Either she was following, or the ever-flailing assistant was. He didn’t pause to check; she’d follow now or someone else would escort her down later.

      He couldn’t afford to coddle the woman. If he could exchange his family’s fortune for time, he would. When he was on duty, there was never enough of it. There hadn’t been enough for his trip to HR this morning, but he’d gone anyway, intending it to be short. But it had already been too long. Who knew what had come into Emergency in his absence? If he wasn’t there, he couldn’t keep an eye out for inevitable trouble.

      No matter how called he felt to emergency medicine, Lyons knew from hard experience the sorts of people who came in. Pediatric specialists might treat innocent children, but were exposed to their unsavory parents too, or had to treat the aftermath of abuse. Those who practiced widely, engaging in everyday emergency medicine, could see kindly grandmothers or men who’d injured themselves while beating another person to death. Patients with police escorts, cuffed because they were a danger to others, not that it always did much good. Trauma surgeons often treated the already unconscious, but afterward had to deal with those who’d accompanied the patient—people who might turn violent when given bad news.

      Or worse, in the high flow of traffic in and out of Emergency, a madman with a gun could blend in and just start shooting. That happened here.

      He hit the hallway without breaking stride. On a good day, he didn’t have time to coddle the woman, and that was without Christmas insanity being added into the mix.

      His main task was vigilance, and medicine came second. He had to do what he’d failed to do last Christmas and pay attention to what his gut had been saying then and was saying now.

      He heard rapid footfalls on the hallway’s tiled floors behind him—two steps for every one of his to catch up—and called over his shoulder, “Quickly.”

      The difference between this Christmas and last Christmas was him understanding what his gut was saying. The three bullets fired into him by the husband of a colleague had become his gut’s Rosetta stone, the wake-up call that made him pay attention to everything—both for his own benefit and those who hadn’t had the misfortune to share in his life lessons.

      Even without the sound of her scurrying, her presence heated his back. For once, that awareness of someone behind him didn’t prickle like danger. He just felt her there. Awareness that bothered by its nature, by the way it fractured his attention. She might not be a physical danger, but the way he heard and categorized her sounds—breath, step, fidget—was by robbing his concentration.

      It was out of character for him to feel anything, really, except for the tension he’d become so intimate with he even carried it into his sleep. Mistrust of everyone, including himself, was also a constant companion. The attraction sparked by this woman—because he wouldn’t lie to himself; that was what it was—he didn’t like. Didn’t want.

      Still, he had to be civil. This was his workplace; he only yelled when someone deserved it. Just get this done quickly, hand her off to Backeljauw for reassignment and get back on duty.

      Breaking his habit, he stopped at the lift and summoned it, giving her a chance to catch up.

      She

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