The Nightshift Before Christmas. Annie O'Neil
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drop completely out-of-character sultry kisses along his neck...
No! And double, triple, infinity no! No Josh West. Not anymore!
“Didn’t the agency tell you?”
The expression on his face told her he knew damn well it hadn’t told her. The twinkle in his eye told her he was enjoying watching the steam beginning to blow out of her ears. Typical. He always had been spectacular at winding her up and then bringing her to a whole other plane of happy—
Stop it, Katie McGann. You are not falling under his spell again.
“Tell me what?”
“No need to grind your teeth, darlin’.” He tsked gently. “It’ll give you a headache.”
“Headache?” Maddening and headache-inducing didn’t even begin to cover the effect he was having on her. “Try migraine.”
“Good thing I’m around, then.”
He gave her one of those slow-motion winks that had a naughty tendency to bring out the...the naughty in her.
“Those things can knock you out flat.”
An image of a shirtless Josh slowly lowering himself onto her...into her...blinded Katie for an instant. The muscled arms, the tanned chest, slate eyes gone almost gray with desire and lips shifting into that lazy smile of his—the one that always brought her nerves down a notch when she needed a bit of reassurance.
She scrunched her eyes tight and when she opened them again there it was in full-blown 3-D. The smile that could light up an entire room.
“Josh, I can’t do this right now. Our locum hasn’t bothered to show, and as you can see—” her arms curled protectively around herself as the sliding doors opened to admit a young man with a child “—I’m busy. Working,” she added, as if he didn’t quite get the picture.
Never mind the fact he’d come top in the class above hers at med school, so clearly had brains to spare. Or the little part about how she was standing there in a lab coat in the middle of an ER. A bit of a dead giveaway. Urgh! If she used coarse language, a veritable stream of the colorful stuff would be pouring forth! Why was he just standing there? Grinning?
“What’s the game here, Josh? Yuletide Torture? Our last Christmas together wasn’t horrific enough for you?”
His expression sobered in an instant. She’d overstepped the mark. There was no need to be cruel. They’d both borne their fair share of grief. Grinding it in deep wasn’t necessary. They would feel the weight of their mutual loss in the very core of their hearts until they each stopped beating. Longer if such a thing was possible. Forgetting was impossible. Surviving was. But only just. Which was exactly why she needed him to leave. Now.
“Sorry, Kitty-Kat. You’re stuck with me. I’m your locum tenens.”
To explain why he was late for his first shift, Josh could have told Katie how his car had spun out on some black ice on the way in, despite it being a 4x4 he drove, and the all-weather tires he’d had put on especially, but from her widened eyes and set expression he could see she had enough information to deal with. The latest “Josh incident,” as she liked to call his brushes with disaster, could be kept for another time.
“No. No, I’m sorry, Josh—that’s not possible. We can’t...”
He heard the catch in her voice and had to force himself to stay put. In his arms was where his wife belonged when she was hurting, but it was easy enough to see it was the last place she wanted to be.
He flexed his hands a few times to try and shake the urge. With Katie right there, so close he could smell her perfume... It would be futile, of course, but one thing people could always say about Josh West—he was a man who never had a problem with attempting the impossible. How else could he have won Katie McGann’s heart? Cool East Coast ice princess falling in love with the son of a Tennessee ranch manager, scraping his way through med school with every scholarship and part-time job he could get his callused hands on? It was when he’d finally got his hands on her—man, they’d shaken the first time—he’d known the word “soulmates” wasn’t a fiction.
“Dr. McGann?”
Both their heads turned at the nurse’s call, and the strength it took to keep his expression neutral would have put a circus strongman out of work.
So. Katie had gone back to her maiden name.
Another nail in the coffin for his big plan, or just another one of Katie’s ways of ignoring the fact they belonged together? That everything that had happened to them had been awful—but survivable. Even more so if they were together.
“Can you take this one? Arterial bleed to an index finger. He says it’s been pumping for a while. Shannon’s in with him now.” The nurse held out a chart for her to read.
“Absolutely, Jorja. How long’s a while?” Katie asked, taking the three strides to the central ER counter while scanning the chart, nodding at the extra information the charge nurse supplied her.
Josh took the chance to give his wife a handful of once-overs—and one more for good measure. It had been some time since his eyes had run up those long legs of hers. Too long. He’d been an idiot to leave it so long, but she had been good at playing hide-and-seek and he’d had his own dragons to slay. A small flash of inspiration had finally led him to Copper Canyon—the one place he’d left unexplored.
He stuffed his hands into the downy pockets of his old snowboarding coat, fingers curling in and out against the length of his palms. Laying his eyes on her for the first time in two years was hitting him hard. She’d changed. Not unrecognizably—but the young woman he’d fallen in love with had well and truly grown up. Still beautiful, but—he couldn’t deny it—with a bit of an edge. Was this true Katie surfacing after the years they’d spent together? Or just another mask to deal with the disappointments and sorrows life had thrown at them in the early days of their marriage?
Gone was the preppy New England look. And in its stead... He didn’t even know where to begin. Was this Idaho chic? Since when did his Katie wear knee-high biker boots, formfitting tartan skirts in dark purple and black with dark-as-the-night turtlenecks? Yeah, they would be practical in this wintry weather, but it was a far cry from the pastels and conservative clothes she’d favored back in Boston. The new look was sexy.
A hit of jealousy socked him in the solar plexus. She hadn’t... He suddenly felt like a class-A idiot for not even considering the possibility. She hadn’t moved on. Not his Katie. Had she...?
His eyes shot up the length of her legs to the plaid skirt and then up to her trim waistline, irritatingly hidden by the lab coat. His eyes jagged along her hands, seeking out her ring finger. Still bare. He would never forget the moment she’d ripped off her rings and slapped them onto the kitchen counter. Throwing had been far too melodramatic for his self-controlled wife. The word “Enough!” had rung in his ears for weeks afterward. Months.
He exhaled. Okay. The bare finger wasn’t proof positive she wasn’t seeing someone else, but it was something. He scraped a hand through his mess of a hairdo, wishing he’d taken a moment to pop into a barber’s. But he hadn’t worried a jot about what he’d looked like over the past two years, let alone worried about impressing another woman. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Katie to the moment she’d hightailed it out of his life—their life—he’d known there was only one woman in the world for him. And here she was—doing her pea-pickin’ best to ignore him.
His eyes traveled up to her face as she scanned the chart, listening to the nurse. He knew that expression like the back of his hand. Intent, focused. Her brain would be spinning away behind those dark brown eyes of hers to come to the best solution—for both the patient and the hospital, but mostly the patient. One of the many traits he loved about her. Patients first. Politics later. Because there were always politics in a hospital. He knew that more than most. It was why staying at Boston General hadn’t worked out so well. Why a new job in Paris just might be the ticket he needed