The Thunderbolt

by Lori Wilde

  The Thunderbolt

  Heartthrob Hospital, Volume 1

  Lori Wilde

  Published by Epiphany Orchards Press, 2020.

  The Thunderbolt

  Heartthrob Hospital Book 1

  Lori Wilde

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from The Jinx

  About the Author

  Also by Lori Wilde

  1

  From the moment Dr. Bennett Sheridan stepped into the operating suite at Saint Madeleine’s University Hospital, his freshly scrubbed hands held up in front of him and a toothpaste-commercial grin breaking across his cover-model face, Lacy Calder was a grade-A, number-one goner.

  She glanced up from where she stood perched on her step stool spreading autoclaved instruments across the sterile field, preparing for an upcoming coronary bypass surgery, when she turned her head and saw him standing inside the doorway.

  Her heart gave a crazy bump against her chest, and her breath crawled from her lungs. Never in all her twenty-seven years had she experienced such an immediate reaction to anyone.

  It was intense and undeniable.

  Endorphins collided with adrenaline. Sex hormones twisted in her lower abdomen like a paint bucket in a shaker. Excitement, approval, and sheer joy sprinted through Lacy’s nerve endings as fast as electrical impulses skipping along telephone lines, wiring urgent messages to her brain.

  It’s him! It’s the Thunderbolt.

  Oh, my goodness gracious, Great-Gramma Kahonachek was right. He wasn’t some silly myth like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or the Tooth Fairy. Lacy was not the sort of woman who lusted diligently after complete strangers, and yet she was lusting after this one.

  Big-time.

  Step aside, McDreamy! Beat it, Doug Ross! Take a Hike, House! Move over, Dr. Dorian! Dr. Bennett Sheridan has arrived!

  The man’s Mr. Universe physique begged her to caress him with her eyes. He was tall, well over six feet, and broad-shouldered. He wore green hospital scrubs, but the normally shapeless garment seemed to actually enhance his amazing body.

  With his arms curled upward, still damp from the mandatory fifteen-minute surgical scrub, she could see the hard ridges of his biceps bulging beneath thin cotton sleeves.

  He possessed spiced peach skin as dark as an itinerant beachcomber’s, and a firmly muscled neck spoke of time spent pursuing outdoor athletic activities. A tennis player, she decided, or maybe softball. His nose, crooked slightly to the right, announced that it had been broken sometime in the past, giving him a tough, no-nonsense air.

  A fight, she wondered, or perhaps an accident?

  His teeth, straight and white, flashed like a linen sail behind his widening smile. An accompanying dimple carved a beguiling hole into his right cheek. When his chocolate-kisses eyes met hers, Dr. Feel Good made it seem as if she were the only woman on the face of the earth.

  Be still, my heart.

  She felt an unmistakable “click,” as if something very important had settled into place. Something that, until now, had been sorely out of kilter and she’d never known it.

  At long last it had happened.

  Lacy’s knees turned to water. Her pulse hammered, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as surely as if plastered by creamy peanut butter.

  “Morning, ladies,” he greeted Lacy and the circulating nurse, Pam Marks. “I’m Dr. Bennett Sheridan, third-year resident on a study fellowship from Boston General. I’ll be interning with Dr. Laramie for the next six weeks.”

  They had known he was coming on board, of course. Dr. Laramie had made a point of bragging about the fine young doctor, summa cum laude from Harvard, who’d flown to Houston specifically to study under him.

  A young doctor who’d beaten out three hundred other anxious applicants for the prestigious opportunity. What Lacy hadn’t expected was that Dr. Sheridan would melt her heart with that let’s-break-open-a-bottle-of-champagne smile or that she would experience the most desperate urge to razzle-dazzle him.

  But how could she ever hope to impress a man so obviously out of her league? He was Mike Trout. She was the water girl.

  His gaze landed on her and stuck.

  A long, weighted moment passed.

  Lacy gulped. Fully gowned and masked as she was, her hair covered with a sky-blue surgical cap and her feet slippered in matching shoe covers, Lacy couldn’t help wondering why he stared so intently. Had she forgotten to put eye shadow on one eye? Did she have a smudge on her forehead? Was her mascara smeared?

  Just her luck to meet the man of her dreams on the day she’d flubbed Makeup Application 101.

  Unnerved, Lacy took a step backward and promptly somersaulted off her stool.

  “Are you all right?” Without even thinking about having broken scrub, Bennett Sheridan rushed to the fallen nurse’s side.

  Poor thing looked like a turtle flipped on its back. Her small legs were flailing wildly as she struggled to extract her toes from the hem of her scrub gown. Her scrub cap was knocked askew, revealing a hint of silky blond hair.

  “Here,” he soothed, kneeling beside her and placing one hand on her shoulder. “Let me help you.” Reaching over, he tugged the corner of the gown from her foot. “There we go.”

  He looked down at her.

  She peered up at him.

  All he could see was a pair of soft, beguiling blue eyes the shimmering hue of lazy summer dreams peeking at him over the top of her scrub mask. Sumptuous eyes framed by impossibly long lashes that zeroed in on him with the precision of a laser beam.

  Bennett blinked at the sudden sensation piercing his chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound emerged.

  “Do you hear music?” she murmured.

  “Music?”

  “Bells ringing, birds tweeting, angels singing?”

  “Angels?”

  “You know, those heavenly creatures with wings.”

  Thoroughly scientific Bennett cleared his throat, but damn if he didn’t hear a faint refrain of hallelujah somewhere in the back of his brain.

  “Did you hit your head?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered.

  “You’ve both broken scrub.” The circulating nurse’s voice cracked through the enchanting spell. “Get off the floor. Scrub in again.” She clapped her hands. “Hurry. The patient is in holding, and Dr. Laramie will be here within minutes.”

  Bennett rose to his feet and held out his palm to the cupcake-size scrub nurse. She reached up and took his hand.

  It was an extraterrestrial moment. An R-rated version of ET. Out-of-this-world woman touches man, generates ethereal glow, causes hot sparks deep inside his groin.

  Very hot sparks.

  Impossible.

  He couldn’t even see her entire face. This sensation had zilch to do with the young woman at his feet and everything to do with the fact he’d eaten a chocolate-chip muffin for breakfast. His blood sugar had crashed after the sugar rush.

  Yeah, that was the ticket.

  Not a testosterone overload. Not an endorphin rush. Bottoming out blood sugar. He needed protein. Good thing he kept beef jerky in his locker.

  He tugged her off the floor.

  She righted her cap and avoided his eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered and started for the door.

  “Wait,” he said. “You’ve got something stuck on the back of your scrub pants.”

  �
�Where?” She turned her head and tried to peer behind her.

  “Allow me.”

  Not knowing what demon possessed him, Bennett placed one hand at her hip to hold her steady. A soft, inviting hip that could easily have modeled gauzy, blink-and-they’re-not-even-there undergarments.

  He took his other hand and grabbed hold of the sticky red label plastered to her world-class tush and pulled.

  Audibly, she sucked in her breath.

  He was startled to discover she was trembling. His heart stuttered, and he realized his blunder too late. He should not have touched her in such an intimate place. Not when he was having lascivious thoughts about that delightful bottom.

  “Here you go.” He cleared his throat and kept his voice neutral, belying the chaos rioting inside him. He placed the label in her hand.

  It read: Volatile, Handle with Care.

  Was that a message or what?

  “Th-thank you,” she stammered.

  “Scrub in again. Both of you.” The circulating nurse barked from across the room and pointed in the direction of the scrub sinks. “Now.”

  They stood side by side at the deep stainless-steel sinks in the scrub area, scouring first their fingers, then their hands, and lastly their arms with stiff-bristled plastic brushes and reddish-brown antiseptic solution.

  Neither had spoken, but Lacy felt as if she was ready to explode.

  Bennett began to whistle.

  The sound pushed excited shivers under her skin. She cocked her head and listened, trying to identify the tune. When she did, she almost dropped her scrub brush.

  “Hooked on a Feeling.”

  Was his whistling this particular old-fashioned song some kind of sign? Possibly a subliminal expression of his internal thoughts?

  The Thunderbolt.

  This had to be it. Nothing else explained her reaction to him.

  Wait a minute, Lace. Hold your horses. For all you know this guy is married or engaged or gay or too wrapped up himself…

  She glanced at his left-hand ring finger. Bare. But that didn’t mean anything. Most surgeons didn’t wear rings. Then again, the guy was a surgical resident, and few residents were married. Still, a naked ring finger was no guarantee.

  Lacy couldn’t believe fate would so cruelly lead her astray. Surely Cupid wouldn’t send her a married man. Because that’s exactly what this felt like. As if she had been shot straight through the heart with the winged cherub’s love-dipped arrow.

  Her friend down-to-earth friend CeeCee would call it “insta-crush lust” but Lacy knew this was different.

  She recalled the feel of Bennett’s hand at her hip, his fingers plucking the sticky label from her backside. An electrical thrill shot through her, tingling all the way to her toes.

  Stunned, Lacy could not speak. How was it possible that the mystery man she’d been spinning elaborate fantasies about for half her life was poised a mere five inches away?

  Since she was a young child, the women in her family had promised that one day she would meet her Mr. Right.

  “But how will I know?” young Lacy had asked her mother.

  “The thunderbolt,” her mother had replied. “It strikes hard and fast. You’ll just know.”

  “There’s no mistaking it,” her grandmother Nony had interjected.

  “No point even looking around,” Great-Gramma Kahonachek agreed. “If you don’t feel the thunderbolt, then he isn’t the one. If you do, then nothing can stand in the way of true love.”

  Growing up in a large extended family, listening to the romantic tales from the old country, Lacy admitted she secretly wished the thunderbolt was real and not a figment of the grandmothers’ active imaginations. They had trained her to associate love with a strong physical and a fated mental jab that couldn’t be mistaken.

  The magic had worked for her mother and her grandmother and her great-grandmother. If the thunderbolt theory was good enough for them, it was good enough for her. They’d all had long, and happy marriages and she wanted in.

  Here at last was her thunderbolt in the flesh. With a mere smile, he had knocked her out with a clean one-two punch.

  She accepted her emotions at face value. Dr. Sheridan was the man she’d been waiting a lifetime for. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.

  And yet, she was scared.

  Terrified, in fact.

  His sudden appearance in her world was a disruption of the status quo, and as much as she had longed to find her true-life partner, now that the time was upon her, she was afraid she would screw up her one chance at happily ever after.

  Lacy experienced a breathless edginess, like a panicked swimmer dragged down by the ocean’s hidden undertow. She wasn’t sure what to do next. She couldn’t very well say to him, “Hi, I’m the woman you’re supposed to marry, and I wanna bear your children.”

  “What’s your name?” he asked in a James Bond voice that caused a ripple of slick heat to roll down her back.

  “My—my name?” she stammered.

  “I don’t want to have to shout, ‘Hey, you,’ every time I need a retractor.”

  His eyes twinkled mischievously, and his bold stare made her wonder if he had X-ray vision and could see past her outer clothing to her skimpy black lace matching bra-and-panty set beneath.

  She had a thing for expensive underwear. Lingerie made her feel feminine, sexy, even when she wore baggy scrubs. She imagined his reaction if he knew what she had on right this very moment and ended up embarrassing herself.

  Cheeks burning, Lacy swallowed hard and concentrated on scrubbing her fingers until they throbbed, desperate to sever her gaze from his.

  Did he feel it too? This heat? This energy? This inexplicable something?

  “Lacy,” she finally whispered, frustrated by her shyness.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.” He tilted his head as if straining to hang on to her every word. “You have such a soft voice.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to apologize for.” His smile widened and twin dimples appeared in his cheeks.

  She knew it was dumb, but she had a really hard time talking to gorgeous men. Her tongue turned to oatmeal; her hand sprouted extra thumbs, and she stumbled and stuttered.

  With the teenage bag boy at the grocery, no problem. Her middle-aged dentist with the bad toupee, no sweat. But give her a handsome, sexy guy, and Lacy morphed into the world’s greatest klutz.

  Maybe it was because she was the second of six kids, and she’d sort of gotten lost in the shuffle. She wasn’t the kind to speak up for herself, although she knew she should.

  Her friends told her she was too nice. Maybe that was true. Lacy only knew that it was difficult for her to make small talk. She worried about sounding foolish, and she figured it was better to keep her lips zipped and let people wonder than open her mouth and remove all doubt.

  So here she was standing next to a mythological god in human form, and she could barely utter a single intelligent word. What good did it do to have found The One when she couldn’t even speak to him?

  “Lacy.” She squared her shoulders and forced herself to speak louder, but she was still unable to meet his eyes. “Lacy Calder.”

  “Well, Lacy Calder, I’m charmed to make your acquaintance.”

  Charmed? Her?

  Quickly, she glanced over to see if he was looking at her, but he was rinsing his elbows in the deep stainless-steel sink. Lacy took advantage of the moment and allowed her gaze to linger upon him, absorbing his essence, rejoicing in his overt masculinity.

  He exuded strength and power. A woman would never be afraid if she had a man like Dr. Sheridan to protect her. Then, as if feeling her eyes upon him, he raised his head and boldly winked.

  Ack! Busted.

  Lacy blushed and dipped her chin to her chest. Thank God for her mask. It covered most of her face. The only things that could give away her errant thoughts were her eyes. As long as she didn’t meet his gaze directly, she could get throu
gh this surgery.

  Hurriedly, she kicked off the water with her knee then turned, hands up, and headed for the operating room.

  She could feel Bennett’s gaze burning her backside. Lacy gulped and hoofed it across the floor, willing her hips not to wiggle. She was concentrating so hard that she didn’t even see the orderly pushing the supply cart.

  “Lacy.” Bennett called her name. “Look out.”

  His warning came too late. She turned but not quickly enough.

  Wham!

  The cart broadsided her. Supplies teetered. The orderly swore.

  Lacy reached out a hand to keep the supplies from falling, but her sleeve caught on a shelf.

  She jerked back.

  Boxes began their slow slide to the floor. Catheters and instrument trays, specimen bottles and packages of syringes, an avalanche of equipment falling on her.

  Lacy tried to leap out of the way, but her sleeve remained snagged. Before she could hit the ground, Bennett was there. His arms went around her waist, holding her steady and his breath seared warm against the nape of her neck.

  Lacy flushed to her roots. He must think her the clumsiest woman in the entire universe.

  “I’ve got you,” he whispered.

  And she thought wildly, inappropriately, Yes, you do.

  2

  After they finished their third scrub of the morning, they re-gowned and entered the operating suite at the same moment Dr. Laramie strode in.

  Bennett started a conversation with his superior, effectively letting Lacy off the hot seat.

  Mentally, she castigated herself for her oafishness. What was the matter with her? She had better get her head in the game. She couldn’t be dropping instruments higgledy-piggledy during the surgery simply because the latest hospital heartthrob distracted her.