Between Me & You: An Enemies to Lovers Workplace Romance (Remington Medical Book 3)

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “She called for transport, and she’s talking to Dr. Michaleson right now,” Harlow put in, and Connor realized she still had the phone to her ear, likely on hold while Macie was on the other line. She sounded fully composed, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wide enough to let Connor know her adrenaline had come out to play, too.

  “Alright. Then let’s see what we’ve got here, shall we?” Mendoza moved to the foot of the exam table, where Marta was breathing deeply like a champ. Connor moved up to make eye contact with her, telling her what a kickass job she was doing and generally trying to distract her from what had to be a really uncomfortable exam, and Connor would give the doc this—he was fast.

  “Marta, you’re four centimeters dilated. Nearly halfway there,” he said. “Your vitals look very good, and your amniotic fluid was clear. All great signs. I’ll go give Macie all the details for the ED. Connor, if you can prep her for transport, we’ll get Ms. Atwell on her way.”

  Mendoza shucked his gloves and slipped from the room, and after a few blinks, Marta seemed to catch up.

  “I’m almost halfway to having this baby? Already?”

  Her panic made a comeback, but Connor got right back in her field of vision, grateful to be big enough that she had no choice but to put eyes on him.

  “There are a lot of factors that’ll determine how long your labor will take. Today is going to be your little guy’s birthday, which is pretty exciting. But since we’re not equipped for him to be born here in the clinic, we’re going to get you across the street to the hospital, just like Dr. Mendoza said. They’ve got the best OBs in Remington over there, and Dr. Michaelson, in the ED? Is one of my closest friends. She’ll take great care of you and the baby while she gets you transferred to labor and delivery.”

  “My husband…” Marta reached out to clutch Connor’s arm. “Oh, my God, my husband isn’t here. We thought we had time, and—”

  “You do,” Connor assured her, because her blood pressure was surely roller-coastering all over the damn place right now. “Four centimeters is just shy of halfway, remember? Is your husband listed as your emergency contact on your paperwork here at the clinic?”

  She nodded. “Y-yes.”

  “Perfect. I’ll have Macie call him as soon as she gets off the phone with the ED, okay?”

  “I can do it right now,” Harlow offered. “Perhaps it would save a little time since Macie’s got her hands full.”

  Marta nodded, a tiny bit of her tension draining away. “Oh, would you, please? This is all just happening so fast.”

  Harlow paused, and Connor realized she was waiting for him to agree before springing into action.

  “That’s a great idea, Ms. Davenport. Thank you. Tell him Marta is on her way to labor and delivery at Remington Memorial, and she’s in the very best hands.”

  She nodded, reaching for the phone she’d hung up only a minute earlier. Marta gave her the number, relaxing visibly as Harlow dialed, then even more when Harlow said, “Mr. Atwell? I’m so glad I caught you,” and began to relay the information over the line. She spoke calmly, and by the time she hung up, Connor had Marta’s IV started and a gurney at the ready. He went through the motions of bundling her in blankets—it was freaking February, after all—and securing her with the safety belt, then heading out to the ambulance waiting in front of the building with Harlow clearing the way.

  “I have to go in an ambulance?” Marta asked in surprise, and Connor nodded.

  “Yes, ma’am. I know it’s only across the street, but rules are rules.” He paused to point at the two very familiar paramedics making their way to the back of the rig. “Plus, the city’s best paramedics are going to take you. Trust me, it’s a win.”

  “He’s such a sweet-talker.” Quinn Copeland, who Connor had known for nearly all four of the years he’d been back in Remington, gave up a grin and a shake of her blond head before turning to Marta. “Hi, Marta. I’m Quinn, and this is my partner, Luke. We’re going to get you to the ED, okay? Dr. Michaelson’s waiting.”

  “That was fast,” Harlow murmured, stepping back on the pavement as Quinn and Connor shifted the gurney and Luke popped the rear doors open.

  “It was great timing, actually,” Luke said. “We just finished making a drop-off, so all we had to do was run it by dispatch, hop in the rig and make a U-turn after Dr. Michaelson got the call. No sweat.”

  An idea popped into Connor’s head, the uneasy look on Marta’s face turning it into words. “Hey, would it be okay if we rode over with you? Just to be sure Marta gets settled,” he added. As badly as he wanted his patient to get the best care possible, he wasn’t about to step on Quinn or Luke’s toes. They were damn good paramedics, from a damn good fire house. “We can stick around the ED until her husband arrives. Show him where to go.” Poor guy was probably panicking a little, too.

  “Fine by me,” Quinn said easily. The call was hers to make. She was the PIC. “Since I’m pretty sure you’re qualified.”

  “I might know a thing or two about being a medic,” Connor joked at Quinn’s back as she turned to move toward the driver’s side door with a laugh.

  Luke shook his head and looked at Marta. “I’ve seen this guy jump out of a medevac helicopter to help save people’s lives. Believe me, he knows more than a thing or two.”

  “Really?” This from both Marta and Harlow, and damn, way to put a guy on the spot.

  Connor lifted a shoulder. “It was only a couple of feet, and there had been a train wreck. They needed medics pretty fast.”

  “It was ten feet,” Luke corrected, forcing Connor to make a mental note to strangle the guy later. “And he was awesome.”

  “Wow,” Marta murmured. But it quickly turned into “Owwwwwww!” and yeah, they needed to move. Luke—the little traitor—and Connor quickly got Marta on board, then climbed in themselves. Harlow stepped up into the back of the ambulance—politely declining Luke’s offer for an assist, Connor noticed with more appreciation than he should probably admit—and in seconds, they were doors-closed, wheels-in-motion. Marta’s contraction lasted longer than her previous two, and Connor timed it as Luke got the call information into the system with dispatch.

  They arrived a minute later, and Quinn and Luke led the way toward the ED for the handoff in motions Connor had done probably a billion times before—survey your surroundings, check. Release the gurney, clack. Hustle forward, thump, thump, thump, and where anyone else might see chaos, Connor felt perfectly at home.

  Especially when he saw Tess waiting only a few steps inside the double-wide automatic doors, with Boldin right beside her. Quinn gave her the bullet, rattling off Marta’s vitals in a few succinct sentences. Tess nodded and greeted her new patient, then turned to lift her chin at Connor in greeting.

  “You’re determined to keep me on my toes, aren’t you, Ginormica?” she called out, sending a tart smile over one shoulder.

  “Always,” Connor promised. “We’ll wait for Dad out here. Cool?”

  “Whatever rocks your socks,” she said, but then turned to mouth thank you in his direction. Tess looked at Quinn and Luke, then Boldin, none of them pausing so much as half a step as she told them, “We’re heading right up to labor and delivery. That way, if Marta here wants an epidural, we can speed that process along.”

  “Oh, God bless you,” Marta said, making Tess (and Connor) grin.

  “I’ve got your back, Momma. Here we go. It’s baby day!”

  Then, as quickly as they’d appeared in the mouth of the ambulance bay, they were gone.

  To the universe’s credit, the rest of the day was business as usual—which, Connor thought ironically, had probably suited Harlow just fine. Marta’s husband had arrived in the ED not even ten minutes after Tess had taken her upstairs, and as soon as Connor and Harlow had directed him to the labor and delivery unit, they’d returned to the clinic in silence. The quiet hadn’t been uncomfortable, although the bitter chill in the air had registered a hell of a lot more since hi
s adrenaline had eased by then.

  Harlow hadn’t seemed to notice. She’d just fallen into stride beside him, telling him she had to get ready for her board meeting as soon as they’d reached the clinic’s front doors. Now that the meeting had come and gone, as had enough hours to shrink the day’s sunlight into shadows, Connor knew he should head out. He’d gotten a lot done today. The clinic was an hour and a half from closing for the night, and only a few people sat in the waiting room chairs.

  But the one person still sitting in the back office had him turning on his cross trainers to move away from the front door, not toward it.

  “Hey,” he said, and guess he was going to make this leaning-against-the-doorframe thing a habit. Harlow looked up, and oh yeah. If this was how the view would turn out, he was definitely going to get addicted, fast.

  Connor cleared his throat. “I, ah, thought you might want to know Marta had her baby about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Oh, really?” Harlow looked oddly relieved, and he nodded.

  “Eight pounds, one ounce. They went with Declan. Everyone’s doing great.”

  She took in the details, but only for a second before she asked, “Wait. You’ve been here all evening. How do you know?”

  Annnnd busted. “Tess texted me.”

  Technically, they weren’t supposed to share medical details with anyone not directly on a case, and Connor’s involvement in Marta’s had ended as soon as Quinn and Luke had rolled up in that ambo. But if Harlow was bothered by the slight indiscretion, she didn’t let it show.

  Instead, she shocked him with, “You have a lot of really close friends, don’t you?”

  Connor blinked. “Guess I’m just lucky.”

  “You really are.” She paused for a second, looking down at her hands. She’d folded them over her desk in a move Connor had seen from her no less than a hundred times, but something was different about this time.

  This time, she looked as if she was trying to keep them from shaking, and God, he was an idiot.

  “Did I ever tell you about my first active op in the Air Force as a flight nurse?” he asked. The question clearly shocked the crap out of her, because that regal chin of hers lifted right up, her fingers loosening over the papers beneath them.

  “No,” Harlow replied, although her tone painted it like a question.

  One he didn’t hesitate to answer. “It was a rescue mission,” Connor said, knowing he had to go vague as hell, otherwise he’d get served with a big, fat court-martial sandwich. “We had people under heavy fire and some of them were wounded pretty badly. I’d been well-trained as a nurse, and I’d gotten so much air time at that point, I was more comfortable in flight than on the ground. But it was the first time I’d had to treat people in an active combat situation.”

  Harlow’s blue eyes rounded. “That must have been terrifying.”

  “I thought I’d be fine.” He laughed softly, but he couldn’t work up much joy to go with the gesture. “I mean, I was tough. Prepared. Eager to help. I’d gone through a shitload of training. And in a way, I was fine.”

  She looked at him in a wordless request to continue, so he did. “The op was total chaos, and there were a lot of men and women badly wounded. It took everything I had, but I managed to handle my adrenaline well enough to provide the best care that I could.”

  “So, you really were fine,” Harlow said, and damn, Connor hated to bust her bubble.

  “Oh, I was great. Right up until we got back on the ground at base and I threw up five steps from the huey.”

  A gasp flew past her lips, just the smallest huff of noise. “But you just said you handled your adrenaline and helped all those people.”

  “I handled my adrenaline in the moment,” Connor corrected. “The moment lasted for a long time, so I thought everything was okay after those first jitters wore off.”

  Never in a million years would he forget the breath-ripping force of his emotions in those first few minutes. The bullets pinging off the UH-1N’s exterior. The smell of smoke and scorched earth and worse. The blood pooling at his boots. The fact that not everyone had survived that choppy-as-hell flight back to base.

  He shook his head to bring himself back to the clinic. “Funny thing about adrenaline. Sometimes those effects can kick in way after you think you’re in the clear. They’re a bit like shock, that way. The good news is, it’s a very normal reaction.”

  “You didn’t worry that it made you look weak?” Harlow asked, not unkindly, but Connor lifted a brow at her all the same.

  “Damn. You don’t mince words, do you?”

  She raised a brow right back, and the move went right to his gut, quickly spreading lower. “You didn’t expect me to, did you?”

  Well, fucking touché. Also, the way she met him toe to toe with zero shits given? Smoking hot.

  He let one corner of his mouth tick upward, just enough to suggest a smile. “Not even for a second. And to answer your question, hell yeah I was worried it made me look weak. It made me feel weak. But then the other guys in my unit all started talking about their first ops. How they froze. Felt scared as hell. I realized those really intense emotions didn’t make me a bad nurse. They just made me human.”

  “Okay, but you were so calm today,” Harlow argued. “Even when Marta’s water broke and she panicked, you didn’t even blink. Her going into labor was probably nothing compared to the other patients you’ve cared for, but it took me hours to stop shaking.” Pressing her lips together, she slumped against her desk chair. “If I’m being honest, I’m still pretty off-kilter, even now. It makes me feel pretty dumb. The whole thing was over hours ago, and her life was never in danger.”

  Connor pushed off the doorframe, taking a step toward her so she had no choice but to look him right in the eye. “Harlow, listen. I threw you into a pressure cooker of a situation today. I didn’t mean to, but it was still pretty intense, and you did a great job. Those residual effects you’re feeling? They’re far from unusual. In fact, I’m still feeling a little kick of adrenaline, myself.”

  “Really?” she asked, part doubt, part something else that tripped Connor’s switch far more than it should.

  “Yep. It’s unavoidable. But you learn really fast to manage it so it doesn’t manage you.” He flipped his wrist to check the Luminox he was rarely without, and yeah… “Speaking of which, you should probably get some rest. The adrenaline letdown can be pretty powerful once it finally sets in.”

  “I don’t think mine will be doing that anytime soon,” Harlow said with a shake of her head. “I’m pretty keyed up.”

  “That delay can happen, too.” Those endorphins did all sorts of weird-ass things to the human body, and they worked on their own schedule. “In fact, that’s usually how I react after a really big call.”

  “So, how do you fix it?” she asked. Figured she’d want a point-blank solution. This was the same woman who had laid out a nine-page proposal on the best strategy to balance their inventory budget.

  So he really hated that he couldn’t give her one. “Everybody’s different. Some people box, or go running. Some people listen to music.”

  Some people also drank or resorted to no-holds-barred fucking in order to even themselves out, but he wasn’t about to throw that suggestion into the mix. The thought of Harlow, flushed and naked and screaming, was…shit, he had to redirect, right goddamn now.

  “Okay, but what do you do?”

  Connor paused. It would be a matter of syllables to tell her, and he damn near did. But just as she’d sat in front of him this morning, needing to see things firsthand, she was in front of him now. Trying to reconcile her strength with a boatload of emotions she wasn’t familiar with. Emotions he’d put right smack in her path. And because of that, he owed her more than words.

  He owed her action.

  So, he took a deep breath and one hell of a flyer, and said, “Let’s get out of here, and I’ll show you.”

  15

  Harlow hadn’t known what
to expect when Connor had told her to come with him, but this? Definitely not even in her top one hundred guesses. Maybe even a thousand.

  “Batting cages?” she asked, eyeballing the large, warehouse-style building in front of Connor’s Jeep, emblazoned with a sign reading Bottom of the Ninth Batting Cages and Training Center. They’d driven separately, with her following Connor in her car and parking alongside him in the sparsely populated lot. Now that they were out of their respective vehicles and standing together on the pavement, her curiosity took a backseat to her unease.

  He grinned at her, and great, just throw highly inopportune, panty-twisting desire on top of the emotions pile.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Connor said.

  Harlow knew most women got a little prickly about being called ma’am, claiming it made them feel old. But she ate, slept, and breathed a world full of executives who were nearly all men. She’d been condescended to by dozens of them. Asked for coffee (sweetheart). Interrupted. Bulldozed.

  But when Connor called her ma’am, she didn’t feel old. She felt respected.

  Oh, for God’s sake, she needed to get her emotions in check before she did something epically dumb, like let them show.

  Connor, of course, was as laid back as if someone had parked his ass in a beach chair and slid a margarita into his hand. “You said you have a gym bag in your trunk, right?” he asked.

  Harlow’s mind zipped to the bag she kept stocked with a fresh pair of yoga pants, a sports tank top, and her running shoes, just in case she ever got a chance to sneak in an early-morning or late-evening workout. “I do.”

  “Great.” He gestured to the sweater dress peeking out from her wool coat. “You look pretty, and everything, but that dress is probably not the best attire for where we’re headed.”

  Harlow wasn’t sure which thing to try and wrap her mind around first, the fact that he’d called her pretty, or that he truly meant for her to take a whack at a bunch of baseballs in order to manage the odd tension she’d been unable to shake all day.