Bought by the Lone Cowboy

by E. Walsh

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events are purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return it to the seller and purchase a copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Warning

  This book contains graphic content intended for readers 18+ years old.

  If you are under 18 years old, or are not comfortable with adult content, please close this book now.

  * * *

  Chapter One

  He heard the click of her heels on the smooth tile and mentally prepared himself for the battle that he knew would ensue.

  “Ah, Dr. Sheridan. How kind of you to join us and give us your expert opinion.” Dr. Logan Belmonte didn’t even pretend to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  The heel clicks stopped just behind him. A wave of her light perfume cascaded over him. He inhaled without thought. She always smelled so damn good.

  Her husky voice wreaked havoc on his pretend indifference. “Dr. Belmonte. Always a…pleasure.”

  She drew out the word in such a way that anyone listening knew her real feelings toward the man.

  Logan sighed loudly and turned to face her. As always, she looked…perfect… damn it... Everything about her was perfect. He’d heard rumors that she’d been a lingerie model to pay for med school and he had to admit that he didn’t mind thinking of her in only underwear.

  Danielle Sheridan was always a golden tan that brought images of beaches and clear ocean water to mind. Her skin was flawless with no evidence of the heavy makeup he hated on the women he dated. Her hair was a rich brown with flecks of gold. It was currently piled high on her head, as was the style she normally adopted when she was trying to appear professional and intimidating. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he thought it made her look like a sexually-frustrated librarian – or maybe that was just his fantasy talking.

  Her eyes were always the part of her that drew him in the most. They were a deep blue green, and they mirrored anything that she was thinking. When she snapped at him (which was often), they turned a vibrant turquoise. When he interrupted her at peace, they were a tranquil sea green.

  They were currently turquoise, so he knew it was bad.

  “What’s up, Doc?” Logan couldn’t resist. They had a pattern. She interrupted him. He annoyed her. She told him he was an idiot and doing it (whatever it was) wrong. He feigned interest. She threatened to have his job. He threatened to quit. They both continued to work in the same place.

  The place was the reason they both continued to work together, despite their differences. Williamson Children’s Hospital was a renowned haven for children under the age of twelve that had not had successful treatments in standard hospitals. They specialized in cancer treatment, and hereditary diseases.

  Both Danielle and Logan cared more about their patients than the feud between the two of them. They’d been grudgingly working together for a couple years now. Danielle had started as a cardio specialist and worked her way up to head surgeon this past spring. Logan, several years older and not nearly as tight-assed (his words), had been head of neurology for almost three years now.

  “What’s up is that I’m still waiting on those test results for Anna Purcell. If she tests negative for epilepsy, I can go ahead and fast track her on the transplant list.” She consulted her diagnostic chart, flipping agitatedly until she landed on the blank test results.

  “And like I said last time,” he sighed back at her, “I’m not running the test for epilepsy until she’s cleared for neuralgia. I’m not going to have a kid’s death on my hands so early in the week.”

  “Then do both. The lab is clear until 09:00 and she takes first priority.”

  “Sir, yes sir,” he mock saluted. “By the way, your boyfriend is in Waiting Room B.”

  Several catcalls were heard through the busy hallway. She glared at him, her eyes snapping fire.

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s the father of a patient. And he’s in the waiting room because of his little girl, imbecile.”

  “Easy, killer,” he teased. “If you don’t stop scowling, you’re going to get wrinkles right there. Oh wait, is that a wrinkle there?”

  He reached out and touched the smooth skin next to her eye. She swatted him away like a fly, then turned around in a flurry of white lab coat, gray sweater, and black pencil skirt.

  While her heels clicked a pattern he was now familiar with, he couldn’t help a smile that found itself on his face. It was a good day. So far.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  Two days later, the two doctors stood with Anna Purcell’s mother, a middle aged German woman who was starting to prematurely gray, no doubt from the off-and-on sickness that had ravaged her six year old daughter for most of her life.

  Logan was explaining how neuralgia affected children and young adults. Danielle wished it had not been the case, but she couldn’t fault Logan for being thorough and catching the early signs where she had not. She worked with the heart, and therefore it was her primary focus. It was no wonder he’d caught a rare disease of the brain before she had.

  While he ran through the list of symptoms little Anna was bound to feel, she studied the doctor standing next to her. He was ruggedly handsome, ridiculously so for a doctor of his intelligence. He belonged on a surfboard or in the center of a magazine, not in a pristine green lab coat.

  He had auburn hair that was casually pushed to the side. He always kept it short on the sides, with a wave to it on the top. His face was square, his jaw line prominent. His eyes were a unique shade of blue-gray.

  But it was always his lips that she was drawn to, whether they were in a teasing smile, or his annoying smirk, they were full and looked soft. His five o’clock shadow was always present, even when he came in for first shift.

  His shoulders and arms were built. She knew that he was into boxing and her coworker Jan swears that her husband recognized him from a UFC fight years ago. He did usually have scrapes on his knuckles, so she supposed he did it now just to keep in shape. And what a shape it was!

  Although she would never admit it to his face, Logan Belmonte was one of the best doctors on the planet. He was great with kids, especially the little boys. He was patient with the parents, and likeable by all. Children’s care was always a difficult field and he handled the bad news as well as the good news. It was an impressive quality in the man.

  “Anything to add, Dr. Sheridan?”

  She was brought back to the present with a knowing glint in his eyes. He probably thought she was mooning over him. Ridiculous. She only mooned a little bit when it came to Logan.

  She began to list the symptoms they would be following most closely, mainly her weak heart and the toll the medication would take on the child’s liver.

  Logan watched her with a respectful smile. He found it interesting that he had caught her eyes on him only moments ago when she usually was intent on the task at hand – Anna.

  He fancied himself a bit smarter than the average guy. Chalk it up to genes or ego, or his extensive medical experience, but he usually caught onto things fairly quickly. And all of his brain cells told him that Danielle Sheridan did not like him.

  When she was talking with Sam Carroll, for instance, the father that he had earlier teased her about, she was all smiles and warm glow. The minute he interrupted her or she saw him out of the corner of her eye, that smile dropped into a clenched grimace.

  They had never really gotten into it at work, at least nothing more than the usual professional banter among peers, so he didn’t exactly know
where the dislike came from. His best guess was that his arrogance annoyed her, his physical size intimidated her, and that she felt an attraction to him that she abhorred. He wasn’t fond of it either. It interrupted their work and even distracted him sometimes.

  Everything about her attracted him – her hint of perfume, her looks, the way that she tried to control him. And while she may not be his typical type, he couldn’t deny that he found her intoxicating on every level.

  However, he knew that ship was never going to sail. It wouldn’t work – both because they had to work with each other closely, but also because he knew he wasn’t her type as much as she wasn’t his.

  Over the years, he’d seen the guys she brought around to work events. They were the sensitive, good-looking, humanitarians and philanthropists. He couldn’t compete with that, and didn’t want to.

  When she looked up at him curiously, he realized that he’d been lost in his own thoughts and had missed the question.

  See? This is what she did to him. Turned his brain to mush. The last thing he needed was to sleep with her. He was sure that sort of distraction would never end.

  An hour later, they walked out of the room and Danielle closed the door softly. She inhaled deeply and leaned back against the wall. That had been rough. When neither of them spoke, she understood without asking that he had felt the strain as much as she had. They both stood there for a few minutes until a nurse called Logan away for a code blue.

  It was moments like these when she didn’t hate him. He was better with patients at times like this. In front of patients they complimented each other very well. It was nice that they could communicate without speaking, given their pension for arguing whenever words were spoken.

  One tiny part of her had the thought that it would be nice to come home to that, too. Not to have to explain the long hours, the trips into work that came in the middle of the night or the middle of a vacation, the unyielding stress of having lives in her hands.

  Not gonna happen, Sheridan, she warned herself.

  She made a few more stops and then went to leave for the day. Checking her watch, she realized that she was twenty minutes late to dinner with Sam. Perhaps the reason she disliked Logan was because he generally was right on. She had been seeing Sam Purcell for a few weeks now. It wasn’t a conflict of interest in her mind, since his daughter was a terminal case that really wasn’t more than just making her comfortable.

  She grabbed her street clothes out of her locker and headed for the elevator. No time to change. She’d have to do it at her house while she raced around trying to look somewhat presentable after a twenty hour shift.

  Hitting the button to go down repeatedly, she heard the laughter behind her and almost groaned aloud.

  “I heard that if you hit it four times a second, it’ll take us to nirvana.” Logan gave her his most annoying smile and winked at her. She rolled her eyes and looked away.

  She glanced at the stairwell a few feet away. Was it worth being late and huffing it down twenty flights of stairs? She sighed. Definitely not. She would then be sweaty and late.

  The welcome ding of the elevator answered that problem. She grabbed her overnight bag and stepped inside. Logan followed her in, then stood at the opposite side of the elevator with his hands in his pockets and eyes front.

  She busied herself by checking through her phone messages as she heard the floors click away. Too soon, the elevator slowed to a halt. She moved farther back in preparation for an oncoming wave of coworkers headed home. Instead the doors didn’t open, and no one came on.

  She heard Logan exclaim, “What the hell?!”

  The lights on the level counter had turned off. She tried pressing a bunch of buttons, but nothing happened and no lights flashed. She hit the emergency red button, but no one answered the call like they were supposed to.

  She looked at Logan, trying to stay calm. “I’m sure it’s just temporary.”

  He looked back at her, but thankfully didn’t question it. They stood for a few minutes, assuming it would begin its travel again. It didn’t. They both checked their phones, but no service inside the metal box.

  “Shit,” Logan said. He glanced sideways at her. “Looks like we’re stuck.”

  “Shit,” she said. This was all she needed; stuck in an elevator with the one man on staff that she couldn’t stand or get out of her mind.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Over the course of the next hour, they each tried to fix the stuck elevator in their own way. Logan, using brute strength and sheer determination, tried to force the doors open or smash out the ceiling. Neither tactic worked very well. Danielle tried calling for help at the top of her lungs and punching the emergency button repeatedly for a good ten minutes -- again, without result.

  “Why is no one answering us?” she asked in frustration.

  Logan looked at his watch and sighed. “Because now it’s shift change at the front desk,” he said, falling back against the wall. “And there are a dozen other elevators in the building. It could be hours before they figure out this one’s not running.”

  She glanced at him with a horrified look on her face. He didn’t know if it was the horror of being stuck in an elevator or the horror of being stuck in an elevator with him.

  He sank down to the floor, landing on the cold base in a slump. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to catch some sleep while we’re in here.”

  “That’s your great plan? Just take a nap?” She shouldn’t have been surprised. Instead of using that brilliant mind of his, he’d just let help come to them…eventually.

  “Well, do you have a better idea? Come on,” he wheedled. “Just sit down. You standing there makes me nervous. What if the elevator shifts and you fall on top of me? I could be injured for life!”

  “Funny, asshole.” She bit at a fingernail and thought about her options. She was passed being late for Sam. Hopefully he would just think she’d stayed late at work or was in surgery, and not that she was standing him up for their date. Defeated, she slumped down on the opposite wall from Logan. She shivered when the thin material of her scrubs hit the cool floor.

  “Are you cold? I don’t think the heat will work when none of the power is on. Do you want my shirt?” He tugged his green scrub shirt away from his chest.

  Danielle looked at him. Unlike her, he looked to be only in scrubs. When she went into her post-surgery checkup, she had changed from her lab coat and regular clothes into a long sleeve gray shirt and her blue scrubs. His arms were bare, and he was offering her his only layer of clothing? Perhaps chivalry wasn’t dead. Or maybe this was his attempt to get laid in an elevator. Her money was on the latter.

  “No, I have street clothes I was going to put on. Now I’m really wishing I would have.” She looked longingly at her tote bag. It was her favorite part of the day, changing out of her scrubs and feeling like a human being again. And now she had hours worth of time before that happened.

  “Well just put them on then. What’s the matter?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Getting naked in the elevator?”

  He gave her a wolfish grin in reply. “It would make for an interesting story in the cafeteria. You know how the nurses love a good scandal.”

  A few minutes later he suggested it again, this time seemingly a little less devilish about it. “Danielle, for Christ sake, just put the damn clothes on. Your shivering is getting on my nerves.”

  Only Logan could follow up such a nice sentiment by being an asshole. Still, he had a point. They were obviously going to be in there a while and she was freezing. And it would be a cold day in hell before she made him undress in front of her just to add another layer onto her.

  She made her decision by reaching for the tote. She looked back at him warily. “Don’t look, Logan.”

  He rolled his eyes, and then covered them with his hand. “Blind as a bat. Happy?”

  Without answering she rushed to undre
ss. She didn’t have a lot of faith that his seemingly goodwill would hold out for much longer.

  When he heard her sigh in relief or warmth, he almost ditched his efforts to not look. As it was, he could see parts of her through his fingers. Hell, he wasn’t a monk. She was a beautiful woman. Who wouldn’t look?

  He held back a smile when he saw her lacy purple bra and panties. That lingerie model rumor was starting to make more and more sense. She definitely had the curves for it. He was having a difficult time covering up his sudden state of arousal. Now images of her moving over him dressed in the lingerie he’d just seen was definitely not helping the matter.

  She shoved her shapely long legs into skin tight jeans that made his mouth dry up. The jeans had places where the material was purposely distressed and he could see peaks of golden tanned skin. She then added a soft-looking white camisole that hugged her breasts the way his hands itched to do.

  On top of that was a warm-looking bluish gray cable knit sweater. On a heavier woman, it would’ve been shapeless and bulky, but on her, it filled her out so she looked warm and delectable.

  She added a white knit scarf, socks, and then some gray shoes that looked more like slippers than anything. They were lined in white fur and she smiled when she slid her feet into them. Yeah, he could bet what they felt like.

  He looked down at his black Nike sneakers. They might not be as adorable, but they did the job. He didn’t even bother bringing street clothes to work. Anyone who wanted to hang out after work would just have to put up with scrubs.

  He felt her slide next to him. When her shoulder bumped up against hers, he knew she must’ve really been cold. She obviously was trying to get at his crazy body heat. He was always warm blooded. Now having her scent all around him, and her body pressed up against his side, he was damn near feverish.

  “Better?” he asked, meaning it.

  She looked up at him curiously, trying to determine if he was being a smart ass. She shrugged. “Much. Thanks.”