“Sleeping beauty,” Jay responded, his easy, care-free expression resuming instantly when he saw that Eli was awake.
“You were arguing about sleeping beauty?” Eli asked in confusion.
“No, dumbass. We were arguing about women. He was calling you sleeping beauty because you’ve been sleeping half the damn day.” But Marcus was grinning as he said it. Even after they’d known he was going to be okay, his best friends had been deeply worried about Eli.
Eli rubbed a hand down his face. “Did anybody come in while I was asleep?”
“Just that scary ass nurse who pulled Jay’s ear when she saw him sleeping on the floor.”
“Nurse Ellers? She’s nice!” Eli insisted.
Jay and Marcus looked at one another and rolled their eyes. “Not all of us have the ability to melt women just by showing our teeth,” Jay said. “She’s nice to you but could take or leave me and Marcus.” He tossed the ball back to Marcus. “Were you waiting for somebody?”
“Nah. Not really.” Eli tugged at his hair just a touch, was relieved when the pain in his ribs wasn’t excruciating. It was roaring, but was more of an ache than a slice of pain at this point. A good sign. He thought of the surgeon. Dr. Natalia Camellia. She’d promised she’d come to see him before he left and he was going home today. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been back since their last conversation.
He looked up at Jay and Marcus. “You guys remember a girl we went to high school with? Natalia Camellia? Not sure if she was our grade or not.”
Jay narrowed his eyes and shook his head. But Marcus’s eyes squinted into the past as he groaned aloud. “You don’t remember her? Tia Camellia was hot as hell.”
“That’s her nickname?” Eli tried it out in his head. Tia. He liked it. It was playful and young. A nice juxtaposition to the composed, serious woman who’d stood before him a few days ago.
“That’s mostly what she went by in high school.” Marcus shrugged. “She was a smart kid. Big glasses, all that dark, shiny hair. Kind of nerdy but in a totally hot way.”
“Is she Laura Camellia’s sister?” Jay asked. “Speaking of hot. That girl was a fire hazard.”
“Yeah,” Marcus nodded. “But they didn’t really look alike.”
That’s right. Eli was getting a dim picture in his head of who she was. But honestly, he could remember her sister way better than he remembered Tia. “Laura had all that curly hair and that rack.”
Jay’s eyes unfocused and a dreamy expression came over his face. “I spent one, glorious Saturday night with that rack one year when we came home for Christmas break.”
“Man. I wish I could say the same thing about Tia,” Marcus grumbled. “I had such a crush on her in high school.”
“Really?” Eli’s brow furrowed. The three of them were always so close that he would have thought he’d have known who Marcus had had feelings for.
“Yeah, man. She was cool. Serious and composed and real pretty.”
“Still is.”
“What?” Jay asked. “You’ve seen her recently?”
“She was my surgeon in the ER. Came around a few days ago to check on me.”
“Whoa.” Marcus palmed the football and swallowed down the harsh bite of panic he felt when he pictured Eli needing emergency surgery in an ER. The three of them were like brothers. And he preferred to imagine his brothers as invincible. “I’d heard through the grapevine that she was in med school a few years ago.” Marcus paused, scratched at his beard. “She’s still cute, huh?”
“Gorgeous.”
A knock at the door had the three of them turning toward the woman in question. She blinked at the three men. Obviously surprised to see all of them there. Marcus instantly rose from his chair.
“Tia.”
“Marcus!” Her face lit up for the first time that Eli had witnessed and it made him feel like he’d just taken a hit of helium. But the feeling immediately soured when she moved quickly toward Marcus, rose up on her toes for a quick hug. “I was wondering if I’d see you. I’d heard that the three of you were still friends.”
Not waiting for an answer, she crossed the room with her hand out. “I’m Natalia Camellia, and you’re Jay Brady.”
Jay, charmed and smiling, took her hand. “You knew my name.”
She rolled her eyes. “Everyone knew your name in high school. But don’t worry about remembering me. I’m sure I was much too quiet and nerdy for the likes of you.”
“Well, that would have been my mistake then,” Jay said, his eyes traveling down the length of her and obviously liking what he was seeing.
Eli shifted against the uncomfortable feeling of wanting to sock both of his best friends in the face. He’d be sure to pull a stitch if he did that.
“So, Eli says that you were his surgeon, huh?” Marcus asked, stealing her attention back.
She’d yet to look at Eli and it was driving him insane. He had the urge to toss his hands in the air, wave them around to get her attention.
“Yes. I was on call that night.”
“Glad you were,” Eli said and—thank god—she finally turned her eyes toward him.
She gave him a brisk nod. “And how are you feeling, Mr. Bird?”
“Eli,” he corrected her again. “I’m feeling a lot better. The ribs are still barking.”
She nodded, her serious mouth pursing for a moment. Eli got a flash of what it would be like to be able to trace that bottom lip with a thumb.
“You feel that the pain is in your ribs?” she asked, seamlessly switching from a social conversation to a doctor/patient one.
“I think so.”
She pursed her lips again and took a step toward him. “May I take a look at the incision?”
Eli nodded and Marcus and Jay stepped out into the hallway to give him a second of privacy.
Tia washed up at the sink and slipped plastic gloves over her hands as Eli flipped up the sheet. She parted his hospital robe discreetly, so that only his side was exposed. She gently pulled the taped bandage from his side and nodded.
“You’re a quick healer.”
“Always have been.” Eli said, his chest swelling from the compliment.
She deftly changed the bandage and then laid a hand on his stomach. Eli’s heart skipped.
“Deep breath for me,” she said.
He winced against the pain but did as she asked.
“And again.”
Her hand gently prodded around on his belly and she rolled her chair away from him and tossed the gloves into the trash. “I’m confident that you’re healing nicely, Mr. Bird.”
Eli’s hand reached out, lightning fast, and he grabbed hers for just a second. A warm, buzzing heat flowed between them and Tia’s eyes went from where their hands touched up to his face.
“Eli. Please. Call me Eli.”
She nodded, gently but sternly removed her hand from him. “Alright.”
Marcus ducked his head back in. “He’s got the seal of approval for going home?”
Tia nodded at the two men. “He does from his surgeon. Have you gotten the RN’s approval?”
Eli nodded. He could tell she was getting ready to leave and it opened up a little well of panic inside him. How could he get her to stay? He really wanted her to stay.
“It was good to see you all.”
“Tia.”
She froze. As if hearing Eli say her name had sent ice down her spine. She turned slowly. “Yes?”
Eli willed something light and flirty to come out of his mouth. Something that would make her smile and come back and chat with him for a while. He’d been getting women to do just that for twenty years. He tried to get his freaking muscle memory to kick in. But the words that came out of his mouth were not light. They were not flirty. They were tense and tight and raw. “I want to thank you for what you did. But I don’t know how. You saved me. And I wish there were words.”
Tia’s face took on a purely professional veneer and she nodded. “I’m thrilled the surge
ry went as well as it did, Mr.—Eli.” She blushed as she stumbled over what to call him. “Good luck with your recovery.”
And then she was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
“T, if you don’t turn that off, I swear to god I’m dumping this red wine all over your stupidly white carpet.”
Tia looked over at Laura, draped like a queen over the sectional couch. She held her wine glass out, tipping it to one side, the edge of the liquid dangerously close to the lip of the glass.
“I just want to see if there’s any updates on how he’s doing!” Tia insisted, feeling mildly embarrassed as she flipped off ESPN and turned to face her sister.
It had been about three weeks since Elijah’s surgery and about two since she’d seen him. Tia had heard next to nothing other than he was recovering. There was no information on whether or not he was going to remain on the Stingray’s roster or if he was going to finally retire. He was young. Still only 34, so if he took this year to recover he could still have another three or so years in the game.
But as much as she enjoyed watching Elijah play football, and she’d missed it these last two years that he’d been benched with his knee injury, she didn’t care whether he ever played again. She just wanted to make sure he was okay.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t ask him for his number.” Satisfied that Tia had turned off the boring sports channel, Laura reclined back even further, her newly-pedicured toes propped up on the armrest.
“That would have been deeply inappropriate considering I was his surgeon.”
Not that Tia hadn’t been kicking herself for that same damn thing at least once a day since she’d seen him. The universe had given her a chance to get back in touch with him and she’d walked right out on it.
She hadn’t been pining for him all these years. Not even close, actually. Her love for him had faded to a crush after years of never seeing him except for the occasional college football game she could catch. She’d been consumed by undergrad and then med school and then her residency. She’d barely been able to keep up with her relationship with Laura, let alone waste brain space on a man she hadn’t seen in years. But that wasn’t to say that her stomach didn’t flip every time she saw him on screen. Every time he flashed that smile for the cameras. And that didn’t mean her stomach didn’t plummet every time she saw that same, handsome and friendly face on the cover of yet another tabloid. He sure did know a lot of beautiful women.
“Oh, please, you told me about what he said at the end. That there weren’t words for how grateful he was. He was totally giving you an opening!”
Tia peeled at the label on the bottle of beer she was sipping. “People say things like that to me all the time. Nobody knows how to talk to a female surgeon. Male surgeons they treat like rock stars. And female surgeons, they feel a connection to. Like I was an angel sent from heaven or something. I was just doing my job and he got caught up in the moment.”
“Alright, whatever.” Laura scrubbed her hands through the air, her wine coming dangerously close to spilling. “But the point, sister dear, isn’t how he feels. It’s how you feel. You deserve to finally, finally tell your high school crush how you feel about him.”
“Felt.”
“Pffft.” Laura raised a skeptical eyebrow at her sister and stared pointedly at the TV that had just been playing ESPN.
“Anyways, I did tell him how I felt. I left that note for him in his yearbook, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. And you scribbled your signature so that he wouldn’t even know who wrote it! A hell of a lot of closure that provided you, T.”
Tia took a swig of beer. “I don’t need closure for a high school crush, Laura.”
“Fine. But you definitely need to get some ass, for the love of god.”
Well-used to her sister’s crass, dramatic attitude—something they often referred to as dramasstic—Tia barely blinked. “And you’re proposing that I get said ass from the most famous quarterback in the NFL? Yeah, I’ll pass on the inevitable STD, thanks.”
She said it casually, but it hurt her to say it. She didn’t love the fact that Elijah’s reputation was one of a serious partier. Where the liquor was expensive and the women were disposable.
And the fact was, it hadn’t taken much for her dwindling crush on him to have been fanned back into full heat. Seeing him those few times in his hospital room, talking to him, hearing his voice, seeing the smile lines around his eyes squint right up. Well, it was a hell of a powerful drug. Even three weeks later, Tia still felt like she was flushing him out of her system. Part of her was relieved that she hadn’t pursued him at all. She would have had to spend even more time trying to get him out of her head.
“Besides, the last thing I need right now is to get all tied up in another man. I’m still trying to detangle myself from the last one.” Tia glanced warily at her cell phone on the coffee table, which she knew had three unopened texts from Owen.
“He’s still bothering you?” Laura sat upright and reached her hand down to Ham, Tia’s chubby little bull dog mutt. Ham made the rounds from Laura over to Tia, settling on her feet.
“Bothering may be a bit of a strong word.” She bent down and ran a hand over Ham’s scruffy fur. “But yeah, he’s still reaching out a lot.”
“What for?”
Tia chuckled at her sister’s incredulous tone. “We were engaged, Laura. The man is entitled to a little closure.”
“Well, is it closure he’s actually after? Or is he trying to open things back up?”
Tia sighed and fell back in her chair, her eyes starting to fall closed a little. For as intense as her job was, her relaxing skills were just as honed. She could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. She never had a problem kicking back. “I’m not sure. It’s hard to move on because we see one another at the hospital so often. And I know he still feels badly about the way he was with Mom and Dad.”
Owen Hughes was another surgeon at the hospital. It was how Tia and he had met a few years ago. They’d been slow to build a relationship, and even slower to move toward getting married, but Tia had been fairly convinced he was the right person for her. But last year, when she and Laura had had to move their parents into a facility for older people with dementia and Alzheimer's, Owen had been so completely hands off, so removed, so resentful of the drain on her time, that Tia had realized that it wasn’t the right match.
She’d been sad to leave him. And very lonely in the following months. But it had been a year at this point, and she rarely thought about him unless he popped up at work or on her phone.
She didn’t feel so sad about the loss of him. But rather what the loss of him said about her. She knew that she wasn’t the most affectionate person. She knew that she was hard to be in a relationship with. She knew that if she’d learned how to let him in better in the first place, then he would have had a place to fit during all the chaos with her parents. And she’d said all those things in their break-up. She’d taken full responsibility, as she well knew that she should. And then she’d moved on and away from him.
She just wished that he would do the same thing, already. His calls and texts always annoyed her at best and unnerved her at worst.
“Well, he should feel bad, Tia. He was an absolute ass during that time. Trust me. I was there.”
Tia nodded, patted Ham again. “You really think I should have asked for his number?”
“Who? Eli? Hell yes. Come on. You’re the one who has instituted this new ‘no relationships’ rule. So where the hell are you gonna get your lady needs met? You should have seen if you could have hooked up with him a few times. Gotten yours and finally worked that crush out of your system.”
Tia leaned back in her chair and let her sister’s words float over her. It wasn’t her style to do casual hook-ups. Especially not with playboy quarterbacks. But she had to admit that Laura was right. It would be nice to find a way to get over this crush.
***
A few days later, Eli winced as
he worked his way up the stairs of the hospital stairwell. He paused and pressed a hand to the sharp bite of pain in his chest. Slow, he reminded himself. Slow.
The problem was, he wasn’t exactly a slow-moving type of guy. He had pretty much moved at one pace since the day he was born. As fast as he possibly could. The only thing that ever tempered his speed was pain. The pain after he blew out his knee and the pain after his accident.
He hated every step of the slow trudge up the rest of the stairs to the third floor. He supposed he could have taken the elevator, but there was something so demoralizing about taking the elevator to the third floor of a building. He was one of the top athletes in the world, for fuck sakes.
Still, he could admit that pushing himself too hard was a good way to get himself landed back here. In this god-forsaken hospital. The antiseptic smell curdled his stomach. There was only one thing that could have gotten him back in these sterile hallways so soon. And he was currently wondering how the hell she dealt with that smell every day.
Eli gripped the potted plant he’d brought and took the last two steps at a measured pace. He took a deep breath before pulling open the door to her floor. Where he’d been told her office was. He’d wanted to wait until he was fully healed to come back and see her. He’d wanted to time it so he could be fresh off a workout, his muscles pumped and jacked. He’d wanted her to see him in all his jock glory.
But he hadn’t been able to wait. Partly because, look, she was really pretty and so serious and he’d just plain wanted to see her. He’d gotten a taste and now he wanted a whole bite. But also because there was something inside him, something deep, that needed to thank her. He needed to thank her and he needed her to hear it. She’d saved his life. Literally.
And he’d brought her a potted plant.
That about made them even.
He rolled his eyes at himself as he strode through the hallway with purpose, reading the names of the doctors on each door.
Dr. Natalia Camellia.
Bingo. He ignored the little nervous jolt in his gut as he read her name. He wasn’t a school boy. He was a highly-trained athlete with a romantic résumé about a mile long. There was no reason to be nervous right now. He gave a sharp rap on her door and pushed it open.
Bachelors In Love Page 3
