by J. S. Scott
“You’re calling me Dr. Leham again?” Nash whispered to her as he washed his hands in the sink. His shoulders were stiffer and higher than usual.
“Respectfully, yes,” she said with an exasperated glance. “Nothing more.”
“Don’t cross her when she gives that look,” her father warned, then groaned again in pain.
“Dad, Nash isn’t…” Katie floundered for the right thing to say, since technically her dad hadn’t said anything, even though it was all laid out in his tone. And his tone warned Nash as though he was Katie’s man.
“Whatever you say, Katie doll,” Harvey replied.
“Don’t listen to him. The pain has gone to his head.” Katie struggled to busy herself so she’d have an excuse to not meet Nash’s bright, inquisitive, and oh-so-smart-and-delving eyes. She bent over the chart, double-checking the information the intake nurse had written down.
“Whatever you two decide to do with each other, that’s fine by me,” her father continued. “If I die, you have my luck Dr. Leham, as well as my blessing.”
“Thanks, Dad, but that won’t be necessary, we only work together.” She put the chart on the gurney beside him and noticed his red corduroy slacks. “Hey, I thought we threw these pants out last year.”
“Your mother found them.”
“My word. We’ll have to burn them so they can’t come back to haunt you.” They were baggy, worn at the knees, and generally a crime against fashion.
“Please do.”
“I’m going to have to agree, although that garment isn’t going to be the worst thing about your evening, Mr. Reiter,” Nash said. He sat on a stool beside her father and Katie felt her eyes tear up unexpectedly. He was being so kind, gentle, thoughtful, and caring with her dad... Well, heck. The lust had just turned into something else. Something mushier. Something she’d only read about in romance novels. The ones she vehemently denied reading. And if she was going to go full confessional, it was also something in scenes she rewound over and over again in her chick flicks and soap operas. And here she was, all ready to swoon over a doctor as though she was an old-fashioned heroine.
She kind of liked the feeling.
“I think you have acute appendicitis and are in danger of rupture. We will be removing your appendix. Immediately.” Nash paused between each sentence to allow her father to absorb the news.
“Let’s do it. I’m needed home by five.”
“Mr. Reiter, you will need to be under observation after surgery. I don’t think you are going home tonight.”
“Please?” Harvey reached out, placing a hand on Nash’s. Katie watched the men, feeling as though she should disappear. To see her father in a weak moment was not what she’d come to work for. She came here to be strong, the one in charge, and she wanted to scream at her father to be stronger. “I need to be home. This night is very important to my wife,” he was saying.
“I understand.”
Katie couldn’t help but give Nash a hopeful, pleading look as well. Even though she knew there was no way her dad was going home tonight.
“I’ll see what I can do to ensure Angelica’s party isn’t spoiled, but I can’t make any promises.” Nash turned to Katie, ushering her toward the door. “Scrub up, you’re assisting.”
“But I don’t operate!” Katie backed up and hit the wall behind her.
“You do today. I need Amy for anesthesiology.”
“But she’s just a nurse. There’s no anethesiologist on today, and he’s family. You need more staff.”
“There’s nobody else here and we don’t have time to wait.” Nash was doing that pause-between-sentences thing again. “If I’m bringing someone inexperienced into the operating room, I’m bringing in the brightest.”
“That’s my Katie doll,” Harvey said, groaning as he curled into a ball of agony on the gurney.
* * *
Katie’s hands trembled as she finished prepping her father for laparoscopic surgery. She’d already shaved and cleaned the area where Nash would make his small incisions, and as she worked she kept up a steady stream of banter to keep herself distracted.
Her father was a good man. She hoped she didn’t do something that would cause his untimely…
No, don’t think that way.
This was a standard operation, one Nash could do unassisted, if need be. But he wouldn’t need to. She was here. She knew her stuff. Or at least enough. He would be able to tell her where to be and when. They were a good team, and as he’d said, she was bright. All you needed to do was be in a few operations—which she had in school—and you had a pretty good lay of the land.
Stay out of the way.
Stay clean.
Don’t kill the patient.
So here she was, ready to slice open her father. Well, not Katie herself; her hallway kisser would be doing that. Not that he was hers. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
She rubbed her face and Nash frowned.
Realizing what she’d done, Katie turned on her heel and left the operating room to scrub up again. That was a stupid, rookie move, touching her face. Way to prove yourself, Katie.
The door swung open and the doctor joined her in the sterile light, probing her with his intense gaze.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” She finished scrubbing, snapped on new gloves and smiled falsely.
“Your father needs you at your best in there. This appendix could rupture and if it does—”
“Yeah, I know.” Katie brushed past him and his delicious green scrubs, hands up so she’d remember not to touch anything this time. “Hey, Dad!” she said as she entered the operating room once again. “Ready?”
“Sure, sweet pea. I’m glad you’re here.” He reached out to hold her hand, and after hesitating briefly, Katie took his and squeezed. When your father needed you, what was another pair of gloves and a scrub-up anyway?
“I love you, Dad.”
“What? Am I gonna die?” He was lying on his back, his eyes glazed from the painkillers. “Save that for after the operation. Your mother already sobbed all over me.”
Katie laughed, blinking away tears that welled up. “Sorry to break your heart, but I think half her upset was over her party.”
“I’m feeling better now. No more pain. Maybe I could go home?” he said hopefully, as Amy positioned herself at his head. She adjusted tubes, cords, and a million other things Katie didn’t know the first thing about. She hoped Amy knew what she was doing and could do it on her own.
“You have to stay here,” Katie replied. Nash stood to the side, waiting, giving them time. Amy nodded and Katie placed a hand on her father’s forehead to comfort him. “Amy’s going to put you under now, okay? You won’t feel a thing.”
The other nurse began counting down backward.
“It’s not working,” her father said.
“Five, four…”
“I’m still awa—” And he was out. Just like that. Midword.
Katie looked at Amy in awe. “Can you do that to my mother sometime?”
She grinned. “Favorite part of the job. I cut the rector’s wife off in the middle of saying ‘shitake mushroom.’ Guess where she stopped talking.”
“You didn’t.”
“Sure did. She was giving me a hard time for engaging in premarital sex. So, you know. I made her swear.” Amy shrugged.
Nash positioned himself over the patient, his focus narrowing in on the operation he was about to perform.
“Sorry,” Katie said to him, “I’ll be back in a flash.” She left the room and once again repeated her scrubbing up and glove changing routine.
He was waiting, scalpel in hand, when she returned. She fell into an easy rhythm across from him, her earlier emotions washed away by purpose. Save the patient.
The body beneath Nash’s deft fingers was no longer her father. This was a job. A project. A puzzle to fix and sort. A wrong to right.
She didn’t flinch as Nash’s scalpel opened the sk
in. She clamped, dabbed, suctioned, passed tools, and when she could afford the slight distraction, watched in awe as Nash, concentration turning his expressive blue eyes intensely bright, worked steadily and with a confidence that turned her on. Totally inappropriate. To be scoping out a surgeon, getting a bit flirty on the inside, when her father’s life was in the man’s hands.
But you didn’t get to choose who you fell in lust with, did you?
Chapter Four
“I really think we should celebrate New Year’s Eve more,” Harvey said, his voice still groggy and hoarse from the anesthestic.
“Why is that?” Katie asked. The operation had been a success and they were in the recovery room, monitoring his vitals and ensuring all was well, and continued that way. Her fifty-eight-year-old father was stable, yet a tad loopy.
“You could dress in a diaper. Get one of those horns with the streamers, and drink champagne.”
“I think it’s been done.”
“Let’s join them!” He pulled himself up, his balance off.
“Careful.” Katie gently encouraged him to reposition himself on his back. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
Her father’s eyes widened. “Did Dr. Leham mistake me for a piece of paper? Did he put staples in me?” He dropped the back of his hand across his forehead with a dramatic flourish. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“You only have internal sutures, Dad. Nothing to worry about. They dissolve.”
“But staples? How do you remove them? You can’t reach inside and unclip them like a bundle of papers. I’ll be setting off the metal detectors in airports. Subject to strip searches. I’ll never be able to leave the country. What if they rust?”
And there was the father she knew. Not listening, and worrying over mostly nothing. Okay, pretty much nothing at all.
“Dad, you don’t have staples. And besides, you don’t fly anywhere. Have you ever even been in a plane?”
“Once.” His eyes closed.
“Are you okay?” Her attention flicked to the monitors. All normal.
“It was ages ago. Your mother and I…” His voice took on a dreamy tone.
“How’s he doing?” Nash asked from the doorway.
“A bit, um…”
“Trippy?” he suggested with a smile.
“Yeah.” She glanced at their patient. He was snoring. Okay, then. Still groggy as well. She made a tick on her chart.
“He was awake for a bit?”
“He was.”
“Coherent?”
“I’d say mostly. Yes.”
Nash’s warm hand rested on her shoulder for a moment and Katie couldn’t help but wish he’d let it linger. “You did well in there.”
“Thanks.” Tell me more.
“It couldn’t have been easy, but you were solid. I knew you would be.” Another shoulder squeeze. She felt like a puppy begging for more treats.
“Thanks for helping him,” she replied.
“Of course.”
“Still snowing out there?”
“Roads are closed. Amy was saying Benny overheard people in his restaurant saying they probably won’t open for another twenty-four hours.”
“So we’re stranded.”
He flashed her a brief smile. “No Christmas dinner for you.”
“I have snowshoes.”
“The visibility is nil.” He stood straighter, his face stern.
Katie glanced at her father. She expected protectiveness from him, not Nash. But wow. It was flattering.
She stood taller in turn. “Maybe I have snow goggles.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re teasing me.”
“A little. I don’t have snowshoes.”
He was so close. His eyes were so blue. She wanted to kiss him, and could tell he wanted to kiss her, too. Their desire was surging in the space between them, building as they breathed each other in. If they touched, sparks would fly.
She wanted to lean in, taste him.
“And so that’s how I ended up flying a plane,” her father said matter-of-factly.
Katie drifted back to reality, then jumped away from Nash. She had practically been kissing him, ignoring her ailing father, and was likely sporting a starry-eyed, drooling expression.
Surely her dad had noticed?
Nope. He was staring at the blood-oxygen monitor, holding his breath to make the numbers change.
“Dad, stop that!”
“I want 100 percent, but it’s too hard. I’m trying for zero.” He muttered a curse. “You made me breathe, Katie doll.”
“Breathing is good. You want high numbers. Zero would make Mom very angry.”
“Is she here?” He perked up like a boy expecting Santa.
“She managed to get back home to check on her turkey—only she can do that, apparently. And it sounds as though she’s snowed in now. A lot has come down.”
Her father tossed the blanket off his legs, eyes lolling back in his head at the sudden effort. “I need to go shovel for her!”
“No.” Katie gently pressed him back into bed. “You can’t go anywhere.”
“But…” He pouted, then glared at Nash, who was watching from the doorway. “You—” he pointed a finger “—said I could go home after I got this dang-blasted thing out!”
“I said maybe. The day is still young, Mr. Reiter.” Nash flashed a smile and hightailed it from the room.
Katie wished she could, too. Maybe follow him, then trap him in a broom closet for a little post-op shakedown. Because honestly? What was up with getting snowed in at work on Christmas Day and having your father around like a chaperone, when you could be getting it on with the most eligible man in town?
* * *
“Katie, could I speak to you for a moment?” Nash stood in the doorway to the continuing care area, where she was checking on the residents. The gleam in his eyes had her up and across the room before she remembered to act cool.
Way too late for that now.
“Yes?”
He pulled her into the hall, double-checking to make sure nobody was listening. Katie almost laughed. There were no secrets in Blueberry Springs. For example, everyone had known Beth was pregnant almost before the mom-to-be did. They had known Devon’s sister Mandy loved her best friend Frankie and that it was just a matter of time before they hit the sack and created magic. And everyone knew Jen Kulak, the local guide, hadn’t burned down the forest. Oh, and Amber—daughter of one of Benny’s long-standing waitresses, Gloria—had a new boyfriend who was away a suspicious amount of time. Not that Amber, who was gaga for the guy, seemed to see anything odd in that.
“You know how you were talking outside your parents’ place last night about—”
Katie leaped on him, finger pressed to his lips. “Shh!” She glanced up and down the hall, then dragged Nash off, seeking somewhere more private.
More private, more private…where was that? The place was dead, but there was nowhere exactly private. Staff room? Amy could walk in. Operating room? Trey was cleaning it. ER? Someone might come in needing medical help. There was nowhere. Nowhere inside. She hip-checked the ER’s side door and pushed, using it like a plow. The snow had piled up so much that even with the entry’s mini overhang the drifts were blocking the way.
“You don’t think people will be suspicious of us out in a snowstorm?” Nash shouted, above the wind howling through the doorway.
Shards of ice and snow stung her cheeks. Wow! When had all this blown in? Not too long ago there had been beautiful, fat flakes blocking out the midday sun. Now it was a raging midafternoon blizzard.
Katie pushed Nash back indoors. Well, mostly she hurtled back to his side, seeing as he’d been too smart to come out in the first place. He brushed the snow from her shoulders and smoothed her hair. “Cold enough for you?”
“Shut up,” she muttered. “This is as private as it is going to get.”
He sighed, his posture sagging in defeat. “Fine. I was talking to my friend Monica.” He lowered his
voice as Katie shushed him. “And she says you can intern for her in Dakota. However long you need to figure out decorating. She does residential as well as businesses. Homes, hotels, building lobbies, you name it.”
“You called her on Christmas Day?” Who was this woman to him?
“Yes.”
“Did you at least wish her a wonderful Christmas before asking a favor?”
“She’s Jewish.”
“I can’t really afford to be an intern, but thank you for asking her.”
“She would pay you well.”
Katie couldn’t meet his eyes. She hadn’t shared her dream with anyone because she knew they’d then expect her to seize the day, make it happen, then skip off into the tastefully decorated sunset. All the while adding commentary on why she wasn’t doing this, that or the other thing faster and better. Everyone would become an expert on her life, her career. But how could she make a living, picking out the right curtains to make a space feel homey? Who would pay for that sort of thing in Blueberry Springs? She’d have to leave everything: her hometown, her friends, her family, as well as a perfectly okay job.
All she wanted was to be happy. Was that too much to ask?
It probably wasn’t, seeing as Nash was here to lift her onto the stepping stone between where she was and where she wanted to be.
The problem was, something like this would change her entire life.
“You could stay with me, or Monica, until you found a place. Take your time and add some experience, build a client base and then go out on your own.”
“Quit pushing me,” she whispered. This was just like with Beth. Nash had tried to make her into something she wasn’t. And now he was trying to change Katie—make her become a decorator. And even though it was her dream to change careers, there were a lot of good reasons why Katie hadn’t made that change on her own—and finding a place to intern wasn’t one of them. Nash only saw the end result and not the hitches along the way. If she followed the path to decorating she would change herself as well as her entire life, and, frankly, she wasn’t sure she was ready for that.
“I’m sorry.” Nash pulled her close, hugging her with one arm. “I took it too far, too fast, didn’t I? Grabbed your idea and ran with it, forgetting it was yours.”
