by Caro Carson
For a long moment, she held his gaze as the last rays of the sun glowed warmly. “I was trying to make a joke.”
Of course she’d been trying to make a joke. They had a routine, and this intense need wasn’t part of it. He was screwing it all up.
He didn’t care. He buried both hands in her hair and smoothed his thumbs over her cheekbones to the outer corners of her eyes, where he’d never seen a teardrop although she’d apologized for crying.
“I’m not much of a comedian,” she whispered. “I’ll let you be the funny one in this relationship.”
Relationship. Was that what this was, built slowly over the course of year, one sentence at a time?
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to make you smile today,” he said, “but now, I’m all yours.”
She closed her eyes against the brilliance of the last ray of the setting sun, and Zach closed his mouth over hers in the kiss that ended what they’d known, and started something new.
Chapter Seven
It was the most perfect kiss a man had ever given her, soft and gentle, a long, still moment of connection. Brooke felt the tender emotion behind it as surely as she felt the sunlight on her skin. As kisses went, it was pure and heartfelt.
Chaste.
And all she could think about was sex.
Zach. All she could think about was Zach.
She’d never wanted to take a man to bed the way she wanted Zach right now.
She wanted oblivion. She was so tired of death, tired of fighting it, tired of accepting it, sick to death of the way death shaped her life. Zach was alive and exciting. He was every peak she so carefully avoided in her quest to never hit rock bottom. She wanted him.
He was holding her face in his hands, so she placed her hands on top of his wrists, tentatively at first. After so diligently keeping a professional distance, it was hard to give herself permission to touch him. Gaining confidence, she wrapped her fingers around his wrists, feeling the coarse, masculine hair that dusted his forearms. Her right hand grazed the watch he wore, a sport model typical of emergency personnel who needed the second hand for taking a pulse—when the patient had a pulse.
God, no. She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think at all.
He ended the slow kiss with a shorter one and rested his forehead against hers. “Let’s skip the drink.”
“Okay.”
Hallelujah—but that was followed almost immediately by a little shiver of nerves. Cold feet. Impatient with herself, she pushed the feeling aside. She could do this. Why not? Why not?
Zach gently let go of her face. As he lowered his arms, she realized she was still clinging to his wrists, holding on as hard as Harold or the woman in labor or anyone else who needed him. She was being desperate, when she wanted to be sexy. She let go of Zach and held on to the leather strap of her purse with both hands instead.
“Dinner would be better than drinks,” he said.
Oh. He hadn’t been thinking what she’d been thinking. She kept moving forward despite her blunder. “Sure. That sounds good.”
Zach was interested in her, without a doubt, but that didn’t mean he wanted to skip every single getting-to-know-you phase to take her to bed. She ought to appreciate that a whole lot more than she did at the moment.
“Let me take you somewhere low-key,” he said. “We’re both wiped out.”
No, I’m not wiped out. Do I look wiped out?
After twelve hours, she probably did. She didn’t feel tired, though. The clean scent of his skin stimulated all her senses. She wanted to wash off her twelve-hour day and be fresh and new, too.
“Do you mind if I jump in the shower first?” she asked. “I won’t be long. I’m not going to soak in the tub or anything.”
He’d been looking at her very intently since she’d first spotted him, but now something she’d said had that cocky grin returning, slowly but surely, starting at one corner of his mouth. Showers? Soaking in tubs?
She cleared her throat. “I guess this is where I say, ‘Why don’t you come up to my place?’”
He winced in an exaggerated way. “That’s one of the oldest lines in the book. It’s listed right after ‘Can I buy you a drink?’”
“I think it’s the line that ‘Can I buy you a drink’ is supposed to lead to. We’re doing this all out of order.”
As she turned to lead the way to her apartment, Zach kept pace with her easily. “We’ll figure it out.”
He slid his fingers between hers, and held her hand.
* * *
Brooke was glad that Zach thought they’d figure out what they were doing, because as she stood in her bedroom, freshly showered and completely nude, she had no idea.
Were they going out to dinner as a prelude to sex? Because all the way up the stairs, he’d held her hand as if they were a couple, familiar with one another and already intimate. But then he’d stood in the middle of her living room instead of making himself at home, and she’d scurried around to find the television remote and offer him a drink—sparkling water, which was all she had. He’d declined. After a moment of silence, she’d said, “Well, um, the bedroom’s through there so that’s where I’ll be, but only for a minute, I’ll be out again.”
So stupid. Of course she’d be out again. She’d sounded as if she was warning him not to come in looking for her—or else she’d sounded as if she was letting him know where she was in case he did want to come looking for her. She didn’t know which way she’d meant it, which meant she didn’t know which way he’d taken it, which meant she didn’t know which underwear to put on, damn it, because she didn’t know who would be taking it back off.
If she wore anything lacy, it would seem as if she’d planned it. But she didn’t want to wear the plain stuff she wore to work, because she wanted to look her best for her first time with Zach. She could just imagine the two of them reminiscing in the distant future. Remember our first time together, and you were wearing that ugly beige underwear...?
Unbelievable. She was not only thinking about having sex with Zach, but she was thinking of it as the start of a long-term relationship.
The man had only invited her out for a drink. She snatched a bra and a pair of underpants out of her drawer and put them on. They weren’t lacy, but they were black, and they matched. After all, those drinks had been upgraded to dinner.
Only because he’s wiped out.
He didn’t look it, although she’d noticed him shaking out his arm a little, while she’d unlocked her front door. Maybe he’d hit the gym between his shift and coming to pick her up. Her mind rejected that quickly as impossible. He’d had no time for both a workout and a shower after his shift, and he’d definitely taken a shower after his coworkers had brought in the ninety-six-year-old.
Why had he waited outside the hospital when he’d been part of that ambulance team? Pieces of a puzzle she hadn’t known she was trying to solve fell into place, and she realized, finally, why he was tired.
Why didn’t he tell me?
She grabbed the dress she’d laid out, the only one she owned that just reached to mid-thigh, making it too short to be appropriate for work. It was sleeveless and snug, and she tugged it into place as she stepped into a rarely-worn pair of metallic sandals.
Zach was on the couch, but he stood immediately when she walked up to him.
“You look great, Brooklyn.”
“You weren’t driving the ambulance, were you?”
“What?”
“If anyone stays outside with the ambulance, it’s the driver. When you said you didn’t come in, that’s what I assumed, but the paramedic who was doing the compressions was barely winded. She hadn’t been working at it long. The other guy’s shirt was so crisp and new, he must’ve just come on shift.”
Zach
smiled at her. “That’s some attention to detail. This is like dating Sherlock Holmes. Is this what you were thinking about while you were in the shower?”
“I was wondering why you didn’t come into the ER. You knew I was there. Why not come in like you usually do? You didn’t come in because you’d just finished forty minutes of chest compressions. You were probably too tired to walk.”
He shut off the television and tossed the remote control onto the couch. “Someone had to do it.”
“You did all forty minutes yourself, didn’t you? Why didn’t you trade off?” She knew she sounded like a stern instructor, chastising a student for failing to follow a recommended procedure.
“There’s not a lot of room in the back of an ambulance, you know.” His tone of voice was mild, as if he spoke about a simple inconvenience. “It was just me, the patient and a family member. I had no choice.”
She felt almost angry with him for taking on such a monumental task. “You must have known he was gone before you even started. You’re acting like it’s no big deal when it must have been exhausting. Why would you put yourself through such an ordeal?”
“I can’t call it, Brooke. I can’t legally decide to quit working on a patient. Only you can.”
She fell silent. Whatever words of frustration she’d been about to say died on her tongue as she looked in his eyes.
“I’m a paramedic. You’re a doctor. There’s a big legal difference.” The last of his smile faded away, and she was unable to look away from his serious gaze. “There are things you want to do, and there are things you have to do. Today, I had to do what I didn’t want to do. It happens.”
Her hot feeling of anger left, and in its place, something close to sorrow threatened to move in. Her throat felt thick with unexpressed emotions.
That, she could handle. She could swallow down sorrow and suppress any emotion in order to keep functioning, but she was caught off guard by the tears that welled up in her eyes. She hadn’t shed tears for anyone in a very long time. They only interfered with her vision, and her vision was necessary to her job. Even today, she hadn’t felt close to tears as she’d watched the girl who’d reminded her of herself at the tender age of twelve.
Instead of crying, I ran to see Zach.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Zach brushed her hair off her shoulder. “You had to do things you didn’t want to do, too.”
She dismissed his concern with a halfhearted wave of her hand. “Not much. I just had to notify the next of kin, but you—”
“Just notify the next of kin,” he murmured.
“But you...forty minutes. Did it hurt?”
“It was a workout.” He shrugged, but she saw that the motion wasn’t totally easy.
“I can’t imagine.”
She could imagine it, actually. She’d done CPR on mannequins many times, and once on a human being. She’d had to throw most of her body weight into each compression for them to be effective. She eyed Zach’s arms and chest. He was much stronger than she, but it couldn’t have been easy, not even for a firefighter.
“Have you taken any ibuprofen yet? You should take something now to prevent delayed-onset muscle soreness.”
He laughed a little and rubbed one arm. “It’s not that delayed.”
“You’re in pain? Where exactly does it hurt?” She stood more squarely in front of him, her mind kicking into physician mode, assessing the symmetry of his body, looking to see if he was favoring an injured part.
As a doctor, she touched people all day, and touching Zach suddenly became clinical, and therefore easy. With a hand on each of his arms, she pressed his triceps and then pushed down on his shoulders, testing for muscle tone and resistance in the deltoids, watching for signs of sensitivity.
Other muscles would have been involved in the motion of performing chest compressions—trapezius across his back, pectorals in the front. But as her hands slid from his shoulders to the solid wall of his chest, she realized Zach was laughing at her.
“Brooke, stop. I’m fine.” He very effectively stopped her by putting his arms around her and pulling her close. Her hands were trapped with her palms pressed against his chest. When he spoke, she could feel the bass of that cowboy voice vibrate through her hands as his breath stirred her hair. “I’m a big, tough guy who has survived worse workouts than that. I’ll be a little sore tomorrow. I’ll survive. It’s just exercise.”
“I’m sorry you had to do it. I’m ashamed of myself for expecting you to make me laugh tonight.”
“Then I have to say I’m sorry, too. I wanted you to be all cool and calculating tonight. If you acted like the whole thing had been just another day at the office, then I could convince myself that was true.”
The heat of his body came through his shirt to warm her palms. She felt that tender, achy need to cry again.
She needed to toughen up. She started by taking a step backward. He let her go.
“Just exercise,” she said, with a bit of a scoff in her voice.
“Just notifying the next of kin,” he said, imitating her tone as he stepped forward, a slow pursuit as she retreated.
Her smile felt shaky. “This is probably a really bad idea, the two of us dating. We won’t have any balance when we’ve both had to deal with failure at work.”
“Or maybe this is why we should be dating.”
She took another step backward. The wall behind her gave her the backbone she seemed to be lacking. She tucked her hands behind herself.
Zach stepped closer. Had it only been this morning that he’d stood too close like this and told her to say yes?
In a moment of illumination, Brooke realized she’d been wanting to say yes for far longer than a day.
Zach’s voice was huskier when he spoke quietly. “Maybe it takes someone in emergency medicine to understand exactly what we mean when we say it’s been a hard day. Seeing how easily things can go bad makes you want to seize the chance for something good. Something like this.”
He kissed her, a little harder than before, a little hungrier. It only lasted a moment, one sublime meeting of mouths before he lifted his head, restraint in every line of his face.
He had more restraint than she felt. She pressed her fingertips into the wall at her back when she wanted to be pressing them into the solid muscle of his body. “I understand that. It makes you want to...live life.”
His blue-green gaze dropped to her mouth. She cataloged the signs of arousal. Shallow breathing, muscle tension—all his. He wanted her.
“Is that what you were thinking about while I was in the shower? That we should go out to dinner, because we both want to live life?”
“Brooklyn.” He sounded stern, almost forceful. The sound of her name spoken that way was thrilling. “I knew you were naked, right on the other side of this wall. I could hear the water pouring down your body. What do you think I was thinking about?”
“Life?” she whispered, her gaze on his mouth. “Me?”
All his restraint broke, and she was swept against him by strong arms, lifted to her toes by the strongest man she’d ever been with. His physical greed for her drove further thoughts from her head. She’d never been kissed so deeply, so decisively, as if she was a prize to be claimed. The sound she made was primal, a gasp of capitulation, an exclamation that meant yes.
Zach clutched her even more tightly and then abruptly let her go. She let herself fall back against the wall for support as he leaned over her, eyes closed, breathing hard. He cursed on an exhale. “It’s okay. I’m no threat to you. We’re going out. We’re going to get to know one another better. Over dinner.”
But his words barely registered over the cacophony of her body clamoring for his. Pheromones, hormones, whatever it was that made bodies communicate, they had it. Their bodies had found their perfect mates without word or con
scious thought. She wanted to feel him move inside her. She wanted to feel his power as he worked for his pleasure.
He was trying to cool things off. Slow things down.
“Zach.”
He opened his eyes and she waited for the second it took him to focus on her.
“Do you want to know what I was thinking while I was in the shower? I was taking bets with myself whether or not we’d really make it to dinner before we did this.” She hooked her fingers into his belt loops and gave them a quick yank, rocking his hips into her.
His body gave in. As if her words had cut some wire that was holding his frame taut, he fell against her, pressing her into the wall. She thought he’d dive into her mouth immediately, but first he cupped the side of her neck in his warm palm. She felt the fine tremor in his hand.
He spoke against her lips. “Be sure. It’s only our first date. We can wait.”
“I’ve been waiting half a year for this.” Burying both hands in his hair, she pushed away from the wall, pressing her soft chest against his hard one. He bent to scoop an arm behind her knees, and she was lifted off her feet, being carried into her own bedroom as she toed off the ankle strap of first one sandal, then the other. She landed on the bed with a bounce that was probably a little less gentle than he’d intended. He was clearly on edge and fighting to keep his control.
She’d wanted oblivion, but the lights were on, and she was on top of the bedding. There were no sheets to hide under, just Zach above her, pulling off his shirt, shucking off his jeans. Zach pressing her into the mattress with his bare body while she was still dressed. This was no mindless escape. She was acutely aware of him, of who he was and what they were about to do.
Her eyes fluttered shut because she could only feel, feel, feel his body against hers. Her whole world narrowed to the sensation of his bare skin and his heavy weight. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and drove her fingers into his hair, needing to hold on to him.
He shoved one side of her short dress above her hips and grabbed the edge of her black underwear, jerking it midway down to her thighs and then to her knees. She bent her leg, wriggled one foot free of the elastic and then kicked them off.
