The Doctor’s Simple Life (Love Heals All Wounds #3)

3. Reece

CHAPTER 3

REECE

“ Y ou’re from the hospital?” I stammer, cringing at myself. Way to make myself look like an idiot on day one.

But really, when a beautiful woman knocks on the door, you don’t exactly expect her to be a nurse, do you? I didn’t.

Oh, God. That sounds awful when I say it like that.

But she is beautiful. Her long chestnut hair is coiled into a loose bun on the back of her head, with wisps of her bangs falling across her face. Her nose, cheekbones and jaw are angular and as sharp as her bright green eyes, and though she’s looking at me with utter disdain, I can’t help but imagine her lips pouting.

What would she look like in a nice dress? In red lipstick? Heels? If she dressed up, she could be so beautiful that anyone would want to be with her.

Shame nobody in their right mind would want to stick around here.

“Right…” I say. “And your name was…”

“Nurse Hale,” she replies, then nothing more. I stare at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell me her first name. It’s like a Western showdown until she finally relents. “Sienna,” she says finally, and I bite back a stupid comment about her name sounding like Vienna and about her looking just as beautiful as that city.

She’s probably never been. She’s probably never even left this county, let alone the country.

“Anyway, thanks for coming to check on me,” I say, wanting this to be over. “Can I help you with anything else?”

Her frown grows even more sour, which barely feels possible. For such a beautiful woman, she really can look miserable.

Desperately trying to make the situation better, I force a wide smile onto my face and say, “So, you’ll be looking after me while I’m here?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she says, her expression unchanging. “I’ll be looking after you.” She says it with such disdain that it’s impossible to imagine that she’s doing this of her own volition.

Whatever. It’s not like I’m doing this by choice either. I lost a bet.

There is nothing I want less in the world right now than to be in some backward little town with some backward little people who are all going to treat me like I’m an awful person just because I come from the city.

But even though this isn’t getting off to a good start, I still have to try my best. I’m a professional, after all.

“Do you want to come in? For a coffee or drink? Or just to chat?” Never mind that I don’t have any drinks — or anything at all in the house. I just don’t want to let her go yet.

“No, thank you,” she says, being astonishingly polite despite the fact that she clearly hates me. “I’ve got things to do today. I just came over to say hello and that I will expect to see you at work bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“What time?”

“Your shift starts at eight thirty on the dot.”

I groan. I just drove two hours to get here. It’s dinnertime, and I’m barely going to be allowed any time to myself. “That early? Really?”

“If you don’t like the way we do things out here, you know where the door and the road are,” she snaps. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do now. And tomorrow, I have my job to be doing. I expect you to help me get on with it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, clenching my fists to stop myself from doing a mock salute. Somehow, I don’t think that would go down very well.

Without another word, she turns on her heel and marches back towards the car.

“Wait!” I call, and to my relief, she hesitates. “What if I need anything? Can I call you?”

She wavers like she’s not sure what to do, then groans and marches back towards me. Militantly, she hands out her hand and glares at me, and it takes me a second to realize that she wants my phone. I hand it to her, and she snatches it away to type her number into my contacts.

“There,” she says, flinging it back towards me. “ Only call if it’s an emergency. I’m talking, ‘Oh no, my house is on fire’ levels. Okay? I don’t care for chatting. I have things to do.”

“Great. Okay. Thank you.”

She nods, satisfied that she’s given me what I need — barely. She stomps back to her car, and I call after her, “Have a good night!” She doesn’t even give me a second glance before she drives away.

What an awful woman…

Why does she have to be so damn hot?

I shut the front door and wander back into the house. Compared to my apartment in Miami, this is a luxurious amount of space. I can barely believe that I have a whole staircase to myself!

In a small town like this, I guess there’s plenty of space to go around. And it’s not like Mikey’s skimped on giving me something good. He promised a full living arrangement, and he has delivered.

Shame it’s so boring in here. The décor is bland, and there isn’t a single touch that makes it feel homey, let alone modern or stylish. If this was really my house, I would strip out every carpet and floorboard and start again, redoing it from top to bottom in a way that suited me and wasn’t ugly as sin.

But this isn’t my house. It’s not like I’m going to get attached to it.

I head upstairs to where I dumped my suitcases earlier and start unpacking. The closet smells like moths and dust, and I wince as I hang my shirts in it. I’m so getting Mikey to buy me a whole new wardrobe if moths eat all my clothes.

After I’m done with the shirts in my suitcase, I pat myself on the back and decide I’ve earned a break. I have the time to spare.

I wander back down the stairs and flop onto the sofa. Maybe I should call someone, just so they know I’m not dead. I scroll through my list of friends and decide that Sanjay is probably free. Lawyers don’t do anything all day, right?

Even if they do, I’ll never know. I hit call and nothing happens, so I squint at the screen and, in horror, notice that I have zero bars of service. What kind of town is this? No phone service?

There probably is, I decide, but maybe not in this room. I can’t be bothered to move from the sofa, and after the trauma of getting my phone connected to the Wi-Fi earlier, I don’t dare video call anyone in case that explodes too.

Okay. So, no other real people. That’s okay. I’m okay by myself. I can handle my own company.

Television. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll log into all the streaming services I subscribe to, and then I’ll be able to let the day happily drift by as I get sucked into a drama or something. This sounds like a great plan, so I force myself to reach out for the remote and coax the screen to life.

I’m almost surprised they don’t still have CRT displays out here. The fact that this thing connects to the internet at all is a shock.

It takes an eternity to load, and when it finally does, I realize I’ve spoken too soon. It connects, sort of, but I can’t download any new apps. And the singular streaming service it has is already logged into a guest account and won’t let me add my own.

And the guest account is locked in kids’ mode.

Christ. This is going to be one hell of a long month if all I can do is watch kids’ cartoons and talk to myself. I just have to hope that work is going to be at least a fraction better. Not that that would be hard. But this town isn’t giving me hope so far.

I settle for a drama that is deemed acceptable for kids. It’s a ridiculous, juvenile show about supernatural creatures, but it’s at least entertaining enough that I lose a few hours to it.

That’s when I realize I have no food and don’t want to cook.

Shaking in terror, I open up my phone and find the food delivery app. I slap in the zip code and hold my breath.

No results.

Not a surprise, exactly, but still not what I wanted to hear. I extend the search radius — I don’t care how much I have to tip the driver. I’ll pay anything for a good meal. Anything.

The nearest place that delivers has an eye-watering fee and an hour-and-a-half wait, but I order a ton of stuff anyway and try my best not to look at the price. That doesn’t matter. If I get enough food now, I’ll have leftovers for a few days. That’s at least a few more days before I have to brave the inevitably devastating shelves of the local grocery store.

I slump back in my seat.

One whole month.

That is, if this place doesn’t kill me first.