Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
CALVIN
“Nurse Hayes,” a singsong voice says near my ear while I’m filling out a chart at the nurses’ station.
I glance up at my best friend, Shameka, expression droll. She’s a slim, pretty, older woman in her late forties. Brown skinned with naturally curly hair she always has a pencil stuck through.
“I swear, you need to stop calling me that dumb shit.” I roll my eyes at her.
She giggles, flopping into the chair and spinning around a few times. “Why? It’s fun. Also,” she says, halting the chair and leaning in close, her chin on the palms of her upturned hands. “There’s a sexy man asking for Nurse Hayes in the emergency room.”
I add a few more notes, signing my name with a flourish before I close the chart and slide it across the desk for her to log. “Asking for me? Who is it?”
Shameka puts the chart away, then rounds the desk, threading her arm through mine. “Can’t remember his first name. Last name is Sinclair. Says he knows you.”
Racking my brain, I shift through the thousands of names I know from my ten years of working here and cannot place who she’s talking about.
I’ve worked in many departments since I started working at this hospital—med surg, labor and delivery, OR, and ICU to name a few—and no one has come back to see me after they were discharged. So who the hell is Sinclair?
“No clue who that is,” I tell her as she leads me to the ER. I groan. “Meka. I wanna go get a banana. I’m tired and hungry.”
“Trust me,” she says, a note of faux lust in her tone, “when you see him, you won’t be hungry anymore. Because he’s a whole ass snack.”
“I’m gonna tell Gabe,” I joke as I smile down at her.
Shameka laughs, swatting at me. Gabe is her husband of fifteen years. She wouldn’t even imagine cheating on him. “Hell, Gabe might drool over him too. Even the young man he has with him is adorable. Maybe it’s his son, though they look nothing alike.”
I harrumph, but let her pull me to the ER to see this mystery patient. “Both father and son are good looking?” I’m intrigued.
“Yep. Dad is tall, tan, handsome with dark hair. Has more than a few battle wounds on him. Might be a soldier or something.” I shake my head, not remembering treating a soldier recently. “And the son is a cute young man with pretty blue eyes and wavy red hair. They look nothing alike but…”
Shameka keeps talking while my brain comes to a halt. I know exactly who she means. Fuck, this man doesn’t give up. I smile, despite wanting to roll my eyes at his persistence.
Atlas Sinclair.
This isn’t the first time he’s come back to the hospital, or the first time he’s asked for me, though it has been a while.
Atlas is… trouble. I’m not sure why—he hasn’t shown that he’s anything but a hardworking man who cares about his son and his son’s boyfriend—but I get a… feeling. Like he has secrets. Secrets he’d rather take to the grave.
Which means someone like him could never open up to me. That’s trouble. My last relationship was so marred in secrets and deception, I had to move away to avoid the whispers and the death threats.
Dating a man with a double life is hard and hurts more than the victims and their families.
But there is something about Atlas I find interesting.
It took all my self-control to turn him down a few months ago when he asked me for coffee.
My schedule was so unpredictable while I worked in the emergency room.
Besides, I didn’t think I was ready to date again.
It’s been years since my divorce, but… yeah, not ready to go there.
I tune back in to what Shameka is saying. “…but I told him you were free since you were about to go on break.”
“So you sold me out?” I ask, glaring at her, though she pokes me in the belly and I giggle, my frown forgotten.
“Come on, Cal. You haven’t dated since you started working here.
I haven’t seen you with a man in years. Even when I tried to set you up, no one stuck around.
I have a good feeling about this one. He’s older, so he might have his shit together.
” She pauses as if in thought. “I think that’s where I went wrong.
Trying to find people your age. You need older, refined, distinguished. ”
“Atlas is none of those things,” I say without thought. “Well, except older.” Not that there’s anything wrong with the rugged good looks he sports. But he’s the type of man who works with his hands, who smells like sweat and oil and warm skin from working outdoors.
He’s the type of man I should stay away from.
“Atlas, is it?” she asks, and I groan. “So you know who I’m talking about. Good. Go ahead and talk to the man. He might need someone to help that intern who’s sewing him up.”
My belly swoops. “Intern? Sewing him up? Meka, why would they leave him with an intern?”
“Uh, because intern doctors need to learn sutures,” she answers, looking at me like I don’t have a lick of sense. “He’ll be fine. Though he was pulling on that thread so tightly it snapped so…”
I huff and unhook our arms, taking off at a jog. “I’ll talk to you later,” I say over my shoulder.
“Go get your snack,” she yells at my back, making me chuckle.
When I get to the ER, it’s pretty chill, so I can see why an intern was sent to stitch him up. I roll my eyes and check the screens over the nurses’ station. Sinclair, Atlas is in bay five with a three-day intern. A fucking baby is suturing Atlas.
Pulling in a deep breath to calm my racing heart, I make my way over to bay five and peek behind the curtain. There, lying on the bed with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arm resting over his head, is Atlas Sinclair.
Fuck, he’s as handsome as I remember. Warm, tan skin, steely gray eyes that dance with amusement as he watches the nervous intern try to thread the suture, and his pretty mouth tipped up in a soft, teasing smile. He’s the picture of sex personified.
Not that I’ve thought about sex with Atlas.
I haven’t.
At all.
“Be still, Atlas,” Ranen, the red-haired man Meka mentioned says, looking exasperatedly at the older man. “He’s trying.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Atlas says teasingly. “Go ahead, champ,” he says to the doctor—whose face turns beet red. “You’re doing great.”
I roll my eyes and snap the curtain open. “Stop teasing the doctors, Mr. Sinclair.” I try to sound as if I’m not amused, but I’m sure I fail. The grin on my lips more than gives me away.
Atlas’s head whips in my direction, and he makes a slow perusal of my body. I look down at myself, taking in my shapeless dark blue scrubs and my soft-soled shoes. Not sure why he looks as if he’s seeing a naked model in front of him and not a tired nurse, but whatever.
“Nurse Hayes,” he breathes, my name on his lips sounding like velvet. “You got my message?”
“Heard you were looking for me,” I say dismissively while I look at Ranen. “Hey there, sunshine. How are you?”
“I’m good, Nur—Calvin.” I smile at him, glad he remembered I asked him to call me that. “Atlas… fell. I keep telling him he needs to slow down in his old age at the construction site.”
I step back and look through the double doors, seeing that it’s pitch black outside. The time on the vitals monitor says two fifty-four in the morning. “Kinda late to be working.”
Ranen opens his mouth, then closes it again, looking at Atlas with wide eyes.
That. That’s the reason I can’t see someone like Atlas. Secrets. That look smacks of fuck, we didn’t get our story straight.
Atlas shrugs. “I wasn’t working. I was grabbing some things. I couldn’t sleep tonight and wanted to do some repairs around the house, but couldn’t find my tool bag. Went to the site to get it, turned my flashlight off when I thought I was good leaving, tripped and fell. It’s not a big deal.”
I give him a skeptical look, but I don’t have a right to question him. What he does isn’t my business.
Instead of commenting on his story, I hum and walk over to the doctor, watching as his shaky hands almost pierce Atlas’s skin with a pair of curved mayos.
“Dr. Vera?” The intern jumps and looks at me with wide eyes.
“You should use straight mayos. You get better access. Would you like me to show you?”
“Can you?” he asks desperately, then looks at Atlas and clears his throat before looking back at me. “I mean, are you allowed? As a nurse?”
I nod, going to wash my hands and glove up. “Yeah. I can, as a registered nurse first assistant, and I did a few continuing education classes to perfect my technique. You can watch if you want.”
He nods quickly and puts the curved suture scissors down, relief crossing his face. “That would be great, thanks.”
I shake my head with a grin at Atlas. “You’ve numbed the area?” I ask.
The doctor’s face drops. “No. I uh… I for… I forgot.”
I look at him, shocked. “You already started suturing. You mean—”
“It’s all good,” Atlas says, waving me away. “I can take it.”
“Nonsense,” Dr. Vera says, looking like he’s going to cry. “I can do it now. I’m sorry, sir. I thought the admitting doctor had… you didn’t move, like it didn’t hurt, so I thought—”
Reaching out, I grab the doctor by his shoulders. “It’s okay, Dr. Vera. Take a deep breath.” I pull in a lungful of the antiseptic-smelling air and he mimics me, his watery gaze clashing with mine. “Mistakes happen. Let’s correct them and move on, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Nurse Hayes.” I don’t correct him. These interns will learn eventually or they’ll drop. Few of them last long in the ED.
When I look back at Atlas, I see him staring daggers at Dr. Vera, where a second ago he was just teasing him.
I raise an eyebrow at him. When our eyes meet, the brief flash of anger melts away and he says, “I didn’t think you’d be here this late.”
“Then why did you ask for me, Mr. Sinclair?”
“Atlas.”
I give him a look. “Mr. Sinclair.”
“I’ll get you to say my name one of these days.”
Ranen giggles behind his hand, and I give him an exasperated look as I step away to allow Dr. Vera to numb Atlas up. “Is he always like this?”
“I think they all are,” Ranen says.
I remember Ranen’s boyfriend. He was very possessive, that’s for sure. I almost thought I’d have to call security with how he refused to leave when Ranen came in after being hurt at a work site. And I remember the brother, with his wild brown hair and intense eyes.
Yeah, I can see that.
“All done,” Dr. Vera says excitedly. “How do you feel, sir?”
“I’ll be better as soon as Calvin sews me up.”
I grin, against my better judgment, enjoying this weird flirting Atlas does. He’s not shy about saying what he wants. No beating around the bush. I kinda like that.
After I change out the needle holders, I go through the best way to suture thin skin in areas such as where Atlas injured himself. It has to hurt, since it’s right on a rib, but Atlas looks like he’s at the spa.
As I’m talking and suturing, I catalog Atlas’s body. Not just his hard pecs and prominent abs—seriously, he’s fifty, why are his abs so hard?—but all the nicks and cuts and raised scars. What is his story?
Almost like he reads my mind, Atlas says, “You’d be surprised what happens in the construction business. It’s a dangerous job.”
I hum again as I finish his sutures. “You have to be more careful, Mr. Sinclair.”
Dr. Vera gives him instructions on how to care for the wound and to return if there are signs of infection, while I clean up the trash and dispose of the needle in the sharps container.
Atlas gives the doctor a dry look, the friendly expression from earlier long gone.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s not happy that the doctor seemed too familiar with me.
That shouldn’t make butterflies dance in my belly.
When Dr. Vera leaves, I turn to Ranen. “Please make sure he’s not… falling… in the dark anymore. The next time might not be so…” I wave my hand in the air, trying to find the correct word to use for a wound that required an ED visit. “Harmless.”
Ranen stands, nodding quickly. “I told him to wait. But… he’s old.”
“Hey!” Atlas says, making Ranen giggle behind his hand again. “I’m not that old.”
“Old enough,” I say with a smirk. “Get home safe, okay?”
“Just a second.” Atlas climbs off the bed, standing to his full height. He’s not much taller than I am, but his bulk makes it look like he’s towering over me. “Do you…” He stares at me, his eyes bouncing around my face. “You look tired. You okay?”
“Yeah. I just switched from the day shift. It’ll take a few days for me to get into the groove of working nights again.”
“We can… we can grab coffee after your shift one day.” He stops and shakes his head. “Hmmm… wait. Night shift. So… before. We can grab coffee before your shift.”
I grin at him, propping my hip on one of the medical carts. “You don’t give up, do you? You know that could be seen as creepy, right?”
Ranen chuckles. “I’ll go get the car, Atlas.”
Atlas waits until he leaves, then looks back at me. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
I shake my head. “No. You’re not waiting for me outside after my shift or anything like that. But you are persistent.”
“You never told me no. Just that you had to work. But if you want me to stop asking, I will.” He pauses, and the corner of his mouth ticks up in a charming smile. “Probably.”
I should tell him no, that I don’t want to go out with him, that I don’t date, that dating made me uproot my life and leave everything I’ve ever known to start over somewhere new.
I should tell him that his obvious secrets are a big obstacle for me and I won’t be made a fool of again.
I should tell him I need to focus on work so I don’t fall for the wrong man again.
I should do all that, but instead, I grin at him and say, “Fine. Take me for coffee, Mr. Sinclair. Don’t make me regret it.”