Chapter 24
Liza
Over seven hundred hours. Four sixteen-week semesters. Eight twelve-hour shifts. Sheer exhaustion didn’t begin to describe how damn tired I was. But it was near the end. I’d power through. Hell, I could nap when I was finished. I’d nap for a week solid.
I was so close to being done with my clinicals. I looked like absolute shit considering I’d been working so much I’d barely been eating, but I didn’t care. It would all be worth it very soon. I was so dang close.
With a sigh, and trying to psych myself up for another shift, I punched in my number to clock in and slipped my badge over my head, which also held my keys to the supply room.
When I walked up to the nurses’ station, everyone was buzzing.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Maybe a good gossip would help wake me up. The coffee certainly wasn’t doing it.
The assembled nurses and CNAs giggled. We were all hard workers, and when the occasion called for it, we let off a little steam by giggling like teenagers.
Nothing wrong with that. “There’s a fine specimen of a man that was seen with Dr. Anthony today,” Rebekah, one of my mentors, said.
“He’s going to be working here as lead nutritionist.”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have time to be noticing some hot guy.
I should’ve known it involved a man. Nurses were the worst gossips in the world, especially about hospital news.
Not that I minded a little gossip—or a hot man—but my brain had room for pretty much only what I needed to get through the next couple of weeks of clinicals.
My focus was school, then landing a job at the hospital. End of story. Everything after that could be swept under the rug. Hot doctors and nurses were a dime a dozen. Blah. Not worth getting distracted over.
“He’s coming,” Rebekah hissed. She grabbed a chart and opened it like she’d been standing here working hard.
I didn’t really have time to fool with it all, but it didn’t hurt to look, did it? With a chuckle under my breath, I turned to see what all the fuss was about.
And stared straight at literally the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on.
I had big eyes anyway, but they were just about to pop right out of my skull.
“Shit,” I whispered. “It’s criminal to be that hot.
” I hadn’t meant to get caught up in it, but something about the nutritionist walking with Dr. Anthony drew me.
He called to me with some sort of ethereal…
bullshit. Shaking my head, I turned toward Rebekah and sucked in a cleansing breath.
The new guy was just another hottie. True beauty was on the inside, not plastered over some nutrition guy’s cheekbones and chiseled jawline.
I couldn’t help myself. I peeked again.
Dr. Anthony walked with him as they approached the nurses’ station. “Ladies,” he said.
They all swooned, but he was swoon-worthy.
Dr. Anthony was happily married, and as far as I knew, everyone respected that.
We all knew and liked his wife, Skye. But there wasn’t a damn thing saying they couldn’t imagine or pretend.
And they called him Dr. Dreamy, like on that television medical drama I loved to hate when I wasn’t falling asleep on my feet.
“This is a good friend of my family’s,” Dr. Anthony said. “Toby Miller.” Toby smiled at everyone, but to my surprise, his gaze kept flitting back to me. “I’m trying to convince Toby to join us here at the hospital, showing him around.”
Toby smiled, still gazing at me, and his teeth were perfect. White and even, and he had a dimple in his cheek that appeared when he smiled. What was up with this pull I felt toward him? I’d been attracted to guys before, but this was a three-alarm fire intensity level.
With his gaze still on me, and the results of that gaze making my chest heave just a tad bit, Toby nodded. I couldn’t stop looking at his lips, and the way they formed around his words. “I think I’m going to take that job, Anthony,” he said. “It seems there really is magic in Bluewater.”