Chapter 1 – Jensen #2
“So,” he says like he’s making small talk. “You meet the new team doctor yet?”
“No. What happened to the last one?”
“Got caught stealing money and supplies from the arena in Houston.”
“Wow. Fuck.”
He nods and digs his thumb into a knot in my shoulder. It hurts like a bitch, but at least it cuts through the static better than anything else does these days.
“New one’s real pretty,” he adds, like that’s the selling point and not the doctor's skills and credentials.
I grunt when he works the knot harder. “Pretty?”
He grins. “Doctor Catalina Alba.”
Doctor Alba…?
The name catches against something in my memory, a nerve ending sparks, but it doesn’t quite land.
Not until the door to the training room slams open hard enough to rattle the hinges.
I twist to see who’s stupid enough to come in here like that.
It’s a woman. Moving fast. Dark brown hair spilling loose from a bun that looks like it was pinned up with an actual pen.
Her eyes are the warmest shade of brown I’ve ever seen, and she’s headed right toward me, looking like she’s already decided this conversation is going to go badly for somebody.
Me. It’s going to go badly for me. Because I know that face.
I sit up so fast Heath stumbles backward with a grunt.
That's the face I saw first when I came out of anesthesia, half-convinced I'd died and gone to heaven. When really, I’d gotten lucky on an operating table in California. Hers are the hands that cracked my chest open, repaired something I didn’t know was broken, and then put my heart back where it belonged.
The same eyes that explained the surgery to me afterward in a voice so flat and clinical I thought for ten straight seconds she was going to tell me I was dying.
What the hell is she doing here on my circuit?
“Jensen Grant.” She says my full name like it’s an accusation, already closing the distance between us. I sit up a lot straighter. She’s pissed. But why?
"I'm the new doctor assigned to the Iron Horn series." She says it flat. Like she's reading off a card she hates. "I'm introducing myself to all the riders." She thrusts a hand toward me like she’s being forced to do it.
I take it. Soft. Delicate. The same hands that held my heart in them and didn't nick or drop it. For one second the static clears all the way out of my skull, and I swear I feel my pulse try to match hers.
She’s closer now. Brown skin that looks as soft as butter.
Brown eyes with a halo of gold around the edges.
Last time I saw her, her hair was slicked into the tightest bun I’d ever seen, and she was wearing a mask.
Damn shame because she has the prettiest shaped mouth that I’ve ever been this close to.
If she recognizes me from the surgery, she doesn’t show it.
But the glare she’s leveling at me tells me I'm still on her shit list. She's robotic in her movements.
Stilted like she's protecting herself and being assessed.
That disappears the moment that she yanks her hand away and leans in so that only I can hear her.
"Need I remind you that my hands are my livelihood. I'd prefer you not crush them with your Herculean paws."
I didn't even realize I was being rough with her.
“Didn’t realize they made livelihoods that fragile.”
“They don’t. Just yours, apparently.”
She’s already turning away from me.
"Hey. Doc. Wait up!"
"You will address me as Doctor Alba."
"Right. Doctor Alba." I rub the back of my neck, still trying to catch up to the fact that she's standing in a training room in Austin instead of an operating room in California. "Didn't figure I'd ever see you again. Sorry about not coming to my follow up appointment.”
I’m trying to be funny, but I guess that didn’t land. She just looks at me with those big, round brown eyes and slowly blinks. Dammit. She’s pretty when she’s mad.
“Guess congrats are in order, on the new gig and all," I say.
She goes very still.
"Congrats," she repeats the word slowly, and I know instantly that was the wrong thing to say.
"Yeah, I mean, that's a hell of a jump. Heart surgery to bull riders."
I'm just talking now, filling space, the way I do with everybody. Except apparently, I’m not supposed to do that with her, because her eyes have gone flat in a way that makes Heath turn around slowly and find the tools he brought out extremely interesting.
"Must've been a slow year for hearts, huh?"
"A slow year for hearts," she repeats and folds her arms tightly across her chest.
I’m fucking this up. I’m not sure why. But I am completely fucking this up.
I run my fingers through my hair. "That came out wrong."
"No," she says, calmly. But it’s a scary calm. "It came out exactly right. That's the assumption, isn't it? That a woman doesn't walk away from the top of her field unless somebody handed her a worse career out of pity."
"Well, that's not what I—"
"I don't need your congratulations, Mr. Grant. I need you to take your own health as seriously as I took putting your heart back together. That's the entire job. That's all I'm here for." She's already moving for the door again. "Try not to need me again so soon."
The door swings shut hard enough to bounce off the frame, and I'm left sitting there with my shoulder throbbing, replaying what I said, trying to find the part that was an insult and coming up empty. And somewhere underneath all the confusion, there’s something that feels a hell of a lot like wanting her to come back in here and yell at me some more.
I like her.
Heath clears his throat. "So, that went well. Seems like the new doctor and you will get along just fine."
"I don't even know what I said. I blacked out."
"Yeah," he says, grinning down at my shoulder like it's the funniest thing he's seen all week. "That's usually how it goes with you and women, isn't it? Lay back, let me finish up, and maybe next time you stay out of Doctor Alba’s way, yeah?"
I lay back on the table. “Yeah…”
But all I can hear is the muted rush of water in my ears, the feeling of being suspended beneath the surface, caught somewhere between panic and calm and unable to take in air.
And then I think of her… Doctor Catalina Alba. The strange jolt I felt when I touched her. Seeing her felt like breaking the surface and finally pulling in a breath after holding it for too long.