Chapter 4 Rose
ROSE
After taking a quick second to review my new patient’s file, I stepped into my office—and stopped dead in my tracks.
The dark silhouette faced the window, sitting in my chair.
His back was to me, his feet kicked up on the windowsill as if he owned the place.
He appeared to be staring at the rainy mountain landscape outside.
The first thing I noticed was the size of his feet, two dirty cowboy boots crossed at the ankles, a trail of mud running down the wall.
I literally cringed. He had brown, shaggy hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a pair of scissors in months, and a neck as thick as a tree trunk.
A tattoo peeked out of the collar of a black leather jacket stretched over the widest shoulders I’d ever seen.
I blinked. Although he had to have heard the door open, the man didn’t move.
Yep, my new patient, whom I’d never met, had made himself right at home behind my desk in my office chair.
Had he gone through my stuff? Pilfered through my space?
My mind began spinning with all the confidential information he could have read on my desk.
Totally unacceptable, and totally inappropriate.
Little did I know what kind of inappropriate this man had in store for me.
“Thanks for showing up.” The faceless voice was jarringly low. As smooth as the icing on Mr. Jenkins’ cinnamon buns, and as loaded as a ham and cheese croissant. The man was pissed. At me.
“Excuse me?”
He kicked his boots off the window, plopping them onto the floor with a thud, leaving enough mud to fill the Grand Canyon. Another cringe.
“You’re late,” he said, still not gracing me with the front part of his body.
No way. This was not happening. Who did this guy think he was? I bit the inside of my cheek and squared my shoulders. Professional, professional, you need this job, be professional, Thorn reminded me.
“I apologize, Mr…” I glanced at the name typed on the file in my hands. “Steele.”
“Phoenix.”
The chair swiveled and a flutter of butterflies rippled through me.
And I thought the voice was jarring…
His eyes were the color of a tropical ocean, a baby blue, almost iridescent, if not for the heat that spilled from them.
The lines of his face were sharp with defined angles, a mirror to the disinterest he wore like a beacon, making sure I knew he didn’t care to be there.
Days of unkempt scruff covered his clenched jaw line, pulling my attention to a pair of lips that had me licking my own.
Circles shaded his puffy, aqua eyes with wrinkles at the edges suggesting he was a good decade older than me, possibly pushing even forty.
A grey T-shirt fit snuggly under that leather jacket, defining a pair of pecs I could only assume were as hard as the expression he was pinning me with.
I felt my weight shift to my tiptoes, like a magnet being pulled, assessing him with a frowned expression that I knew was giving me away.
Because under all that weather-beaten, overtly masculine appearance, narrowed eyes, and locked jaw, there was a strikingly handsome man. Hidden, almost as if on purpose.
I’d never seen an aura before, but the man vibrated the air around him in a hostile, dark cloud like an animal warning of its presence. I could actually feel him in my office.
A Mighty King. Fallen.
He held a plaque in his hand—my diploma—gripped loosely at calloused fingertips as if letting me know what he thought about it.
Not much. He’d taken it off the wall, where I’d so proudly hung it months earlier.
This little power play ripped me out of my hypnotic gape.
He was playing a mind game, and I didn’t like it.
Ballsy, too, coupled with the fact that he’d settled behind my desk.
This was my first indication that my new patient was going to be like all the other macho males that crossed through my door.
Too manly to take care of the most important organ in their body—their brain.
Too prideful to speak to a female doctor.
As if my vagina somehow made me less capable.
They were my worst patients, my headache patients.
The patients that made me want to throw myself out the window.
It was time to show this one who was boss. To watch him fall in line as the others always did. Because I was the doctor, and he was the patient, and that was how it was going to be.
“Phoenix,” I repeated his name as I crossed the room. “As I said, I apologize for being late—”
“Accident on the south side of Shadow Mountain?”
I cocked my head. “Actually. Yes.”
“Should’ve taken the cut off before Snakepit Road, then looped around.”
My gaze shifted to the stack of mail on my desk, some with my home address on them. Sneaky bastard. I narrowed my eyes and leveled him. “Mr—”
“Phoenix.”
“Phoenix,” I said between clenched teeth. “If you wouldn’t mind, please take your seat on the couch and we’ll begin.”
He stared at me a moment, the slightest curve touching his lips as if my authority was humoring him. A subtle, cocky expression I assumed came as naturally to him as his next breath. It was a look that made women either fall to their knees, or take a few steps back.
Not this woman. This was my office, my territory.
He was my patient.
He tossed my plaque on the desk before standing.
My chin tilted upward as he stood, unfolding himself from the chair that seemed so tiny underneath him. The man was massive. Six four—at the very least. He stepped toward me, eyes locked on mine. Intimidating.
Butterflies ripped through my stomach, a weird mixture of attraction and nerves. I felt like a bunny encountering a wolf in the woods. Cautious, wary, curious.
I forced myself to keep eye contact as he brushed past me, his hips sweeping past my own leaving a spark of heat on my skin. It was then that I realized my pulse had picked up sometime during our interaction.
Phoenix Steele was throwing me off my game. I needed to get a grip and reverse the roles between us that had somehow switched to his favor.
I stepped behind my desk, taking a quick scan of what else he might have seen—or, taken, for that matter.
But everything seemed to be in its designated spot, including my cleaned, empty coffee mug that read I’d Rather Have a Margarita.
A few folders sat to the side, each color-coordinated and labeled.
Above that, a cork board covered in post-its of the million to-dos I’d yet to cross off.
Lastly, a Bob Ross desk calendar—a gift from Zoey.
My computer was on, and I always turned it off when I left for the day.
It was number three on my “walking-out-the-door” checklist. I frowned, looked at my laptop and monitor, both black, then at the piercing pair of eyes watching my every move.
Holy smokes, the guy was intense.