Chapter Seven
Pull it together.You are a professional.
She might not have much, but she had her career.
Jory checked in on the next two patients on the floor, introduced herself, and logged on to the computer. This she could do. Review charts. Check on progress. Confer with patients, nurses, discuss the treatments with family and verify that all was well.
She headed to the next patient’s room, her fingers idly fiddling with the medallion through the fabric of her scrubs and the soft, thin body suit she always wore underneath for warmth and comfort. She’d put the chain on as an impulse, and now she wasn’t sure how she felt about it—holding her back or pushing her forward? As a kid she’d worn it proudly, but under her clothing so no one would tease her or ask about it. Then she’d worn it as a talisman to lead her brother and father home.
She swallowed a rueful smile. She’d lost hope a long time ago, but still, she always thought Josiah would find her. She’d looked for him, online, but nothing. Perhaps her father had changed their names. Now she felt that by wearing the necklace she was once again calling out to her brother, soul-to-soul.
She reached for it, thinking she should take it off but hesitated. The medallion was all she had from her past, and she needed to own it so she could move on.
“Excuse me, Dr. Quinn.” A nurse hovered at the door as she made a note in the computer.
“Yes.” She looked up. Tall, blonde, sparkling blue eyes, bright pink lips and a dazzling smile.
“The patient in room310 has asked for you about the drain. You’d mentioned you could take it out?” The nurse looked friendly, expectant, and Jory wondered if she should recognize her from high school. There had been a lot of tall, blonde cowgirl and rodeo queen beauties, and she had tried to fly under all of their radars.
She checked her phone. Dr. Sam Gallagher had texted back a thumbs-up.
“Yes, I can.” She steeled herself. He was a patient like any other. Professionally she couldn’t ignore him. “Are you free to assist?”
Puzzlement flashed over the nurse’s features and then enthusiasm.
“Certainly, Doctor. You might not remember me. We were in chemistry together. I was a sophomore. You were a freshman and got the highest score on every project and test that Mr. Lynch had ever had in twenty years of teaching. Rhianna Masters—MacIntyre now. Are you home in Marietta to stay?”
The nurse had a little hop in her step like that would be a good thing. Why would she care? And yes, she remembered her now. She’d been a highly ranked barrel racer and had worn rhinestones on everything and sparkling eye shadow, lip gloss and cheek bronzer. She’d glittered like Christmas every day.
“I’m a traveling hospitalist,” Jory said. “Marietta was the only opening in Montana, and they had a high need, but it’s only for two months.”
“Oh.” Rhianna’s wattage dimmed a little. “I was hoping you were home for good. It would be nice to have a hospitalist who understands the community and is invested.”
Jory nearly tripped over her Dansko clogs—and that had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they stood together outside room310.
The usual excuses burbled up—she liked to travel and wasn’t ready to settled in one place, but Rhianna looked so sincere that Jory couldn’t mouth the lie.
And it was a lie.
She’d been running.
“I make more money doing locums.” Jory surprised herself with the truth. “I’m still paying down my school loans, and I help out my mom and grandma. They sold up and moved to California.”
What was she doing—bonding?
Rhianna nodded like she seemed to do everything—brightly.
“I still have college loans too. My husband Dillon—you probably remember him—he was a rodeo cowboy and buckled a lot. He and Rohan Telford were always neck and neck in the stats. He joined the army and did two tours so he could get most of his college paid for. We lived with my folks so we could save enough to buy a place. I have a daughter and a son. My mom was helping with childcare, which is why I work the evening shifts, but now that Dillon has finished his degree, and is working regular hours, he’ll cover the evenings I’m working.”
It was a lot of unasked for information, and Jory wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” she finally said as Rhianna seemed to expect something.
Rhianna nodded. “We have a house in town, and my folks still have their twenty acres, so I keep my horses there and still ride. Dillon and I are hoping to buy them out when they’re ready to retire. Keep the land—small as it is—in the family. Dillon’s family sold their land, and some influencer bought it and created some monolithic horror and gated it all up like they’re some A-lister. Sad.”
Jory nodded. Her family land was gone too. She’d thought good riddance. But then she wasn’t planning on having a family.
She steeled her shoulders. She’d stalled long enough. Usually she didn’t engage in small talk with staff, but it had actually felt natural.
“Sure you want me in there?” Rhianna whispered. “It’s pretty crowded with all that ex-military testosterone surging.” She winked at Jory like she hadn’t been the town outcast and object of pity, “but I’ll protect you.” Rhianna winked.
Like we are friends and colleagues.
Something hot gushed in her, and for a moment she was panicked that she would start crying right there outside of a patient’s door.
“Definitely I want you in there with me.”
Rhianna grinned. “I’ll play bodyguard and deflect the man eye candy.”
“I’m more worried about the dog.”
Rhianna evidently found that hilarious. “Kai is a sweety.” She laughed. “Military dogs are highly trained as long as you don’t pose a threat, but even then, Kai’s handler would have to give the attack command.”
“That’s supposed to be reassuring?”
“At least Mr. Miller doesn’t have a catheter in. That makes men cranky.”
And as a professional, Jory should not be feeling so flushed.
She rapped on the door and eased it open. There were now three large men in the room, along with her patient, who was sitting up in bed, looking mildly pissed.
“Huck could sew me up. You should have brought him and sprung me.”
“Not until you’re healed, and Huck has baby duty,” a large man with witch-black hair to his shoulders said, leaning against the closed bathroom door.
The room pulsed with masculine energy. Rohan smiled at her.
“Hey, Jory, good to see you again. Rhianna.” He dipped his head like he was still wearing his hat.
Rhianna grinned and waved. “See you brought backup. Y’all could be a cowboy boy band, Rohan.”
Rohan snorted. “How’d it go at the house, Jory? Did you exorcise any ghosts?”
“I think your reconstruction and remodeling booted any spirits,” she said softly and immediately wished she’d spoken with more power because Mr. Otis Calhoun Lael-Miller was watching her like she was a target. “You’ll need to clear the room. Kai, too. Nurse McIntyre and I will take out the drain since it’s no longer needed. Less risk of infection.”
Rhianna shooed the men out, but Kai remained at attention at the patient’s side. Yes, she would just think of O as the patient. That would help. What would help more would be if he’d look more like an invalid, but no, Calhoun had arms like cinder blocks and highly defined abs—no mere six-pack for this man, but an eight.
“How are you feeling?” She nervously fiddled with her medallion, but quickly crossed her arms.
“Like an idiot.”
Jory didn’t know much about the accident, but looking at his chart, he must have been hit soon after leaving the Graff Hotel. Guilt niggled. He wouldn’t have been at the Graff if she’d behaved herself like she always did.
Rhianna bustled around the room, getting the materials that Jory would need.
“I need to grab some lidocaine, Doctor.”
Damn.
“Leave the door open, please, Nurse MacIntyre.” She sounded like a pompous ass.
Rhianna shot her a surprised look but pulled the privacy curtain and swung the door wide.
O’s grin was feral. “Maybe it’s a good thing Kai stayed? Worried you’ll jump me? Do I need protection from the randy doctor?”
“No. Certainly not, and this is not funny, Mr. Miller.”
“Please. I’ve been inside you.”
“Shshshsh,” she hissed at him. “Not one word more. You aren’t funny. This is…” How could he not see how wrong the situation was? “You are in a vulnerable state, and I am in a position of authority, and…” She broke off as he groaned and pinched his nose.
“What’s wrong?” She quickly approached him, hands out ready to assess his ribs, his incision, his pulse points in his feet. “Are you in pain?”
“Psychological pain for being such a dumb-ass that I didn’t look before I ran into a street and got caught between the grille of a teenager late to high school English and texting, and another construction worker doing a bakery run for his colleagues and trying to get there before the coffee cooled. Do you know how stupid that sounds?”
“That’s why it’s called an accident.”
“The sooner I get out of here, the sooner I can put the whole moment of stupid behind me.”
He didn’t say it, but she had a feeling that he wanted to put last night in his rearview as well.
Which is what I want too.
But looking at him sitting up, bare-chested, slash of color across his cheeks, and his eyes glittering almost bronze with temper, he was utterly tempting.
Patient, pervert.
“I can’t release you tonight, Mr. Miller.”
“Stop with that mister crap, Jory.”
“You are my patient. Patient. I could lose my license.”
“Why?”
Her mouth dropped open but no words emerged.
“Will you medically treat me if I say I won’t sleep with you again?”
Jory strode to the door and closed it firmly.
“You can’t say things like that, Mr. Miller.”
“Calhoun. Say it.”
“Why?”
“You never said it last night. Say it now.”
“You didn’t tell me your name. I didn’t tell you mine. It was deliberate. We had a deal.”
“And now?”
“There is no now?” she whispered, her anger fizzling to terror. “I could lose everything, Calhoun. Everything I’ve worked for. My license. I’d have nothing. No way to pay my loans. Help my family.”
He said nothing for a long moment, and Jory felt that she was the one stripped naked.
“You are a patient,” she whispered.
“Don’t sell me so short. I would never hurt you. Never.”
His voice rang with honesty, anger. But so much was at stake.
Rhianna knocked and opened the door, lidocaine in her hand, she looked at the door and then at Jory, a little quizzical. Relieved, Jory approached Calhoun—no, the patient.
“I won’t be a patient for long, Dr. Quinn,” he said quietly.
Jory deftly removed the drain, and quickly stitched the small wound closed. She could have let Rhianna take over, but Jory knew Calhoun was going to push his limits and perhaps impede his recovery. She checked his incision site, put the back of her hand on his forehead and back of his neck even as Rhianna took out the thermometer.
“I’m going to run a quick diagnostic to check for signs of compartment syndrome. What’s your pain level?” she asked as she examined his lower legs. Wow they were powerful.
“Depends on the type of pain.” He grinned and tried to catch her gaze, and it took more effort this time to not respond.
“Physical.”
“I’m used to pain, working through it. My insides feel like they were put in a blender, and my ribs are screaming at an eight, but I’ll deal. I heal fast and I don’t want any pain meds. I need a clear head. I got a little job to do—a problem to solve so Kai and I can be on our way. Not getting bit by whatever magical love juice my brothers swallowed at the town watering hole.”
“Good luck with that, Mr. Miller,” Rhianna chimed in. “This town is full of cowboys and single women looking to lasso one.”
“Hard pass.”
“Famous last words,” Rhianna said, her wedding ring sparking in the fluorescent lighting. “All cowboys get roped. You know why?”
“Nurse, I have other patients to see,” Jory said, starting to feel claustrophobic. If Calhoun didn’t stop looking at her like he was mentally taking her clothes off, she was going to melt.
“Why do they get roped?” Calhoun asked like it mattered.
Rhianna winked. “Because they want to.”
“All of them?”
Jory peeled off her gloves, determined to ignore the flirty teasing or whatever it was. She was so bad at the social stuff.
“All of them.”
Rhianna opened the door, and with raised eyebrows at Jory, who nodded, Rhianna left the door open as she returned to the nursing station.
“I was a cowboy once.”
This had to stop.
“Mr. Miller.” She marched to his bed as she spoke, keeping her voice low.
“Calhoun.”
“You have to stop flirting, or whatever you’re doing. I told you I’m not good with social things and too much is at stake.”
“What the hell is that?” O reached for her necklace that had fallen out of her shirt. “Where’d you get this?”
He sounded like a cop.
She tried to pull her medallion back to tuck it back into her shirt, but it was between his fingers. “Where’d you get it, Jory?”
“It’s mine. It’s a family…” How to describe it. “A gift. A family crest of sorts although my family wasn’t a family that had crests. Delusions of grandeur or wishful thinking on my great-grandfather’s part.”
She pulled the medallion back with more force, suddenly frightened. She tucked it deep into her shirt, but she wanted to pull it off, tuck it in her pocket and run.
Her pulse pounded and she flushed as if with fever.
“I don’t believe you’re at risk to develop compartment syndrome, but I’m still keeping you under ob…” she stumbled over the very familiar word as in this setting it suddenly sounded pervey “…servation for twenty-four hours, and… Stop.”
Calhoun was trying to sit up again, and his grimace of pain felt like a flaming dart shooting through her.
This man. Didn’t he know how to not push it?
Jory held him in place and pushed the button on the remote to raise the bed.
“Follow the rules,” she said. “You’re going to reinjure yourself and have to stay longer.”
“No. I have to get out of here. I have things to do.”
“What things?”
His face twisting in pain, he reached for his dog’s harness. He dangled something between his fingers and Jory felt the blood drain from her face. Her lips felt numb, frozen, and her ears buzzed, and she could hear and feel her heart thump.
“Where’d you get that?” she whispered, swaying on her feet.
She felt the intensity of his stare blaze over her like a torch, but she still felt as if she’d been struck by an arctic blast, but before Calhoun said anything, she heard the alarm for a code blue. Her training kicked in and she pivoted and ran out the door.