Chapter 2 TESSA
Tessa
“Holy shit.”
It sits on the edge of the Atlantic like it owns the ocean, glass and pale stone rising straight off the headland above the water, three stories of money perched where the waves can’t reach.
I stare at it through the windshield.
Then I pick up my phone and check the address.
Twice.
Because there is absolutely no way this can be right.
I look from the house to my phone, then back to the house.
Same address. Apparently.
“Huh.”
I spent half of last night reading everything I could find on Ronan Sinclair.
Thirty-two. Single. Founder and CEO of Synapse.
Recovering from a serious SUV accident. None of which prepared me for the discovery that Sadie’s older brother lives in a house people on passing boats probably stop and point at.
My phone buzzes twice in the cupholder.
Sadie: Gate code’s 4287. Mrs. Vale’s off today so just let yourself in.
Sadie: And don’t let him scare you off.
Three weeks ago I’d have said no. But three weeks ago my life still looked like something I recognized, and saying no to the woman who runs my emergency department wasn’t really an option.
Besides, if I’m honest, I need this almost as much as her brother needs a nurse.
I just need it for reasons I’m not putting in any text.
I grab my bag off the passenger seat, climb out into the salt air, and let myself in through a front door the size of a small church and into a house that doesn’t make a single sound to greet me.
“Hello?”
It comes out softer than I mean it to, and nothing answers, which somehow makes the place feel even bigger.
It’s the quiet that gets me first. I’m used to meeting patients in a trauma bay with alarms going and people shouting over each other. This is the opposite of that.
There’s a walker folded against the wall in the hall, unused, accusing. Two cans of a high-calorie recovery shake sweating on a side table, untouched. A row of amber pill bottles beside them, caps still sealed.
I set my bag down on a chair by the wall and keep moving, further into the house.
“Hello?” I try again, a little louder this time. “It’s Tessa. Sadie sent me.”
Still nothing.
Then I hear it.
The faint tap of keys somewhere deeper in the house.
I follow the sound down the hall and stop in the doorway.
There he is.
Ronan Sinclair is propped up in a hospital bed angled toward the windows, laptop balanced on his lap. All I see at first is broad shoulders and dark hair and the brace running the length of one leg on top of the covers.
A worn T-shirt, sweatpants, three days of stubble. Everything about him says a man who used to dress like armor and can’t right now.
A crutch leans against the nightstand, far enough out of reach to be a statement.
He doesn’t look up. Not right away. His attention stays locked on the screen, fingers moving across the keyboard with the focus of a man trying to out-work the fact that his body has filed for divorce.
I clear my throat.
Nothing.
For one absurd second I genuinely wonder if he plans to make me stand in this doorway until one of us dies of old age.
“If you’re the new nurse, you can turn around.”
The laugh slips out before I can stop it.
“Good morning to you too.”
His fingers stop.
For a second he doesn’t move.
Then he looks up, and the whole room changes temperature.
Whatever Ronan Sinclair expected to find standing in his room this morning, it wasn’t me.
Surprise crosses his face, and he puts it away. Then his eyes come up to mine—and I make the mistake of holding them. A man I’ve been hired to take care of.
The scar stops me. A raw pink line down his jaw, still angry, weeks from healed, cutting up into the stubble.
For half a second I look at it like a nurse—and then not like a nurse at all.
I’m seeing the shadows under his eyes, the stubborn set of his mouth, the exhaustion he’s pretending isn’t there. At all of it. At him.
He’s injured, he’s impossible, and he’s almost certainly going to make my life miserable.
None of which does a thing to make him less attractive.
The realization settles somewhere low and entirely unprofessional.
Which is deeply inconvenient.
“You’re not sixty,” he says.
I clear my throat, mostly to give myself somewhere to put the half-second I just spent forgetting I’m his nurse. “No.”
His gaze travels over me again, as if another pass might produce a different answer.
“You’re the nurse?”
“I take it I’m not what you were expecting.”
“Not even close. I expected someone experienced.”
“I am experienced.”
“That’s difficult to believe.”
It’s so flatly honest it catches me off guard. Most difficult men at least try to hide behind charm. Ronan Sinclair doesn’t seem interested in the effort.
Neither of us says anything. Then he drops his eyes back to the laptop and resumes typing.
Just like that, I’ve been dismissed, like you’d wave off a delivery you didn’t order.
“I’m Tessa Quinn,” I say. He doesn’t look up.
“Sadie asked me to come.”
The typing stops.
He lifts his head and studies me like he’s trying to work out where the flaw is and how long it’ll take to surface.
“I told my sister I was done with this,” he says.
“With nurses?”
“With all of it.”
“You should go home,” he says.
“That’s not happening.”
“What are you hoping to accomplish here?”
He has no idea what he’s asking. I think about Portland. The investigation. The emails I haven’t opened. The whole mess waiting for me there.
“I’m not in the habit of quitting on day one.”
One eyebrow lifts.
“That’s unfortunate.”
He goes back to the laptop as if the matter is settled.
“Where do I put my things?”
That gets his eyes back up, like he’s affronted I’m still taking up space in his house.
“Across the hall,” he says. “I wouldn’t unpack. Or get comfortable.”
“Noted.” I head for the door.
“Miss Quinn.”
I stop.
For the first time since I walked in, there’s something almost amused at the corner of his mouth.
Almost.
“You’ll quit by Friday.”
It isn’t cruel.
It’s certainty.
He says it like a man who’s watched this exact movie four times and already knows how it ends.
I take him in. The crutch he won’t touch. The recovery shakes he won’t drink. The laptop he shouldn’t even be using. A man determined to win an argument with his own body.
Then I meet his eyes.
“That’s optimistic.”
His mouth twitches, the smallest hint of a smile.
“No,” he says, his attention already returning to the screen.
“Optimistic was Nurse Number Three.”