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Chapter 2“You want to come to Mana’s with me tomorrow night? She’s making that chicken with the orange glaze you liked.” Jude Torres shifted in his seat to face his partner in the dark cab of the ambulance as she settled behind the wheel. It had been a long, late shift filled with alternating bouts of boring non-activity interspersed with two COPD patients and an elderly woman who slipped on her neighbor’s porch. She turned out to be fine, but her yell had drawn nearly every person in the neighborhood despite the frigid temperatures. He’d thought he and Rebecca would never get out of there when one of the more persistent neighbors kept asking them health questions.
Jude had to grin. Anyone brave enough to admit to erectile dysfunction issues in front of a gathering of his neighbors—all in pajamas—deserved the time for an answer or two. Neither Jude nor his partner was a doctor but that never seemed to matter. As soon as people learned they were in a medical profession, the questions inevitably came. Jude was pretty sure he’d heard it all during his six years as a paramedic as well as the two before that as an EMT, but people still managed to surprise him.
“Orange glaze,” Rebecca murmured. “Oh! You mean the Yucatan dish? I loved that.” She reached up to yank out her ponytail holder, causing her long, thick hair to fall. She gathered all the straggling brown escapees from the wind and secured it back in a tail fast, then watched her mirror as a cop car passed them.
He’d been working with Rebecca for months since he’d transferred to UC and she’d quickly become his closest friend. She had the kind of personality that drew a person in. Even when she was growling at loud-mouthed men with personal function issues. He felt pretty damn lucky because partnered paramedics spent more time together than a lot of married couples. Actually liking the partner was a major plus. “So you’ll come?”
Rebecca shot Jude a look as she started the vehicle. “Won’t your mother go into that girlfriend thing again if you bring me home for supper? I shouldn’t have kissed you. She didn’t seem to get that it was a joke.”
He shrugged before reaching out to adjust the heat. The temperature had dropped so much he could see his breath in the cab and his hands were still freezing from being outside so long. “She knew it was a joke, even if she did sound hopeful. She’s accepted that I’m gay.” He thought about Anna’s new favorite rainbow T-shirts. “Over-accepted it, actually. Trust me. She gets that you’re just a friend. Don’t be surprised if she starts asking about your family’s medical history.”
She cackled. “Oh God! Womb searching?”
“Of course! She wants grandkids something fierce and in her family, thirty is way past the time to be a father. But she gave you an open invitation to join us for dinner any time. She hates that your family is so far away and she likes to feed you—says you’re too skinny.”
“Damn, I love your mother’s definition of skinny. Wish it went along with the rest of the world’s.” She flipped on the headlights, sending the bright beams splashing across parked cars and a seemingly endless row of two-story homes wrapped in weathered red brick. Leafless trees stretched down the block, clawing at the black sky as if trying to pull down the blanket of clouds against the winter wind.
Jude smirked. “You’re gorgeous and you know it.”
She was. At only an inch or so under his own six feet, she had the kind of long legs and healthy, curvy body that made Jude’s brothers follow her around like enamored puppies. If Jude had been straight, she would have been just his type. Funny, family oriented, and kind...nothing like the man Jude couldn’t get out of his thoughts—the one they called the surgeon general behind his back at the hospital.
Dr. Ashton Frost was anything but family oriented and kind, and had earned his nickname from his love of barking out orders. But since the first time he’d locked gazes with those ice-blue eyes, Jude couldn’t keep the man out of his fantasies. He had a direct, sharp stare that did something to Jude’s ability to breathe. He filled the room with his domineering presence, his mountain-sized arrogance rolling off him in waves, and all Jude’s blood went south as he had to fight the urge to bring the man down a notch or two.
He wanted to wreck the doctor.
Wanted to see him covered in sweat and shuddering with passion underneath him. Wanted it until he dug his own fingernails into his palms to keep from reaching out and hauling the doctor into the closest empty room every time he passed him.
“Whoa, where did you just go?” Rebecca’s laugh filled the cab of the ambulance, jerking Jude back. “The heat pouring off you is better than the flimsy puff of air coming out of the vents.”
