“I’m researching for a role. I need to speak with hospital employees, and I didn’t want to wait until Monday to get permission from the administrators.” He leans in close, as if sharing a secret. “I’m not always the most patient of men, Nurse …” He glances at her name badge. “Robin.”
Now she recognizes him. The man in front of her is Cupid, an award-winning actor who’s famously talented, famously gorgeous, famously wealthy, and simply … famous.
But in her ER, that doesn’t matter.
She stares at him stonily. “If you’re not injured or ill, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Killjoy.” He sighs and rolls his eyes at her. “Fine, then. My heart is hurting. Do something about it, Nurse Wretched.”
She fights the urge to roll her own eyes. “I believe that’s Nurse Ratched.”
“I said what I said.” That obnoxious grin is back.
So she asks him to roll up his crisp white shirtsleeve, and she prepares to take his blood pressure. Only—
The standard, rote procedure has never felt like this before. The contact with his arm zings through her with surprising heat.Alarmingheat.
“Oh, my goodness,” she whispers.
Cupid jerks away and stares at his arm as if it betrayed him.
“Ridiculous,” he says, and then it happens.
He gives a choked-off exclamation and flaps his arm, as if in pain, but she can’t pay him the attention a nurse should right now. She can only feel what’s happening on her own arm.
Robin gasps at the sensation she’s been waiting for her whole life, the sensation she never actuallyexpectedto feel.
The letters appear one by one on her forearm in an unfamiliar, messy scrawl.
As a child, she imagined those letters might itch and burn, might feel foreign on the skin, but they don’t.
They’re a caress instead, a tender stroke of her flesh. They’re as ridiculously beautiful as him, each one a rainbow of jewel tones frosted like sea glass.
Ridiculous. It’s a lamentable soul mark, to be sure, but it’s hers.
When she looks up, his gray eyes are wide, his cheeks flushed a vivid pink.
He’s her soulmate.Her soulmate.
It’s a shame he’s such a pain in the ass.
EPILOGUE
VIKA ANDRICH GLANCED AT HER NOTES FOR THE NEXTquestion, and Lauren braced herself.
“Tell me about the experience of filming with Carah Brown, Alex.” The blogger leaned toward the couch where Alex and Lauren were seated thigh to thigh. “You two had a few key scenes together inGods of the Gates,but now you’re on the road in each other’s company for weeks at a time. How has that been?”
Lauren’s heart rate slowed once more.
Marcus had encouraged Alex and Lauren to accept Vika’s invitation for a New Year’s Day interview, and Francine—now Alex’s agent too—had concurred.She’s sharp but not unkind,Francine said.She’ll do right by you both, and a joint interview is a good way to appease your audience’s curiosity on your own terms and help guide coverage of your relationship.
So they’d said yes, but Lauren was still watchful. So was Alex, especially since they hadn’t been given the interview questions ahead of time.
If something went awry, though, Lauren could handle it, and she intended to prove that. To herself and Alex both.
But this was another question that didn’t require her input. Even better, it was one Alex could answer without hesitation and with total honesty. Unlike, say, Vika’s queries about the final season ofGods of the Gates—which had just finished airing and been shredded by fans and critics alike—and whether he still wrote fanfic. Which he did, under the anonymous handle Pegosaurus, as part of the Cupid’s Cuties community. But he couldn’t tell Vika that.
He could, however, rave about Carah.
