He didn't need to. I knew where he was in the room. My whole body knew.
Then came the sound of a boot lifting off the linoleum.
Two steps, and his shoulder was beside mine. Six inches of air between us, and the smell of him crossed it — motor oil and soap and something warm and male underneath that my lungs took in without my permission. I did not look up. The skin from my elbow down to my wrist was humming on a frequency I had not felt in years.
"Nice work," he said, at my ear.
The breath of the words crossed the side of my neck and I lost the count on the stitch. I found it again. I pulled through and tied it off. The patient winced and the man beside me shifted forward like a man whose hand wanted to go to the patient's arm — and stopped it in the air, and returned it to his side. I filed the gesture, but didn’t look up.
He stepped back.
The air went cold where he'd been. I finished and dressed the wound, before giving the patient his discharge instructions. "Keep it dry for forty-eight hours," I said. "Come back in ten days to get the stitches removed. And wear gloves next time."
"Yes, ma'am. Thanks, doc."
"Nurse," I corrected him, peeling off my gloves.
They headed for the door. At the threshold, the man who'd been holding up the wall stopped and turned back. Held out a hand. The logo on his chest came into focus for the first time in the whole encounter — Black Iron Customs, white on black, a hammer struck through the letters. I took the hand because I thought I was supposed to. I was being purely professional.
"Caleb," he said in a low voice, his drawl sitting under the second syllable.
His fingers closed around mine—warm, calluses pressing into my palm—and stayed closed a beat past the threshold of a handshake.
His eyes finally caught mine.
On the available evidence, the man was criminally attractive.
His thumb moved across the back of my knuckle. Once. Slowly. A small enough motion that a person who hadn't felt it could deny it had happened, but it was absolutely deliberate.
This was the part where, if my brain was working properly, I would have said my name back.
What I gave him in place of my name was a small, polite, mortified smile.
His eyes dropped to my badge.
"Sophia." So-phi-a. Three syllables of a name I had answered to for thirty years that had never sounded the way they did coming out of his mouth.
I pulled my hand back. I pressed it against my hip the way you'd press a cup you didn't want to spill.
The patient leaned back through the door. "Come on, Casanova. Fuck. Can't take you anywhere."
The man in the doorway turned, half-grinning.Kill me now, he’s gorgeous.
"I'll see you soon, Sophia," he said in that same drawl, drooping lower.
My mouth opened on every word in the English language and what came out, again, was nothing at all.
He held the grin a beat longer than was polite before exiting. I watched him leave—who could blame me? The man was built like a Greek god who had happened to discover denim—listening as his steps grew quieter and quieter, eventually blending into all the other steps in the corridor.
I stood at the empty gurney with my hands unsteady. It finally hit me that his friend called him Casanova because he was one. I told myself, standing in that bay, that I would not be seeing him again.
I opened my eyes.I could tell the blush was still creeping down my neck.
Lucky for me, my brother was three counties away and not standing in my driveway, because Liam would have clocked the color in ten seconds, asked who gave it to me, refused to drop it until I told him, and had Caleb's plate run by lunch.
Some women got overprotective big brothers.
I got an overprotective Texas Ranger with investigative powers and absolutely no respect for personal boundaries when he thought he was protecting me.
