Page 8 of Sacred Blood

Gabriella

“You can’t be serious!” It was hard not to throw the clipboard on the floor and do the Flamenco dance all over it. On day four of working with a greatly reduced staff, I was ready to break the Hippocratic oath and kill someone. That or curl into the fetal position and cry.

I was filling the role of three positions while half our nursing staff was down with an awful flu bug. The worst part of it all was that I was a fake, a phony, and way over my head.

After my visit from Papa, I knew I needed an escape plan and called my bestie, Sonja, or Red, as she preferred to be called. She was an IT genius, and her father—a member of the powerful Russian Bratva—had sent her to Canada to be educated.

We bonded over cannoli one day at a local restaurant on campus and became fast friends. When I told her my education was being cut short and needed a host of documents saying I’d finished the program with honors, she’d hacked into the system and gotten me what I needed.

Three days later, I left Toronto with a full set of identification under the name of Gaby Cala. My photo ID showed my newly dyed auburn hair instead of black. And the colored contacts I wore made my eyes blue instead of brown. With the makeup job Sonja had done, I didn’t look like me at all. If my father’s people were able to break into data banks, I was confident they wouldn’t find me.

The practicum experience I’d missed during my final year of school, I was now getting in spades at my new job. Was it even legal to make a nurse work forty-eight hours straight? But what could you do? As a newbie, I was used to crappy hours, but the burden of no sleep and too much caffeine was weighing on me. And now they wanted me in the operating room as a surgical assistant. Something I’d read about and seen, but had never performed that particular duty as yet.

Cursing my father and my lot in life under my breath, I trod down to the surgical ward. Being brought up in a mafia family had taught me how to present a version of myself that wasn’t real. Plant the fake smile in place and appear calm like Mother Teresa in the face of adversity. No effort was spared in trying to control the shaking of my hands when I waltzed into the sanitization station and began scrubbing in.

When I was ready, I flipped through the file on the door to familiarize myself with what we were doing and saw the name Dr. Vitale listed as the head surgeon. The name was vaguely familiar, but my caffeine-addled, sleep-deprived brain couldn’t put the name and a face together.

I was busy laying out the instruments on the tray when I heard the door open behind me, then voices as the head surgeon and anesthetist entered the room. Normally, there would be six of us assigned to this type of surgery, but with so many out ill, we were a skeleton staff of four and I was the only nurse present, which meant I had no one to rely on.

I listened to the voices, enjoying the rich, chocolatey tone of one of the voices behind me. It was so relaxing, like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

“Nurse!”

Shit! I’d fallen asleep on my feet, but it wasn’t my fault, I was exhausted. I turned suddenly, startled by the abruptness and my hip hit the tray. The sterile instruments went flying. A scalpel barely missing my foot.

“Shit!” I yelled before I could school my reaction. I dropped to my knees to pick up the now dirty instruments and got yelled at again.

“What do you think you are doing?”

I stood up abruptly knocking into the doctor that stood way too close and knocking his nose with the top of my head.

“Ouch,” I cried out and finally looked at the doctor with the velvety voice as I rubbed the top of my head.

Oh, no. It couldn’t be. It was Mr. Sexy tattoo man with the piercing eyes from the restaurant and the club.

“You!” we both said at the same time. Of all the people.

Of all the hospitals.

Of all the operating rooms.

It had to be him.

The stranger from Vinny's.

The stranger from Club Carnage.

The one man I'd noticed despite every effort not to.

Mortification crawled up my spine.

His eyes weren’t just piercing right now, but furious as they glared out from an otherwise fully covered face. But I knew what he looked like beneath the surgical mask.

Did the ugly blue scrub cap irritate the generous amount of hair he had slicked back? The idea seemed hysterical, and a giggle escaped my compressed lips. His eyes narrowed and I dropped my gaze to his powerful arms. His hands were slim, but powerful, with the precise confidence of a man accustomed to saving lives. The baggy scrubs did nothing to hide the powerful body or the intense power radiating from him through his smoldering gaze. Everything about him screamed dominant and controlled. I bet those hands could make my body scream with pleasure. My sex spasmed in reaction, my panties soaked with my release. The doctor, who’d been hard at work reining in his temper, removed his mask and sniffed the air, like a predator picking up on the scent of my arousal. His eyes darkened to almost black pools, which I was sure had been amber, just moments before. His appearance was a contradiction. Despite the mask of cold anger, there was also hunger in those inky depths. His lips had a sensual quality, but were held in a smirk of cold aloofness.

“Postpone the surgery until later today. And you,” he said pointing at me, “will follow me. Ms—?”

“Cala,” I answered in a strangled tone. Gulping, I attempted to dislodge the lump forming in my throat.