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I move to escape, needing to flee and get my head back on straight where it belongs when he reaches out and grabs my arm, stopping me. He steps in behind me, his mouth close to my ear, and he whispers, “It was nice spending time alone in the dark with you again, Katy. See you around.”
He releases me, and I stagger out of the elevator, stunned speechless.
Son of a bitch. He does remember me. And our kiss.
Chapter Two
Katy doesn’t know this, nor will she ever, but I knew she worked here before I even interviewed for the position. That morning, I was walking into the hospital on my way to the interview with Wes Kincaid along with the chief of surgery when I saw Katy enter ahead of me. I recognized her instantly. She was wearing scrubs and had an elastic dangling from her teeth as she ran her hands through her thick, brown hair, and I was immediately hit with the memory of doing the exact same thing to her once.
Her hair felt like silk beneath my fingers, and she smelled like fucking sunshine and vanilla. Tasted like it too.
Katy Barrows.
The young, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed medical student who utterly captivated me. So much so that I spent extra time teaching her simply to have an excuse to look at her and talk to her while hoarding her attention all to myself. I had wanted to kiss her from the moment I first saw her, and I only did so that night because she was going into her fourth year of medical school, and I was moving across the country for a fellowship.
I had nothing left to lose.
I figured I’d never see her again, and that was my last shot to do the one thing—well, one of the many things—I had always wanted to do with her. Now she’s even more beautiful than I remember, and that day in the lobby, I found myself following her, watching as she grabbed a coffee from the kiosk and then met up with a friend before climbing into the elevator and disappearing.
I knew she had planned to become a trauma surgeon. She had told me all about it that night at the party before I kissed her, and I wondered if I took the job, if she’d be working for me once again. I told myself it didn’t matter. Despite the unethical quandary that comes with dating a resident, after what happened in Minnesota, I need this fucking job and have no plans to risk it. Not to mention, I have no interest in dating anyone.
Not after how badly my marriage to Lizbeth ended.
No. I moved back to Boston for one reason and one reason only. My mother. And the job, so maybe that’s two. But my mother is my primary reason. She’s sick and alone, and I can’t abide either for her.
So Katy doesn’t enter into my plans. Not even a little.
But I won’t lie and say I’m disappointed that I’m going to be seeing her regularly, even if only as my resident.
She’s everything I remember her being but with the added confidence and maturity of a great surgeon. I knew the second she got a good look at me that she remembered me, and sitting there in the dark in that stuck elevator, it was easy to suspend time and not think about the hospital beyond the four walls of the elevator or the reality of our situation.
Even if just for a moment.
I touched her. I teased her. I flirted. Though I did manage to keep it somewhat professional. That’s where it ends. Toying with the line is dangerous and forbidden, even if she is alluring as hell.
I released her after letting her know I remembered her, and in doing so, I vowed that was it. The simple truth is, I can’t fucking touch her. From now on, we’re chief and resident and nothing more.
I scrub my hand along my jaw and walk through the emergency department, watching her race toward the trauma rooms. Inwardly, I sigh. It’s going to be a long fucking year.
Taking a left, I head out the ambulance bay doors and jog toward the garage in the sweltering heat and torrential rain of a Boston August storm. Instantly, my blue button-down is soaked, sticking to my skin as my hair drips water directly into my eye, making it harder to see. Overhead thunder rumbles loudly, followed almost immediately by a crack of lightning. If that, along with getting stuck in an elevator, are not ominous signs for my first non-official day, I don’t know what is.
Wes is letting everyone know he’s stepping down as trauma surgery chief, and tomorrow will be my first official day where I greet everyone. And hope that the rumors of why I left don’t reach Boston. But today, I have somewhere more important to be, and as I climb into my car and drive across town, I do my best to focus on that. Not on what I left behind or the strings I had to pull to get this job after the way I left my old one or my ex.
And certainly not on the pretty brunette with eyes so blue they almost appear lit from within or the fact that she was so adorably nervous and unsettled in that elevator but seemed just as drawn to me as I was to her. Was it from seeing me again or the situation we found ourselves in?
I growl out a frustrated breath, running my hand through my wet hair and turning up the volume of the song playing through my speakers to drown out my useless thoughts. By the time I pull into the parking garage at Dana Farber, I’m centered on why I’m here and nothing else.
My mother.
After stopping at the restroom to use the hand dryers on my shirt, I weave my way through the building and take the elevator up to the infusion area, the bookstore bag dangling from my wrist. “Good morning, Kimberly,” I greet the nurse in the front.
“Good morning, Dr. Lawson.” She blushes as she did the first time I was here. “Your mother is just getting started. Would you like me to take you back to her?”
“Sure. That would be great. Thank you.” I may be an angry, grumpy prick now, but I’ll never be a dick to nurses, and certainly not nurses responsible for my mother’s care.
She stands and swipes her badge on the wall and then leads me back to an open space that appears more like a lounge than a hospital with its large, comfy, reclining chairs and sweeping views of Boston out the large floor-to-ceiling windows. Patients can choose to be either in a communal infusion area where they can socialize or in a private space, and my mother has chosen the latter.
Likely because of the books I’m carrying with me.
