Out of His League. Cathryn Parry
and you need to take care of yourself.”
He winced again, and she remembered that he’d said he hadn’t taken painkillers. She opened a cabinet and grabbed some over-the-counter acetaminophen and wound-dressing supplies.
She hadn’t bandaged a patient since her rotation in emergency medicine, but she owed him that, at least. “Let me change your bandage as a thank-you. Then you should go home and rest. Surgery is difficult on the body.” She handed him a glass of water and shook out two tablets. “Take these. You’ll still be able to drive.”
He took them from her outstretched palm. His hands were...overly large for his frame. Long fingers, the nails groomed short.
“Do you ever watch baseball, Liz?” His voice was so low and warm it made her shiver.
But she shook the thoughts of him out of her head. Those pheromones were wreaking havoc again. “Never,” she said firmly, turning to the sink to soap up her hands, then she smeared them with Purell almost to her elbows, by force of habit. “I already told you that.”
He said nothing. Sat still, at her kitchen table. She bent over his splinted finger, and squinted into the light.
She could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing, she was so close to him, their heads almost touching. She was horrified to find that she was matching her inhales and exhales to his.
Stop it, she told herself. Switching into professional mode, she removed the bandages the surgical nurse had placed around Jon’s finger. The stitches beneath were small and even: expert. Typically, the residents stitched up the incision after the surgeon cut, but in Jon’s case, he had wanted to do everything himself, carefully and by the book; he’d even forbidden the team from playing music in the operating room.
“Do you have any idea how much money this guy’s hands are worth?” Dr. Morgan had remarked to Elizabeth. At the time, she’d had no clue. Now, after watching that clip on television, she had a better idea.
She kept her gaze on Jon’s finger, and on the sterile gauze and tube of antibiotic ointment she was opening. Jon said nothing, and that was worse than his teasing earlier in the night had been.
He wasn’t throwing roadblocks in her way now. So why was she delaying sending him home?
She drew in her breath. “Thank you for watching Brandon for me,” she said crisply, “but I see no reason for our continued acquaintance beyond tonight.” Her heart rate was elevated again, but she forced herself to continue. “I understand that Brandon and you may have formed an attachment, and I think that’s wonderful, but tomorrow Brandon goes home, and tomorrow you can take up the matter with my sister if you wish.”
“I’m not interested in your sister,” he said quietly.
“Don’t say that until you’ve met her,” she said beneath her breath.
His ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into her. Seeing too much beneath the surface, more so than she was comfortable sharing with anybody.
She made as much noise as possible, tearing at the packaging for the sterile gauze. Anything to distract herself from his presence.
“Does she suck up all the attention, Liz?” Jon asked quietly.
“What? No!” She jerked her gaze to him. “Stop questioning me. You have the wrong opinion of us.”
“What’s wrong about it?”
“You would like my sister. Everybody does.”
“I’m not everybody.”
He did not understand. “You in particular would like her, I mean.” Elizabeth slapped the bandage onto his hand. Or, she wanted to slap it on, but years of training betrayed her. Be gentle with the patients. “I’m saying that because right now she is helpless and in need of assistance, and you seem to be drawn to helpless women, one of which I am not.”
He frowned, pulling back his hand. “You think you’re helpless with Brandon, don’t you?”
“Did I say that?” she demanded. “Don’t put words in my mouth!”
“You’re prickly.” He smiled. “I touched a nerve, didn’t I?”
She really did not like him sitting so close to her, seeing too much inside her life. And yet, she had finished bandaging him and he wasn’t pulling away, despite what he saw of her. She leaned the tiniest bit closer, into his space again. It had to be the pheromones.
She shook it off. Remembered why she was pushing him away. “You stayed here, Jon, and you took right over from me because you like being in situations where people are helpless. It allows you to be the hero. I can see it, and I don’t want that in my life. It goes against everything I’ve set up for myself.”
He stared at her. “You are so wrong about me,” he blurted.
Yes, she thought, that’s good. Get mad at me and then leave.
But at the same time she felt sadness. She didn’t know why. Maybe she’d hoped he saw beyond the prickliness of her delivery into the truth of what she’d observed.
She fought her own inner resistance. Pushed back from the table—from him—and grabbed the pizza box she’d bought him, which was quickly getting cold. She shoved it forward, against his chest. “Thank you for your assistance. Tomorrow I go back to my normal life and Brandon goes home to his. Please be careful driving home, and follow all the instructions on your postsurgical papers this time.”
“I didn’t come here intending to help you with Brandon,” Jon said, standing to his full height and towering over her.
“Maybe not,” she replied, looking up into his face, “but that’s the instinct that took over, isn’t it? Maybe subconsciously, that’s how you’re used to handling difficult situations.”
Real anger flashed in his eyes.
A textbook reaction—and she knew, because she’d completed a psychology rotation. Jon seemed to be experiencing classic denial symptoms.
“Excuse me?” he said. “You don’t know me at all.”
Perhaps, but she knew a textbook case. Psychology fascinated her. And why not answer his question? It’s not as if she would ever see him again after tonight.
“You’re a pitcher, Jon, right? You play in the major leagues. That took years of training to attain—I’m assuming it was as long and as grueling as it was for me to become a doctor. I’m also assuming that in order for you to make the major leagues, and stay there, you have to love your sport the same way that I love my job. So if that had been me tonight in your shoes, I would have been watching that game very closely, and not at all caring about somebody else’s reaction to it. And yet, you weren’t even interested in watching that guy—Martinez, the ace pitcher—seeing how he did it. You were just staring at me.”
“I’m friggin’ tired,” Jon said as he shoved the pizza box back at her, which was the first instance of hostility she’d seen from him. Maybe it was for the best. That meant he didn’t like her, either. That meant she had nothing to fear from him.
“I had surgery and I was pumped full of chemicals today,” he continued. “Your chemicals.”
She nodded vigorously, walking him toward the door. “And yet you came here to see us—to see Brandon. To help Brandon. As I said, you have a white-knight complex.”
Those ice-blue eyes bored into hers. “Lady, you have no idea who I am.”
Bull’s-eye, she thought. And it gave her no comfort to be right. That wasn’t why she was pushing him. Being prickly.
“Why are you always so prickly?” Ashley often asked her.
Because I want to be back on my own track away from everybody else, she silently answered.
Jon Farell was...not good for that. He threatened her