Following the Doctor's Orders. Caro Carson
stood there, each holding their side’s doorknob for a long, mute second. Zach let go and stepped back.
She came in and shut the door. “I was looking for you.”
His surprise was genuine. For eight months, he’d been bringing patients into West Central. For eight months, she’d been ignoring him.
“I wanted to tell you that your decision to under-dose the morphine increased the odds in Harold Allman’s favor. Thank you. And thank you for sticking around after the handoff. I think the way you kept him calm also kept him out of severe shock.”
Dr. Brown had never spoken two complete sentences to him. Zach wasn’t sure what to make of it. She wasn’t flirting, not like other women did. She was just talking to him. He crossed his arms over his chest.
Her gaze held his as she spoke. She didn’t come close to batting her eyelashes, not one flutter, but he noticed how thick they were, anyway.
“Not a lot of people would have held a patient’s hand like that,” she said. “Especially a... Well, I was going to say especially a man wouldn’t hold hands, but that would be gender stereotyping, wouldn’t it?”
Gender stereotyping. Did she have to speak like a sexy librarian as well as look like one?
“Forget I said that,” she said. “It was a job well done, whether you’re male or female.”
Apparently done for the day, she began unbuttoning her white lab coat, starting with the button at her chest.
Damn, damn, damn. He was definitely male.
Through the kitchen was an even tinier room, one that held a cot and a few metal lockers. It was the physician’s lounge, in theory. In reality, it was just where the doctors stashed their belongings. Dr. Brown stepped toward the lounge door, unbuttoning as she walked.
There was no way Zach was going to leave while an attractive woman was removing clothing. He leaned back against the counter.
Since he couldn’t just stare at her, he kept the conversation going. “I denied the patient adequate pain relief, so it seemed like the least I could do was let him squeeze the hell out of my hand. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. The old guy could grip as hard as a female patient I had last year. She was in labor, and she nearly broke my hand with every contraction.” He paused and grinned at her. “But if that sounds like gender stereotyping, forget I said that.”
And then it happened. What the corniest pickup lines or the cleverest zingers couldn’t accomplish, a simple conversation could: Brooke Brown smiled. She laughed, actually. Laughed as she shrugged off her white coat and let it drop down her arms.
Go. Leave now, before you fall too hard.
He couldn’t just turn tail and run. That wasn’t how they played their game. It would look odd. He needed to spar with her. Keep things normal.
But he stayed silent, mesmerized by a Brooke Brown who was neither focusing on medical care nor glaring at him while the rest of her staff flirted with him. She reached behind the door for a hanger, a woman doing a common task that shouldn’t have been so fascinating. He didn’t look away as she hung up her white coat.
“I’m glad I’m done for the day,” she said, as she stepped into the tiny room and opened one of the metal gym lockers. “Are you done, too?”
She was making small talk, completely unaffected by this change in their routine. Still, he didn’t take his eyes off her, not even to glance at the wall clock. By the time they drove the engine back to the firehouse, it would be seven o’clock and the end of his twenty-four hour shift.
“Yeah, I’m done, too.”
He needed to stick to his plan. Coffee to go. Head for the engine after delivering the line she expected, if he could remember the over-the-top line he’d planned.
He could not. As he picked up the full coffeepot, he thought of the oldest line in the book, instead. He raised the pot in one hand and the cup in the other. “Can I buy you a drink?”
She froze in place. Her back was to him, and since he was watching her every move, he saw her hesitation. He watched her fingertips as she raised her hand to the back of her neck and fumbled for her stethoscope. She pulled a square purse out of her metal locker, keeping her back to him, her head a little bowed. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. We’re not coworkers per se, but we do work together at least a couple of times a week, and...”
Her voice trailed off as she turned around and saw him holding up the coffeepot and the cup in the gesture that had accompanied Can I buy you a drink?
“Oh, it was a joke,” she said, and he felt every bit of her mortification. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and the cool and commanding physician looked for all the world like an embarrassed young girl, standing in front of gym lockers like an awkward teenager.
“My mistake,” she murmured.
He could leave it like that, with her feeling embarrassed, and their relationship unchanged.
But she deserved better, this smart and sexy woman who hadn’t seemed to like him much until today. The truth was, he’d said the line in a different manner than he usually did. Not so tongue-in-cheek. Not laughing as he spoke.
“It wasn’t a joke, Brooke. Can I buy you a drink?”
She was such a fool.
Can I buy you a drink?
He’d said it in that delicious deep voice, but without that good-time cowboy tone. For once, he’d sounded serious.
Still, he’d meant it as a joke. It was always a joke, it had been a joke from the very first, and Brooke was an idiot for having forgotten that for even the briefest of moments.
The stethoscope dangled from her hand. Buying herself a moment, she tucked it into her purse.
Why had she imagined a guy like Zach would have been serious for even a moment? He’d called her by her first name for the first time she could remember, and it made her want to blush like he’d whispered some intimacy in her ear. Maybe that had made her hear something more than he’d meant.
He was only eye candy. A ladies’ man. A fun-loving cowboy, for goodness’ sake.
And she was an emergency medicine professional. She could operate under duress. She’d been trained to keep moving forward, even after a blunder.
She moved forward now, literally, to toss her purse on the counter and take the empty coffee cup from his hand. “Sure, I’ll take a drink. Thanks for pouring.”
His smile seemed to come as easily as ever, but the look in his eyes pinned her in place. “Am I supposed to politely assume that’s a no and drop the subject?”
“It’s a yes. I’d like a drink.” She wiggled the white cardboard cup impatiently.
He covered her hand with his before he began to pour the steaming hot liquid, holding her cup steady with the same hand that had kept poor Harold steady. His palm was warm. His hand was large enough to wrap around both her hand and the cup easily.
Unlike Harold, she didn’t find the touch of his hand calming. She’d been this close to Zach before, but only in passing, for a whisper of silliness—I’m having a hard time finding my way out of this building because I keep getting lost in your eyes—and then he’d be gone and she’d be left alone with a pleasant little shiver of awareness.
He didn’t leave this time. He was still here, still touching her, and she had nowhere to look except at him. His eyes were blue-green and as focused on her as she was on him.
“I expected more from you.” He let go of her hand