Mount Mercy Read online

  I couldn’t hear, couldn’t think. I could feel the panic rising up inside. I take patients’ lives in my hands every day, but it’s calm and controlled. Every step is planned. This was the opposite: a mad, confusing scramble with a guy’s life on the line. This is why I stay upstairs!

  But out of all the eyes watching me, there was one pair that felt gentle. Sympathetic. I glanced up for a split second.

  It was Corrigan. Watching, willing me to succeed.

  And as I looked down at the wound again, feeling his eyes on me... somehow, I managed to slip into the zone. Everything else fell away and my fingers seemed to move on their own, sure and certain and quick. I heard one of the nurses mutter a curse, impressed.

  I sutured the last bleeder and stepped back. “There.”

  Corrigan’s gorgeous lips curved into a grin. “I knew you could do it.”

  And beneath the teasing, cocky tone, there was genuine admiration. For once, instead of flushing, I stared right back at him, trying to figure him out.

  He wasn’t prepared for that. And for an instant, I thought I saw it again: something beneath all that confidence and charm, something painful and deep. Something real.

  I was still staring when Krista ran up to us. She looked at me. She looked at Corrigan. “Okay. What did I miss?”

  I dropped my gaze. “Nothing. We’re taking this guy upstairs.” I kicked off the gurney’s brakes and heaved it into the elevator. I managed to do it without looking Corrigan in the eye again.

  But it didn’t matter. I could feel his gaze following me until the elevator doors closed.

  * * *

  Upstairs in the sanctuary of my operating theater, with the knife wound guy on the table and Brahms playing on the speakers, I hoped life could get back to normal. But no.

  “Corrigan’s been to Libya,” said Krista. “And the Congo. And Uganda. Doctors Without Borders.”

  I met Krista two years ago, the day I arrived at Mount Mercy hospital. She’s a frizzy-haired firework of a person, my head theater nurse and my best friend. Normally, I love hearing all the hospital gossip, especially because, as we both agree, I have no life of my own. But today she was talking about Corrigan, the one guy I was trying to forget.

  I tried to focus on the lung I was repairing but I couldn’t get into the zone. Playing in a loop in my head was the way he’d dressed me down...and the way he’d smiled at me. I couldn’t work out if I was mad at him or melting at him. Both?

  “He’s been shot,” said Krista, awe in her voice. “He has bullet scars. Three of them. And a scar from a machete, right across his chest.”

  I tried not to think of hard pecs or the way his body had felt when it pressed against mine. “How would you even know that?” I mumbled.

  “Someone saw him in the locker room this morning.” Krista grinned. “The word they used was lickable.”

  “Anesthesia still okay?” I asked. I was desperate now to change the subject. Every time I thought of those Irish eyes, a hot ripple went right down my body. If Krista noticed, it would start a conversation I did not want to have.

  But Lina, our anesthesiologist, was no help. She just solemnly nodded from behind her monitor. A six-foot, imposing blonde from Austria, she almost never speaks during operations, just sits there watching over the patient, a silent guardian.

  And now Adele, our junior nurse, joined in. “A nurse from pediatrics knows a nurse who knows a doctor who knows another nurse who worked with Corrigan in LA.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “They had a thing.”

  “I don’t want to know,” I lied.

  “I do,” said Krista quickly.

  Adele’s eyes went big. She’s so young and innocent, sometimes she looks half kitten. “They have this swimming pool in the basement, for physiotherapy, and someone came in and they were—”

  “No—” said Krista.

  “Yes! In the shallow end, with her legs wrapped around him.”

  Krista squealed with delight.

  “Can we just focus on the patient?” I pleaded. I knew it was useless. They were like a couple of teenage girls squee-ing over the hot new exchange student. Who was also the star quarterback and was in a band. The more they talked, the more I could feel Corrigan’s muscled hip pressing against mine. I started to think about that stubbled jaw and how it would rasp gently against my cheek as he moved in for a kiss. This is crazy! I never got like this about a guy. And guys never look at me the way he had.

  “Dominic. Even his first name’s sexy,” said Krista.

  I shook my head. “No it isn’t.” Yes it is.

  “He’s like some muscley, Irish doctor of lurvvv,” said Krista with relish.

  “No nurse can resist him?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Not just nurses,” said Krista. “Doctors. Surgeons....” She looked at me. I appeared completely disinterested... I hoped. “Anyone female,” Krista continued. “The man gets around. I heard that when he was in Detroit, someone walked into an office, looking for the hospital’s head of legal, but Corrigan was sitting in her chair. And then they see her heels, sticking out from under the desk.”

  Blood was welling up in the wound. “Could I get some suction, please?” I asked.

  Krista dutifully vacuumed the blood away. But then, “That’s what he said.”

  She and Adele doubled over, giggling uncontrollably behind their masks. I swear I even heard a snort from Lina. Goddamn that man! He was three floors away and he was still managing to disrupt my neat, ordered little world.

  I closed the hole in his chest, then started stitching him up. There. Finished. The guy would heal up just fine.

  And staring at the wound, I had to admit something. The bleeding had been bad, but, with some fast work downstairs, I’d handled it. His heart, though, had been about to stop. If we’d left the knife in as I’d wanted, this guy probably wouldn’t have made it.

  Corrigan was a cocky, risk-taking womanizer. But he’d been right.

  When I’d closed up and finished, I went out into the hallway and leaned my head against the window that looks out over the town. It was March and so far it had been a mild winter with only an inch of snow on the ground.

  Mount Mercy, named for the mountain that rises above it, is really too small to need a hospital, but they had to build one somewhere to serve all the villages around the area. Most of the staff don’t even live here. They commute from one of the other towns, where there are movie theaters and more than one restaurant. But I love this place. I love the way it looks in the summer, with wildflowers turning the fields into a blaze of color and—even though I hate the cold—I love how it looks now, in winter, with the snow dusting the rooftops.

  I love that most of the buildings date back to the Gold Rush, and that a lot of the locals have roots here going back that far. Even the police feel old-fashioned. Looking down Main Street, I could pick out the well-cushioned body of Earl, the head of our tiny police force, as he patrolled on foot, the sun glinting off his silver walrus mustache. Beside him was Lloyd, the young cop he was training. The hospital was a regular stop for them on their beat. In fact, Earl seemed to hang around the hospital much more than he needed to, as if he liked spending time here. None of us could figure out why. But he brought in boxes of his homemade apple and caramel donuts, so no one argued. It’s a cozy nest of a town.

  The mountain freaks a lot of people out. It’s beautiful, with thick pine forests and a gorgeous white snowcap, but on the side closest to the town there’s a huge outcropping that looms over us. It literally casts a shadow over the town each morning. If all that rock ever broke loose, it’d slide straight down the mountain and bury us, but nature has smiled on us ever since the town was formed a hundred years ago: hence Mount Mercy. And I like it. It’s a reassuring sign that nothing ever changes here.

  Until today.

  Now Corrigan was here, prowling around my cozy burrow. It made no sense: he couldn’t be interested in me. If he was the new quarterback, I was the weird, gee
ky girl who hid away in the library. But whenever I closed my eyes, I saw that cocky, lust-filled gaze.

  He wanted the geek girl.

  And—I flushed—I had a crush on the quarterback.

  I didn’t understand it. He was my complete opposite: confident where I’m shy, loud where I’m quiet, risky and quick where I’m cautious and slow. He was everything I shied away from and nothing like the men I’d been into before. And yet I was drawn to him. I couldn’t stop thinking about his eyes or the way his body had felt when he pressed up against me. And that brief second of vulnerability I’d seen, that hint of something deeper underneath his cockiness, that only made it worse. I knew he was totally unsuitable, a womanizer who was only after one thing. I knew he couldn’t really be interested in me. And yet I was fascinated.

  Goddamn him. Why did he have to come here?

  3

  Dominic

  WHY DID I have to come here?

  I was in the ER break room, pouring coffee into someone else’s World’s Best Dad mug. The acrid smell made my nostrils prickle: it must have been sitting on the hotplate since dawn. But I needed the caffeine. Last night, my first in the apartment I’d rented, I hadn’t slept at all. Even after going for a run. Even after hitting the town’s one bar and sinking some late-night beers. This place was just too damn quiet.

  In LA, I’d had three locks on my door, bars on the windows and a siren wailing past every few minutes. In the Congo and Libya, it wasn’t a normal night unless you were jolted awake by the crackle of gunfire or the thump of an explosion. But in Mount Mercy, I could hear myself breathing. I wasn’t sure if people even locked their doors, here.

  And the quiet gave me space to remember. I’d laid awake staring up at the ceiling, feeling the void where their voices and footsteps should have been.

  I drained the coffee, wincing. At least hospital coffee was the same the world over. And when I slammed the mug down, I had a plan.

  If Mount Mercy was too quiet to distract me, I’d find something else. I’d go back to that bar and get wasted. Or I’d borrow some skis and find a black run, something that would get the adrenaline pumping. Or….

  The break room had a window that looked out into the hallway. I could see a couple of the nurses out there, chatting away at the nurse’s station. I’d seen their eyes go big when they first saw my tattoos and heard my accent. I’d give one of them the silver-tongued Irish charm and take her back to my place. Or maybe both of them. Yeah, sex was the answer.

  Except….

  My gaze had drifted to a sign that pointed the way to different departments. An angled arrow led upstairs. Surgery,

  Amy Beckett.

  Smart. Annoying. Sheltered. She’d last about five minutes, down here in the real world. But she hadn’t backed down when I’d gotten in her face. She might be shy, but she had a spine. And she hadn’t gone all doe-eyed and melty over me but...there’d been something. Something a lot more interesting.

  Stupid. Why make it hard on myself? This place was packed with women. I looked back to the nurses. One of them caught my eye and gave me a smile. I smiled back.

  But….

  It was a weird feeling, like when your tongue keeps wiggling a loose tooth even though it hurts. There was something about Beckett. She was all buttoned-up and smart and efficient and her body was hidden under those shapeless green surgery scrubs. But there were these little things... like the blue eyes that had gone from frosty to steaming hot when we’d glared at each other just right. Or her creamy skin, that pale throat leading down into the neckline of her scrubs, tempting me with thoughts of what she might be wearing underneath. I imagined a black, lacy bra and sexy little black panties, silky fabric stretched over firm ass cheeks. My fingers sliding under the material at the front and down and in and her letting out a high, shocked little squeal of pleasure as I parted her slickened folds.

  And that red hair. The hair most of all. Not fake, cherry red, not auburn like fall leaves. Full-on glossy copper, bright as a flame. I’d only seen a single lock that had escaped from under that tight surgical cap: just a hint that under all that cool formality there was something scalding. All I could think about was pulling it free and letting it spill down her back in a shimmering wave. I’d roll the strands over her breasts with my palms until her nipples jutted out, hard and perfect, and my kiss swallowed up her moans.

  I turned away from the window. Feck. Now I was rock hard in my pants.

  Well, fine. The cock wants what the cock wants. I’d find her, work my magic on her, and get her into bed like all the rest.

  As I headed towards the door, though, I had this itching, nagging sensation. She’s trouble. I didn’t just want to fuck her. I was... fascinated by her. Despite the fact she was so different to the others. Maybe because of it. And that felt dangerous.

  Nah. It’ll be fine. I flung open the door.

  And walked right into a teenager.

  “Hi!” she said, far too brightly for a Monday morning.

  I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling my stubble scratch. “Who are you and why are you so perky?” I frowned. “Where did you steal the scrubs from?”

  “Bethany Taylor!” she said, no less perkily. “I’m your medical student.”

  Were students really that young these days? I knew she must be early twenties, but she looked like she was barely in college. Was I really that young, once? “My student?”

  “Mr. Bartell paired me up with you. He said it’d be good for you.”

  Bartell. I always hated administrators and this one already had it in for me. I wanted out. I needed to get back to a city, to the bustle and noise. But Bartell was right, I was beyond my last chance. Being fired three times in a year will do that.

  I studied Taylor suspiciously. She had long, golden hair straight out of a shampoo commercial, bubblegum pink lipstick and she was looking at me excitedly...and just a little cautiously. “What else did Bartell say about me?” I asked tiredly.

  “Nothing, Doctor Corrigan.”

  “Taylor….”

  She bit her lip and looked at the floor. “He said don’t let you rub off on me because he doesn’t need another loose cannon.”

  I waited. “... and?”

  Her cheeks colored. “He said not to let you chat me up.”

  I sighed. Come on, like I’d fuck a MED student! Then I frowned. Okay, there was that one time…. But not now. Now, I had my sights firmly on Beckett. “We’ll get on just fine, Taylor,” I told her. “What have we got?”

  She led the way to Exam One and pulled back the curtain. A white-haired guy sat on the edge of the bed and a much younger guy sat on the visitor’s chair. “William Jackson, possible arrhythmia, history of coronary heart disease….” She ran through his vitals while I studied the guy.

  He was in his sixties with a deep tan that he sure as hell hadn’t gotten in Colorado and a thin coat that said he wasn’t used to the weather here. Two of the local cops strolled past the open curtain. Instantly, my patient was on his feet. “I don’t need to be here,” he said.

  “You do,” said the young guy in the chair. “You’re having palpitations.”

  Now he looked like a local. He was in a heavy plaid shirt and he had a thick jacket hung over the back of his chair. He couldn’t have been much older than Taylor, with thick, unruly black hair and big blue eyes. He’d rolled up his shirt sleeves and his arms were loaded with muscle. Probably had all the girls after him. But his eyes were following the cops, too. Both of these guys were mixed up in something shady.

  I got the old guy to open his shirt and listened to his heart. The faded prison tattoos weren’t a total surprise. And... yep. “You are having palpitations,” I told him. I turned to the young guy. “Good catch.”

  He flushed. “I... uh... did a few years of medical school.”

  Taylor stepped forward, interested. “No kidding? Where’d you study?”

  The young guy looked at her and their eyes locked.

  “I’m Seth,
” said the young guy.

  Taylor grinned and bit her lip. “Bethany.”

  I rolled my eyes. Ah, young love. “Nice tan,” I told the old guy. “Florida?”

  He looked at me suspiciously, then nodded. “Flew in last night.”

  “You have altitude sickness,” I told him. “Florida to Colorado is a ten thousand foot difference. It can cause palpitations if you already have heart disease. It’ll pass in a day or two. But I want to do an ultrasound of your heart, just to be sure there’s nothing else going on.”

  Both of them jumped up. “No need,” said the old guy. “I’ll be fine. Thanks, doc.”

  I narrowed my eyes. This was more than just a couple of criminals being antsy around cops. They were scared of something else. I put my hand on Seth’s chest, blocking him. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  He wasn’t going to tell me. But when Taylor cocked her head to the side and made it’s okay eyes at him, that did the trick. “My dad,” Seth blurted at last. “He doesn’t know we’re here. He’ll be mad.”

  And he rubbed at something on his forearm. A tattoo, still angry red with freshness. I’ve been around the world, but I’d never seen anything like it: two crossed rifles beneath a clenched fist.

  I looked at the old guy. The sudden fear I saw in his eyes, just at the mention of Seth’s dad, made me go cold inside. They hadn’t been nervous about being caught by the cops. They’d been nervous about what Seth’s dad would do if they got themselves arrested. Who the hell was this guy?

  “A half hour,” I told them. “Let us do the ultrasound and you can get out of here.”

  “I can do it!” said Taylor, so fast it was almost one word. She and Seth looked at each other and grinned again and she blushed. Seth reluctantly nodded and the two men sat down.