After the Christmas Party...

Although she recalled the removal of her clothes, she didn’t recall how he’d gone from fully dressed to whatever he still wore beneath her covers.

He was wearing something. Wasn’t he? Just because she couldn’t see any outlines, it didn’t mean boxers or cotton briefs weren’t there, right?

His eyes glittered. “You don’t recall ripping them off me with your teeth, princess?”

She’d taken them off him? With her teeth? Her jaw dropped then clamped shut in case her teeth got any fresh ideas.

“Okay, it was bad of me to tease you.” His grin turned devilish. “You didn’t use your teeth.”

She’d…She closed her eyes and tried to recall the events of the night before. “We had sex, didn’t we?”

“I already told you that we didn’t have sex.” He sounded annoyed that she’d asked again, that she hadn’t taken him at his word.

Unable to resist a moment longer, she reached out beneath the covers to touch his chest. His bare chest. To see if the feel of his skin was familiar, to see if touching him would cause a rush of memories.

“Then why are we naked in my bed?”

“I wasn’t planning to spend the night anywhere so I hadn’t packed any pajamas…not that I normally wear anything to bed. But I’m not naked. I’m wearing boxers and would be happy to show you if you’d like proof.” He covered her hand with his, brushed his thumb across her skin. “Besides, you looked as if you needed me to stay. My guess is that you don’t drink often.”

Still reeling from his offer to show her his underwear and just how tempted she was to take him up on that offer, she focused on the other part of what he’d said. “I don’t drink at all and I didn’t drink anything last night except fruit punch.”

“That was rum punch you were drinking, Trinity. It had alcohol in it.”

“The punch was…but…” Hadn’t she felt funny? Hadn’t she noticed that the more she’d drunk the less nervous she’d been? Dear Lord. “I was punch drunk.”

Looking as if he wanted to laugh, he just grinned. “You were a bit inebriated but no worries, you were a cute drunk.”

A cute drunk. As if such a creature existed. No one was a cute drunk. At least no one Trinity had ever had the misfortune of seeing drunk. Her mother had certainly never been cute. Chase had not been cute.

“I didn’t know there was alcohol in the punch.”

“It’s okay, princess.” His thumb paused and he gave her a sympathetic smile. “I figured out that you weren’t at a hundred percent. That’s why nothing happened.”

She tried again to remember the events of the night before, but only bits and pieces came back to her. “You wanted something to happen?”

He gave her a look that questioned if she had really asked that. “Of course I wanted something to happen.”

“Why?”

He laughed but the sound came out a little stilted. “That’s a question with a very obvious answer.”

“Because you’re a guy?”

“Despite what the female population may believe, not every guy wants sex to the point of doing so with any willing woman.”

Which meant she’d been willing but he hadn’t been. Urgh. What was she thinking? Of course she’d been willing. The man was hot and got under her skin to probe places she’d rather keep locked away. She’d been under the influence to where her fears wouldn’t have come into play to remind her of yet another reason why she should keep her legs closed.

“I’m confused. You wanted something to happen, but even though I was willing, nothing happened?” Even as she said the words, the reality that they were almost naked, lying in her bed, hit her. That he could have taken advantage of her and he hadn’t. She liked that. A lot. Possibly because most of the men in her life had taken advantage at every opportunity presented. Not sexually, necessarily, but in any other way they could.

Riley made a sound that she wasn’t sure was a low laugh or a growl. “Yes, princess, I wanted something to happen. A lot of somethings. Had you been sober, this morning would have been very different.”

She didn’t doubt that the morning would have been different. Had they had sex, he probably would have snuck out at some point during the night. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have bothered to sneak, he’d have just gone, and left her to her non-sexual self. She knew her strengths and weaknesses and if she hadn’t, Chase had done a really bang-up job of pointing them out to her and anyone else who had cared to listen. Sexual prowess wasn’t in her bag of tricks.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he surprised her by saying. “What I want is to see you smile.”

She bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile because, really, he deserved a smile. He was unlike any man she’d ever known and that made her want to know more…and terrified her, too.

“Not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s a start.” He smiled so warmly at her that the nausea within her actually eased. “Now, the most pressing question is whether you have any food in this joint so I can cook us something or would you like to go out for breakfast? I’m starved.”

In reality they did neither. Not long after she’d draped the comforter around her shoulders and rushed into her bathroom to clean up her mess of a face, he tapped on the door.

She cracked the door open to peer at him. He was fully dressed in his clothes from the night before.

“I’ve got to head to the hospital. I’m on call today, and they’ve had several chest pains come into the emergency room. Apparently the cath lab is a madhouse. Dr. Stanley is going to be tied up there for some time and there are two more chest pains on their way by ambulance.”

Trying not to look too disappointed that whatever their morning had been going to bring had been interrupted, she nodded. “I understand.”

Apparently she didn’t do such a good job at hiding her doubts.

He tilted her chin toward him so he could fully see her face. “For whatever it’s worth, I don’t want to go.”

His fingers on her face were so warm, so tender that she sucked in her breath. “What is it you want?”

“To spend the day with you. Maybe help you drag out your Christmas decorations because your apartment is sadly lacking in Christmas spirit. Or, for that matter, we could decorate my tree. It’s been delivered, but I haven’t had a chance to trim and decorate it.”

He had a live Christmas tree? Who did that in these days of commercialized Christmas? Not that she’d be doing either of his suggestions. She’d had her fill of Christmas spirit the night before and preferred to stick her head in the ground until the season passed. Just look what happened when she tried to get into the spirit of things. She’d ended up drunk and waking in bed with a man she barely knew. No, thank you.

“Honestly, what we did wouldn’t matter so much just as long as I got to spend some time with you.”

From somewhere in her bedroom her cellphone started buzzing.

“If that’s who I think it is, you’ll probably get your wish. I’m on call today, too, and if you’ve been called in, I’m likely to be as well,” she mused, pulling her robe tight around her while she dashed toward where her phone had ended up the night before.

“The hospital?” he asked the moment she disconnected the call.

She nodded.

“Maybe the chest pains will end up gastro related rather than cardiac and we won’t have to stay long. We could grab lunch,” he suggested.

“Maybe,” she replied, dropping the phone back into the small black evening bag she’d carried the night before.

“Trinity?”

She glanced towards him.

“I like you.”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’d like to see you again.”

Was he a glutton for punishment or what?

“Despite whatever impression I gave you last night, I’m really quite boring,” she said, wondering if she should also warn him about how much baggage she carried. The airport’s claim area had nothing on her.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You should,” she warned. “I’ve known me a lot longer than you have.”

He laughed then glanced at his watch. “I could never be bored around you, funny girl. Unfortunately, I have to get moving and your car is still at the hotel where the Christmas party was held. You’ll have to ride with me to the hospital so get hopping. We have lives to save.”

“Sure thing, snowflake.”

CHAPTER FOUR

ALTHOUGH RILEY HADN’T been on the schedule, he still spent most of the day at the hospital.

Fortunately, so did Trinity.

He’d been able to easily maneuver her into the cardiac lab with him. Right or wrong, he wanted her near him. The panic he’d seen in her eyes that morning worried him. Plus, she was going to need a ride to pick up her car at the end of her shift. He was way too smart to miss out on the opportunity to play white knight and give her a lift.

Doug Ryker, a fifty-three-year-old, had woken up with chest pain that had increased as the sun had come up. When he’d started clutching his chest, his wife had called 911. An ambulance had brought him to the emergency room. His cardiac enzymes had been elevated and, at the minimum, he’d needed an arteriogram.

That’s where Riley came in.

He’d met the gentleman’s family very briefly while the patient was being prepped. Now Riley was scrubbed and ready to proceed. Trinity was his nurse.

He stole a look at her. If she noticed, she ignored him and focused on their patient.

Too bad there wasn’t a sprig of mistletoe around because he’d love to pull down her mask and kiss those plump lips of hers. Did she remember their kiss beneath the mistletoe or had she blocked it from her mind along with the rest of the night? Just how much did she remember about their evening together?

’Twas the season for good tidings and cheer. Riley couldn’t think of anything that would cheer him more this Christmas than getting to know the lovely woman he’d spent the night holding and had developed a fascination for that he couldn’t quite explain, much less understand. Maybe it really was the season?

He loved Christmas, everything about it. The sounds, the smells, the spirit of giving, all of it. If someone popped a bow on top of Trinity’s head and set her beneath his tree to unwrap, he’d be a very happy man.

He glanced over at the angel monitoring Mr. Ryker’s vital signs.

She caught him looking. Instant hot pink tinged what he could see of her upper cheeks peeking out from behind her surgical face mask. He winked and her color deepened.

Something warm and fuzzy, like the smell of cookies baking, filled him. Something that just made him feel…happy.

Odd that the feeling felt strange, because he couldn’t think of anyone he’d label as happier than him. He was totally happy go lucky. Yet he couldn’t deny that the feeling felt alien.

And addictive because already he knew he’d want more when the feeling waned.

Maybe everything would go well with Mr. Ryker’s arteriogram and the man wouldn’t need anything beyond a few stents. Then, Lord willing, Riley would ask Trinity to go to a late lunch.

“Vitals are good,” she said, probably more just to say something rather than to actually inform him.

After she’d prepped Mr. Ryker’s groin, Riley numbed the area with an anesthetic and made a penciltip-sized incision. Carefully, he threaded the cardiac catheter through the femoral artery and up into Mr. Ryker’s heart.

Mr. Ryker’s elevated enzymes had already conveyed that there was cardiac tissue not getting proper perfusion. Riley had hoped he’d find a single small blockage that could be fixed easily with a stent to restore blood flow. He found much more than that. Unfortunately.

Mr. Ryker’s mammary artery had a large area of calcification and stenosis. Plus, there were other areas of calcification scattered throughout the arteries. Riley carefully positioned the catheter tip and placed a stent, then another, corrected the blockages that he could via an artificial material holding the artery open. Unfortunately, the stents weren’t nearly enough to restore blood flow to the tissue. He withdrew the catheter.

“He’s going to need a coronary artery bypass graft,” he told another nurse, while Trinity applied pressure to where the catheter had been withdrawn. “Find an available vascular surgeon stat and let’s get Mr. Ryker into the operating room.”

So much for taking Trinity out to eat any time soon. They’d be here for several hours yet.

Trinity wasn’t sure how she’d gone from being in the catheter lab to the operating room as that wasn’t usual protocol. At least, it hadn’t been standard at the hospital where she’d worked in Memphis, but there she was. In the operating room. With Riley.

She was working as his assistant and blowing CO2 into Mr. Ryker’s open chest. That helped keep blood from interfering with Riley being able to readily see where he was making the anastomosis in the mammary artery to loop the vessel into the right coronary artery. While keeping the CO2 blowing at just the correct angle, she watched him carefully cut away a pedicule and reroute the artery. Painstakingly, he sutured the arteries together, making sure not to damage the vessels.

Another nurse dabbed at his forehead. Trinity found herself wishing she was the one touching him. Silly really. They were at the hospital. Working to save a man’s life. Touching the cardiac surgeon while he performed a procedure should be the absolute last thing on her mind.

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