fingers curling in and out against the length of his palms. Laying his eyes on her for the first time in two years was hitting him hard. She’d changed. Not unrecognizably—but the young woman he’d fallen in love with had well and truly grown up. Still beautiful, but—he couldn’t deny it—with a bit of an edge. Was this true Katie surfacing after the years they’d spent together? Or just another mask to deal with the disappointments and sorrows life had thrown at them in the early days of their marriage?
Gone was the preppy New England look. And in its stead... He didn’t even know where to begin. Was this Idaho chic? Since when did his Katie wear knee-high biker boots, formfitting tartan skirts in dark purple and black with dark-as-the-night turtlenecks? Yeah, they would be practical in this wintry weather, but it was a far cry from the pastels and conservative clothes she’d favored back in Boston. The new look was sexy.
A hit of jealousy socked him in the solar plexus. She hadn’t... He suddenly felt like a class-A idiot for not even considering the possibility. She hadn’t moved on. Not his Katie. Had she...?
His eyes shot up the length of her legs to the plaid skirt and then up to her trim waistline, irritatingly hidden by the lab coat. His eyes jagged along her hands, seeking out her ring finger. Still bare. He would never forget the moment she’d ripped off her rings and slapped them onto the kitchen counter. Throwing had been far too melodramatic for his self-controlled wife. The word “Enough!” had rung in his ears for weeks afterward. Months.
He exhaled. Okay. The bare finger wasn’t proof positive she wasn’t seeing someone else, but it was something. He scraped a hand through his mess of a hairdo, wishing he’d taken a moment to pop into a barber’s. But he hadn’t worried a jot about what he’d looked like over the past two years, let alone worried about impressing another woman. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Katie to the moment she’d hightailed it out of his life—their life—he’d known there was only one woman in the world for him. And here she was—doing her pea-pickin’ best to ignore him.
His eyes traveled up to her face as she scanned the chart, listening to the nurse. He knew that expression like the back of his hand. Intent, focused. Her brain would be spinning away behind those dark brown eyes of hers to come to the best solution—for both the patient and the hospital, but mostly the patient. One of the many traits he loved about her. Patients first. Politics later. Because there were always politics in a hospital. He knew that more than most. It was why staying at Boston General hadn’t worked out so well. Why a new job in Paris just might be the ticket he needed to wade out of that sorry old pit of misery he’d been wallowing in.
But he wasn’t going anywhere until he knew Katie was well and truly over him. He checked his watch. Seven days to find out if she was cold-or warm-blooded. It ended at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. He’d either hand her a plane ticket or the divorce papers. He sucked in a fortifying breath of Katie’s perfume. Mmm... Still sweeter than a barn full of new summer hay.
Well, then. He gave his chin a scrub and grinned. Best get started.
“WHAT YOU GOT THERE?” Josh stepped up to the desk, shrugging off his jacket as he approached. Out of the corner of her eye Katie could see Jorja’s lips reshape into an O. Josh—or rather his body—had that effect on women. It was why she’d never thought she’d stood a chance. People always mistook her shyness for being stuck-up. But Josh had seen straight through the veneer and gone directly to her heart.
He turned his Southern drawl up a notch. He could do that, too. Pick and choose when to play the Southern gent or drop it if he saw it detracted from his incredibly sharp mind.
“Dr. McGann, may I help keep you out of the fray while you sort out the big picture?”
Katie eyed him warily for a second, then made a decision. By the hint of a smile that bloomed on his lips she could see it was the one he had been hoping for.
He would stay.
Never mind the fact that showing up on Christmas Eve when they were a doctor down wasn’t giving her much of a choice. She had it in her to kick him the hell outta Dodge, if that was where he needed booting. But right now there were patients to see, and pragmatism always trumped personal.
“Twenty-five-year-old male presented with an arterial cut to the bone on his index finger.” She tapped the chart with her own.
“Turkey?”
“Ham. Too easy for the likes of you.”
She pressed the chart to her chest, claiming it as her own. Katie let her eyes travel along all six feet three inches of her ex. Josh had always been a trauma hotshot. And he’d always looked good. She’d steered clear of the Boston General gossip train, so didn’t really know what path he’d chosen professionally after she’d left, but personally nothing had changed in the looks department. He still looked good. She looked away.
Too good.
“You’re the next one down.” She pulled the X-ray down from the lightboard and passed it to him with a smirk. “Make your Gramma Jam-Jam proud. You can put your stuff in my office for now—the staff lockers are further down the corridor and this patient’s been waiting too long as it is.”
She tipped her head toward a glassed-in cubicle a few yards away. Josh took advantage of the broken eye contact to soak in some more of the “New Katie” look. Her super-short, über-chic new haircut suited her. It sure made her look different. Good different, though. No longer the shy twenty-one-year-old he’d first spied devouring a stack of anatomy books in the university library, a thick chestnut braid shifting from shoulder to shoulder as she studied.
He cleared his throat. Whimsical trips down memory lane weren’t helping.
“Green or red scrubs,” she added, pointing to a room just beyond her office.
“You always liked me in blue.”
The set of her jaw told him to button it.
“Green or red,” she repeated firmly. “The patients like it. It’s Christmas.” She handed him the single-page chart with a leaden glare and turned to the nurse. “Jorja MacLeay, this is Dr. West, our locum tenens over the next few days. See that he’s made welcome. His security pass should expire on the first of January.”
“At the end of the day?” Jorja asked hopefully.
“The beginning. The very beginning,” Katie replied decisively, before turning and calling out her patient’s name.
He flashed a smile in the nurse’s direction, lifted up his worn duffel bag to show her he was just going to unload it before getting to work. The smile he received in return showed him he had an ally. She shot a mischievous glance at his retreating wife and beckoned him toward the central desk.
“Don’t mind her,” Jorja stage-whispered. “A kitten, really. Just a grumpy kitten at Christmas.” She shrugged off her boss’s mysterious moodiness with a grin. “As long as she knows you’ve got your eye on the ball, she’s cool.”
Josh nodded and gave the counter an affirmative rap. “Got it. Cool. Calm. Collected. And Christmassy!” he finished with a cheesy grin.
“Says here you’re double-shifting.”
“You
