from Adam.”
“He said he’s a paramedic,” Joe interjected, obviously still hopeful he wouldn’t have to clamber up the embankment. “Who are you with?”
“No one today. I’m what they call in between positions.” He saw Murphy’s eyes narrow at his words. She didn’t need to know he’d already polished his boots in advance of his first day at Seaside Hospital. “Twenty-nine. Thirty.”
He raised his hands away from Diego’s chest and looked directly into Murphy’s eyes as she pressed the charge button on the AED. Through the high-pitched whine of the charging defibrillator he felt an otherworldly surge of electricity hit him in the solar plexus. That indefinable connection that made a man cross a crowded room when his eyes lit on a perfect stranger and the organic laws of chemistry did their explosive best to bring them together. He hadn’t felt that charge of attraction in a while. On a roadside, giving CPR to a vet, wasn’t exactly where he’d thought he’d feel it next, but...he hadn’t really thought there’d be a “next.” Too many ducks already waiting to be put in a row. He scraped a tooth along the length of his lower lip, eyes still glued to hers... The hot Miami sun wasn’t the only thing warming him up.
And then—she blinked.
Ah...so he wasn’t alone here. She felt it, too.
“Huh.”
He heard the sound—an instinctual response to disbelief—come from her throat, but her lips hadn’t even parted. Just pushed forward in a disapproving moue that disappeared as she pulled her lips in on themselves and swallowed whatever words were roiling around her mind.
Santi fought his own features, trying to maintain his best neutral face when all he wanted to do was grin.
His first chink in her Gaelic armor.
He wasn’t a flirter and this sure as hell wasn’t flirting, but—electricity was hard to ignore. The automated voice of the AED broke through the static in his head. Verbal sparring would have to wait. He watched as her eyes flicked to the monitor at the sound of the electric charge making the connection.
A thin flat line.
Her fingers shot down to Diego’s carotid artery and, as if she was an angel delivering the healing touch...beep, beep, the flat line re-formed into the graphic mountainscape that was a beating heart. It was a far cry from a match to the Rocky Mountains—more like the rolling hills of South Dakota—but with a bit of luck and a stint in the hospital he’d get there. The triumphant glint returned.
“Guess you’d better get away up that hill for a backboard, then.” She jutted her chin toward Joe. “It’s my partner’s last day. We don’t want the old fella slipping a disk or anything, now, do we?”
“Watch it, girlie. I still have plenty of time to file a grievance against you and get you shipped back to where you came from,” Joe cautioned, as he all but proved her point by performing the stretch and twist only a stiff back could bring.
A jag of discord took hold of her features and just as quickly was lifted away with a bright smile. There was a story there. But she hid it well, cleverly tucking it away behind a sharp wit and a winning smile. Miles better than his go-to scowl.
“That’d be about right, Joe. Picking on a poor wee girl fresh off the boat from Ireland. Now, quit your faffing about and get me another dose of epi, would you?”
Santi’s eyebrow lifted in an amused arc. At five feet and a splash of something extra, this woman—“Murphy”—would’ve struggled at a standing-room-only stadium concert. But he had little doubt she was head and shoulders above your average crowd.
“Hey,” he asked as he pressed up from the ground, “what’s your name, anyway?”
The smile she was refusing to give him morphed into a smirk as she raised a finger and double-tapped her name tag.
Murphy.
So that’s all he was getting.
He felt his lips peel into a full smile as he took the steep incline in a few long-legged strides. They’d board up Diego then away she’d go...
Meeting this enigmatic woman was no doubt going to fall into the brief encounter catalog of his life, but he could feel the moment elbowing into the happy memories section. Suffice it to say the department wasn’t very big, but the unexpected jolt of affirmation that he was still a red-blooded male was a reminder that some parts of life were definitely worth living.
* * *
“Here you are, mija.”
Saoirse reached out both hands to take the iced glass, loaded to the brim with a freshly whizzed margarita. With salt. It was a take-no-prisoners cocktail and about as well deserved as end-of-day drinks got.
“Your parents named you well, Ángel!” She gave the bartender a grateful smile. It had been a lo-o-o-ng day. New Year’s Day celebrations seemed to have lasted two weeks in Miami. One of their patients had only been adorned in a swirl of glittery tinsel. Didn’t he know it was bad luck to leave his decorations up so long? Or take quite so many little “magic” pills? It was one way to start the New Year with a bang. His girlfriend had looked exhausted.
“Murph!”
She looked up, scanning the growing crowd, eyes eventually landing on her friend Amanda waving to her from the entryway to the patio, arm crooking in a get your booty over here now arc. She took a huge glug of the margarita, convincing herself it was to make sure the drink didn’t spill as she wove her way through Mad Ron’s Cantina to the picnic-table-filled, blue-tiled garden area already overflowing with well-wishers for Joe. She’d been lucky when she’d landed him as a mentor in her work-study program. The guy had seen it all. Not to mention the fact that, forty years on, an ambulance had helped him accrue a vast pool of friends. The place was heaving.
“Hey, girl! What took you so long?” Amanda gave her one of those American half hug things she was growing to like. Irish people weren’t huggy like this, but after the day... No. Make that the year she’d had? The blossoming friendship was a much-needed soul salve.
“I wanted to stop by the hospital to check on a patient.”
“Oh? Bit of a hottie, was he?”
Saoirse snorted. Mostly to cover up the fact it had been the roadside stranger she’d been hoping to see, not the tattoo-covered vet they’d saved.
“Not so much. But he’d been out a long time—cardiac arrest—and I wanted to see what his recovery was like. Curiosity. Never seen a guy make it through who’d had over twenty minutes of compressions.”
“You did that? Twenty minutes?” She blew on her fingers in a color-me-impressed move.
“Don’t be mad!” Saoirse waved away the suggestion, trying to shake the mental image of Mr. Mysterioso’s very fine forearms as she did. She had a thing for forearms and his had launched straight to Number One on the Forearms of the Week list. Not that she actually kept a list or anything. She blinked away the image and forced herself to focus on Amanda. “No mad compressions for me. I would’ve stuck my magic electric shockers on him straight away.” She made her best crazed-scientist face to prove it was true.
“You’re
