at her that way.
Considering her relationship with Brian was DOA, Molly had grave doubts. For a woman brilliant in her profession, when it came to her personal life she was one big mess. Not that flirting at an emergency scene was appropriate, but she wasn’t good at it anyway. She’d always been a wallflower—one more check in her Don’t-Date-Much column.
“Gurney coming through.”
Molly barely had time to keep her toes from getting crushed before the EMTs rolled past with the first victim. The two men hoisted the little boy up into the ambulance, then returned for the mother.
After they’d gotten the woman secured alongside her son, another man with a bandaged leg joined them in the back of the rig and the doors were closed. The hunk crouched near Molly’s feet, gathering up scattered gear and shoving it into a medical bag. From her vantage point she couldn’t help noticing how his tight navy blue T-shirt clung to his muscles and sinews and the way his black pants cupped his butt like a second skin.
Throat dry and head swirling, Molly panicked and said the first thing that popped into her mind—more random trivia. “Moose are herbivores and will casually devour seventy-three pounds of plant material a day in the summer. They like an assortment of shrubs, woody plants and aquatic vegetation; in the winter, their diet is more restricted.”
She clamped her lips shut to prevent more useless facts from spilling out. Her father’s voice echoed through her head, calling her pathetic. Worse, her last argument with Brian replayed in her mind like a bad song. The red flags were so easy to see now. She’d asked him to set a wedding date, to take their relationship to the next logical step, but he’d balked.
“Not everything’s about logic. You solve everyone else’s problems, but not your own.”
The handsome first responder straightened and gave Molly a slow once-over. “Your facts are correct—except the bull that caused this accident wasn’t looking for a meal. He was looking for a date.”
Ah, right. She’d read about the mating season starting in late September in one of her pamphlets. Embarrassed heat prickled Molly’s cheeks. Nervous, she smoothed a hand down her blond hair, still secured into two braids. Quickly she removed the bands at the ends of her plaits and ran her fingers through the stick-straight strands that wouldn’t hold a curl to save their life.
The man’s gaze followed the movement, the gray of his irises darkening to gunmetal. A throb of want started low in her belly, spreading like honey through her blood. It had been so long—too long—since a man had looked at her like that, and she found his arousal intoxicating.
“C’mon, Doc,” the other medic said through the open door. “We got patients who need to be transported to Anchorage Mercy.”
“Have a nice evening, ma’am,” the hunk said, his stormy gaze flickering to her lips before returning to her eyes. “Be careful on the roads.”
Molly stepped aside as the rescuer slung the medical kit over his shoulder, then climbed into the passenger side of the rig. The ambulance pulled away, maneuvering out of the tangle of vehicles blocking their path to the open roadway.
Hurrying back to the Range Rover, Molly started her engine, hoping to follow behind the emergency vehicle to her destination, all the while analyzing the new information she’d just gleaned. So he wasn’t an EMT, he was a doctor. At Anchorage Mercy. Where they’d be working in close proximity.
Whoops. No.
Molly doused the sudden flare of excitement sweeping through her like wildfire. The last thing she needed was a rebound fling. Not with her career in the balance and her life in Chicago a shambles. Besides, she’d never chased after a man, never lived dangerously. At least not outside of the medical realm.
In the pursuit of a cure for her patients she’d tackle any challenge, take any risk.
In the pursuit of her own happiness? Not so much.
Still, one of the other reasons she’d chosen to do her TV show was to learn to listen to her gut. And right now her instincts were screaming that following that man and his ambulance represented her best shot at finding the hospital. So, Molly reasoned, this wasn’t about a rebound relationship or a booty call with a hot doctor at all. It was about solving her next case and saving her show. She would worry about the rest later.
Squinting out the windshield through the gathering twilight, Molly realized she couldn’t go through all the jumbled vehicles snarled in gridlock and still catch up to the ambulance, so she went around instead, driving her off-road-capable vehicle into the grassy gulley between lanes and past the still blocked section of roadway, then back onto the asphalt highway.
She might be late to her meeting, but if she was lucky she could still salvage this debacle.
“DR. FLYNN, I’M glad your producer was able to find a slot in the schedule for us.”
The hospital’s chief of staff grasped Molly’s hand, his white hair and jolly blue eyes reminding her of Santa. He’d been kind enough not to mention she was an hour late. She was never late. Another lesson courtesy of her bully father. He’d always noticed any tardiness and the results had never been good.
“Your dad and I were classmates in medical school. How is he these days?”
Molly took the seat he offered. It seemed she hadn’t quite outrun the looming shadow of her father after all. “He’s currently in Beijing, conducting a training conference on the latest alternative techniques for closure of the open abdomen.”
“Fascinating.” The chief sat behind his desk and straightened his name plate. “Dr. David Carpenter” it proclaimed, in engraved gold letters. “And, please, call me Dr. Dave.”
“Okay.”
The cluttered room was the opposite of Molly’s own pristine office back home. Amongst his papers and files were several family photos, in which everyone was laughing and cheerful. Smiles—genuine ones, anyway—were rare in the Flynn family.
“What can you tell me about my patient, Dr. Dave?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” He searched through a stack of charts on a shelf against the far wall then handed her one. “His name is Robert Templeton, though he prefers to be called Bobby. Thirty-one and a professional hockey player for our hometown team the Anchorage Anoraks.”
“Anoraks?” Molly raised a brow. “Isn’t that a type of jacket?”
Dr. Dave chuckled. “Yep. But it sounded cool so we went with it.”
“I see. Says here he’s an enforcer. What exactly does that mean?”
“It’s not an official position on the hockey team, more of a tough guy. He starts fights to protect the smaller guys from taking the hits.”
“Huh.”
Molly had gone to a Blackhawks game in Chicago once, with Brian, and had had to cover her eyes during the worst of the brawls. Even a year spent in the ER hadn’t prepared her for the copious amounts of gore and raw testosterone. If her new patient regularly
