and the ICU guy began to wheel Mrs. Roberts from the room. As he left, he said over his shoulder, “I’ll dictate my procedure note. You got the code note?”
“I’ve got it,” Katy and Alec said at the same time. Their eyes met, his the amused, warm amber she remembered so well, and she felt her face flush. How could she have thought the guy was talking to her when attending surgeon extraordinaire Alec Armstrong had taken over?
“So, Katy-Did.” His lips curved as he folded his arms across his chest. “What the hell did you do to my patient to make her code like that?”
“Please call me Katherine or Katy. I’m not a kid anymore,” she said with dignity. Which he should know after her ill-advised behavior at her brother James’s wedding five years ago. Her cheeks burned hotter at the memory.
“Fine, Dr. Katherine Pappas.” His smile broadened, showing his white teeth. “How did you almost kill her?”
“I didn’t almost kill her, and you know it. I didn’t do anything.” Katy’s voice rose to practically a squeak on the last word and she cleared her throat, forcing herself to sound somewhat professional. “I was talking with her and giving her an exam, and she just fainted. I think she probably has sick sinus syndrome, which is why she’s sometimes fine and other times faints.”
“Do you, now?” He laughed. Actually laughed, and Katy felt her face heat again, but this time in annoyance.
“Yes, I do. I may be a total newbie, but I’m allowed to give my opinion, aren’t I? Isn’t it part of my training to form an opinion, even if it’s wrong?”
“It is. And you are. Right, I mean, not wrong. And why am I not surprised that on your first day you’ve figured out this woman’s likely diagnosis?” He stepped closer, touching his fingertip to her forehead and giving it a few little taps. “Some things never change, and one of them is that amazing, analytical brain of yours.”
Some things never changed? Wasn’t that the unfortunate truth? In spite of him making clear he had no interest in her as a woman, in spite of everything she knew about the kind of man he was, being so close to Alec made her breath a little short, which irritated her even more. How was it possible that the deepest corners of her brain still clung to the youthful crush she used to have? But being on Dr. Playboy’s teaching service for the next month would most definitely squelch the final remnants of that for good. She was sure of it.
His fingertip slipped to her temple then dropped away. “Teaching rounds begin in an hour. Not too many people get to brag about dealing with a code on their very first day.” That crooked grin stayed on his mouth as he gave her a little wink. “You did great. Welcome to Oceancrest, Katy-Did.”
He turned and walked from the room, and she found herself staring at his back. Noticing that his thick dark hair was slightly longer than the last time she’d seen him. Noticing how unbelievably great his butt looked in those scrubs, how his shoulders filled every inch of the green fabric.
Noticing how horribly unkempt she herself looked at that moment. She looked down at her own wrinkled scrubs before she glanced in Mrs. Roberts’s bathroom mirror at circles under her eyes the size of an IV bag. Ridiculously messy hair that had been finger-combed at best and now looked like it had been tamed by an eggbeater. Sleeping in the on-call room—if you could call the few hours her eyes had been closed sleeping—did not exactly lend itself to looking pulled together and rested.
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. Why did it have to be that the first time Alec saw her at the hospital, she looked like a wreck?
And why did she care, anyway? The man was a player through and through.
Never would Alec have guessed he’d someday have Katy Pappas on his surgical teaching service. The cute but clumsy little girl who’d bugged the hell out of him and her brother Nick when they’d been young, tagging along on their adventures and asking nonstop questions, for some reason believing they’d know the answers.
The worshipful gaze of her blue eyes had always made his chest puff up a little with pride. Despite how much he and Nick had complained about her hanging out with them, he’d always secretly liked it when she had. That someone had thought he was smart and worthy of that kind of adulation had felt damned good, since it had been in very short supply in his own home.
The nonstop criticism his father had doled out had made Alec want to live up—or down—to his father’s expectations of him. He’d worked as hard at partying as he had at football, and probably the only reason he hadn’t gone down in flames had been because he’d had the steady support of the Pappas family, and Dr. George Pappas in particular.
After he and Nick had headed off to college and medical school, he hadn’t seen the Pappas clan again until five years ago at a family wedding. Gobsmacked that Katy, awkwardly geeky child and studious teenager, had morphed into a drop-dead gorgeous twenty-one-year-old woman, he remembered standing stock-still, staring at her in disbelief. Shocked that he’d found her attractive in a way that was not at all brotherly.
He’d been even more shocked when, standing in a quiet corner at the reception, a champagne-tipsy Katy had grabbed his face between her hands and pressed her mouth to his. A mouth so warm and soft and delectable that every synapse in his brain had short-circuited and he’d found himself kissing her back. Their lips had parted and tongues had danced as he’d sunk deeply into the mind-boggling pleasure of it.
Then sanity had returned and he’d practically pushed her away, horrified. No way could he have anything like that with Katy Pappas, little sister of his best friend. She was totally off-limits. Period.
He’d tried to make a joke of it. Katy, however, hadn’t thought it was remotely amusing when he’d told her he didn’t feel that way about her, and that it would be all wrong if he did.
If she’d been pressed closer against him, she would have known part of that statement was a lie. But appropriate? Hell, no.
He sighed. From that moment on his friendship with Katy had been pretty much over. She’d been cool at other family functions since then. Aloof, even.
Alec had shoved down his feelings of disappointment that she was no longer the Katy who’d thought he was great. Hell, after the mess he’d made of some things in his life, he shouldn’t expect anyone to feel that way.
Then he’d walked into the coding patient’s room and seen her, wrinkled, messy, and nervous. Beautifully messy and nervous, yes, but so much like the Katy he’d once known he hadn’t been able to help but want that old friendship back.
And just like the old Katy, in the midst of all the chaos she’d still shown what a brainiac she was. That she was good at figuring out what to do in any circumstances, despite being brand new at the art and science of doctoring.
Maybe it was absurd, pathetic even, but he wanted to see again the Katy who used to like and admire him, who had tolerated and even enjoyed his teasing.
Alec remembered well the feel of her lips against his. But a woman like her no doubt had so many boyfriends that a little kiss five years ago would have been completely forgotten.
AS ALEC STRODE down the hall, he could see the residents and interns waiting for him at the end of it, but his gaze stuck
