he asked her about it later, she’d snickered, unrepentant. It amused her to hear people fawn over him, she’d said. Listening to his minions try to outdo each other while shoveling the…praise, invariably gave her a hearty chuckle.
Minions? Shoveling? Trey well remembered his own astonishment at her frankness. No one had ever made such a remark to him before, and only Callie Sheely continued to make similar impertinent jests about him, to him.
But instead of being irked—Trey admittedly didn’t tolerate frivolity or nonsense very well—he had found himself seeing the humor. Sharing her amusement.
“Of course, they genuinely do admire you,” she’d also assured him, and Trey had found himself snickering, a rare event in itself. As a rule he did not snicker.
However, Callie’s warm assertion had touched a humorous, previously unstruck, chord within him. As if he cared whether he was admired by junior toadies, as if he needed anyone’s assurance about anything! The very idea was laughable.
And now whenever anyone laid on the compliments or the hero worship a tad too thick, he looked at Callie, and they would share a silent, mutual moment of mirth.
Trey continued performing the operation, explaining the procedure to his audience while he worked, all the while contemplating Callie Sheely’s irreverence toward his lordly reputation.
He had been blessed with the ability to think and do several different things simultaneously, while keeping each separate and exact. It was a gift he took for granted, having always possessed it.
He flicked his finger slightly, and Callie immediately handed him what he wanted, a small sharp scalpel, an instrument he’d redesigned and then had reduced to near doll-size for certain specific uses, today’s operation being one of them.
He rarely had to ask Callie for instruments during an operation, not unless an unforeseen complication occurred and he had to improvise on the spot.
Otherwise, she routinely remembered which one was used for what from previous operations, and when he was going to try something new, he would go over the procedure with her beforehand, taking her through it step by step. She filed away what he told her in her head, using the information to expertly assist him.
Trey admired her excellent memory and OR nursing skills as much as he did her unruffled calm under pressure. He had never worked so well with anyone before, never been so in sync with another person as he was with Callie Sheely during surgery. While in the OR, it was as if she were an extension of himself.
It was new to him, this kind of intuitive rapport. Certainly it had never existed in his personal life and still didn’t. Yet here in the OR he and Callie were as one, working together in uncommon unity and intimacy.
He lifted his gaze to meet Callie’s again. She had the most beautiful, expressive eyes he’d ever seen, a dark liquid velvet glowing with warmth and intelligence, alert with liveliness and—
“Any questions?” Trey deliberately interrupted his own reverie.
Lately, renegade thoughts about Callie Sheely seemed to strike him more and more frequently. Whether in the OR or alone in his apartment or chatting with colleagues anytime, anywhere, random images of Callie Sheely would suddenly pop into his head. He would find himself drifting off on a mental riff, mulling over her memory, her eyes, her humor.
Such thoughts had no place in a professional relationship, Trey reminded himself. And a professional relationship was the only type he and Callie Sheely had. The only kind of relationship they would ever have, and that was the way he wanted it, the way it had to be.
Still, his unexpected musings were beginning to bother him. After all, Trey Weldon’s finely honed mind did not drift into unfitting flights of fancy.
Except lately, when it did. And inevitably the disconcerting drift was Callie Sheely inspired.
“I repeat, any questions?” He heard the impatient edge in his tone.
Well, he was impatient, though not really with the students who remained silent, perhaps intimidated.
“So I can assume that everybody perfectly understands everything there is to know about AVMs and this procedure?” It was a short step from impatience to sarcasm, and Trey couldn’t resist taking it.
At last one of the med students dutifully piped up with a question. True, it was a stupid question, but then the kid was merely a student. Trey took pity on him and proceeded to answer in painstaking detail.
He determinedly put aside any more thoughts about Callie Sheely’s eyes. He refused to think about her marvelous memory or her invaluable OR skills, either. He particularly refused to ponder their intuitive rapport and the way her sense of humor had somehow infected him.
She was not getting under his skin, Trey assured himself.
They were colleagues. They worked together, nothing more. They weren’t even friends, because friends socialized outside the workplace, and he and Callie Sheely never saw each other except in the workplace.
And that was the way he liked it, the way he wanted it to be.
No, she was not getting under his skin.
Chief OR scrub nurse Callie Sheely listened to every word of Trey Weldon’s comprehensive explanation. As always the mellifluous timbre of his voice stirred her. Only Trey could sound seductive while discussing the complexities of AVMs and their variations, along with inventive ways to repair them.
Callie watched him work, anticipating what he would do next and what surgical instrument he would need, his voice keeping her focused even as it enthralled her. Excited her. Trey Weldon had the sexiest voice she’d ever heard, deep and masculine, mesmerizing, with just the slightest hint of an upper-class Virginia drawl.
If only he sounded like Elmer Fudd, she lamented wistfully. As a diversion Callie tried to imagine Elmer pronouncing arteriovenous. She had to do something to decrease the sensual effect Trey’s voice had on her.
It just wasn’t fair! Not only was her boss good-looking, brilliant and talented, but he had a voice that could net him a fortune doing romance-hero readings for books on tape. And she had to listen to it, to him, by the hour and was expected to remain completely immune to him and his powerful allure.
After all, Callie knew the rules. She was Trey’s coworker, his subordinate, actually, and she knew that was the only way Trey Weldon saw her. Would ever see her.
She viewed their situation as comparable to characters in the old Greek myths, which she’d enjoyed reading as a child on her biweekly trips to the Carnegie library. In those myths, gods who dwelt high in Mount Olympus did not consort with ordinary mortals. Just as upper-class scions like Trey Weldon didn’t socialize with working-class nurses from Pittsburgh. Like Callie Sheely.
Ancient and fanciful they might be, but those myths taught a necessary counterlesson to the fairy tales that Callie had also devoured as a child. In fairy tales, a scullery maid might land a prince, but not in real life.
Real life meant sticking with your own kind. Otherwise the result was culture clash, not romance.
Callie suppressed a sigh, wishing that Trey would lapse into silence so the music could be cranked up to full volume. The OR team took turns choosing what was to be played, and today’s
