and damp from a shower, smiling at her from the empty white pillow next to hers.
Shall I call you for breakfast, or just nudge you?
Brooke didn’t swoon for superheroes. She didn’t date eye candy.
But if she wanted to, she could, because the offer still stood.
In the last unguarded moment of a long day, Brooke fell asleep with a smile on her lips.
She heard him before she saw him. Tom Bamber’s voice was as distinctive as Zach Bishop’s, but not in a sexy way. He sounded more like—well, he sounded like a radiologist giving a report, which he was.
He wasn’t giving the report to Brooke. He was speaking to Jamie. It was odd that Tom had emerged from his basement office and walked to the emergency room instead of just picking up the phone.
She had a hunch that he’d done so in order to see her. Brooke considered sneaking past the nurses’ station to the kitchen in order to avoid Tom. If he was planning on asking her out again, discretion would be the better part of valor.
Okay, she was feeling cowardly. She didn’t want to face the awkwardness of an offer she didn’t want but shouldn’t refuse. She started down the hall with careful steps, trying to minimize the sound of her heels on the tile.
Tom was exactly the kind of guy she ought to date. Her mother would approve. Nothing could be safer and more secure than a radiologist. Mom was big into security. Predictability.
Imagine taking firefighter Zach home to meet Mother.
First, the man would have to be crazy about her to want to set foot in the mausoleum that was her mother’s house. Second, although women loved Zach, her mother would be the exception. Even Zach couldn’t charm her from her permanent frown.
But what if he could? That would really be something.
“Overactive imagination in room two.”
Brooke stopped in midstep and turned to face the nurse. Loretta might as well have been diagnosing her as the next patient.
“Sorry, Dr. Brown. Did I startle you?”
“No, not at all.”
Was she blushing? She couldn’t be. Dr. Brooke Brown did not blush. She also did not daydream about firemen who were so madly in love with her that they wanted to even meet her mother. Where was her logic, her order, her checklists? First, long before the man was crazy in love with her, she’d have to actually see the man again, maybe even call him by his first name.
First, the man would have to make an effort to see me.
It had been three days since he’d said the offer still stood and then left for the accident scene. Zach didn’t have her phone number. He didn’t know where she lived. He was leaving it up to chance for their paths to cross, as always. They would both have to just happen to be ending shifts at the same time for that after-work drink to become reality.
In other words, he was an easy-go-lucky, flirtatious guy, and she was an idiot for mistaking his casual invitation for anything more. Had she really thought their relationship was going to move to another level? She was a fool for daydreaming that a handsome playboy was anything but a handsome playboy.
Loretta handed her the clipboard for room two. “Four-year-old female, two hovering parents who brought their own thermometer.”
Well, there was nothing like work to wake Brooke up from her daydreams. “Fever?”
“Barely one hundred degrees, the third time they asked me to verify their thermometer’s readings with our thermometer. Runny nose. They printed out a list from their internet search. Could be the first signs of a cancerous tumor, you know.”
“First things first. We’ll have to consider the common cold.”
“Good luck. Those parents are already in a temper because the urgent cases were seen first. They got here at six-thirty this morning, because their regular pediatrician’s office didn’t open until eight. It’s nine now, so...you get the picture.”
Twenty minutes later, Brooke was in a temper herself. She understood anxious parents—she’d been raised by one—so Brooke had been very thorough in her exam of the child. There was no indication whatsoever of anything more serious than the common cold in the little girl. Nothing in her medical history, nothing in her family history, nothing to warrant even a basic antibiotic prescription.
Brooke had explained her reasoning. She’d answered every question the parents had. But when the parents had questioned her qualifications as a physician, when the accusations had started flying that Brooke must be unduly influenced by insurance companies, drug companies or hospital profits, her own patience had run out.
They’d asked to see another doctor.
Jamie MacDowell was in there now. Brooke stood at the nurses’ station, empty-handed, denied even the patient chart that she could have slapped onto the counter in a satisfying smack.
She knew Jamie’s conclusion was going to be identical to hers. Jamie would back her up in every way. It was all such a waste of effort. The parents would leave, and the next time they feared that their daughter was seriously ill, they’d go to a different hospital’s emergency room. All of Brooke’s careful explanations, all of Jamie’s professional courtesy, would result in nothing. West Central Texas Hospital was wasting resources that could have been better spent on a dozen other people.
Worse, those parents would never relax and appreciate that they had a healthy child. Brooke couldn’t help but think of her mother and how grateful she would have been to have a four-year-old girl with a common cold. Instead, when Brooke’s sister had been four, her mother had spent a week sitting at the bedside of a child in a coma, until Brooke’s sister had passed away.
It had been so long ago, close to twenty years now. Brooke rested her elbows on the high counter of the nurses’ station and let her head drop into her hands. For just a moment, she pressed her fingertips against her temples to relieve the stress. It was impossible to treat a four-year-old little girl and not think of her sister.
If those angry parents in room two only knew how much worse their lives could be, how much more serious their troubles could get. People should thank their lucky stars when their lives were normal. Boring. Routine. Brooke’s mother was right: security and predictability were the keys to a good life.
“Dr. Bamber asked that you give him a call when you have a moment,” the nurse at the desk said.
Brooke frowned. She wasn’t waiting on any radiology reports. “About which patient?”
The nurse, the blonde and single one from a few nights ago, beamed at her. “No patient. I think it’s personal.”
So, Tom was going to ask her out again, and he wasn’t waiting until chance brought them together to do it. He was predictable. He was exactly what she needed in her life, if she needed any male companionship at all.
The glass doors slid
