“You should go home.” Her voice came from somewhere to his left. He tried to get to his feet but that sent the room into an alarming downward spiral. Giving into it, he dropped over to his side and everything faded to black.
Chapter Six
Cara blinked into the middle distance, preoccupied, hung over, and fighting the urge to go home and sleep for the next ten hours.
“Yo, join us here on earth?”
The sound of her boss’s voice invaded her inner musings. Her face reddened when she realized she’d been ignoring the timer on her latest patient who now winced her way through the tag end of an ice bath.
“Whoops! Sorry,” she muttered, grabbing the dinging timer. She reached down to help the young woman out, determined to focus on her job, on her looming wedding—the one that did not involve the old boyfriend she’d let drunk-fuck her like some loser co-ed the night before.
Once she had that patient finished, Cara faced a full load of random knee and hip replacement surgery recoveries—the geriatric brigade, the staff called them. She blew a lock of her hair off her forehead and studied the schedule while shifting in her seat, a little sore from the previous night’s activity. Grinning, she twisted her engagement ring around, pondering how awful it had been, and how much she wished she could get a second chance with Kieran Love.
“Stop it,” she said, without realizing she’d spoken aloud until her colleague glanced over at her. “Sorry.”
He shrugged and jerked his chin toward the door where a tall, masculine figure was backlit from the afternoon sunlight. When he entered the waiting area she stopped and nearly stumbled over her own feet.
“Hey, babe.” Kent emerged, looking well rested and definitely unlike her hungover self. She rallied her inner engaged-to-successful-rich-lawyer-grown-up woman.
“Hey,” she responded, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat and had to acknowledge that having Kent in her face was the last thing she wanted right then. What she wanted was to go home to her shitty apartment, take a shower, drink some wine, and ponder what she’d done the night before.
“You’re a little ragged around the edges. Rough night out with the girls?”
Glancing down at her feet, annoyed by his prescience not to mention his presence, she shrugged. “Yeah, something like that.” If she didn’t know better she’d swear a neon sign flashed over her head: Fucked old boyfriend, so drunk I can barely remember it but still...with a couple of red arrows pointing down at her bowed head.
Kent chuckled. Biting back the urge to tell him to leave her the hell alone with her whirling, confused thoughts, she let him tug her close.
“That’s my wild girl,” he said into her hair. She pulled away and ducked his lips.
“Not here. What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were in court all day.”
“Prosecution got a delay. But you know what that means?”
Completely unable to imagine what that meant, she stayed quiet. He raised a dark eyebrow at her making her suck in a quick breath at his physical perfection.
And he wants me? I must be living in some bizarre parallel universe.
“C’mon baby.” He nodded over her shoulder. “Hey, Rich, can I snag my future bride away from the salt mine here?”
Her boss, Richard Butler, former high school-football super stud and Kent’s college buddy, crossed his arms and gave her a fake frown, making her irritation at them both that much more acute. “Sure thing. Y’all get on outta here before I change my mind.”
“But...but...Rich.” She clapped her lips shut to keep from stuttering as heat flooded her face at their assumptions about how she wanted to spend the afternoon. “It’s geriatric brigade day. You’re shorthanded. I have a new patient.” She sighed when Kent grabbed her arm. “Guess what I want doesn’t really matter,” she said too loudly. He frowned and let go of her.
“Well excuse me for wanting to spring you for a surprise afternoon with yours truly.” His expression flattened in a way she’d come to know meant imminent sulking and anger. “Guess I don’t rate as high as the geriatrics?”
“Make way for your geriatric elders, young man.”
Lindsay Love winked at her when Kent moved aside.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered her, ever polite.
“Hi, Miss Lindsay,” Cara said. “Appears as though someone else will be providing your therapy today.” She glared at Rich who shrugged.
“Oh, that’s all right, hon. Kieran says to tell you hello.”
Cara let him drag her out the door, but she fumed the entire way to Kent’s expensive imported car which crouched alongside her piece-of-crap-Chevy like a snooty predator. She yanked her elbow out of Kent’s grip.