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“I’ll be vaiting.” His Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation wasn’t half-bad.
She strode to the refrigerator and removed three trays of testing antigens, trying her best to steady her nerves.
Poor Patrick. Dr Mehta wanted the works and that’s what the two of them would get. She’d get a certain satisfaction in stab—Er, scratching the cocksure doc a good sixty times in payment for being so damn sexy. But she felt bad for the boy. It was never easy to test children, especially if they were afraid. At least Dr Mehta had come up with an abridged version for kids under twelve. Beth had been told by many of her patients that she had a soft touch, and today she’d definitely use it on Patrick. But Gavin? Well, that was another story.
She shook her head. So this was what she got for watching those chick-living-in-the-big-city sitcoms. They made casual sex seem so easy and without consequences. Well, here she was, sweating in her scrubs and wishing she’d never been so bold with the ER doc. What in the world had come over her that night? Two words. Gavin Riordan. And now, several weeks later, her total physical attraction to the man hadn’t changed an iota.
She carefully placed the trays on a movable bedside table and rolled everything toward the half-closed curtain. Gavin, still naked from the waist up, swept the curtain open for her, affording another view of his muscular shoulders and arms. Everything about his incredibly superb physique affected her right down to the core, exactly the same way it had the night they’d “met”.
“Here. I think you forgot this,” she said, lifting the gown from the gurney and tossing it back at him.
Slightly off balance, Beth gulped and gestured with an unsteady hand toward the narrow gurneys. Making another attempt to sound professional, she concentrated on Patrick’s scrawny body instead of his father’s mature, masculine frame.
“I need both of you to lie face down on the testing tables.”
“Now, that sounds like fun,” Gavin said, obviously making light of what they were about to undergo for his son’s sake.
Patrick dove for the gurney and it rolled a few inches, making him look like a surfer paddling out on the Pacific Ocean.
“Whoa, hold on, dude,” Gavin stopped the gurney with a sculpted arm, and pressed on the brake.
Beth’s gaze ran over the smooth tanned skin of his back. She shook her head. He was nothing more than a brief sensual treat. Eye candy. That’s all.
An incredibly sexy memory of the two of them in a rather exotic position forced its way into her mind, and she almost lost her composure again.
Beth helped Patrick get into position on the gurney and gave him an encouraging look. “You’ll do fine. I’ll test your dad first, OK?”
The boy nodded in relief with a tense, thin-lipped smile.
She tried her best to ignore Gavin’s goose-bumps at her touch, rationalizing that it was the cleansing alcohol wipe she’d applied, the potent whiff of which seemed to be taking her breath away…
Gavin felt Beth’s breath blowing lightly over him. The fine hair on his neck stood erect and his skin prickled. She had a face he couldn’t forget—bright hazel eyes surrounded by thick lashes and brows the color of dark honey, and a fine, straight nose. Her kissable lips were a natural tone. He’d already committed to memory how those lips felt. And her body. She’d tried her best to cover it up today, but he knew what was beneath those scrubs.
Where did they go from here? Hot sex with a stranger was one thing, but did he really want to get to know her? Maybe some things were best left forgotten.
It tickled when she drew something on his back and applied light, chilling drops of liquid. He relaxed and enjoyed the sensual feeling.
She began to scratch him beneath each of the droplets with something that felt like a needle. Hey! What was that?
“How does it feel, Dad?”
“Not bad at all,” he fibbed. “Sort of like a pinch.”
“Just a light scratch,” Beth said.
Yeah, and we’re just work colleagues.
Wanting to be a good example for his son, he managed a reassuring smile then laid his forehead down on the backs of his hands and forced himself to relax. But soon his head shot up. “I felt that one.” Oops.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about the last time I saw you. A lady, um, called you away.”
OK. So she definitely remembered him. Yeah, Carmen’s timing had certainly sucked that night, but she’d found out that Patrick had been in the ER and had done the right thing by beeping him. It had been a much wiser choice than breaking in on them, though he was certain Carmen had known exactly what had been going on.
Ignoring another sharp scratch, Gavin seized the opportunity to explain. “That was no lady, that was my ER charge nurse, Carmen.”
“I like Carmen,” Patrick chimed in. “She lets me watch videos at her house sometimes.”
“She was my designated driver, Bethany.” He raised his head and looked over his shoulder. “What is your last name?”
Her eyes quickly flitted away. “Caldwell. Bethany Caldwell. Now, lie still or these drops will run together.”
“Nice to meet you again, Bethany Caldwell. Carmen was supposed to keep me out of trouble that night.” Gavin couldn’t resist reminding her about them meeting the month before. Sure, he’d wished he’d known her last name and where she worked. If he’d had it all to do over again, he’d definitely handle the situation differently. It was probably too late to worry about that now, though.
“Did you get into trouble, Dad?”
“Nah, I was just kidding.” Turning his attention back to Beth, he said, “As I recall, you’re divorced, right?”
“My mom and dad are divorced.” Patrick hadn’t a clue what was going on but, as usual, just wanted to be in on the conversation.
Beth rolled the stool she sat on toward the counter to discard her cotton swabs and lancets. “Well, I guess we have something in common, then.”
Gavin remembered her silly toast about her ex-husband at the party. Something about “May the dog lose his pecker in a mysterious accident.” He scratched his nose and tried not to crack a smile. It sounded as though her marriage had ended as badly as his had.
She washed her hands and rolled toward Patrick’s gurney.
“Now it’s your turn, fella.” She gave Patrick a warm smile. Gavin liked the way she treated his son, especially as he missed his mother so much. He went back to resting his chin on a pedestal made from two fists, and thought he could get used to looking at Beth.
“That’s cold,” Patrick protested. “It tickles.” He giggled and contorted while she drew lines and letters on his back.
“OK, let’s get all the squirming over with before we start the test.” She tickled his sides until he laughed so hard he relaxed.
It took a special woman to know how to work with kids. He’d give her that. Gavin optimistically calculated the odds of getting to know Bethany Caldwell better. He genuinely wasn’t a cad. Not asking her full name or getting her number really had been beneath his usual standards. And never in his life had he carried on with a woman he hadn’t even been introduced to. But, as they said, there’s always a first. Hell, if they’d been dating and the sex had been that amazing, he’d have sent flowers the next day. But that night, with the strong sexual current flowing between them, his good sense had gotten left behind. And when Carmen had beeped him and alerted him about Patrick, well…
Now the question was, how could he make up for it?
Intense itching ratcheted up in wicked swirls around the test patches on his back. “Am I allowed to scratch?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re sadistic, you know that?”
“What’s sadistic mean?” Patrick asked as Beth made the first scratch on his back. He didn’t protest, but his face turned red from trying to hold still.
“It means she made my back itch a lot and won’t let me scratch it.”
“It’s one of the perks of the job,” she said, looking playfully at him for the first time that evening. He remembered that look.
Beth quickly finished testing Patrick without a peep coming from him. Gavin wondered why his back felt on fire but his son wasn’t complaining at all.
“OK, guys. Now you have to lie here for twenty minutes.”
“Hey, where are you going?” Gavin asked.
“To clean up the work station. It’s closing time. Talk amongst yourselves.”
He lay there like a good boy trying to be teacher’s pet but his skin flushed from warm to hot, beginning from the top of his head downward. His scalp felt tingly. “Does your head itch?”
“Nope,” Patrick said, looking very comfortable. “Hey, let’s arm-wrestle.”
Gavin cleared a tickle in his throat. His lungs twitched and itched inside. His beeper went off. He sat up. “Maybe later.”
Using the wall phone, he dialed in the familiar ER numbers. “Riordan.” He coughed while he listened, then glanced at his arms. They were covered with the beginnings of hives. Patrick’s back looked pale, other than a few red dots and lots of writing.
“I’ll be right down. Contact Orthopedics and the plastic surgeon on call.” He hung up.
Beth reappeared at the door. Her eyes flashed both a double-take and alarm when she saw Gavin. “Are you all right?” She glanced at Patrick to make sure he was OK.
“A four-year-old was just brought into the ER. I’ve got to go,” he said, as the intense itching from his back spread all over his body.
“You can’t leave. It looks like you’re having a systemic reaction. And you can’t leave a minor alone during skin testing. California law.” She reached into the cupboard for a syringe and a vial.
The soles of his feet and palms of his hands joined the tornado of itching traveling across his skin. “They’re waiting for me.”
She wiped his arm with an alcohol swab and popped him with a needle.
“Ouch! Hey, what was that?”
Patrick looked on in alarm. “Do I gotta have that, too?”
She shook her head. “No, you’re fine. But your dad is having a big reaction to the testing.”
Patrick coughed.
“That was epi. Here, take this.” She handed Gavin a small foil packet she’d torn open. “It’s an antihistamine. Dissolve it under your tongue.” She turned him round and assessed his back. “Good God, a whole section of the testing has run together into one huge welt. Let me check your blood pressure.”
“I told you I have to go.” He coughed and Patrick coughed along with him. Irritation accompanied his racing pulse and his lungs wheezed. Tight, resistant huffs replaced his normal breathing.
“Sit down.” She gave his chest a firm shove and angled him into a chair. “You won’t do anyone any good if you collapse in the elevator.” She fastened the blood-pressure cuff around his arm, pumped it up, and listened with her stethoscope. He flashed her an annoyed stare. Unfazed, she bent forward in silence, almost head to head with him as she listened to his blood pressure.
He started to stand up.
“Hold your horses. Good. Your pressure hasn’t dropped. Let me listen to your lungs.” She placed the cold stethoscope bell first on his chest then on his back and commanded him to breathe in and out for each. “I hear a little wheezing, but not bad. Let me roll you down to the ER in a wheelchair. You shouldn’t be running around like this. And you can’t leave Patrick alone here.” She glanced at his back. “Man, you should be a bubble boy.”
“Yeah, I’ve always been special. Look, this is ridiculous. I can walk.”
“Maybe you can, but we don’t want to spread this reaction any further by increasing your circulation with physical activity, so you’re going in a wheelchair.” She reached into the cupboard again and tossed him a small gray canister and then an aerochamber. “Take a couple of hits off that while I get the wheelchair.”
He felt like an insolent teenager screwing up his face at a teacher’s stupid idea, but did what he had been told for Patrick’s sake. The woman was as pushy as his ER nurses, but he trusted her knowledge.
Before Beth left, she’d obviously become aware of what Gavin had been noticing for the last few weeks—Patrick’s troublesome, persistent cough. He kept coughing as though he had a nervous tickle.
“Maybe you should take your asthma medicine, too,” she said.
“I don’t have it with me.”
“Later, when we have time, I’ll teach you about keeping peak-flow records and carrying your inhaler wherever you go, but for now, use what I gave your dad. You guys both need a bronchodilator.”
She disappeared around the corner. Gavin heard her explain to Dr Mehta over the intercom what was going on, while they did what they were told.
Reappearing and rolling the wheelchair behind him, Beth caught the backs of his knees and pushed his shoulder down to force him to sit. She handed him his scrub top and lab coat and gave Patrick his basketball jersey.
“Would you like an ice pack or should I put some cortisone cream on your back before you get dressed?”
“Don’t have time now, but I’d definitely like to take a rain-check on the second part.” Though nervous about his reaction to the testing, he couldn’t resist horsing around to lighten her intense mood and help himself relax. He lowered his voice. “My choice of cream, though.”
She lightly cuffed his shoulder and rolled her eyes toward Patrick. Ignoring Gavin’s come-on, she spun the chair round and pushed it toward the door. “I’m missing dinner because of you, and I already skipped lunch today.” With the clinic normally closing at five o’clock and it now being almost six o’clock, the hall was empty.
“Nurses are tough. What about our dinner?” He gestured to his son. “You know, I think you owe us dinner for all this grief.”
“It was your idea,” she said.
“Are we asking her to take us out, Dad?”
He grinned. “Maybe.”
She ignored the implication and let Patrick push the elevator button on the fifth floor. Amazingly the door opened right away. She rolled him inside and stood across from both of them. Patrick punched number one.
“How am I supposed to figure out what you’re allergic to if you’re running around in the ER?” She fanned herself, looking suddenly flushed.
“You can’t.” Gavin studied his shaky hands. How was he supposed to examine a traumatized kid when he itched all over and his back burned hotter than Hades?
“Are you OK, Dad?” Patrick asked as he stood next to the wheelchair.
“I’m fine.”
“It’s just the medicine I gave him, Patrick. It will wear off. How about you? You seem to have stopped coughing.”
“I’m good.”
“The medicine helped?”
“Maybe.”
Now pale and looking droopier by the second, Bethany leaned against the adjacent wall. “And why is it no one else can take care of this emergency?”
“Because I’m the head of the ER and the kid had his hand practically torn off by the family dog.”
He glanced across the elevator just in time to see his new, and definitely favorite, allergy nurse fainting.
