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“Merry Christmas, Dr. Davenport,” Stacey squealed as she ran up to him, holding the ugly fake mistletoe over her head and kissing him on the cheek. Carol snatched it from Stacey’s hand.
“Merry Christmas.” And Carol kissed him on the other cheek.
“Uh, Merry Christmas...” he said stiffly.
Ella snorted. He didn’t know their names. That wasn’t surprising. They were only two of the trauma nurses in the department he worked in, why should he know their names? Typical spoiled Zac Davenport. Not a care in the world for anyone but himself.
“Stacey,” Stacey said.
“And I’m Carol,” Carol said, stepping in front of Stacey. “We’re on duty tonight.”
Zac looked uncomfortable.
Good.
“Shouldn’t you two be out on the floor?” Zac asked, trying to untangle himself from the onslaught of nurses. Ella felt a small amount of pity for them.
“Yes, you two should be out on the floor. There are patients waiting,” Ella said stiffly, trying not to make eye contact with Zac.
“Of course, Dr. Lockwood,” Carol said. “We’ll just take our decorations and go.”
Stacey nodded and picked up the dilapidated box where they’d got the fake mistletoe from and left the staffroom.
“Thanks,” Zac said. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of that.”
“No problem,” Ella replied, but she didn’t look at him. It was better that way.
“Isn’t your shift over?” he asked, as he approached the coffee pot where she’d retreated to after he’d walked into the room. In effect, cornering her.
“Yes, but if you haven’t heard, most of the next shift is unable to make it in and Manhattan has shut down.”
“You worked a full shift, you can just walk home.”
“It’s not safe,” Ella snapped, annoyed that he wanted to get rid of her so badly.
Wouldn’t you be pestering him the same way too?
“I’m just worried that you’re too tired to work another shift.”
She glared at him. “Really? You’re concerned about my well-being?”
“You’re tired,” he said.
“You don’t look so hot yourself. You have dark circles under your eyes.”
Zac’s eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Then maybe you should go home and rest.”
Zac’s eyebrows shot up. “What is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with me?” Her voice rose an octave and she was annoyed with herself for engaging in conversation with Zac. She’d promised herself when she’d heard that Zac Davenport had been discharged from the navy and was coming to work at Manhattan Mercy that she would keep her distance from him. That she wouldn’t let him bait her.
She’d worked hard here to build a reputation for herself, and just because Zac had come waltzing back to Manhattan and had immediately got an attending position in Trauma because he was a Davenport, it didn’t mean that she was going to run away with her tail between her legs.
No way. Not this time.
“You’ve been acting weird lately. I mean, I tried to speak to you at Charles’s wedding and you said nothing to me, and then fighting over that patient? We haven’t exactly worked well together.”
“Actually, I said hello and goodbye, if I remember correctly, at the wedding. As for the working situation, well, the trauma floor is tense and that was my patient.”
Those brilliant blue eyes darkened with annoyance. That mouth, which she was all too familiar with, frowned and he crossed his arms.
“Ella, what is wrong?”
You were my best friend, my first kiss, and then publicly dismissed me in front of our peers. You broke my heart.
“Nothing is wrong.” She set down the plastic cup that was half-filled with now-tepid coffee. “You know what? You’re right. I’m tired and maybe I should head out in the whiteout conditions and go home.”
She turned on her heel and stormed out of the staffroom, clenching her fists to keep herself from shaking.
There was no way she was actually going to head out into that storm. The ER was short-staffed and whiteout conditions didn’t make it exactly safe to navigate the streets tonight. It was safer in the hospital.
As long as she could get away from Zac.
She was going to stay, but she just couldn’t stay in the same room as Zac Davenport. Not for one more second.
“Ella!”
She heard him shout her name from behind her.
Why is he following me?
“Ella!”
She ignored him and quickened her pace, but she was no match for Zac, who gripped her by the arm and pulled her down a side hallway.
“What?” she demanded as he spun her around to face him.
“Look, I didn’t mean it. You can’t go out in that storm.”
She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t going out in the storm. You really don’t think much of me, do you?”
He cursed under his breath, running his hands through his short brown hair in frustration. “What did I do, Ella? Seriously?”
She was going to open her mouth to say something when there was an unmistakable sound of a power surge. An electric hum and suddenly they were cast into darkness.
“What the heck?” she asked. “I thought the new system was supposed to control these brownouts.”
There were murmurs and shouts of shock.
“No,” Zac whispered. “No.”
Ella was surprised by the sound of panic in Zac’s voice, the terror etched on his face under the emergency lights. “It’s probably just a brownout. Like before. The generator will kick—”
“Son of a...” was shouted as someone further down the darkened hall knocked over a tray of metallic instruments. Followed by the clang of metal echoing and bouncing off the hospital walls.
Zac froze. His eyes were wide with terror as he backed against the wall, trembling. Ella was shocked, because he didn’t even seem to know that she was there. His body was rigid in terror. Just like after the corks at the wedding. When the pops had sounded, she’d seen him freeze, then duck under the table. He’d seemed to recover quickly, but afterwards he’d left the room, looking pale. No one had noticed in the confusion of the wedding, but she’d seen it.
“Zac?” she asked softly, reaching out to touch him, but he pushed her hand away, as if her touch would harm him.
A couple of porters who were making their way down the darkened hallway stopped and stared at Zac, who was breathing deeply but clinging to the wall like he was on the edge of a precipice and was about to fall.
And she recognized the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. No one had said anything to her about Zac having post-traumatic stress disorder. That would be something they would disclose about a new doctor working at the hospital to the head of that surgeon’s respective departments.
I don’t think anyone knows.
One thing she did know, she had to get him out of there and calmed down.
“Come on, Zac. Let’s go.” She took his hand and this time he didn’t fight her off. She pulled him into the nearest empty on-call room and shut the door. She led him to the cot and made him sit down. “Breathe, it’s okay. It was just a porter knocking over some instruments.”
Zac nodded, but didn’t look at her. He just took deep, calming breaths.
What had happened to him during his tour of duty?
“I’m okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?” she asked, not wholly convinced that he was all right.
“I’m fine,” he snapped.
Of course, he was back to normal. The ungrateful jerk that he always was. Not even thanking her for taking him somewhere quiet where he could center himself.
“I’m so glad,” she retorted. She had to put some distance between her and Zac. “Well, I’m just going to head back to the trauma floor and make sure the patients are okay.”
“Sounds good.”
Ella pulled on the doorknob and it popped off. She stared at it in horror.
“Did you just pull the handle off?” Zac asked in horror.
“Yes,” she said, and then it was her turn to curse. There was no way out of the room. She was stuck there with Zac Davenport until someone came to get them out.
CHAPTER TWO (#ua45c8e58-9265-5c1e-884b-ba3cf3e86704)
ZAC COULDN’T BELIEVE he was staring at the doorknob in Ella’s hand. He was still a bit in shock. It was bad enough that he’d had that momentary blip of PTSD in front of her. He just needed to put some distance between her and him, but now that really wasn’t an option.
It’s because you’re working too hard.
He shook that thought away. Work was the only thing that helped. It kept the ghosts at bay. Saving lives helped him focus and forget. He was a trauma surgeon, that was his job, and that’s all he needed to worry about. Of course it was hard to be a trauma surgeon locked in an on-call room.
“Give me that,” he snapped, snatching the doorknob from her and trying to cram it back where it was supposed to be.
“Oh, my God, why didn’t I think of that?” She slapped her forehead. “I forgot you had the ability to fuse metal.”
Her sarcasm was grating on the last of his nerves.
“Dammit, Ella.” He threw the doorknob down and scrubbed his hands over his face. This was not happening.
“It’s not my fault.”
She was right. It wasn’t her fault that the doorknob was defective. She’d made it clear that she wanted to leave the room just as much as he did. And he shouldn’t be angry at her, he should be angry at himself.
If he hadn’t run after her he wouldn’t be in this mess.
If the power hadn’t gone out, he wouldn’t be in this mess and if that tray of instruments hadn’t been knocked over... Just the thought of the metal hitting the polished floor, the clattering against the walls made his pulse kick it up a notch.
Get a hold on yourself.
He didn’t want to have another attack here now, locked in a room with her.
Although Ella wasn’t stupid. She’d probably figured out that what had happened had been a PTSD attack.
No one in his family knew about it, except Charles, who knew that Zac had been cleared for work. Of course, it rarely made an appearance. He kept it in check.
But even Charles didn’t know the exact reasons he’d left the navy and had accepted his honorable discharge. No one needed to know. He’d tried to stay in Annapolis and work there, but working on injured veterans had brought back the horror of his last tour of duty all too well.
And just thinking about it, the screams from last Christmas filled his head.
“I need to sit down.” He pushed past Ella in the small on-call room and sat down.
Why did he have to be locked in an on-call room with her right now?
The one woman he’d never really been able to resist. The one woman who his family had been trying to marry him off to since he’d been a young man. He didn’t want to ever get married. Adventure had been his goal and family just tied you down, stopped you from living your life. On his own he could do whatever he wanted.
Life was too fragile. Lives could be cut short in the blink of an eye and after what had happened with his parents, with his father cheating on his mother, yeah, marriage was something he’d never wanted. Settling down had never been on his agenda.
Ever.
For so many years he’d tried to keep Ella Lockwood at arm’s length, but that summer before they’d both headed off to medical school, they’d connected.
Ella had been so much more than the awkward society princess he’d thought she was. She had been curvy, clumsy and her self-esteem had been shaky, but there had been something about her that had drawn him to her.
And he’d known from past experience he had a hard time resisting her.
Though he’d tried. He’d been going off to Annapolis. He hadn’t wanted to be tied down because he’d had these childhood feelings for Ella Lockwood.
Then that Christmas at her parents’ home in the Hamptons, right before he was going back, they kissed and he knew he had to walk away from her or there would be no turning back. She fired his blood and it frightened him, the hold she’d had on him. That she still had on him.
