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“Right, thank you.” Nate turned back to Flo. “See, this is why I’m doing my research and maybe this young doctor here would like to assist me while I continue with my research here in Los Angeles.”
“Thank you, Dr. King,” the surgeon said, stunned.
Flo shot him another look that said, Are you kidding me?
“I never questioned why you were doing your research, Dr. King. I admire it, but since Mr. Francis here will be stabilized, albeit bound to this hospital with his LVAD, maybe you could return to New York. I’ll let you know when UNOS has a heart and lung ready for Mr. Francis.” Flo continued with her work.
“Ah, but that’s the thing. They won’t be calling you, Dr. Chiu. UNOS will call me. I’m the one who put Mr. Francis on the transplant list.”
Her head snapped back up and she fixed him with a stern look over her surgical mask.
That got her attention.
“You are persistent in your need to stay here, aren’t you?” she said, with a hint of admiration in her voice.
“When it comes to my patients I am very persistent.”
She looked up at him briefly and he knew by the way her eyes crinkled in the corners that she was smiling behind that mask. “Me, too.”
“Dr. Chiu, I don’t see why we both can’t work together on Mr. Francis’s care. We don’t both have to stay at this hospital twenty-four-seven, waiting for a heart and lungs. Surely you have a life outside this hospital?”
“What’re you implying, Dr. King? Are you implying I don’t have a life?”
“On the contrary, I’m sure you have a life. Someone special.”
“What?” she asked, not looking at him.
“A boyfriend.”
There were a few titters in the crowd and Flo quickly shot them all a dirty look, which silenced the laughter.
“Not that it’s any of your business, Dr. King, but I don’t have a boyfriend. My work is my life.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
Flo groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those kinds of men?”
“What kind of men?”
“Men who think that a woman is worthless if she doesn’t have a boyfriend or a significant other.”
“No, I’m not. It’s just...” Then he trailed off as he thought about Serena. “Life’s too short.”
She looked up at him, her brown eyes warm and tender as if silently agreeing with him. As if she knew personally how fragile life was, and he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened in her life. Had she lost someone she’d cared about?
Nate certainly hoped not. That was a pain he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.
“You’re right,” she said. “Life is too short. At least with this operation he won’t be one of the ten to fifteen percent who die while waiting. It will give him a chance to beat the odds.”
Nate nodded, but didn’t say anything further as they worked together to attach Kyle’s left ventricular assist device. Kyle was lucky that they’d brought him to Dr. Chiu, in light of the fact that he himself was based in New York.
There was talent here.
There was skill.
Together they could save Kyle’s life. There were always variables when it came to heart and lung transplants, but maybe together they could succeed.
No. You can’t. Not together.
Flo was the type of woman his old self would have pursued in a heartbeat and that thought scared him. If he had to work closely with her, then he would be tempted.
How could he not be tempted by a woman like Flo?
He had to keep his distance from her. It would be hard, but he had to put a wall between the two of them. It had to be professional. It had to be businesslike. That was all there was to it. Nate couldn’t risk his heart again.
Risk was a dangerous thing and he wasn’t willing to play around with that.
Look where his life of risk had gotten him.
Don’t think about Serena now. You don’t deserve to mourn her.
After the surgery was successfully completed, Nate didn’t say much. He just scrubbed out and then tried to find his way off the surgical floor. He needed air. It took him a few minutes, but he found his way back up to the roof, to the helipad. Maybe the height would get him out of the LA smog.
It was hot out, different from New York, where the bitter remnants of March still clung to the city. He’d forgotten how much he missed the heat of California. He took a deep breath and tried to calm his jangled nerves.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this.
Since Serena had died he’d been busy burying his feelings in his work. He didn’t usually connect with anyone, but Flo had got under his skin.
Even in the brief time he’d known her.
She made him forget. She made him forget how he had a tight rein on his emotions. Absolute control at all times.
“There you are,” Flo said behind him, making him jump slightly.
“Why did you follow me up here?” he snapped.
“Don’t get so testy. I followed you because I wanted to give you this temporary pass.” She held out the scan card in her delicate fingers. “If you don’t have this you can’t get access to Mr. Francis or basically get around the hospital.”
Nate sighed inwardly and took the scan card from her. “Sorry. Thanks.”
“I guess I could’ve kept it and you would’ve been trapped up here.” A smile played at the corners of her lips. “You would deserve it, too, asking all those personal questions during surgery. My team doesn’t need to know about my personal life.”
“I was trying to lighten the mood in there.”
Since when?
In New York City he was always serious. Residents and interns alike quaked in their boots around him. He wasn’t known for lightening the mood, or even chatting in an operating room. He didn’t know what had come over him.
She crossed her arms. “There was no need for mood lightening in there. Besides, from what I hear, you’re not exactly jovial all the time.”
“Who told you that?” he asked.
“Mr. Francis, when he first came in and was stabilized. When he found out his management team had called you he warned me about you. He said you were a bit of an arrogant brute.”
“I doubt he said arrogant brute.”
“You’re right,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes. “It was much more colorful.”
Nate chuckled to himself. That sounded like something Kyle would do. And when he glanced at Flo he could see a soft side to her. She gave off the appearance of being a tough cookie in the operating room, but there was a softness about her. A warmth.
Something he’d been missing in his life for so long.
“Thanks for helping me in there. I’m so glad he’s stabilized. Let’s just hope we can keep him that way until UNOS calls you.” She smiled at him. “I’ll leave you to it. If you need anything, just have me paged. I’ll be at the hospital for some time still.”
She turned to leave, but Nate reached out and took her elbow to stop her. Flo turned, a questioning look on her face.
“Thank you for being here to help my patient,” he said. “I’m glad a surgeon of your caliber was here to help him. And I’ll get UNOS to add you to the call list.”
Her brown eyes widened in surprise and then she smiled, a pink blush tinging her round cheeks as she tucked an errant wisp of hair behind her ear. “Thank you, and of course.”
Nate knew that he should let her go, only he couldn’t. He felt mesmerized by her and without thinking he pulled her tight against and kissed her.
For one moment, while he tasted her sweet lips, he felt her melt against him, which prompted him to wrap his arms around her, deepening the kiss. Her petite body was pressed against his, his hands in her hair as he bent over to kiss her.
Nate wanted to take this further. If they had been back at his place in New York, he’d be scooping her up in his arms and carrying her off to bed to make love to her, but he was standing with her on a helipad in Los Angeles.
He was tumbling down a dangerous path.
Then he remembered what he was doing.
That this was not keeping his distance from her at all. It was the exact opposite.
He broke off the kiss and took a step away from her, running his hand through his hair, trying to calm the erratic beat of his pulse and the longing in his blood.
Flo stood there, just as shocked as he was, her fingers pressing her lips, her eyes wide.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know...” He trailed off. He knew what had come over him and he was angry at himself for letting lust take over his senses, even for just one moment.
“No, it’s okay,” she said quickly. “The rush of the moment. I get it. We won’t talk about it again, Dr. King.” And then, before he had a chance to say anything else, she turned on her heel and jogged away, putting the distance between them that he should’ve done in the first place.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1bc7242a-89e5-520c-9287-2d4f32720962)
FLO WOKE WITH a start and forgot for a moment that she was in an on-call room. Her arm had pins and needles because when she’d crashed, she’d crashed with her arm hanging over the side of the bed, clutching her pager, which was currently vibrating in her hand.
She glanced at it and saw that Freya Rothsberg was looking for her.
Drat.
She hoped it didn’t have anything to do with sharing her office with Nate. She wouldn’t have really minded or put up a fight before, but after yesterday Flo knew that sharing an office was a bad idea.
She’d been so surprised when he’d pulled her into his strong arms and kissed her. A little voice inside her head had told her to push him away, but she’d been unable to because the kiss had been the hottest kiss she’d ever had.
Every other kiss in her life, before Nate’s kiss, had been chaste in comparison. The moment his hand had cupped the back of her head, his fingers playing in the wisps of hair at the back of her neck, it had sent a jolt of pure longing and desire through her veins.
And she’d wanted him.
That side of her that lived for the moment had screamed at her to take him. Though the sensible side of her had reminded her that the last time she’d become close to a man, when she’d almost taken the plunge and had had sex, a certain scar had scared Johnny. It spoke to the world that she was ill. That her life was uncertain, and no one wanted to be tied down to a risk. Johnny had made that much clear.
He’d been afraid to touch her again after he’d seen the scar, and she’d told him why she had it hoping that would calm the issue, but it hadn’t. It had just made it worse. Besides, what did she really know about sex? She’d never had it before.
It was good that Nate had broken off that kiss, though it was going to be hard to work with him. Especially if Freya insisted that they share an office.
Flo got out of bed, tidied her hair and brushed her teeth in the on-call room, then made her way to her office. Thankfully, her administrative assistant wasn’t in yet, because Sally would certainly pepper her with a ton of questions about Kyle Francis and Flo’s bedraggled appearance.
You slept in the on-call room again, didn’t you?
Flo locked the door to her office and went to the closet to pull out the set of business clothes that she always kept on hand, because this wasn’t the first time she’d slept over at The Hollywood Hills Clinic and had needed to make an appearance in front of the bosses the next day.
She tossed her scrubs in the laundry basket and then pulled on a reliable white blouse and pinstripe black pencil skirt. She traded her comfortable running shoes for her black heels and hoped no one would see the dents in her ankles from the elastic in her socks after wearing them all night.
Flo fixed her hair, putting it up in a bun, and then slipped on her white lab coat, attaching her security cards and identification. With one last look she reached down and grabbed a tablet so she could bring up Kyle Francis’s file, because she was positive that Freya would want to talk about that.
Once she had everything she quickly made her way through the halls of The Hollywood Hills Clinic to the boardroom, where Freya had asked her to meet her, which also had Flo’s nerves on edge. She knocked and then entered the boardroom and tried not to blush when she saw Nate sitting in a chair at the table.
He was chatting to Freya amicably, but the moment Flo walked in those piercing blue eyes trained on her, and it took all her willpower to stop her knees knocking together. She would not let Nate get to her.
They were colleagues. That’s it.
Besides, even if something came of it, once he found out she was a transplant patient herself, he’d run, like all the others had. Her uncertain future like kryptonite to men. Which was why she kept it to herself, both in her personal and professional life.
“Sorry for running late, Freya.”
“No, it’s quite all right, Flo. Please have a seat.” Freya motioned to the seat directly across from Nate, on her left side. Flo sat down and tried not to look in Nate’s direction.
“I understand Mr. Francis has been stabilized?” Freya said, sitting down at the head of the table and brushing her long hair over her shoulder in that refined way she had.
“He has.” Flo pulled up Kyle’s file. “The surgical report is here if you need it.”
Freya held up her hand. “No, I’m not here to talk about Mr. Francis’s surgery. I’m glad to know that he’s been stabilized.”
“I thought you wanted to talk about Kyle Francis? The page said there was going to be discussion about him.”
“Well, it’s indirectly about Mr. Francis.” Freya brought up an image on the screen behind her with a click of the remote.
Flo almost fell out of her chair when she saw the headline of a local paper and the photograph that was underneath it.
Superstar Kyle Francis’s doctors locked in a kiss while actor hovers near death.
