Luke (4 page)

His eyes reflected surprise, but before he could say something, Shelby came around the corner and waved Faith down. "I just paged you. Woman in labor in room four. Fully dilated, fully effaced, freaking out, won't push, won't let us even take a peek anymore."

Faith set her purse down and started walking fast with Shelby at her side. "First baby?"

"Oh yeah. And she's a screamer."

"Get Guy—"

"He's already in there. If anyone can soothe a terrified pregnant lady…"

"Guy can." Guy Anders, their therapeutic massage therapist, had a voice that could sedate a gangbanger, and hands from heaven. He was their ace in the hole in situations like this, but still, as they rounded the corner and heard the screams, Faith cringed, both in sympathy for the woman and the people in the waiting room. "Dr. Walker—"

"I'll assist," he said from right behind her, and in fact, pushed into the room ahead of her.

Shelby lifted a brow, and Faith sighed. "He's used to being in charge."

Shelby let out a low laugh. "Well, since you are, too, this is going to be interesting."

They stepped into the room, where the screaming had stopped. Their patient, a woman in her midtwenties, lay in the bed, eyes huge on one Dr. Luke Walker, tall and leanly muscular, scrubbing his hands at the sink and talking to her the entire time. Then he hunkered down at her side, holding her hand, murmuring words too softly spoken for Faith to catch.

On the other side of the bed stood Guy, also tall and handsome, though unusually so with a purple stripe in his hair, and interesting tattoos and piercings. He shot Faith a bemused glance at being usurped, but didn't say a word.

Luke lifted his head and searched out Faith. "Margaret's ready to push now. I'm going to examine her first. Do you have a spare set of scrubs?"

"No!" Margaret sat straight up, not an easy feat with forty pounds of belly, and grabbed Luke by the collar. "No scrubbing, no changing! I want to push now!"

With her fists embedded in his shirt, Luke simply nodded calmly. "We can do that," he said in a soft, utterly authoritative yet kind voice, accepting gloves from Faith and snapping them on. To everyone he said, "I'll deliver in my street clothes."

Faith had just scrubbed and was already moving around to the foot of the bed. As a nurse practitioner she'd delivered more babies than she could count, simply because the doctors tended not to make it in time. Since she'd opened the clinic, there'd been hundreds more. Delivering babies was her favorite part of the job.

But Luke beat her to it. Leaning in, he murmured for her ears only, "She's obviously low pain tolerance, let's get her an epidural—"

"Her chart says she requested no drugs when she arrived."

He leaned in closer, stooping a little to stand eye-to-eye with her, and since they were eye-to-eye, she had no trouble seeing his carefully reined-in anger. "You don't believe in epidurals?"

"She requested to do this naturally," she repeated.

"Ah, the barbaric way then," he said. "Have you ever had a baby naturally, Faith McDowell?"

"No, and I'm fairly certain you haven't either. There are plenty of other methods of easing pain—healing touch, herbs, imagery, pressure point therapy—"

"Let the patient decide against conventional pain meds," he said in a low, harsh whisper. "Let her decide in the moment, as in right now, not before she knows what she's getting into. And don't let your beliefs drive the decision, that's unfair."

"Fine." She shoved her chin in the air. "Clearly you have this situation under control. I'll tend to the other patients."

Without responding, he turned his attention to Margaret, his big body leaning over hers protectively, talking in that same low, gentle voice he'd never used on Faith.

She should be thankful for small favors, because that voice he didn't share with her made her tummy quiver and her legs feel funny. Boneless.

She really wished she'd had some chocolate.

* * *

Margaret delivered a beautiful eight-pound girl—without the epidural.

Faith delivered herself a pounding tension headache, the kind she'd had daily once upon a time, when she'd worked at the hospital.

"I need a new set of scrubs," Luke told her a couple of hours later on a rare two-minute break between patients.

"Fine." She strode down the hall, jerked open the supply closet and flipped on the light. She could smell him behind her, and one would think after hours of working with patients and running at a fast pace, he'd at least smell like it, but no. He smelled delicious, quite frankly. "How do you do that?" she asked grumpily.

"Do what?"

"Still smell good." She didn't point out how annoying that was. Or that her nose was straining to catch the scent of him.

"My mother always told me to smell good."

That startled a laugh out of her. "Really?"

"No." He was smiling. Good Lord, he shouldn't do that, because like his voice, it did funny things to her insides. "My mom didn't tell me anything," he said. "She had the nanny do it."

"Ah. Poor little rich boy, Dr. Walker?"

"Luke. And nah, not rich. My mother just didn't like messy things, and my brother and I were about as messy as they came."

No. No, she didn't want to hear this, that he was human, that he'd had a mother who hadn't mothered him, that he had a brother he'd obviously shared a lot with, that he … that he just might have had as lonely a childhood as she.

She found him a pair of scrubs, and as she pulled them off the shelf, she fought back a laugh. Pink flowered scrubs. Smiling at the petty revenge, she turned around to hand them to him and found him much closer than she'd anticipated, as he'd stepped into the supply room behind her, craning his neck to check out the shelves. The last time she'd been this close to him, this morning, in fact, he'd been only half-dressed and tousled. Now his short, spiky dark hair had been combed, though his jaw still showed a shadow, probably because she'd given him the bum's rush, not giving him time to breathe, much less shave. It didn't change the potency of being this close to him. So close she could have leaned in a fraction of an inch and—

"Nicely stacked."

She watched his lips move, heard the words, and her jaw fell open as she looked down at the front of her scrubs, which so effectively hid her breasts. She had no idea how he'd—

"The shelves," he repeated slowly, frowning at her reaction. "They're nicely stocked. Organized."

Nicely stocked.
Stocked, you idiot.
Good God, she needed to get it together. This was
her
arena, her clinic, and lust, or whatever had happened to her genes and hormones since she'd set eyes on him, didn't have a place. Nope, no matter how big, bad and pulse-jerkingly magnificent the man standing close enough to grope was, she needed to ignore it all. "Um … thanks."

He'd complimented the clinic. Okay … maybe this
could
work, maybe they could find a happy medium—

"For a froufrou clinic," he added.

Nope. No happy medium.

Chapter 3

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F
aith decided it must be a full moon, as besides their scheduled massage therapy, acupressure and aromatherapy appointments, they had an unusual number of women in labor, walk-ins and emergencies.

Either a full moon … or curiosity about Dr. Luke Walker. She decided it didn't matter. She loved knowing people came to Healing Waters for help. She ended up eating lunch on the run, which she hated to do but it couldn't be helped. And by late afternoon, she felt that familiar light-headedness—the one that signaled her resistance was down—and still had that monster headache that wouldn't quit.

If she didn't want to get sick, she needed a break, horizontal on her couch in her office. And she'd get it, she promised herself, as soon as she saw the seventeen-year-old waiting for her in room seven who wanted to get on birth control pills without her mother's permission.

"Psst."

Shelby and Guy were huddled behind a tall potted palm, frantically waving her over. With a low laugh, Faith looked conspiratorially right, then left, then joined them in their usual gathering place to exchange patient charts and any new gossip.

"Tell me one of you has something chocolate," she said hopefully.

"Is that all you think about, food?" Guy asked, and slapped his pockets. "Sorry, I've got nothing." With a sigh, Faith pulled a granola bar from her own pocket and after splitting it three ways, stuffed her portion in her mouth. When she realized they were staring at her, she stopped in mid-chew, not easy with homemade granola. "What?"

Guy shook his head at Shelby. "She's going to deny it, so don't even bother to say anything."

"Say what?"

"Say that the sparks bouncing between you and the good Dr. Walker are threatening to burn the place down," Shelby said.

"Sparks?" Faith laughed. "Of course there's sparks. We rub each other the wrong way. I'm just sorry you're picking up on the temper between us. I know that's not good for a calm work environment."

Guy and Shelby looked at each other, then grinned.

Faith eyed them warily. "What now?"

"We're talking about
sexual
sparks, Faith," Guy told her.

"You remember the word
sexual,
right?" Shelby lifted her brow suggestively. "Even though you haven't had any sex since the nineties."

"Don't be ridiculous." Faith forced another laugh even though, pathetically, Shelby was right. "Of course I remember…"
Sort of.
"But there's nothing between us, sexual or otherwise."

"Really? 'Cuz I could have heated my lunch burrito off the heat between you two." Guy studied his fingernails. He'd painted the pinkies dark purple, which matched the stripe in his hair. "Probably would have burned it."

Faith's stomach growled. "You had a burrito?"

"Concentrate, hon." Shelby patted her perfect hair. "The good doctor is an amazing specimen. We know you noticed."

Faith would rather talk about burritos, extra fat please. Of course, that's why Shelby looked like a glamorous actress playing at being an overworked medical professional while Faith looked like … well, like an overworked medical professional.

"All that rough-and-tumble masculinity, combined with his take-me-as-I-am attitude. Wow." Shelby fanned herself. "And his bedside manner … made my knees weak."

"Mine, too," said Guy, also fanning himself.

"So…" Shelby, a woman who liked men as much as Faith liked … air, looked at her. "Are you going to do him?"

Faith nearly choked on the last swallow of granola. "Not everyone is interested is 'doing' a man who is overly confident and too gorgeous for his own good."

"Speak for yourself," Guy muttered.

Shelby looked at her watch. "Look, sex is supposed to be fun. I realize you might have forgotten that, but…"

No, Faith remembered that much about sex. Barely. "I remember, but at the moment, I have to go talk to a seventeen-year-old who wants birth control pills."

Both Shelby and Guy suitably sobered. "Well, don't tell
her
how fun it is," Shelby advised. "Kids shouldn't know that."

Faith walked down the hall, practicing her abstinence speech in her head, but it seemed old-fashioned, even if she wholeheartedly believed in it for all seventeen-year-olds. But these days she had to be more realistic, and she needed to be armed with more advice than
look but don't touch.

It turned out there wasn't just seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Stone in room seven, but her boyfriend as well, if the fact that they were thigh-to-thigh and holding hands meant anything.

Oh, and one Dr. Luke Walker, sitting right in front of them, all comfy cozy in the third patient chair. Elizabeth and the boy were smiling, and so was Luke. He was leaning back, one long leg crossed over the other, looking utterly at ease as he discussed the advantages of condoms for sex, every single time.

All three of them looked up at her when she entered, and Luke handed her Liz's chart.

"Thanks for the appointment," Elizabeth said to Dr. Walker, and with a smile at Faith, she and her boyfriend left.

Faith looked at Luke. "What are you doing?"

"Your receptionist asked me to handle some of your patients. You're backed up."

You're backed up.
Not we. Of course not we, he wasn't a part of them, he was simply fulfilling what he considered a punishment by his hospital. "What did Elizabeth say?"

"She refused to discuss abstinence so we talked about STDs until she turned green. Then we talked about condoms."

Faith would've given them the same talk about sexually transmitted diseases so she had no idea why she felt the need to argue with him. Had she wanted him to disappoint her? Was she that shallow simply because
he
had been?

He yawned, and in an absent gesture, scratched his chest. Then he looked at his watch.

"Long day?"

They stood so close she could see his eyes weren't just that light see-through blue, they had specks of a darker blue dancing in them. Combined with the shadow on his jaw and his sleepy eyes, he seemed edgy, almost unbearably, effortlessly … sexy. Damn him.

And he still smelled like woodsy soap and one hundred percent perfect pure man. How annoying was that when she knew the only thing that she smelled like was disinfectant soap.

Pass the chocolate, please.

"Long
couple
of
nights," he admitted, and something about the weariness in his voice caught her because she suspected this was an actual moment of vulnerability, something he didn't often show to a mere mortal like herself.

Then Shelby poked her head around the corner. "There you are. Amy Sinclair, in room three with another migraine. We've got aromatherapy and acupressure going but she asked for you, Faith."

When she was gone, she felt Luke's tension and braced herself.

"Aromatherapy." He said this like it was a bad word. "As in … candles?"

"Essential oils."

"For a migraine?"