MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance) (85 page)

Chapter Two

Olivia waited for Dr. Kal’s scheduled 2:30 surgery before she wandered into the hallway in the administrative wing that housed his office. None of this made any sense. Six months ago, she had been told that she had been promoted. Then, all of a sudden, the job was given to some outsider who had never worked in that hospital or any other one in the area for that matter. To make matters worse, he happened to be the most authoritative, arrogant person she had ever met.

She tried the door to his office. Of course it was open. She stepped inside and shut it behind her, ignoring that warning flutter in the pit of her stomach, the one that told her there was something very wrong about how she was handling this whole thing. Nevertheless, already being in his office gave her no choice but to continue.

She swept the familiar place with her eyes, scanning the robust bookshelf, the stacks of papers, clearly organized on his desk, the telephone and the mounted pictures that looked like they had been pulled right out of a JCPenny catalogue. None of this held any value.

She went straight for his drawers. The top one held an in-drawer divider that kept his copy of
Grey’s Anatomy
, his collection of pens and his supply of paperclips and thumb-tacks separate. But she could see through the divisions and the clutter to something just underneath it. She lifted the organizer and slipped the piece of paper from under it, turning it over to its front.

What she saw made her jaw drop. It looked like some kind of high resolution, three-part Polaroid picture…if that were at all possible. She peered into it.

The first compartment held an image of what looked like Kal but wasn’t Kal. His skin looked different…almost green. He knelt on what looked like a desert or a canyon, she couldn’t tell which, tending to what looked like victims of a natural disaster. The middle compartment was an image of him, still a little green, standing with what she could only guess was some kind of Eastern European, Western Asian warlord, receiving a metal. And the last one was him in what looked like the control room of a submarine.

Olivia’s heart fluttered in her chest. This wasn’t a lot, but if she could use it as grounds to get the chief to launch a more rigorous background check, they might find something they missed before.

She was just about to return the organizer and jet out of there when she heard footsteps headed her way. She decided to leave it all, rushing to the threshold only to meet Dr. Kal halfway. She wracked her brain for any viable excuses but came up with none.

“Wha—” But then his eyes fell on the photo in her hand.

An unexpected wave of shame took hold of her. She didn’t even want to explain herself. Being faced with her calm adversary in his own office made her feel smaller than ever. “I could ask you the same question.”

He brushed past her into the office. “Not in my office you can’t.”

“You can’t say that when you’re the one hiding something.” Olivia followed him back inside.

He sat down at his desk, irrationally calm. “I’m not hiding anything.”

She shook her head. “I can’t stand it when people lie to me.”

“No,” he said, looking up at her. “You can’t stand it when
I
lie to you.”

“So you admit that you’re lying.” It was a small glimmer of hope. She stepped toward his desk, resting her hand on the chair.

“Will this admission turn you off me?”

Olivia gulped. “I could never be turned off you.” She cleared her throat. “Until this is fixed, of course.”

He leaned toward her, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What is this?”

Olivia threw the picture onto his desk. “You lied about who you are.” She expected him to deny this.

But he didn’t.

Triumph seized her, yet something held her back. “I’ll tell the chief.”

His eyes went wide, those black irises consuming her. “You wouldn’t.”

“How can you make that assumption?”

“Because.” He stood up and rounded the desk. He didn’t stop moving until a mere three inches of air separated their two bodies. “You don’t want an investigation. You don’t want me to leave.”

Olivia’s breath came fast and shallow. “Yes, I do.”

He grabbed the hand she held the picture with.

She licked her lips, some kind of pull coursing through her entire body, his eyes getting bigger and bigger. It wasn’t until his exhale that she even realized their lips were almost touching. “You like fighting me too much.”

“No.” She ripped herself out of his grip. “You don’t deserve to be here.”

He scanned her from head to toe, his default crooked smile falling, because he finally got it in his head that she meant business, even if she did like the fight. “I can’t explain everything right now. But I need to be here. You can’t tell him.”

Olivia scoffed. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

He approached her again with such intensity in his eyes that she doubted she’d be able to resist letting it go. “Your eyes sparkle when we fight.”

Her chest swelled. “If there’s a good explanation, then I’ll keep your secret.” She couldn’t deny that she wanted him to confide in her, but the dissidence was too much. One part of her screamed at her to get out of there and oust him goddamn it, and the other part yelled at her to seized this opportunity to explore something new.

“I just can’t tell you.”

It felt like a rejection.

Olivia nodded. “Well,” she said, stepping away, “then I guess I’m just going have to find out myself.”

“Olivia.” He grabbed her arm.

There it was again. The pull, clear as day, impossible to ignore. But this time, when she looked into his eyes, all she could see was a giant, albeit good looking, roadblock to the future she had always wanted. “I’m telling you for the last time, its Dr. Jones.”

With that, she left him standing alone in his office and went straight to the chief.

She would be lying if she said she never considered turning back around and trying for the umpteenth time to get inside his head, but the fact of the matter was that she was exhausted. Everything from the fighting and the jealousy and the clinging to what might just be a small glimmer of a possibility of a connection gave her stress lines. By the time she got to the chief’s office, she hated that she had even hesitated to come forward with the information in the first place.

She dropped the picture onto the chief’s desk.

He looked up at her, his bushy brows furrowed in confusion. “What is this?”

Olivia eyed the photos one more time. “I thought you should know that the person you hired out of nowhere is lying about his identity.”

The chief ran a hand through his graying hair as he examined the photo. “Who is this person?”

“Kal. Obviously.” Olivia tapped her foot as she waited for him to get it.

“I don’t see the resemblance.”

Olivia snatched the photo out of his hand and stared at it herself. “What do you mean? Look at these! It’s obviously Kal…I mean…what even is this? What kind of warlord…”

The chief watched her fluster with a grimace.

She nodded. “I know I sound like a hothead, but—”

He chuckled. “There’s no but about it. You
are
a hothead, which is why I like you in an EMT van.”

Her face fell. “You mean you weren’t—”

He knew exactly what she was talking about. “No. I seriously considered it for a while. You are a good decision maker. You think on your feet and deal with the consequences later. That’s good for getting people into the ER and the OR safely. But as far as making calculated decisions when it’s not just one life but many others…I doubt you’re ability to do that.”

Suddenly the picture didn’t feel so important. “But you know I’ve been working toward this…” She found it hard to talk around the lump in her throat.

He nodded. “I know, and maybe one day.” He nudged the picture back toward her. “But until then, just try harder at working with Kal. You either hate him or love him. I can’t tell which and I don’t particularly care.”

He returned his gaze to the files he had been looked it.

Olivia stood there, struggling to come up with something else to say, anything to keep the argument alive. Her pager went off. She glanced at it, and then with a sigh she left the chief to his own devices.

Chapter Three.

In just a couple of hours, the ER had become alight with chaos all over again. Olivia suited up and made her way outside, a nurse following alongside her with instructions. “Now, we’ve got three units out there from Southwest, but they need backup.”

Olivia climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door behind her.

The nurse clasped the window, jabbing her head inside the cab of the truck. “It’s a gang fight, Olivia.”

She glanced over, only to find Kal sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Seriously?” she whispered.

“For God’s sake, just be careful,” the nurse said as she let go of the window and scurried back into the ER.

She gulped as Kal rushed off. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He shrugged before resting his right elbow on the window. “You heard the nurse. They need more help.”

“But did you have to pick this vehicle?” Olivia wanted nothing more than to avoid him for the rest of eternity.

“If I remember the last sixty seconds correctly, you joined me.”

Olivia pressed her forehead against the window, watching the lights blur past. “It’s not even important.”

Kal had to raise his voice to speak over the sound of the siren. “I’m assuming it didn’t go well with the chief?”

“I don’t think that’s important right now.” The words practically fell out of her mouth.

“The chief didn’t believe you?”

“He didn’t care what I had to say.” Suddenly she wanted to pour out her heart to him.

“I don’t understand.” There was a trace of tenderness in his voice, a slither of something that made her want to rest her head on his shoulder.

“You just don’t have to worry about me trying to push you out, because even if your secret gets out, I’m not moving up. He doesn’t believe in me.” She loathed the burn in her eyes.

“I can’t say I’m sorry.”

She was bled from the inside out. “You’re not innocent.”

He let out a deep sigh. “Not this again.”

“You’re selfish.”

Kal let out a humorless laugh. “Excuse me?”

“You’d rather hide this from me than—” But she stopped herself, because she didn’t know what she was saying.

“Than what?” He glanced over at her, a glare in his eye. “Did it ever occur to you that’s it’s not my secret to tell? What makes you think I owe you this?”

Olivia frowned. It was a valid question, yet one she couldn’t answer. It felt obvious. “I don’t know. We’ve just known each other…and I…”

And I feel something strong every time we touch.

And when you look at me, I just…

“I don’t know.”

Kal chuckled. “And you call me selfish…”

“Excuse me?”

“You think you’ve known me all this time. You think we have some connection…and yet you just tried to sell me out.” He pulled up to the scene, the sound of sirens pouring into the vehicle. He yelled over the gunshots and the screaming and the bull horns. “Whatever you think we have between us, whatever you’re trying to tell me you feel, I feel that too. But you would throw all of that away for a job.”

Olivia barged out of the EMT, slamming the door behind her. She wanted to be lost in the chaos, and with six other trucks, an armada of police and three news stations, it wasn’t difficult. She scanned the scene, noting the fact that Kal threw himself at the first emergency he could find.

Olivia forged through the mess, her eyes landing on two men talking excitedly to each other. She kept her distance but peered a little closer, finding that one of them was barely a teenager. The older one shoved him and then continued to hit him after he had fallen. He ran off, leaving him there.

Olivia had found her emergency.

She darted toward him, throwing his arm over her shoulder and leading him back to the closest truck she could find. His screams of pain filled her head as she worked to examine his wounds: a bruise on his right lung, possible broken rib, and busted lip. Nothing extraordinary, but he was young and she wanted to make a difference.

Within the next minute, she had loaded him into the truck and was ready to set off. As the driver pulled off, she towered over him, her fingers pressed into his wrist so she could check his vitals.

One.

Two.

Three.

He grabbed her wrist, his grip strong enough to leave bruises.

Her heart skipped a beat.

“Wh—?”

His other hand slipped a switchblade out of his back pocket.

She had only enough time to register the weapon before he used it on her.

The first blow took the wind out of her. She staggered the available two steps before slamming against the side of the EMT van. There were three more blows, all in her abdomen. She watched her blood drip down his hand, a small puddle building, before the first waves of pain took her over.

She curled over, a screech slipping out of her mouth.

“Olivia?” the driver called.

The boy reached over to the driver’s seat, pressing the bloodied knife into his neck. “Just. Keep. Driving.”

As they got closer to the hospital, the wail of the sirens became more consolidated, filling every single hole of empty space, making Olivia’s mind vibrate with madness. As soon as the ambulance came to a stop, the boy shoved the back doors open.

A nurse and a doctor stood waiting at the door, but their expectant eyes turned into horrified ones when he jumped out, slipping the gun he had concealed out of his pants.

Olivia attempted to stand, but the crunch in her abdomen sent a rush of pain down her entire body. She collapsed back onto the floor of the truck. “Help me,” she croaked to no one in particular.

“Oh my God. Call 911,” a nurse ordered.

“Don’t move!” The boy trained the gun right on her before reaching back into the truck.

He grabbed a handful of Olivia’s curly auburn hair and dragged her out into the night.

She hit the ground, a slapping sound echoing all throughout the hospital lobby. Her jaw swung open as another screech of pain fell out of it.

“What is going on?”

Olivia would know his voice anywhere. She looked up to find Dr. Kal standing in front of the nurses, his hands slightly extended out in front of them in a protective fashion. “No one move. I have called the police.” The stern look on his face made Olivia feel more protected than anything else could.