Sizzling Nights with Dr. Off-Limits (8 page)

“I'm going to take a shower.” She tried to sound calm. She didn't want him to know how shaken she was by their having had sex. By the fact that, since Lucas didn't know she was on oral contraceptives, he had just risked getting her pregnant, something he'd meticulously made sure to never risk while they'd been married.

She met his gaze and didn't so much as blink as she stared him down. She couldn't or the tears she was fighting might spill free. “Be gone from my apartment when I get out of the shower.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

C
ASSIE
B
ELLOWS
'
S
NIGHT
NURSE
reported that the child had cried in pain most of the night. They'd given her medication, but even in her sleep tears had fallen.

Emily's heart twisted as she took report on the little girl. She hated the thought of the child in so much pain that she'd cried even during sleep.

“I called Dr. Cain and he'll be by this morning to check on her. He plans to get her into surgery this week.”

Lucas was coming by.

Of course he was coming by. He worked there. She worked there. They'd see each other, behave professionally as if they hadn't had sweaty kitchen sex the night before, and they'd be polite.

Only, when Lucas came in, he wasn't polite. He was irritated. With her.

He should be grateful that she wasn't a wide-eyed innocent who wanted marriage, children and happily-ever-after as she'd been when they first met.

Children. Emily's breath caught and for a moment a wave of dizziness almost overtook her. Why hadn't Lucas mentioned birth control the night before? Why hadn't she thought to ask him? Why hadn't he worn a condom? He was a wealthy man, one whose parents had accused her of trying to trap him.

If only they knew the truth. If only Lucas knew.

“When was Cassie's last dose of painkiller?” he practically growled.

Emily leaned in and pointed to the computer screen.

“Right there.” She tapped the screen, pulling up where the medication was recorded. He was still fairly new. Maybe he truly hadn't known. Then again, Lucas was a quick study. She would guess he knew more ins and outs of their computer system than she did after being there for years.

He studied the screen, then frowned. “I want to increase her dose.” He named the quantity.

She made a mental note. “With her next dose due when?”

“Now. Give the medication,” he ordered. “I don't want Cassie in pain. I'm taking her to surgery early in the morning. Even if she stays sedated most of the day, that's preferable to her crying in constant pain. I'd do surgery today if I could have gotten an operating suite and team approved.” His look said he wasn't very happy that he'd been unable to. Perhaps that was why he'd been irritable when he'd joined her.

“Cassie's status changed a great deal overnight.”

Looking stressed, he nodded. “As much as I hate to expose her to more imaging, I've requested an MRI brain scan that I want done stat. Whether they want to approve it or not, the operating room staff may have to find me a suite and staff today.”

Part of her couldn't believe she was having a normal work conversation with the man she'd had crazy hot sex with the night before. Then again, they'd had normal conversations after having phenomenal sex in the past. So why it seemed odd to her now she wasn't sure, just that it did.

“About last night,” he began, and she cringed. So much for her previous thoughts.

She shook her head. “You don't need to worry. I'm on birth control, so let's not have this conversation. Especially not at work.”

The fatigue etched on his face earlier returned. “That's not what I wanted to talk about, although it probably should have been. Still, you're right. This isn't the time or place.”

“Agreed.” As far as she was concerned, there never would be a time or place for that conversation.

She'd rather chalk that one up to rebound sex or curiosity sex or just “spur of the moment because Lucas was hot” sex.

Right or wrong, this time she'd keep her head high rather than drowning in a thousand pitiful tears.

Sure, she'd had a moment of questioning herself when she'd walked into her kitchen, prepared to straighten up the mess from their meal only to find he'd already done so. She'd done the majority while she'd been cooking their meal, but he'd loaded their dishes into the dishwasher, wiped down the countertops and table, and her kitchen had looked as if he'd never been there.

“I'd ask you to dinner so we could talk about last night,” he interrupted her thoughts, “but I may be tied up in the operating room.”

“You really think something emergent has happened?” She wasn't going to bother to acknowledge how his comment affected her heart rate or her pretense of calm. Nor would she tell him that she thought their seeing each other again outside of work was a bad idea.

“With the changes in her vitals and pain level? It'll surprise me if her test doesn't come back showing something different.”

“What do you suspect?” After all, the brain tumor had been there for months and months with only gradual changes in her neurological status. Cassie's condition shouldn't have changed so drastically from her tumor.

“If I didn't know better, I'd suspect a bleed. But the tumor shouldn't have caused that. She's fallen several times prior to her admission, but she's had imaging that didn't show any evidence of a bleed or fluid buildup.” His words seemed to be brainstorming as much as telling her his thoughts.

As much as she didn't want to share any kind of connection to him, she liked the insight to how his mind worked, liked that she could tell he was open to any ideas she might have.

“A bleed seems the most logical explanation for a sudden change,” she agreed.

“I need to get the kid into surgery, get that tumor out and find out what the unknown is.”

She recalled his talking about unknowns in the past. There were the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns and the latter were the ones that in his profession were the killers. Hearing him say the word swamped her with a wave of nostalgia that she quickly shoved aside.

No more nostalgia allowed. None. Only...

She stared at him a few minutes, at the concern on his face. He sincerely cared about Cassie and her outcome.

Not that he was an uncaring person, but when he'd been in medical school, he'd seemed removed from his patients, more as if they were just case studies and diagnoses, not real people. It had struck her when she'd walked in on him doing the puzzle with Cassie. Never in the past could she have imagined him working on a puzzle with a child. Now he fretted over what was going on beneath the surface with the girl's health. He was worried about what her unknown was.

He cared. He truly cared about his patient.

The same as he cared about Jenny and had looked so protective of the child. Emily had liked that look. Which she didn't like. Because the less she liked about Lucas, the better.

They'd had their shot, hadn't worked, and the things that had torn them apart were all still there. They weren't meant to be and to let herself get caught up in the spell just being near him again wove would only lead to heartache for her.

She didn't want to think Lucas had a soft side. A vulnerable, caring side.

It was much easier to think of him as the one who'd given up on their marriage and no longer wanted her. The one who hadn't had a heart.

If she saw him as a person with a heart, didn't that mean she had to wonder what it had been about her that had caused him to push her away?

* * *

Lucas had known. Of course, in this one instance, he wished he'd been wrong.

Then again, at least seeing the pocket of fluid on Cassie's brain explained why his functioning patient from the day before had gotten into serious trouble overnight. Most likely she had a slow hemorrhage from one of her falls related to her poor balance. The poor kid couldn't seem to get a break.

He scrubbed his hands, gloved up and proceeded to the operating table where Cassie Bellows was anesthetized.

Sometimes, it still awed him that he was a brain surgeon. Him. A spoiled rich kid who'd never had any real responsibilities until he got to medical school.

Once there, he'd done just fine except for the short period of time he'd been with Emily. During that time, he'd had a neurosurgeon mentor pull him aside and tell him he'd best get his act together or he was going to make a mistake that could be detrimental to his patients' lives and Lucas's career.

One thing he'd always known was that he didn't want to follow in his financial guru father's wealthy footsteps. He'd wanted to follow his own path and life calling, to make a positive difference in the world. When in high school a classmate had suffered TBI from a football injury, Lucas had become fascinated with the boy's care and known that was what he wanted to do with his life. Perhaps living off his parents' money while achieving that hadn't been making his own way in many people's eyes, but, until Emily, Lucas had never questioned his right to do so. It was what he'd grown up expected to do.

Emily had made him feel guilty for living an easy life. Wasn't that what his parents wanted for him? What they'd worked to give him? Should he have refused their help, left his trust funds untouched and struggled? What purpose would that have served? He was an only child, his parents loved him, and they'd not understood Emily's aversion to their help, especially since they'd been so suspicious of her motives. Still, other than with educational expenses, he'd abided by the rules Emily had set about taking money from his parents.

He still didn't agree with Emily, but time had given him the ability to at least have a better understanding. Perhaps she'd wanted him to have a better understanding of who she was, of where she'd come from, to where they had more insight into each other's world.

Either way, it had been his inability to juggle a depressed new wife along with his other obligations that had been the big problem, not his parents' money.

He'd tried to stop Emily's tears but had only seemed to make them worse. Being around her, knowing he'd caused her unhappiness, had left him feeling impotent. When he'd catch glimpses of her at the hospital, she seemed fine. Only around him did the waterworks start. So he'd stayed away more and more, focused on the things he had control over and hoped his wife would kick out of her depression.

Instead, she had started talking babies almost nonstop.

He'd full out panicked. What little time he'd had away from studies, he'd spent away from her and the longing he could see in her eyes for something he simply couldn't give her. Not at that point in their marriage, which was something she hadn't seemed to understand or accept. He knew people managed a lot more than what had been on his plate, but, for him, he'd already felt he was halfway doing too many things.

What if her depression had gotten worse? What if she hadn't been able to deal with a baby and he'd had to take on that load, too? He'd have made it work, but he'd worried about the effects on Emily. Which had affected him. Affected them. They'd grown further apart. He'd wanted to make Emily happy, had tried to. Instead, she'd gone into deeper despair and refused to seek help.

He'd failed on all counts.

Here he was scrubbing up for surgery and distracted from what he was doing by memories from the past. He needed to put Emily out of his head. Far, far out of his head until he finished with Cassie's surgery.

Which proved a little more difficult than he would have thought when he walked into the surgical suite. Despite the fact he could see only her green eyes beneath her surgical gear, he immediately recognized her. Emily was in the operating room.

What was she doing there and why?

* * *

Emily had started out in the operating room at Children's. It had been the only job opening when she'd applied. She'd been desperate to escape working with Lucas every day and had taken the first offer that had presented itself.

Which made her recognize the irony of her volunteering to go into the operating room with him this evening. Truly, she'd come full circle.

She'd had only an hour left on her shift. The hospital had been scrambling to put together a team for the operating room, and before she'd been able to give better thought to it, she'd volunteered to work overtime and assist.

Since Jenny had remained stable, and Cassie was her only other patient, getting the okay for Emily to go into the surgical suite had been an easy process and one the hospital had appreciated her doing.

Now that she was here, watching Lucas drill a hole into the child's skull, she wondered if she'd been too hasty.

As gruesome as some of the surgeries she'd assisted in were, that aspect didn't bother Emily. She knew what they were doing was to Cassie's benefit and without the procedure the child's odds of survival were poor.

If she did survive, the longer surgery was delayed, the higher the risk of permanent brain damage.

It was watching the precision and expertise with which Lucas worked that was getting to her. Her gaze kept wandering to him.

She performed her job duties with remembered ease, always there to hand him what he needed, to assist in any way, along with the others assisting with the procedure.

When Lucas located the tiny hemorrhage that was causing so many problems, when he got the bleed stopped, he sighed in relief. He looked up, sought her gaze, and although she couldn't see more than his eyes, she saw so much.

The relief, the fear that had been eased. He'd cared about Cassie, cared that he took good care of her. She wasn't a number or a case study. She was a child who'd been assigned to his care. He took that seriously.

Emily was glad.

So glad that she smiled at him. Not that he could see her beneath the mask, but maybe he knew because she'd swear he smiled back even though she couldn't see his mouth beneath the surgical mask, either.

What was happening? She did not want to feel any kind of bond with Lucas. Not physical, not emotional, not professional, not any.

Yet, at this moment, she felt as if time had never passed and she was looking into the eyes of the man who'd stolen her heart rather than the one who'd broken it.