Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 113(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 113(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
“Oh she knows how,” Luke muttered.
Cole laughed hard at that. “I take it you would know.”
“Not goin’ there,” Luke repeated.
“Yeah, protective and silent. She got to you. So what are you going to do about it?”
Luke tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “If I were smart? Nothing.”
“Nothing because . . . ?”
“I live in Texas, man. She’s from here. I ought to leave it as a one-night stand.” The thought made him want to puke. That right there was a sign.
“But you won’t.”
Luke shook his head. “No, I won’t.”
“Got a plan?”
Only what had been kicking around in his head since Cole told him Alexa was known as an all work, no play kind of woman. Luke shrugged and replied, “I’m gonna teach her how to have fun.”
* * *
Alexa bounced through her rounds of patients in the morning, her meeting with hospital adminstrators and she was still bouncing when her father caught up with her right before lunch. She knew the reason for her bounce. Her body still tingled in all the best places. Long neglected places. Places that were now happy and thanking a certain football player for making them come alive.
“Alexa, what’s this I hear about you treating children at the youth center downtown?” Aaron Collins was a good-looking man who had dark brown hair with only a hint of silver and distinguished features. Unfortunately, his perpetual scowl and all-business attitude turned many people off and prevented them from seeing some of his finer qualities.
Considering he’d raised her alone and though he’d directed her life, she’d never doubted that he loved her. She’d certainly seen those qualities when she was a child. She just hadn’t been the recipient of them recently. Her father had lost his ability to enjoy life, something else he was trying hard to pass onto his daughter.
“Well?” he asked when she didn’t answer right away.
She placed the stack of folders down on the top of the counter at the nurses’ station.
She should have known he’d get word of her activities last weekend. “Strep was going around. Some kids weren’t feeling well, so I offered to take a look.”
“Did you use hospital supplies to do it?” he asked.
She straightened her shoulders. “No, I did not. I paid for those supplies with my own money, and how dare you suggest otherwise.”
“Did it not occur to you that you could treat paying patients with your time?”
A steady pain began to throb in her temple. “Then sick children would go untreated.”
“Their parents could take them to their pediatrician and pay there.”
Those same parents sent their kids to the youth center so they could work, even on the weekends, not that her father would understand. “I don’t have to account to you for my time off.” She turned to the nurse behind her who was blatantly eavesdropping. “Can you please make sure you mark down all the medication changes I made so my patients get their correct doses?” She patted the charts she’d finished with.
“Yes, Dr. Collins.” The other woman picked up the folders and walked away.
Alexa turned back to her father. “Now, as I was saying—”
“If you have enough time to treat gratis, perhaps I could give you more hours in the E.R.”
She clenched her jaw and breathed in deep, deciding to ignore his bluster and call him on his complete lack of emotion when it came to the important things in Alexa’s life. “Did you happen to hear who I spent the day before yesterday treating?”
Her father blinked. “I haven’t checked the roster of patients.”
“What about town news? Did you hear that Cara was attacked?”
“Cara?”
“Hartley. My best friend,” she reminded him.
Since Alexa was from the wealthier side of town and Serendipity kids tended to run in cliques, Alexa hadn’t grown up hanging in the same circles as Cara. But when she’d returned to Serendipity after med school, she and Cara had gotten reacquainted and become close. Not that her father paid attention to his daughter’s friends.
“An abusive asshole almost strangled her behind Joe’s. I spent all night treating and worrying about her, and all you can talk to me about is that I treated sick children as if there’s something wrong with that?” Alexa asked, her voice rising.
“Alexa, darlin’, glad I found you,” a familiar voice said.
Luke.
She glanced away from her father only to realize Luke must have come over while they were arguing, and she hadn’t noticed. She’d been too busy making a spectacle, something that Luke, from the pissed off look in his eyes, had obviously noticed.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.
“Who are you?” Her father eyed Luke warily.
Alexa swallowed over the answer that came to mind. Dad, meet the hot guy I picked up at Joe’s, took home for wild sex, then left sleeping in my bed this morning. She had no doubt what Aaron Collins would think about the way his daughter had chosen to spend her day off yesterday. Or the night that followed.