Against the Ropes
Page 11

“Mac, wake up.” The urgency in Charlie’s voice snaps me out of my daydream.
“What’s going on here?” Big Doris swoops into my cubicle and stares down at me through clear, plastic lenses that do not refract her eyes in any noticeable way. She whips out her book of green slips and clicks her pen. “I’ve had a complaint about a patient backlog.”
“We’re having problems with the computers.” Charlie pokes his head around the partition and lies with the aplomb of a used car dealer sensing a sale. “They keep freezing up. We need someone from IT down here right away.”
Big Doris narrows her eyes but even she doesn’t dare challenge Charlie. He has been here too long. He knows too many people. And he has a very sharp tongue.
“Fine. I’ll deal with it.” Big Doris deflates and storms away.
“You just ruined her morning,” I call out. “She wanted to give me another green slip.”
“Don’t worry about Big Doris. I’ve got her figured out. She just needs a man. And since you won’t have me, I’ll have to settle for tenth best.”
Hah. Charlie and Big Doris. Never going to happen.
While I wait for the computer to dredge up a new patient form, I resolve to find Charlie a girlfriend. Someone normal. Someone who likes nice, soft, slightly balding guys who are eager to please. Someone whose heart doesn’t pound at the sight of hard-bodied men covered in tattoos.
A collective sigh from the waiting room pulls me out of the start of yet another daydream about Torment. I look up, just as Dr. Donald Drake, preeminent heart surgeon turned administrator, glides toward me. He stops in front of my desk and smiles.
Ah. My insides quiver. Although he has no visible tattoos or piercings and exudes an aura of calm competence as opposed to one of seething danger, I am not immune to his chiseled charms.
“How are things going today, Mac?”
My smile stretches my cheeks. “Very well, thank you, Doctor Drake.”
Dr. Drake places his hands on my desk and leans forward. I inhale his fresh, clean scent of laundry soap and after dinner mints. I sneeze.
“Doris mentioned you were having difficulties with your computer. Perhaps I could take a look at it for you.”
“You?” My eyes widen. He has departments filled with minions to do his grunt work, not to mention an entire IT department.
Charlie makes lewd, loud kissing noises behind the partition, and I cover my mouth, pretending to cough.
Dr. Drake glances over at the partition and frowns. “Problem, Mr. Brown?”
“No, sir,” Charlie calls over. “Just sucking on a lemon. I’m trying to increase my consumption of citrus fruits.”
My stomach clenches with repressed laughter.
Dr. Drake looks down at me and smiles again. Such a happy doctor. The light glints off his unnaturally white teeth. “I know a thing or two about computers, Mac. I didn’t spend all my time with my head in my medical books.”
“Heh, heh, heh.” I join him laughing at his own joke. What a pathetic laugh. Thank God I can’t see Charlie’s face.
A few moments later, Dr. Drake’s lean, toned body is settled in my desk chair. He pounds away at my keyboard, and I glance over the partition at Charlie. Big mistake. He mouths “heh, heh, heh,” and then wheezes in a breath, and doubles over in a fit of laughter. I resolve to find Charlie a psychopathic girlfriend with a sharp knife.
“I think this may require an IT specialist after all.” Dr. Drake’s perfectly smooth brow wrinkles. “Why don’t I take you for lunch? I’ll ask IT to send someone up while you’re away from your desk.”
My mouth drops open. Dr. Drake is asking me out for lunch? With his medical pedigree and women lining up to get in his pants, he doesn’t lack for potential lunch partners. Why me? And why couldn’t he be a beguiling fighter with the manners of a Southern gentleman?
A fighter I will never see again. The rational thought sobers me up and I muster a lukewarm smile. Only last week I would have been overjoyed at the chance to lunch with the hospital’s number one most eligible bachelor. Or maybe not. We are fiscally incompatible. He is caviar and I am instant noodles.
“I’m afraid she’s taken.”
Brain freeze. From somewhere deep in my core, recognition of the deep, sensual rumble of that voice sizzles through me, awakening every nerve ending in my body. Awareness comes back slowly. A shadowy image hovers in front of my desk. Gradually, my vision comes into focus.
Torment.
Torment is here.
My heart takes off down the speedway.
His loose, wavy brown hair is neatly tucked back into his black bandana. He is wearing his black leather biker jacket over a Harley-Davidson T-shirt stretched tight across his broad, muscular chest. His black jeans are a feast of tight seams in all the right places. He exudes pure, raw sensuality. And he is looking at me.
“Ready to go?” He drops his pack onto the chair in front of my desk and holds out his hand.
Inhaling a sharp breath, I blurt out an eloquent, “What?”
His lips curve into a smile. “Lunch, Makayla. You do eat, don’t you?”
“You want to have lunch with me? How did you know where I work?”
His gaze sears through me, hot and electric. “You told me last week. I have a good memory for details. And yes, I am here to take you to lunch.”
“Mac, do you know this…person?” Dr. Drake rises slowly from my chair and positions himself between me and Torment. From the unnatural wrinkles in his perfectly smooth forehead, I assume he is not pleased to have our discussion interrupted.