The Nurse's One Night to Forever

So much for his belief that she was coming around to his way of thinking...

* * *

Riley didn’t see Justin for the next couple of days as he wasn’t on the OR schedule but working in clinic.

That didn’t keep her from thinking about him. Nor did it keep her from looking at the photos he’d taken of them when she’d been riding piggyback.

Even though he’d asked her to, she’d not sent them to him. Something about sharing the pictures made her feel vulnerable—as if she would be giving him a part of herself, a part she needed to protect.

Stretched out on a hammock beneath two palm trees, she fiddled with her phone, flipping through the shots he’d taken, unable to keep herself from smiling. When she came to the one of their “silly” faces, she even snickered.

“What’s so funny?” Cassie asked, plopping down on the hammock next to Riley and almost flipping them out as she sat on the edge, her feet barely touching the ground.

“Nothing.” Face heating, Riley clicked her phone off as if she’d been caught looking at something naughty.

“Nothing?” Cassie asked, then shook her head. “You’re not fooling me, you know.”

Holding her phone close to her chest, Riley asked, “About what?”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you just admit that you like him?”

“Who?”

From where she perched on the hammock, Cassie gave her the evil eye.

Riley sighed. “So I like him.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Good question.

“I’m not planning to do anything,” she admitted, toying with her phone.

“Well, that’s a crying out loud shame—because he likes you, too.”

“How do you know?” Eek. That had been a lot of interest in her voice. Too much.

“You mean other than I saw how you two were eyeballing each other at Cheyenne and Paul’s party?”

Riley sucked in a deep breath. “He’s easy to look at. I’m not blind.”

“If you don’t see how he looks at you then you must be.”

“How does he look at me?” She cringed because she’d asked, but she hadn’t been able to stop the immediate question. Nor could she stop the way she waited with bated breath for her friend’s answer.

“As if he wants to eat you up.”

“That was just at Cheyenne and Paul’s party...because we’d drunk a little too much.”

“It’s every time he’s in the same room with you. It’s been that way from the beginning.”

Riley clicked her phone back on, pulled up the photos and handed the phone to Cassie.

Her friend’s dark eyes widened. “When were these taken?”

“The other night when I took Daisy for a run. I bumped into him.”

Cassie flipped through the photos. “You were having fun?”