Sizzling Nights with Dr. Off-Limits

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.