Mount Mercy

If they think you’re shallow, no one tries to dig deep.

I saw Beckett cock her head to one side, confused. She knew something had changed. I’d just have to convince her that the cocky me was the real me. The only me. No more slips.

But now that I’d buried those deeper feelings, the raw attraction took over. I looked at her and I couldn’t stop, my breathing coming quicker and my heart starting to race.

I leaned infinitesimally towards her, close enough that I could smell the clean, warm scent of her. My breath caught as I looked down at her soft lower lip, already dreaming about how it would feel as I crushed my lips against hers. My eyes flicked to the little semicircle of pale skin at the neckline of her scrubs. That mystery, almost nothing showing...she was sexier, to me, than some stripper in a G-string. God, I wanted to know what her breasts looked like. Wanted to ram that top up to her neck and fill my hands with them. Wanted to jerk down the pants and cup her pussy in my hand, let her rock against me as my fingers explored her. Then I’d spin her around and bend her over the bed….

The blood was thundering in my ears. One hand was still on her waist and the press of her against my palm was the best thing I’d ever felt.

I was getting addicted to this woman.

Our eyes were locked on each other. Our breathing had fallen into time. She gave the tiniest shake of her head: not a no, a disbelieving why?

I frowned. Are you serious? Didn’t she know how gorgeous she was? Then I remembered a doctor’s reaction, when I’d asked about her. Beckett? he’d asked me, mystified. The surgeon, Beckett? As if no one would ever be interested in her. I wanted to punch the guy. It wasn’t right, that everyone overlooked her.

I stared right back at her and let her see how certain I was.

And those blue eyes slowly filled with heat. That was what really drove me crazy about her, I realized. Not the pale skin or the copper hair, but the hint that deep down, underneath all that shyness, there was a woman with a lust to match mine, who’d grab my ass to urge me deeper, who’d claw my back and scream my name until her throat was raw. All I had to do was free her.

I could still hear that warning voice in the back of my mind. She was different. We had something together, something that would make it hard to say goodbye in the morning.

But I drowned the voice out. I couldn’t fight this: it was too strong. I had to have her.

I put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m taking everyone out for drinks tonight,” I told her. “New guy buys the beers, and all that.”

She immediately shook her head. I could see her trying to retreat back into her safe little burrow. “I don’t really….”

“Beckett.” She froze, when I said it like that. Interesting. “I already told you, you need to get out more. You saved a little girl’s life and you survived nearly getting stabbed. That deserves a drink.”

She looked away. Looked back. Looked away again. But every time her eyes came back to me, I was waiting for her. Challenging her to deny what was building between us.

“One drink,” she said at last in a small voice. I hadn’t picked up on her Colorado accent before because it was so soft and somehow shy. You know how big and confident a Texas accent is, herding all the syllables into line? This was the opposite of that. It suited her perfectly.

“One drink,” I agreed. And stepped back. She hopped off the table and hurried off and I watched her until she was out of sight. I could feel that cocky attitude hardening, strengthening into a protective shell around me. I told myself that I’d get her into bed and that would be the end of it.

9

Amy

FOR A FULL half hour after work, the doctors’ locker room was packed out. Every woman in the hospital was preparing to head to the town’s one bar to drink with Corrigan.

Almost every woman. I waited in the hallway, pretending to study the notice board, until they all flooded out in a clatter of heels and confidence. Only then did I creep in. The place was a battlezone: hair dryers dangling from tangled cables, lipsticks rolling across the tiles, the air acrid with hairspray and clashing perfumes. They weren’t taking any prisoners. And I was going to walk into that same bar? Me?

I changed into the street clothes I’d arrived in that morning: my favorite blue jeans, ragged on one ankle, a thick green roll-neck sweater I wore because it kept the wind out and a black leather biker jacket I’d picked up on a whim from a yard sale. My hair was still pinned up and I was wearing barely any makeup. Unlike most of the women, I didn’t keep a pair of heels at work for nights out. On the rare occasions Krista managed to drag me out to be sociable, I went like this and then hid in the corner.