I blinked at him. How did he know—
“I asked around,” he said.
I tried to imagine someone asking people about me, pursuing me like that, and couldn’t. This must be a trick. Some way to tease the shy girl, like the jocks had in high school. And even if he was serious, no way was I going to become one of his one-night stands and have the whole hospital talking about me. I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Fine.” He slapped the table hard enough to make the whole room jump. “Beckett it is.”
Beckett. The way he formed the B, like his lips were blowing a kiss, the way that hard k sounded in his accent, like fuck... it sounded way more intimate than Amy.
He gazed at me and, however much I looked away and looked back, he was still looking at me. Watching me as if I was the only one in the room who mattered. A twisting, crackling energy began, arcing down inside me. It lashed at my groin until I wanted to circle my ass against the bench. I could actually feel myself heating and moistening. But it didn’t stop there, low down and base and sexual. It changed. It rose up, filling me, making my heart race. “Stop that,” I told him.
“Stop what?”
My heart was thumping in my chest, now. Something was happening. Heady and scary, like standing with your toes over the edge of a cliff. Looking into those Irish eyes was like drinking from a firehose. But every time I looked away, I immediately looked right back. “That. This.”
“I’m not doing anything, Beckett.”
And underneath the heat, underneath that diamond hard, cocky exterior, I glimpsed something. He was telling the truth. This wasn’t just him.
This was us.
But then I flushed and dropped my eyes. I could suddenly feel everyone looking at us, laughing at how ridiculous the idea was. The quarterback and the geek girl. “You’re not really interested in me,” I mumbled.
His brow crinkled in a frown. He leaned in towards me. “Don’t tell me who I’m interested in, Beckett.”
The doors at the back of the cafeteria slammed open. “Corrigan!”
We both looked round. An ER nurse stood in the doorway.
“Paramedics are bringing in an eight year-old girl,” she said. “Bus crash. It’s bad.”
Corrigan’s face changed in a heartbeat. He was up out of his seat and running before the nurse had finished speaking. The doors banged closed behind them.
I hesitated. I hate the ER. And I’m not even meant to be down there unless I’m called. But there’d been something in the nurse’s voice. If the kid was really that bad….
I jumped up and sprinted after them.
5
Dominic
WE REACHED THE ER just as the paramedics crashed through the door. “What have we got?” I yelled.
“Eight year-old girl, crush injuries. Open tib/fib reduced at scene. No sign of bleeding, but blood pressure’s dropping. She’s been in and out of consciousness.” The paramedic started reeling off her vitals. All of them were lousy and getting worse.
“Let’s move her!” Everyone grabbed hold of the backboard she was lying on. I counted three, we heaved her onto a gurney and I got my first proper look at her.
Tousled blonde curls. A button nose. Big, blue, terrified eyes. She could have been Rachel, grown up. She’d be exactly the right age. Fuck. I drew in a shuddering breath to help hold it together and listened to her chest, looking off to the side to help me focus—
And saw Beckett. She was standing back from the huddle, eyes wide at the noise and the chaos. She really isn’t used to this, is she? But weirdly, I was glad she was there.
“Decreased breath sounds bilaterally,” I said, my voice tight. “Can you tell me your name, sweetheart?”
“Rebecca.” She sobbed it out and the pain in her voice nearly broke my heart.
“Rebecca, I’m Doctor Corrigan, we’re going to make you all better, okay?”
“Pressure’s falling, 95 over 40,” a nurse said. She kept her voice carefully level, but I could see the fear in her eyes. This kid was heading south, fast.
“Two units O neg on the rapid infuser, stat! IV wide open,” I snapped. “She’s bleeding from somewhere: let’s roll her.” We carefully rolled her, but there was no blood anywhere. “Fuck. The bleeding must be internal.”
“Pressure 88 over 38,” said the nurse. This time, she couldn’t keep her voice level.
I cut open Rebecca’s clothes and started checking her abdomen. She was a mess of bruises. And all the time, her blood pressure was dropping, dropping…. We had to figure out where she was bleeding from, fast. “What happened?” I yelled over my shoulder as I worked.
“Truck plowed into a school bus,” said the paramedic.
I glanced towards the door, but there were no other gurneys being wheeled in, no sirens outside. “Where are the rest of the kids? The teachers?”