When he finally surfaced from the rock-’em, sock-’em, his face was mashed up against the marble and he was breathing like he’d sprinted from one side of Caldwell to the other.
Or maybe all the way to Canada.
Turning into the spray, he rinsed off again and stepped out, nabbing a towel and . . .
Manny looked down at his hips. “Are. You. Kidding.”
His cock was just as erect as it had been the first time: Undaunted. Proud and strong as only a dumb handle could be.
Whatever. He was done servicing it.
Worse came to worst, he could just disappear the damn thing in his pants. Obviously, the “relief” method wasn’t working, and he was out of energy. Hell, maybe he was coming down with the flu or some shit? God knew, working in a hospital you could pick up a lot of things.
Including amnesia, evidently.
Manny wrapped a towel around himself and walked out into his office—only to stop dead. There was a strange scent lingering in the air . . . something like dark spices?
Wasn’t his cologne, that was for certain.
Striding across the Oriental in his bare feet, he opened his door and leaned out. The administrative offices were dark and empty, and the smell wasn’t anywhere around.
With a frown, he looked back at his couch. But he knew better than to allow himself to think of what had just happened on it.
Ten minutes later, he was dressed in fresh scrubs and had had a shave. Mr. Happy, who was still making like the Washington Monument, was tucked up in his waistband and tied in place like the animal it was. As he picked up his briefcase and the suit he’d worn to the track, he was beyond ready to put the dream, the headache, the whole godforsaken evening behind him.
Walking out through the surgical department’s offices, he took the elevator down to the third floor, where the ORs were. Members of his staff were doing their thing, operating on emergency cases, dealing with patient setup or transport, cleaning, prepping. He nodded to folks, but didn’t say much—so as far as they knew, it was business as usual. Which was a relief.
And he almost made it to the parking lot without losing it.
His exit strategy came to a screeching halt, however, when he got to the recovery suites. He meant to go steaming past them, but his feet just stopped and his mind churned—and abruptly, he felt compelled to go into one of the rooms. As he followed the impulse, his headache was Johnny-on-the-spot with a return to life, but he let it roll as he pushed into the isolated bay that was all the way over by the fire exit.
The bed against the wall was neat as a pin, the sheets tucked in so tight they were all but ironed flat across the mattress. There were no staff notations on the dry-erase board; no beeping of machines; and the computer wasn’t logged into.
But the scent of Lysol lingered in the air. And so did some kind of perfume . . . ?
Someone had been in here. Someone he’d operated on. Tonight.
And she had—
Agony overwhelmed him, and Manny pulled another sag-and-grab, latching onto the doorjamb and leaning in to keep standing. As his migraine, or whatever it was, got worse, he had to bend over—
Which was how he saw it.
Frowning against the pain, he stumbled over to the bedside table and got down on his haunches. Reaching underneath, he patted around until he found the folded, stiff card.
He knew what it was before he looked at the thing. And for some reason, as he held it against his palm, his heart broke in half.
Flattening the crease, he stared at the engraving of his name and title and the hospital’s address, phone, and fax. In his handwriting, in the white space to the right of the St. Francis logo, he’d written his cell phone number.
Hair. Dark hair in a braid. His hands undoing—
“Mother . . . fucker.” He threw out a palm to the floor, but went down anyway, hitting the linoleum hard before rolling over onto his back. As he cradled his head and strained against the agony, he knew his eyelids were bolted open, but damned if he could see anything.
“Chief?”
At the sound of Goldberg’s voice, the sharpshooter at his temples faded a little, as if his brain had reached out for the auditory lifesaver and been dragged away from the sharks. At least temporarily.
“Hey,” he moaned.