BETH
I stared at my phone as though it were a rattle snake ready to strike at me at any moment. It didn’t though. It just kept sitting on the nurse’s station desk as harmless as ever. Well, not entirely harmless. Rafe’s phone number was locked and loaded in there.
When I got home from the bar, I had pulled it out to text him, but decided not to. He wasn’t any boss of mine, even if his kiss had a way of melting my body against his. And that orgasm—I never came so hard in my life, and never twice in one session. But I didn’t need a mess like him in my life. I had bigger priorities, and he was the VP of the Anarchy’s Reign. So, instead, I thanked Mrs. Owens profusely and sent her home, ignoring her knowing smile and satisfied tone when she commented on my somewhat disheveled appearance.
“I ran into Brittany on my way in.” Cassidy winked at me. Setting her coffee cup down, she swiped her tablet to open her charts.
I groaned internally. Brittany couldn’t keep her mouth shut about anything. I hadn’t given her much detail about my time with Rafe, knowing this about her, but she knew enough to have Cassidy grinning ear to ear at me.
“Don’t believe everything she says. My life isn’t that exciting, I’m sure she glammed up a few details.” I checked my watch. Another half an hour and my shift would be over. I needed my bed more than most nights. Between the bar the night before and Madison wanting cereal and morning snuggles at six in the morning, I’d managed to get a whopping four hours of sleep. A reminder as to why I stopped doing the bar scene.
“Uh-huh. You gonna tell me who the guy was? She wouldn’t tell me, just said it was some hot biker guy. Complete with tattoos and everything.” I could almost see the drool accumulating in her mouth at the mental image she conjured. If she had seen the real thing, she probably would have pounced on him. Rafe was more than hot, and it wasn’t just his looks that had my breath catching in my throat. The way he moved, like he owned every inch of the world, gave me the sense that he wasn’t a man to be pushed. And yet, I had pushed. Right up until the moment he fucked me in that back office.
Just the memory of his fingers on me, his words, and his mouth made my cheeks burn with a brand new blush. “It was nothing,” I murmured, and turned away, hoping she didn’t see my face.
Of course, no such luck. “Oh, it was something all right.” She whooped with laughter. “It’s good, Beth! It’s good to see you out there in the world. You know that asshole ex of yours may have taken off, but your life didn’t go with him.”
I’d heard that speech so many times before I had become numb to it. They just didn’t get it. Madison was the most important thing in my world. I couldn’t jeopardize her for a guy. Guys were trouble. And I had enough of that trying to make next month’s rent and pay Madison’s daycare bill.
“There’s been a shooting. Cass, Beth, let’s go.” Gerri, the shift manager, waved us over to the ambulance bay.
Leaving everything behind we ran over to the bay and started gloving up and getting ready for the doors to open up. When the doors swung wide, we stepped aside for the paramedics to jump out. “This one’s DOA, the next one is your patient.” Jeffrey Hobbs rolled the cart with the body out of the way quickly to allow the second set of hands to hand down the patient.
The medic began to run down vitals and information to the doctors, who quickly assessed the patient and had us wheel him straight into a trauma room. I held onto the rails at the foot of the bed and pushed down the hall. I heard the patient struggling with his mask, but didn’t look back at him. Gerri would keep it on him. His foot started to kick out at me, but I just kept going.
Once wheeled into the room I went about getting the trays ready and grabbing supplies for a gunshot wound. I heard the doctor yelling at the guy to lie back down and calm down. When I turned back around they had the patient on his back and with the injection of sedative the doctor had called for.
“Call the OR, we’ll be there in ten minutes. Start getting him prepped.” Dr. Wilkins pulled off his bloodied gloves. “Cassidy, you scrub in on this one with me.” No shocker there, Dr. Wilkins has been trying to get down her scrub bottoms for over a month.
“Hey, I got this. This one could take another hour, and you need to get home to that baby girl of yours.” Cassidy gave me a weak smile. I didn’t mind not heading into OR. That late at night some of the scrub nurses were still around, but they were a territorial bunch. They hated when us lowly ER nurses headed into their turf.
“Okay, yeah.” My feet nearly sighed in relief at knowing in under an hour my feet would be propped up on the coffee table at home. “Thanks.” I stepped back as the curtain was yanked open and another team stood out in the hallway ready to get going.
As they wheeled him past me I happened to glance down at the patient. My heart jumped up into my throat. Rafe. The gunshot victim was Rafe.
Picking up the pace, I walked behind the team, trying to get a better look, to be sure. I could recognize that stubborn jaw anywhere and the large tattoo covering the left side of his chest made identifying him easy.
“Beth?” Cassidy looked over at me with concern as we approached the OR doors. She stepped aside to let everyone pass through and stopped me from following. “What’s wrong? What is it?”
I swallowed hard. Losing sight of him as the doors swung shut I refocused on her concerned face. “That’s him.” I took a deep breath. “That’s the guy from last night. His name is Rafe.” I didn’t know what to do, but my body had more energy than a two-year-old on a sugar high.
“Shit. Really?” She peeked through the window. “I gotta get in there. Go home, take care of Maddie. I’ll call you as soon as we’re done.”
“Yeah.” I stepped away from the doors. “You’re right. I’m gonna head home.” I nodded, my head completely agreed with the plan. However, it was the rest of me that sat at the reception desk waiting for them wheel him back out.
There was no good reason for me to wait for him. He was a one-night thing. A fleeting thought. And he was dangerous. The man was brought in with a gunshot wound; if that didn’t warn me enough to stay far away from him, I wasn’t sure what else would have. After I called Mrs. Owens to be sure Maddie had gone to sleep all right, I sat drumming my fingers on the desk.
Finally, the doors swung open and out came the whole team and Rafe. Of course he was unconscious. I didn’t expect him to be sitting up and smiling, but I wanted to see the color of his face, the expression of the doctors as they walked out of the OR. He was a bit pale still, but otherwise looked good and the doctors were talking about some dinner they were going to next weekend. I sat back down and shook my head. What was I doing?
“Beth. You’re still here.” Cassidy grinned as she tore of her scrub hat and mask. “He’s fine. The bullet was deeper than they could reach in the trauma room. Bleeding stopped, no muscle or nerve damage, he should be fine in a few weeks. They are keeping him for at least tonight, maybe tomorrow. I guess the cops are going to be hanging out to talk with him.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I shot at her. “I gotta go, I’ll see you tomorrow. I have the afternoon shift. You in?”
“Yep, three to eleven. You know, I got a good look at your Casanova as they were putting him under…you could do a hell of a lot worse for a boyfriend.”
“Cassidy! He was shot. I don’t think he’s the right kind of guy Madison and I need in our lives right now.” I slung my purse over my shoulder and headed toward the exit. “See you tomorrow!” I waved and headed home to my warm bed.
Rafe was fine. No serious damage. Why the hell did I care so much?
***
When I started my shift the day after Rafe’s shooting, I expected to find the ER in the usual Sunday lull. Things didn’t usually pick up until later in my shift on Sundays. Maybe folks wanted to get their prayers all said before they headed to the ER for their coughs and sprains.
What I didn’t expect was to find Dr. Wilkins standing at the nurse’s station with an angry glare pointed in my direction as I walked up. “Hi, Dr. Wilkins.” I forced a smile as I put my coffee down. Madison woke me up at the crack of dawn to get her breakfast and play dress up with her dolls all morning; I needed the coffee. “Everything okay?” I looked around for Cassidy, surely he was looking for her.
“No. That patient from last night, the gunshot victim. If you can call him a victim.” He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s up in room 305 demanding to see you. He won’t let the nurses redress his wound until you are there.”
Rafe wanted me in his room? He must have seen me when they wheeled him in the night before. “Can’t you just give him a sedative?” I asked weakly. If I had to see him, I’d lose my nerve to forget all about him. He was dangerous, I reminded myself over and over again.
“That would be the easy way out. However, I have a feeling we’d be going through this each time someone entered his room. You know that man?” I could see the disapproval in his eyes as he swept them over my face. As if I hadn’t already been low on his scale of people by being a single mom and a nurse, now I was a single mom who was connected to a biker.
I let out a deep sigh. “Not really. I mean, I met him once, I don’t know him really at all.”
His lips scrunched up into a pucker and his left eyebrow raised as he gave a little humph. “Well, I need you to get up there. His bandages need changing and his discharge papers can be started after that. I assume he’ll want you there for that, too. See if you can tear yourself away to get back down here as soon as possible. Other patients need your attention as well.”
I was left standing at the nurses' station with my mouth dropped open and my temper starting to boil up in me. Who the hell did that asshole think he was to talk to me like that? I may not be a doctor, and just a lowly nurse, but I hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t my fault Rafe was demanding my presence.
Rafe. At least that was something I could control. Well, maybe.
The elevator stopped at every floor on the way up to his room, leaving me feeling a bit nauseated once it finally dropped me off. Ignoring the motion sickness, I marched down the hallway until I found his room. Ready to give him hell.
When I tore back the curtain that shielded him from the door of the room, my breath caught in my lungs, and every angry word I had stored up fled the scene. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Rafe’s entire torso was uncovered. Other than the white bandage covering his shoulder, I could make out every firm muscle in his arms and chest. Dark black tattoos covered his arms and half of his chest. His deep brown hair was tussled from lying on the bed, but otherwise he looked even hotter than he had at the bar.
“Finally!” He stood from the bed and faced me. His jeans were already on, hugging his narrow hips and showcasing his abs too well for my comfort. Already I felt my cheeks heating up with a blush I knew he would see.
“I don’t work on this floor; you can’t just demand whatever nurse you want.” I finally found my voice. I tried to look menacing, but from the slow way his lips curled, I figured I didn’t hit the mark.
“I didn’t demand whatever nurse. I asked for you.”
I rolled my eyes. “How did you even know I worked here?” Before he could answer I threw a hand in the air, stopping him. I didn’t want to know, the less I knew about him would be better for me. “Don’t answer that. Never mind. Let me get your actual nurse so she can change your dressings. I have to get back downstairs; Dr. Wilkins is pissed enough at me.”
“For what?” His eyes narrowed.
“What do you think?” I turned to walk to the door, but he was on me in a flash, a strong hand on my shoulder spinning me around.
“It’s me, because I’m a biker. A low life scum to him, is that it?” He didn’t try to hide the anger in his expression, and I was relieved it wasn’t aimed at me.
“He feels that way about everyone.” I patted his good shoulder. “Sit down before you tear your stitches. I’ll get your nurse.”
“You can change them yourself. Fuck that doctor.” He grabbed my elbow and half dragged me to his bed.
I stared at him for a long moment as he glared back up at me. I wasn’t going to win, even if I called his nurse, he’d just stop them from doing their job. Letting out an annoyed sigh, I gave in. “Fine.” I left him sitting on the bed while I went out to get the supplies I needed. Even though no one said anything to me, I could feel their disapproving stares.
When I returned to the room three other men were standing around the bed in a heated argument with Rafe. I pushed through two of them and laid out the new bandages and medications on the tray beside his bed.
“You didn’t see anything?” the tall one with ultra-white hair gelled up into points all over his head demanded.
Rafe’s jaw clenched at the man’s tone, but he kept his eyes on me as I started opening packages. “If I had, don’t you think I would have told you? I had my back to the fucker; he got me as I turned around to see him. Jason saw him though, he knew him.” He looked away from me to point at the shorter of the two guys. “I need you to get the club together, we are having a meeting tonight.”
“Gray already called one.” The shorter guy adjusted his leather jacket, a nervous jitter to his voice.
“Yeah, seven tonight,” Spike said.
I tried to ignore their conversation as I removed his bandage, taking a look at the ugly black stitches in his shoulder. No signs of infection, just swollen and red. Other than a small jolt in his body when I applied the cleaning solution to the wound, he made no show of feeling any discomfort. I’d had a cut cleaned with that stuff, it burned like hell.
Once I had the new bandage on, I started cleaning up the mess of wrappers. Tearing off my gloves, I tossed everything into the trash bin and started to make my way out. “Hold on. Beth, don’t you go anywhere just yet.” Rafe’s voice stilled my movements.
When I turned to give him a piece of my mind, two sets of eyes settled on me. Both men had a smug grin on their face, like they were daring me to defy him. “You two get out of here. I’ll see you tonight.”
“You gonna get out in time?” Spike asked.
“Beth here will take me home after her shift ends. When’s that, Beth?”
“I’m off at six.” I found myself answering him. Take him home? No way. “I’m sure your friends would rather pick you up. Besides I’ll have your discharge papers ready within the hour.”
“That’s fine. I’ll wait.” Rafe waved off the two men. “Go. Make sure Stephanie’s okay. Make sure her mom’s with her, and I want two men at the house. I don’t want to take any chances this asshole is going to go after Jason’s family. His little sister, too—get someone with her.”
“You got it.” Spike nodded. “We’ll leave you in Nightingale’s hands.” He gave me a smug grin as he walked past me, as did shorty.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said softly once we were alone. His face tightened at the mention of his friend’s death.
“Yeah. Me, too.” He looked away, out the window, and ran his hand through his hair. “I’ll find who did it.” He vowed in a strong voice. “And they are going to fucking pay.” He was hurting, even with the tension in his jaw and the straight laced way he held himself, I could see the pain in his body. And it had nothing to do with his flesh wound.
Stepping back over to him, I rested my hand on his good shoulder, sitting down beside him. “You can’t just go all vigilante, you know. You could get yourself killed.”
He flashed a grin at me. “Don’t worry about me, sweet cheeks. I’ll take care of myself.” The arrogance laced his tone again and I shook my head.
“Well, you can’t just sit here all day after you’re discharged. You should have asked your buddies to take you home.”
“We have some unfinished business you and me.” He turned on the bed, facing me. His face was too close to me, his lips too tempting. I swallowed hard and tried to look away, but he captured my chin in his hand and tilted it until I looked back at him. “You never sent me that text.” His harsh whisper caught me off guard. “What did I say would happen if you didn’t text me?”
The fluttering in my stomach didn’t help matters. “You were kidding.” I tried to pull away but his grip was too tight.
“I never joke about a good ass spanking.” His eyes bore into mine. My skin tingled beneath his touch, and damned if my pussy didn’t react to being so damn close him again.
“I’m not your girlfriend,” I blurted out.
He let out a short laugh. “Like that matters. I promised a spanking and you earned one. You’ll be getting it when I’m ready to give it to you.” He let go of my chin. “And for the record, you may not be my girlfriend, but you sure as hell belong to me.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I jumped up from the bed. The last thing I needed was more drama. I had enough of that just by being a single mom of a five-year-old.
“It means you’re mine. Now go get back to work before that doctor comes in here and makes me tear my stitches from punching him in the face.” He leaned back against his pillows and slid his bare feet onto the bed.
I glared down at him for a minute, trying to think of something to say to him to make him change his mind about waiting for me to get off my shift, but the look he gave me back suggested I leave it alone. “I’m sending in your real nurse to do your discharge. You can wait in the ER waiting room if you want a ride.” Not my best work, but it was enough to get me out the door.
The man was as arrogant and cocky as the day was long. I had to stop giving into him.