Even after a day of sleep, I was exhausted. The planned c-section ended up becoming an emergency c-section beginning six hours earlier than scheduled. Technically, I didn’t need to come in—there was another person on staff who could’ve taken over, but I’d been part of the planning meeting about what to do for the little guy about to enter this world with his heart not fully formed, and that made me the best person for that particular case.

Steven Johanson from Springfield was born struggling even more than we anticipated he would, but after only a few hours, he was stable. He needed to wait for his heart surgery, and chances were he’d be one of my patients for the next few months, but his long term prognosis was good. His condition was rare enough, and his parents rich enough, that the heart specialist, Dr. Sanders, who was slated to do the surgery, had watched the entire delivery through a video conference and gave advice as needed. He seemed to really know his stuff and had a great manner about him. I doubted poor Steven would’ve made it without Dr. Sanders’s guidance.

The only thing still keeping me awake was the anticipation of my date with Ren. It was stupid to have thrown all my hopes into one basket like that, but there was just something about him. I showered and played the “what to wear” game, going so far as to call Joaquim to ask for his advice. Of course, that turned out to be useless since he just kept telling me whatever I picked would be fine.

As the clock ticked by and six came and went, I began to get worried. Did Ren change his mind? Did he have a flat tire? Did his car fall off a cliff—which was doubly dumb since there were no cliffs between our two towns.

While I waited, my nerves grew until I had to do something, anything, to keep busy. I decided that re-brushing my teeth was never a bad idea and raced back into the bathroom to do so just as there was a knock on the door.

Of course there was.

I made a one eighty and ran back into the living room with all the elegance of a moose, knocking over the box that held the four thousand pieces that would somehow come together to be my new bookshelf. It crashed with both a thud and a jingle. There was a good chance the blasted thing had suffered some damage, not that I wanted to think about that then. I had a date to get to. I turned it on its side, not bothering to lean it against the wall again, before finally answering the door.

“Hey,” I said, my voice raspy and slightly out of breath. Not the way I’d planned to greet him. And plan it I did—multiple ways over the course of the afternoon. I’d been more than excited by my plans for the evening.

“Damn, you look good.” His words took me aback. I felt like such a hot mess after the box fiasco.

“You too.” My eyes didn’t leave his. Shit, I didn’t even know if he had a kilt or jeans on, I’d been too mesmerized. Although, if it was a kilt he’d been sporting, I’d have kicked myself for not noticing it sooner. “Please come in.”

“I heard a crash,” he said, looking around the room for evidence of the destruction. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I clicked the door closed. “More than. I just knocked over the box with my bookshelf in it. I’d planned to put it together two weeks ago, but as you can see, that didn’t happen.”

“Is it the kind with more pieces than you thought humanly possible, and yet at the end, you’re still missing one?”

I knew exactly what he meant. You never had just enough pieces—always too many or too few.

“That’s the kind.” I pointed to the clock on my wall. “We should probably go get food. It’s Sunday in Mapleville, so our choices are The Diner or The Diner and they close at eight.” Small town living had a lot going for it, but all night cuisine wasn’t one of those things.

“Oh crap. Hold on.” Ren ran out the door and was back in three seconds flat holding my favorite flower in my favorite color.

“How did you know?” I took it from him and immediately saw the label on the instruction card wedged inside. “Never mind. You must have met Vivian.”

“You make that sound far less creepy and stalkerish than I’d have had it sounding. She makes this a habit I take it,” he teased as I placed the plant on the coffee table. I’d need to find a better place for it, sunwise, but it was good for now.

“That she does. And the alpha who you met the other day, whose mate needed him at the hospital, she’s his mother-in-law so we know each other pretty well.” I’d already told him about Brent’s prognosis and that Joaquim was a coworker, but for a second, I swore I saw a tinge of jealousy in Ren’s eyes. And bad me—I didn’t hate that.

“I can help you put this together after dinner.” He kicked the bookshelf box gently with his foot.

“I’d like that. And, well, it might be late afterward, you know, if you wanted to stay over.” Might as well lay it all out there. “I have a queen sized bed—cozy but big enough.” My face was burning.

“Let’s get to the eating then.” Ren had me by the hand and out the door before I could respond. I was taking that as a heck yeah.

We drove to The Diner, which was aptly named since it was in fact a diner. I’d have liked our first date to be all fancy and romantic, but burgers and meatloaf it would have to be. And cookies. They made the world’s best cookies.

Ren didn’t seem to mind the choice and held my hand as we found the booth farthest from everyone. It gave us a false sense of privacy and made conversation flow freely. Being closer to closing than I usually came in, Martin, our less-than-cheery waiter for the evening, was at our table almost instantly with waters and asking us if we were ready to order. The poor guy almost ran back to the kitchen window with the order once we gave it.

“He didn’t even ask you how you wanted your burger.” I fidgeted with my straw wrapper as I watched Ren slide his menu back behind the napkin dispenser, not even pretending to not watch his arm muscles flexing.

“The menu said something about only serving fully cooked meat so my guess is they’ll default to medium well. He seemed in a hurry.”

“There are only three tables full and it’s Sunday—in Mapleville.” Which I would wager was the entire reason, as sad as it was.

“It smells worth it.” Ren was right. It totally was. “So, you’re a doctor?”

“Hardly. I’m a Respiratory Therapist. I help people breathe.” I crossed my fingers and toes that any disappointment about my career being so much less than he thought wasn’t a game changer for him.

“That’s really important. My old neighbor had a daughter with CP, and they talked about the Respiratory Therapist a lot after one of her hospital stays. Very fondly too. At the time, I didn’t understand what they did. I just knew that to little Shelley, the woman was called Angel Grace. Tell me about your job.” Ren leaned in, elbows on the table, and his hands reaching across for mine. Hands that I filled immediately.

And then I told him all about my job and how being a NICU specialist made my job different than when I was working with stroke units fresh out of school. After that, we talked about his job working with numbers, which was all kinds of sexy in my book. And at the point that our meal came, we started talking about everything from favorite colors to the way the highway construction was going, to where we went to school.

By the time we were given the not-so-subtle hint to take our cookies to go, I felt more at ease with him than I ever had with anyone else on a first date...or was it sort of our second? Either way, it was wonderful.

And arousing.

My damn cock had been hard for an hour and a half straight. From the looks of things when Ren got out of the booth, he was in a similar situation.

I was going to have to do something about that.