Feel the Rush: A Hard Feelings Novel (InterMix) (5 page)

His expression flinched and Meagan realized that her face was now twisted into a scowl. He was worried. One of his men was about to be taken to surgery. He was putting up a facade, but she knew better—she could see through it. She forced herself to be Nurse Meagan, not the ego-bruised Meagan he took home from a bar eight years ago. Her face softened and she smiled.

Relief rolled through his shoulders as he cracked a smile. Not a full one, but a relieved one, and of course it had to make her want to do the whole swoon-and-sigh thing. “Would you do me a favor? Would you just keep me updated throughout the surgery? I’ve got to get back, I have my company’s graduation tomorrow to get ready for, but I can be back here in five minutes if you need me. Please?”

Dammit. She was hoping that she would find out that Reed Porter was some grade-A asshole who would make her want to avoid him at every turn, especially given the case of memory loss he was apparently privy to having—but it wasn’t looking like that was going to happen.

“I’m sorry, I won’t be able to give you specific updates, but we will make sure to contact your battalion as soon as he’s out of surgery.”

The depth of anguish that folded over his face sent her heart into her stomach. This man was truly concerned for his soldier, and there was nothing she could do to ease his worry—and even with the loud warning sirens blaring in her mind, she hated seeming him like this.

She internally sighed and pulled out her phone. She wanted to pout and hold a grudge against him, but dammit, he was making it difficult. “What’s your number? I will call you directly and let you know when he is out of surgery, but that’s the best I can do.”

A grateful flash skimmed over his eyes. Yes, he was making this grudge thing extremely hard.

He reached forward and slipped the phone from her hand. His fingers made contact with hers, and she cringed inwardly at her schoolgirl reaction, that giddy flutter that pricks in your chest for half a second. Not long enough to get worked up about, but long enough to notice.

“There,” he said, placing the phone back in her hand. “I texted my phone, so now I have your number too.” He smiled, and it was one that was attempting to be real, but an emotion that was embedded in the creases of his eyes weighed down the small tilt of his lips. Was it fear, or sorrow? Maybe a little bit of both, and whatever it was, Meagan instantly wanted to take it away. She wanted to wrap her arms around this man that she didn’t know anything about and hold him against her.

“Okay,” she replied, not really knowing what else to say at that moment.

“Thanks,” he said, and then he turned around and left.

Meagan made her way back toward the nurses’ station. She looked at the clock. She’d been there for four hours already. She had forgotten how quickly time could pass with an ER full of patients. The health clinic she worked at on post at Fort Drum wasn’t exactly a hustle-and-bustle environment.

She knocked on the slightly ajar door to one of her patients’ rooms before she pushed it the rest of the way open. A woman in ACUs, probably around Meagan’s age, was sitting on the hospital bed, her tan boots kicked up and crossed at the ankles as she cradled a sleeping toddler in her arms.

His little face was flushed and blotchy from apparent crying. His head was full of tight little curls, and his tiny bare feet were dangling over his mom’s lap. His Thomas the Tank Engine sandals were on the floor next to the bed, along with a blue blanket that looked like it had been dragged through space and back, washed and repeated about a million times.

Meagan smiled as she eyed the blanket, she had one of those growing up too. The stinkier and dirtier the better.

“Would you mind handing me that scrap of disgusting fabric before he wakes up and has a meltdown?” the woman whispered. Her body was frozen like she was afraid to even breathe, afraid that he would wake up.

“Sure,” Meagan whispered back, picking up the blanket and handing it to her. She tucked it up next to his cheek and his little face instantly nestled into it.

“I just want to make sure Braden’s temp has gone down.” Meagan was instantly grateful to whoever invented those handy little forehead thermometers. She didn’t want the little man to wake up either. She had been the one to get his temp when he first arrived to the ER screaming in agony—it was 105. She had almost started crying for him too, he had to have been miserable.

“Looks like the Motrin has kicked in. 99.2.”

The woman kissed the top of her son’s head. “Thank god. I don’t know how it spiked so quickly like that. He seemed fine this morning, other than that constant runny nose of his. When the daycare called me, his tempt was 101. By the time I got there not even thirty minutes later it was 104.” She sighed and Meagan could see the apparent fear in her eyes.

She gave the woman a reassuring smile. “The doctor will be in here shortly to talk to you about his meds for his ear infections, but it won’t be long, and then we can get you two outta here. He will be back up, bouncing off the wall and driving you crazy, in no time flat.”

“Ha, ain’t that the truth.” She smirked.

Meagan smiled and gently ran her hand over the top of his blond ringlets. “Enjoy his cuddle moments. Even though it stinks when they are sick, they always cuddle better when they don’t feel well.”

She gave a knowing nod. “How old are your spawn?”

“Oh, I don’t have any children yet.” Meagan wrote his temperature on the patient chart. For some reason she was afraid to meet the woman’s eyes. Which was stupid, she knew that. But her question just added to the nagging in her ear.

“Well, for the record, he likes to color on my walls and poop in the bathtub while I happen to be in there with him, he tries to eat dirt, and at the ripe age of three, has managed to destroy every piece of furniture in my house, so even though I hate it when my baby doesn’t feel well—I definitely cherish these snuggle-bug moments. Drool and all.” She snickered, looking down at her chest, which had a nice wet spot right under little Braden’s mouth.

Meagan laughed quietly, attempting to keep from waking him. Lord knew his mom needed a few more minutes of quiet after the wave of panic she went through when her son had a dangerously high fever. And sleeping it off was the best thing for him too.

Meagan’s eyes shifted from the little boy to his mom, and she was just staring at Meagan with a smile on her face.

“Oh, just you wait till you have kids. You’ll see. They only look sweet when they sleep,” she teased, kissing his head again.

Meagan made sure they didn’t need anything else before she headed to check on her next patient.

“Back again?” the soldier asked when he looked up from his phone to acknowledge Meagan as she walked in his room.

“Yes, I know. I’m a pain in the butt, but I just wanted to check in on you again real quick. How’s the hand?”

“It’s starting to throb again, but I’ve had worse.”

Meagan shook her head. Men and their pride. Scratch that—
soldiers
and their pride. He probably wouldn’t tell her if it felt like it was about to fall off. “All right, tough guy. I’ll be back to check on you
again
and I promise the doctor will be in here as soon as possible to go over your X-rays.”

He just nodded and looked back at his phone. If he wasn’t in pain, she might have told him to shove that phone in his ass. She just might check in on him a few more times, just to push his buttons.

The rest of Meagan’s shift went by even more quickly. She made sure to keep tabs on Reed’s soldier during his surgery, and she kept her word and called him as soon as he got out. The surgery went well, thank god, and now Sergeant Brewer was recovering in the medical surgical unit.

Meagan leaned over the nurses’ station and whispered to Zoe, who was on the phone. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She nodded and smiled her reply and Meagan made her way to the elevators to head on up to the med surg unit. She wanted to check on Sergeant Brewer one last time before she left. She had popped in a few times after he was out of surgery, and he was sleeping like a baby, well, more like a heavily drugged oversize baby. He was a good-looking guy, shaved head, long lashes that brushed the tops of his cheeks as his slept, and from what little she could tell from the hospital gown he was wearing, he wasn’t lacking points in the build department either. But something about this guy triggered the motherly, sisterly, whateverly instinct that was coiled up inside her to come out, more so than usual. Meagan was always the friend who took care of everyone when they were sick, or, hell, just drunk or hung-over—and that definitely carried over to her job, but for some unknown reason, Meagan had a pull to this guy that made her instinct kick into overdrive. She just needed to make sure he was okay. For no other reason than she just needed to know.

She walked down the hall and stopped outside his door. There was laughter coming from inside the room and it instantly made her cheeks tighten into a grin. He was awake, and from the sounds of it, he was enjoying his medical cocktail.

“Knock, knock,” Meagan said as she opened up the door. Two sets of eyes turned her way, and one of those sets happened to involuntarily make her insides turn to a quivering mess.

Reed’s mouth fell open. “Well, how in the hell did you get so lucky to have this beautiful woman come visit you?”

The not-so-coherent soldier rolled his head to the side as he laid back on his pillow and looked Meagan’s way. “Hell if I know, are you sure I haven’t died and gone to heaven?”

Reed shook his head and laughed. “Really, Brewer? That’s the best you got? Come on now, a sexy, blond nurse just walked into your room. . . . Give her something better than that.”

His eyes glinted wickedly as if Reed had just thrown out the challenge of a lifetime, and Meagan was the prize. She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing at Brewer, who was high as a kite. She lifted her hands to her hips and waited for the punches to start rolling.

“If I had a nickel for every time I saw someone as beautiful as you, I’d have five cents.”

She shook her head back and forth but was unable to keep the smirk from appearing on her face. “Surely you can do better than that,” Meagan said, walking farther into the room and setting her purse down in the chair next to the bed.

He shifted his upper body slightly and his face twisted tightly as he fell back onto the pillows again. “I don’t know,” he huffed, struggling to even speak. “I’m in a lot of pain right now.”

Her face dropped and she glanced back at the door. “Do you want me to go grab your nurse? What can I do?”

“I’m not sure, I think there’s something wrong with my eyes.”

Meagan frowned. “Your eyes?”

A slow, deliberate smile pulled across Brewer’s cheeks and she knew she had just fallen right into his trap. “Yeah, because I can’t seem to take them off of you.”

“If you weren’t so drugged up and injured right now I would hit you.”

Reed couldn’t stop laughing.

“Really, you think that one was funny?”

“Hell no, but it’s funny you fell for it. I knew where he was going the second he said he was in pain. Good one, my man.”

“Hey, nurse,” Brewer slurred.

Meagan rolled her eyes at Reed before turning back to Brewer. “My name’s Meagan.”

“My beautiful nurse Meagan, can I use your phone?”

Meagan reached for her purse and pulled out her phone. “Um, sure.”

“Thanks. My mom told me to call her when I found the woman of my dreams.”

She snatched the phone back out of his hands and rolled her eyes. Reed reached around Meagan and fist-bumped Brewer. Seriously? Did grown men actually still do that? “Did you really just fist-bump over a pick-up line? You two are something else.”

“And you can do better?”

She arched her eyebrow, meeting Reed’s playful eyes with her own challenging stare. “I’m here, aren’t I? Now, you’ve got two wishes left.”

“I do believe we’ve met our match,” Brewer said, his words slurring even more.

She looked back over at Brewer, who was starting to slip into dreamland. “Did he just get a round of meds?”

“Yeah, about five minutes before you came in. Looks like they’re starting to kick in.”

“Yeah, looks like—”

Her words were cut short as Reed moved closer, invading the immediate space that encircled her. She was now surrounded by him and the look in his eyes was lacking all the playfulness that had been there moments ago. His jaw was set tight, and he hovered over her, his tall body framing her as he stood so close they were touching save a thin slice of air between them. His hand reached up and brushed away the strands of hair that had fallen loose around her face. His fingertips were rough, callused, but his touch was so light that it caused tingles to erupt all over her scalp.

He squinted his eyes and tilted his head to the side as if he was studying her. Holy hell, did he remember her? Meagan’s palms clammed up and she took a few quick breaths to try and steady her damn body, which was acting on its own accord. “Hey, hold still, sugar,” he said moving his hand to cup her face. His accent rumbled through her ears and sent shivers across her skin. “I think you’ve got something in your eye,” he said, so low it was more of a whisper. The rough pad of his thumb traced the thin skin underneath her left eye as he leaned in closer to her, his warm breath now bouncing between them—and damn it if her mind didn’t wander back to the way his lips had felt moving over hers that night that seemed like a lifetime ago. And damn it if she didn’t want to feel them again at that very moment.

His hand left her face and dropped back to his side. “Nope, just a sparkle.” His mouth twisted, and beautiful as it was, it caused Meagan’s eyes to almost completely disappear behind her lids.

The back of her palm connected with a thud against his chest. “Smooth, real smooth,” she mocked, taking a step back in the hopes of regaining her composure.

“I know.” That’s all he said. No, “Yeah, I know, I’m good,” or “I got this,” or whatever else cocky and annoying things men like to say. Nope, just “I know.” Simple as that. And that alone was in fact smooth.