Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (24 page)

This was an orgasm for the record books.

Shirley knocked her head back and cried out in a long, high-pitched animal scream.

Goddamn.

Who knew a small-town countrified Southern belle like her was even capable of fucking like a wild animal? Well, if the sound of that scream was any example, the whole world knew it now.

She felt Ed’s climax begin to explode into her just as the last spasms of her own climax subsided. He let out a low, long guttural grunt—
uuuhhhhgggnuhhhh
—followed by a shouted “hot DAMN!” And then he came. Big-time. The force of his explosion was so hard, it nearly broke the condom in half.

Nearly, but not quite. The engineers back at Trojan designed those extra-large Magnums with redblooded Carolina men like Ed Main in mind. And thank God for that.

Because Shirley wasn’t done with Ed yet. Not by a long shot.

They still had a whole packet of condoms left to go, after all. And the night was young.

Very
young.

Six

It took all the strength of will Shirley had to drag herself into work the next morning. She and Ed had been busy doing every possible variation of the Horizontal Bop until the wee hours, then finally collapsed to sleep on the hard, cold bathroom tile around four a.m. Since Shirley had to be at work that day by six-forty-five to prep for her first operation on her new job, that amounted to about an hour and a half of sleep. She still had a crick in her neck from falling asleep with her back and shoulders pressed up against her clawfoot tub with Ed sprawled on top of her. And all the hours of wild fucking had made muscles Shirley didn’t even know she had plenty sore.

Ed had mumbled his goodbyes and shambled downstairs to his own apartment when Shirley’s alarm woke them both at six. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever see him again.

Well, she supposed she’d probably run into him in the lobby by the mailboxes, or maybe in the stairwell. But somehow Shirley supposed that she’d seen as much of Ed Main last night as she’d ever see of him in the naked department. Because while their red-hot, tile-banging night of stranger sex had been fabulous, there wasn’t much to it beyond scratching an itch. No real passion or depth of feeling. Just a wild couple of fucks on a wet bathroom floor. Nothing that poets would compose verses about, nothing that a gifted sculptor would commit to marble. Just a basic, serviceable, reasonably satisfying night of fucking that got the job done without any frills.

When it came to fucking, Ed Main was like a sturdy old Chevrolet. Sure, he was reliable and got you from Point A to Point B. But he wasn’t, well—a
Lexus.

And Shirley Daniels wanted to fuck a Lexus, damn it. Maybe even a Rolls-Royce.

Dr. Randall Hamm could sure as hell pass for a Rolls-Royce. And as luck would have it, she was set to assist Dr. Randall Hamm in the OR today.

Shirley smiled to herself as she strode up to University Hospital’s main lobby doors. She would make that man notice her today if it killed them both.

She paused to gaze at her reflection in the tinted glass window. She looked like warmed-over hell. But what could she expect after fucking her downstairs neighbor’s brains out on the bathroom floor all night long? At least she didn’t fall asleep facedown on the tile like Ed did and wind up with a hexagonal terrazzo pattern embedded into her cheek. She just had bags under eyes the size of Louis Vuitton deluxe travel totes, that’s all.

Well, it was nothing a little caffeine and Maybelline couldn’t fix. She glanced at her watch, saw she had ten minutes to spare before she needed to scrub in. Plenty of time to inhale a couple mugs of strong black coffee and put on her face. She would make an impression on Dr. Randall Hamm, that was for damn sure. A
good
impression. The kind of impression that could help her get laid—this time, with the man she really wanted to sleep with.

Not that what she’d done with Ed Main last night hadn’t been fun. It had. But Ed Main was a Chevy. Dr. Randall Hamm was a Rolls-Royce. Who wouldn’t go for the luxury model if she had the chance?

Shirley slipped into the ladies’ room, makeup kit in tow. She parked herself in front of the mirror and set herself to work erasing those Louis Vuittons from under her eyes. A dab of concealer here, some purple eyeshadow there, a dash of sulty Lip Plumper gloss in Dusty Pink Nude, thick black liquid eyeliner, and some Maybelline Instant Lash Extensions—
voila!
Instant sexpot.

Or as much as a sexpot as she could appear underneath shapeless scrubs and a blue paper bonnet, anyway. Fortunately for her, scrubbing in alone took ten minutes. That was ten minutes she could stand directly across from Dr. Randall Hamm at the scrub trough, pouting her lips and flitting her eyelashes at him like a
Maxim
cover model.

If only he’d pay attention.

Damn it, she’d
make
him pay attention. Somehow. She didn’t have a good plan for exactly how to do that yet. But if Shirley Marie Daniels knew how to do anything, it was improvise.

She dusted the makeup residue off her hands and headed for the scrub room.

Her face fell and her heart sank when she got there, though. Because the instant she crossed the threshold into the green-tiled sterile scrub room, Dr. Randall Hamm was already at the drying table, holding his freshly scrubbed hands and forearms out in front of the blower.

Shit. Her plan was wrecked before she even got started.

“Good morning, Dr. Hamm,” she sang at the top of her lungs, hoping to distract him enough to keep him in the scrub room for just a moment or two longer.

Dr. Hamm glanced over his shoulder at her. His eyebrows pursed together and he frowned. “Awful dolled up for a morning in the OR, aren’t you, umm—what’s your name again? Sharon?” he said, disapproval thick in his voice.

“I like to look professional at all times,” Shirley chirped, slipping out of her cardigan and stepping up to the scrub trough. “And my name’s
Shirley
, not Sharon.”

“Oh, Shelley, right. Sorry.”

“Shirley.”
So much for getting Dr. Drop Dead Gorgeous to notice her. He couldn’t even get her damn name right. This was hopeless.

“Shelley, Shirley, what’s the damn difference?” He shrugged.

“A big one,” she hissed. Boy, Dr. Hamm wasn’t exactly living up to his dreamy first impression from yesterday, no siree. Yesterday he was George Clooney. Today, he was more like Hugh Laurie, the smarmy, cynical doctor on
House.
Talk about getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

Dr. Hamm finished drying off and slipped into his surgical gown. “Anyway, Shirley-whatever-your-name-is, there was recently a study published in the
New England Journal of Medicine
showing that wearing cosmetics in the OR can increase the rate of patient infection. Lipstick, mascara, and nail polish are all notorious bacteria traps. So as long as you’re assisting me on anesthesia,
Shirley
, I suggest you take one of those sterile wet-wipes from the box over there and use it to wipe that mess off your face before you scrub in. No makeup in the OR. Period. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get the machines calibrated.”

With that, Dr. Randall Hamm turned on his heel and stomped into the OR.

Sheesh. What a bastard.
No makeup in the OR?
Whoever heard of such a draconian rule? Not Shirley—and she was hardly a babe in the woods when it came to medical rules and regulations.

Things really were different here in the big city, that was for sure.

Dejected, Shirley used a sterile alcohol wipe to remove all her makeup. She stared at herself in the polished chrome surgical mirror above the scrub trough, cringing at her bare face, ruddy and raw now from the rubbing alcohol. The bags under her eyes were bigger than ever.

Well, she’d gotten Dr. Hamm to notice her, all right. For all the wrong reasons.

She got into her mask and gown and dragged herself into the OR, blinking back tears.

****

Dr. Randall Hamm stood in the OR, staring at the wall and grinding his teeth. He gazed down at his bulging crotch.
Down boy
, he ordered his cock, which had taken on a life of its own the moment the hot new anesthesia nurse walked into the scrub room.

He knew her name now. Shirley Daniels. He’d made a point to make sure he knew it, in fact. He’d memorized it off the duty roster. He’d repeated it to himself a dozen times, relishing the feel of the words as they slipped off his tongue.
Shirley Daniels.
It was a sensible, old-fashioned name, and yet sensual at the same time—like the stage name of an old-time movie starlet of Hollywood’s bygone era. He knew her name too well, in fact—and wished to God he didn’t.

Seeing her face made up like a runway model’s had thrown him for a loop. She had no right to walk into the scrub room looking like that. No right at all. It was an occupational hazard. He had no choice but to force her to wipe it off. There was no way he could make it through an entire operation staring at those luscious long lashes of hers. No way in hell. He needed her to stay as plain-Jane as possible. For the sake of his own sanity.

Damn it, he had it bad.

The situation was untenable. Things were bound to get complicated. And he didn’t like complicated. He didn’t
do
complicated. He liked everything in his life to be neat, clean, trim, and sterile. Especially where women were concerned.

And Shirley Daniels was anything but.

****

Dr. Hamm didn’t say a word to Shirley through the whole operation. She followed his cues on blind instinct; lucky for her, she had fifteen years’ experience in the OR and didn’t need any help when it came to monitoring the anesthesia machine or the unconscious patient’s vital signs. In fact, when the surgeon started closing up the incision, Dr. Hamm got up from his post behind the sleeping patient’s head and left without explanation—leaving Shirley in charge of getting the patient into recovery. She wasn’t sure if that was a snub on Dr. Hamm’s part—or a compliment of her skills.

Whatever it was, it really pissed her off.

The surgeon closed up the incision—a quick job, since it was a simple gallbladder operation and the surgeon was using staple sutures—and scrubbed out. The surgical nurses did a sponge count and all the other routine safety procedures for the end of an operation, and left the surgical suite one by one. Shirley dialed down the anesthesia and watched the sleeping patient’s blood pressure and heart rate stabilize, then began disconnecting the elderly, moderately overweight woman from the anesthesia machine.

Everything went as it should, routine as routine could get. Then, just as Shirley was about to call for an orderly to help her wheel the patient into the recovery room, a screeching alarm went off on the blood-pressure monitor.

“Oh my God!” Shirley cried as she watched the poor sleeping woman’s blood pressure plummet to a near-lethal level. Her nurse’s training told her that kind of postoperative blood-pressure drop could have only two possible causes—internal bleeding, or anesthesia toxicity.

She pressed her blue-bootied foot on the bright red button on the floor that read “EMERGENCY.” A recorded female voice called out “Emergency Team to Operating Suite, STAT. Emergency Team to Operating Suite, STAT. Code Red. Code Red.”

The surgeon, team of nurses, and another doctor Shirley didn’t recognize bounded into the room. Most of them were already out of their surgical gowns and wearing nothing but dirty scrubs. All of them swarmed the operating table, taking pulses, checking breathing, trying to figure out what was wrong. But the one person that Shirley needed there most was nowhere to be seen.

“Where the hell is Dr. Hamm?” she yelled. “He’s the one that calibrated the anesthesia machine, damn it! If he OD’d this patient, it’s on his head, not mine!”

The emergency team paid her no attention. They were too busy trying to help the dying patient.

“DR. HAMM!” shouted to the empty air. “GET THE FUCK BACK IN HERE!” Shirley needed Dr. Hamm’s help desperately, but she didn’t dare leave her post—if she did, she’d be subject to disciplinary action. The patient was already disconnected from the machine, so if the dose she’d received had been toxic, at least she wasn’t getting any more of it. But Shirley wasn’t trained in emergency patient resuscitation beyond routine CPR and ventilator procedures. There was nothing more she could do.

All the vital signs monitors flatlined. The patient was dead. But would she stay dead?

The emergency team scrambled to save the elderly woman’s life. Epinephrine, shock paddles, heart pumps. Nothing worked.

After fifteen minutes of trying, the surgeon and emergency-services doctor both set their instruments down and shook their heads. “Time of death, eight forty-five,” the surgeon said. “We did everything we could. Now we just need to find out what the hell happened.” He stomped out of the OR, still shaking his head.

The other doctor came up to Shirley, his face grim. “Hi there—Shirley,” he said, reading her ID badge. “I’m Dr. Simpson from Emergency Services. Dr. Hamm is going to catch hell for this. Obviously he thought you were very capable, otherwise he wouldn’t have left you in charge of recovery. But he should have come back as soon as you sounded the alarm. It wasn’t fair of him to leave you high and dry like that—even if it turns out this wasn’t his fault.”

“It
has
to be his fault,” Shirley snarled, still stunned at what had just happened. “Why else would he have bolted out of here and then not come back?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Simpson replied. “But I don’t think we should be assigning blame prematurely. Sometimes patients just die for no good reason. I’m sure the woman’s family will order an autopsy, hopefully we’ll have some more answers soon.” He paused, gave Shirley a sympathetic smile. “You were very fast on your feet, by the way. Good job.”

“It still didn’t do any good,” Shirley said, staring at the floor.

He gently squeezed her forearm. “People die in this business. That’ll never change. Just try to focus on the positive.” He covered the dead woman with a sheet, and finished filling out the toe tag so an orderly could pick up the body for the morgue. “It could be worse, you know. You could be the one stuck with breaking the news to this poor woman’s family.”