Prima Donna (9 page)

“I should probably be impressed.” Regan’s grin twitched slightly against her glass. “But I don’t have the slightest clue who Stan Smyl is.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” When she shook her head, Carter closed his eyes and groaned, long and loud. “And here I was beginning to think you might be damn near close to perfect. Stan Smyl…played his whole career with the Canucks…Steamer…Captain for eight years…they retired his number for crying out loud…really? Nothin’?”

“Sorry.” She shrugged slowly. “But your man-crush on this Stanley Steemer guy aside, I’ll give you full marks for the lasagna thing. Any guy who knows his way around cheese can’t be all bad.”

“That’s it? I give you all that, and the only thing you appreciate is the cheese?” Her faint honey-vanilla scent teased him, pulling him in until he was close enough to count her freckles.

“Not the only thing.” Regan licked her lips and pressed her hands flat against his chest, only this time, she didn’t pull him closer, she held him back. “The sewing thing’s good, too.”

“It’s not sewing. It’s suturing.”

“Tomato tomahto.” Her shoulder lifted in a mock shrug. “And even though I was sure I’d regret it, it’s kinda nice that you’re hanging out with me even though I’m in a bad mood.”

“Damn, woman,” he murmured. “If this is you in a bad mood, I can’t wait to get hold of you when you’re in a good mood.”

She released a sound that was part laugh, part groan, and ducked away. “That’s not going to happen until I finish jazzing up my résumé enough to land a job.”

“And you’re going to do that now?” Not only now, but apparently right now. He’d barely inhaled again, and she was gone, reappearing a second later with a laptop that she set up on the little table under the window.

“Bills won’t pay themselves, Carter, and the sooner I get my résumé out there, the sooner I get a job.”

Right. Résumé. Job.

“Ever done any office work?”

“If you mean filing, answering phones, making appointments, working with spreadsheets, and paying bills, then yes.” She stopped, grinned, and wagged her brow at him. “I can even do most of those things with scissors in one hand and a comb in the other.”

He didn’t doubt it. “Do you type?”

“Sure. Well, I don’t do ninety words a minute, but I’m well above finger-pecking. Why?”

Carter shrugged slowly. “Rossick and Jules are looking for a receptionist, so I told them I’d ask—”

Before he knew what had happened, she hurtled herself across the space separating them, threw her arms around him, and squealed.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, struggling to keep them both from crashing over. “The woman they hired up and quit on them this morning and they need someone who can start on Monday.”

“That’s so great!” She pulled back a little and winced up at him. “I mean, it’s not great that the other woman quit, but…”

“They’ll have to meet you first, and I can’t guarantee they’ll hire you just because we’re…” With each word out of his mouth, Regan pulled back farther until there was a good couple of feet between them.

“We’re what?” she asked tentatively. Arms folded over her chest, she raised both brows at him, waiting for some kind of response, which he didn’t have. When he didn’t answer, she went on, her pretty mouth curling up into one of her smart-ass smirks. “I don’t know what you think this is, Carter, but one night of mind-blowing sex isn’t going to send me running out to get your name tattooed across my butt.”

How twisted was it that the more she said things like that, the more he liked it? The more he liked
her
? And it helped that she’d gone from saying last night had been good to admitting it had been mind-blowing.

After a few seconds, she glanced down at her feet, but her eyes flicked back to him twice before she blushed and laughed.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re cute and all, but being able to melt my knees is
not
going to help pay my bills, so if push comes to shove, I’m sorry to say…” The corner of her bottom lip disappeared behind her top teeth as she frowned, then sat down in front of her laptop. “Wait a second. You’ve been here all afternoon—why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“I started to when I first got here, but then you mentioned last night and I sort of got distracted.” Carter grinned. “And then you started yelling about how no other job would ever be as good as what you had…”

“Oh yeah. Oops.” She winced over her grin. “My bad. Sorry.”

“Sorry enough that you’ll come with me to dinner at Aunt Deb’s?”

“No.”

The fact she never even looked up from her screen made Carter laugh. “You wanna take a second to think about it?”

“What? Oh, sorry.” Her quiet laugh floated toward him, made his grin widen. “Still no. I need to spend the night padding my résumé with so much BS your friends’ll think I’m some kind of brain surgeon and hire me on the spot.”

No amount of pleading would sway her; she just continued to shake her head even as she focused on her computer screen.

“Not gonna happen.”

“You’re telling me that inside information on a full-time job
with benefits
isn’t worth sitting through a simple meal with me?”

“With you, sure,” she laughed. “With the whole Scott clan?
With Ben?
No. Way. In. Hell.”

“Then how ’bout this?” Carter leaned a little closer, pushed his fingers against her laptop until it started to close and she looked up at him again. “You forget about the résumé, I forget about dinner with the family, we order a pizza, and watch
The Empire Strikes Back
?”

“Oh no,” she snorted. “Jayne’s probably expecting you there to help run blocker between her and Deb, and I’m not going to be the reason you end up on her hit list.”

“Too late.”

“What? Why?” She pulled her hair back and tied it with a white band she fished out of her pocket. “What did I do?”

“Not you. Just me.” Carter tucked his phone away and started for the door. “She ripped me a new one when I got home last night. Apparently she doesn’t think you and me are a good idea.”

He heard Regan mutter something behind him, but when he looked back at her, she just smiled and held out his helmet as he shrugged into his jacket. Instead of opening the door, though, he just stood there staring at her, knowing he should leave, but not quite able to go yet.

Arms crossed, Regan smiled slowly and blinked up at him. “So, um, today turned out better than I was expecting. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He wrapped his fingers around her waist, brought her close, and leaned in, but stopped when she tensed, her hands settling on his arms.

“I…it’s just that…” Her breath was short, raspy. Sexy. But she dropped her gaze—not a good sign—then inhaled slowly, taking a long time to look up again. “There’s so many reasons why we can’t do this.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s never a good idea to dip your pen in the company ink.” Carter started to object, but she talked over him. “I know you don’t own the clinic, but your friends do, so it puts this right up there beside the inkwell, and
if
I get the job, it means we’ll be working with each other every day.”

When he grinned at her, she just rolled her eyes and chuckled.

“Exactly,” she said. “Last night was…yeah…but I meant what I said; I’m not looking for a relationship, and I’m sure as hell not going to be your next flavor of the month.”

“What about—”

“And honestly, Carter, I have too much going on right now to spend time trying to figure out how to keep you or any other guy happy.”

“Any other guy?” Carter frowned. “What other guy?”

“And besides all that,” she went on, ignoring his frown. “I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of friend code that prohibits friends from dating each other’s cousins. It’s like dating your best friend’s sister.”

“See, now you’re just making shit up.” When she laughed quietly, he leaned in again, closer, but didn’t kiss her. Not yet. “I’m not asking you to tattoo my name across your butt, Red.”

“I know, but let’s be serious for a second. I don’t do picket fences and minivans, remember? And I’m pretty sure the mere mention of those words gives you hives, am I right?”

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Exactly,” she said. “So what good can come from this? It’d only be a matter of time before we both started looking for a way out, and I won’t be the one who makes things awkward between you and Jayne or you and your friends if they give me this job—which they probably won’t if they think we’re together.”

He cupped her face between his palms and slid his thumb across her cheek, so soft, so perfect.

“I can’t decide if I should be flattered you’ve put so much thought into this or offended that you came up with so many reasons in such a short amount of time.”

Her quiet laugh settled inside him, warm and smooth, even as she added the final brick to the pile.

“You know I’m right.”

Of course he knew she was right; didn’t mean he had to like it, but after a few seconds, he finally gave in with a slow sigh.

“I should probably warn you that I’ve never stayed friends with a chick I’ve slept with, so I’m not sure how this is supposed to work.”

“Well.” A slow smile tugged at her lips as she covered his hands with her own and gently pulled them down. “Since I’m not a chick, I bet it’ll be easier than you think.”

“Yeah, right.” With a resigned grunt, he forced a smile he sure as hell didn’t feel. “Bring your résumé by tomorrow morning and I’ll put in a good word for you. Fair enough?”

“Thank you.” She looked up at him, but there was no smile this time, just a glimpse of the wall he’d already come to hate. “Who knew you were such a nice guy?”

Truth be told, no one was more surprised than him. With a low, muttered curse, he pulled the door open and stepped out into the hall, letting her hand slip slowly through his.

He backed into the elevator, never looking away from her until the elevator doors closed between them. She was right; neither one of them wanted a relationship, so they’d be doing each other a favor by leaving it at one night and moving on before they made a mess of things.

The problem was, though, now that he’d been with her, now that he knew how her full pretty lips tasted, how her soft curves felt pressed up against him, and how his name sounded as it slipped out of her on a long satisfied sigh…well,
now
…now he was just screwed.

Royally and thoroughly screwed.

How the hell was he supposed to
not
think about her? Not touching her, not feeling her smile under his kiss was going to drive him crazy, but if that’s what she wanted, if that’s what made her happy, what choice did he have?

Seeing how happy she’d been when he told her about the job was one of the best things he’d ever…
wait a second
.

Since when did making some chick happy take precedence over making himself happy?

Carter scrubbed his palms down his face and grunted out a curse. Twenty-four hours ago the answer to that would have been never, but then he’d stood beside Regan and watched her heart break as her business drove off in the back of a battered U-Haul. From that second, something changed, and for some unknown dumb-ass reason, he wanted to be the one to make her happy.

Shit!

“Look, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine. Trust me.”

Han Solo,
The Empire Strikes Back

After a brief check in the rearview mirror, Regan took a few deep breaths and walked into the clinic. Or she tried to, anyway.

Dozens of boxes teetered precariously atop a chaotic jumble of bubble-wrapped chairs, bookshelves, sections of desks, and two large couches, all of which jammed what should have been the reception area and one of the hallways.

Regan was sure one good hard breath would have brought it all crashing down around her, but that didn’t stop the guy in the work shirt from pushing through the door behind her with another large leather five-wheeled office chair.

It took all the restraint she had not to send him right back outside with it until there was room to move. How did anyone think it was a good idea to keep piling things up? And why wasn’t anyone moving anything past that hallway?

Two men hunched behind the reception desk acknowledged her with brief nods, then went back to work, one hooking up a computer and the other bent over a phone system that looked like it had come straight from NASA.

Voices rose down both hallways, and none of them sounded terribly happy.

This was, without a doubt, the worst time to have brought her résumé. She should have discussed timing with Carter before he left last night.

“You two go, then I’ll go when you get back.” Carter’s voice preceded him into the hall. He caught her eye and grinned, sending a crack of electricity ratcheting through every cell in her body. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Regan breathed slowly, and thumbed toward the jumble of furniture. “If I’d known you were setting the place up like Jenga, I would’ve worn a hard hat.”

“Yeah, most of this was supposed to be delivered tomorrow or Friday, but stuff just keeps coming and all we’ve managed to do is write our initials on what’s ours.” His grin widened the closer he got, but his voice lowered to a deep whisper. “You look great.”

No she didn’t, she looked like someone out on a job hunt, with her black pants and pressed white blouse. Even her black pumps were boring, but the way Carter stared at her with that wolfish grin of his, she might as well have been standing there buck naked.

Flashes of the night before blazed through her mind but in every single one it was Carter who was buck naked. What a sight he was, stretched out on her bed, his lean muscular body inviting her to take whatever she wanted.

And boy, did she take. Without hesitation, she’d touched him in ways she’d never touched anyone else, and she’d let him…

This is not the time to be thinking about that!

Maybe if she breathed in and out nice and slow, she could push back the heat coursing through her body, but there was no way to camouflage the freckles she knew had to be standing out now.

With a quirk of his left eyebrow, Carter’s gaze roamed over her face, then lingered a second too long on her hair. He spoke so quietly, she almost didn’t hear him.

“You kidding me with the hair down like that?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to shush him when a tall man behind him cleared his throat and all but shoved Carter out of the way.

“Hi.” Grinning broadly, he took her hand and shook it with gusto. “Charlie Rossick.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Regan Burke.”

“Are you the one…” A pretty woman with hazel eyes and long chestnut hair pulled back in a messy knot stepped around both men, clicking her tongue as she did. “Are you the one Carter told us about?”

“I, uh…” Regan glanced at Carter who nodded. “Yes.”

“Great. I’m Julia Dean, it’s nice to meet you.”

“You too.” Carter and Rossick continued to push each other, which made it a little difficult to focus, especially with workmen trying to grunt past them, but Regan shook Julia’s hand and smiled. “You’re obviously busy, so maybe I should come back another time.”

She started to back up, but Carter caught her wrist and pulled her back.

“Hang on.” His eyes opened a little wider, almost hopeful. “If you’re not busy, we could use your help here for a bit.”

“Sure,” she answered slowly. “What do you need, besides someone to un-Jenga this place?”

He tipped his head toward Julia and Rossick. “Before we can get privileges at Newport General, we need to meet with the administrator and get all the paperwork signed.”

“Yeah, okay. And?”

“And we were supposed to be there ten minutes ago, but with these guys coming and going—”

“No problem. I’ll stay, you guys go.”

“That’d be great, thanks.” He bobbed his head toward the door, but Julia and Rossick hesitated. “She’ll be fine; she can play Jenga if she gets bored.”

“Can I?” Regan was already sorting through the mess in her head. “I mean, I’m happy to start moving things if you like.”

“Really?” Julia stared wide-eyed for a second. “You don’t have to…everything’s marked…but don’t worry about it, we can do it when we get back.”

They hadn’t even cleared the door before Regan was slipping out of her jacket and toeing off her pumps. She tucked them off in the corner as the two workmen barely managed to squeeze through the door with another bookshelf bundled under yet more layers of bubble wrap.

“Wait,” Regan called. “Are you just going to leave that there?”

The older of the two—Adam, according to the embroidered name on his shirt—shrugged. “Normally we set up the furniture, but the other delivery guys left all that equipment blocking the hall, so the tall guy said to put everything here.”

“Hmm.” She eyed the blocked hallway, the overflowing waiting room, and the two workmen standing in front of her. “Make you a deal. Pizza’s on me if you help me get it all moved. And I’ll make sure the docs tip you extra.”

Neither man hesitated. “You got it.”

The younger guy, Kenny, ran down to lock the truck while Adam and Regan shuffled the equipment and exam tables down the hall farther so they had room to move. She wasn’t exactly dressed for this kind of work, but she just rolled up her sleeves, then twisted her hair tight and tucked it down the back of her blouse.

“Just give me a second.” Regan hurried down the halls, doing a quick survey of every room. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”

While the computer and phone guys watched, safe behind the desk, Regan put Adam to work assembling desks in the extra office while she and Kenny lifted, pulled, and dragged all of Rossick’s equipment into the exam room closest to his office, then lugged the rest over to the north hallway and repeated the process for Julia’s and Carter’s exam rooms.

When that was done, she sent Kenny off with some cash to get the pizza while she and Adam moved the furniture and stacked the boxes in their respective rooms. Anything not labeled went into the empty office for the doctors to sort out themselves. She’d just stepped back into the almost-empty waiting room when Kenny returned.

“Perfect timing.” She bobbed her head toward the plastic-wrapped couch they’d just set against the north wall. “Take a load off.”

After offering the tech guys some, Adam and Kenny dug into their first pieces, eating over the box so as not to spill. Regan lifted the end of the other couch and began to spin it so she could set it against the opposite wall. Halfway through the turn, Carter, Julia, and Rossick stepped through the door.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Painting the barn,” Regan snorted and kept turning. “D’you like the color?”

Carter didn’t laugh. Everyone else did.

“Look out.” In one swift motion, he grabbed the couch and hip-checked Regan out of the way. “You couldn’t just push it over there?”

It wasn’t until they’d positioned it properly that she stopped and looked at Julia and Rossick, who whistled quietly.

“I thought Carter was kidding about the Jenga thing.”

“How long were we gone?”

Carter, on the other hand, honed right in on the workmen sitting on the couch, but Regan stopped him before he could say anything.

“Leave them alone,” she said. “I worked them hard, they deserve a break.”

With a slight frown, Rossick headed down the hall to his office, stared for a few seconds, then started back, glancing into the exam rooms as he did. “What the…? Jules, come look at this.”

Carter followed Julia down to Rossick’s office, where they both stopped and snorted. When Rossick crooked his finger at Regan, she looked to Kenny and Adam for a little moral support, inhaled slowly, and headed down the hall.

As she neared the doorway, Carter and Julia backed up, leaving room for her and Rossick to peer into the room. It looked fine to her, so what…?

“It took me two very stressful rounds of rock-paper-scissors to win this view and I don’t even get to look at it?” His slow grin, dimples and all, immediately eased the tension from Regan’s shoulders.

“I just put it where it made sense to me,” she chuckled, leading him inside. “But for the price of another pizza we can always change it.”

The view from his huge plate glass window
was
amazing, and the only spot in the entire office where you had a clear view of The Chief. Twenty-three hundred feet of solid granite, the huge dome was a mecca to rock climbers and hikers from around the world, and as awesome as it was on any given day, the brilliant January sunshine made it more so today.

“Look.” Regan held her arms wide, as though she were lifting the desk into different positions. “If you face the window, your back’s to the door. Not good. If you put your back to the window, your patients will get the view, and they’ll be so distracted, they won’t listen to what you’re saying.”

Turning like Frankenstein, she had to wait for Rossick to step out of the way before she could continue.

“If you put it here, it’ll feel like you’re tripping on it the second you come in the door, but over there, it’s out of the way, everyone can see the view if they turn their heads, and it makes the space seem more open.”

“Hmmm.” Rossick nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“The bookshelves can be moved easily enough,” she went on. “It just felt a little claustrophobic setting them up behind the patients’ chairs. Adam says they still have to bring in the plastic mats for under the chairs and a few other things, but we’ll need to vacuum before they lay the mats. Oh, and the artwork is still in the truck, too.”

Carter lounged against the door frame, and Julia squirmed in around him and perched herself on the corner of Rossick’s desk.

“How did you know where to put everything?” she asked.

“You marked everything, remember?”

“But how did you know whose office was whose?”

Regan frowned, pointed toward the window ledge. “The key ring there has that plastic model heart, Carter’s helmet was in the office on the far left down there, and there’s a jacket in the other one that could only fit you.” She stopped, stared wide-eyed at Julia. “Was I wrong? I can probably get Adam and Kenny to help me—”

“It wasn’t wrong. I was just curious.”

“There are still boxes to unpack, and anything we weren’t sure of, we put in the empty office across the hall.” She looked at each of them, but the only one looking back was Carter. The other two seemed to be carrying on a full conversation with each other using nothing more than a few different looks and a shrug or two.

“Okay, then.” She wiped her suddenly sweaty palms down her pant legs and nodded. “I’ll just go find my shoes.”

She padded barefoot past Carter and hurried to the waiting room, with Julia hot on her heels.

“I can’t believe you got all this done,” she gushed. “It’s great—thank you!”

“No problem.” She pushed her feet back into her pumps and folded her jacket over her arm. “Happy to help. It’s hard to believe they fit so much into this waiting room.”

Arms crossed, Julia looked around the room with a skeptical eye. “But even with all the other stuff gone, it seems so small in here.”

“Yeah,” Regan said slowly. “I was thinking that, too.”

She took a few steps toward the couch Adam and Kenny were sitting on just as Carter and Rossick walked up.

“If you get rid of this—”

Julia started to protest, but Regan stopped her.

“Hang on. If you switch it out for a couple of chairs, it’ll open up space against the wall for a toy box or a game station, which will give the kids something to do and keep them off the middle of the floor where other patients could trip on them.”

“Xbox!” Carter held up his hand, which Rossick immediately high-fived.

“For the kids,” Regan laughed. “The
little
kids.”

After a second, Julia nodded. “Good idea. Thanks, we’ll think about it.”

All three doctors grinned back at her. Rossick shot a glance at Julia and Carter, then threw his arm around Regan’s shoulders and tucked his head close to hers.

“Do you type?”

“I’m sold.” Rossick sat back in his chair and propped his feet on the corner of his desk, his Chinese takeout box and chopsticks resting on his stomach. “I mean, hell, look at everything she got done while we were gone.”

“I know.” Jules dropped her chopsticks and empty box into the trash and lifted Regan’s résumé from the desk. “But what about experience?”

“Gimme that.” He took the résumé from her and read it over slowly. “She ran her own business for eight years; that’s got to count for something.”

“I’m talking about medical office experience.”

“So she’s not an MOA,” Rossick scoffed. “Big deal. It’s not like she’s going to be assisting with procedures or anything. She can learn the terminology easily enough and she seems to know how to handle people, so the only thing that might trip her up is the billing system, but she can learn that from the online tutorial.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And you heard her—she’s only looking for something temporary, so if we hire her for a couple months, it’ll give us time to repost the job and find someone besides the ex-con and the crier, and at the same time, she gets to collect a regular paycheck. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

Jules turned to Carter. “What do you think?”

“I’m just a renter, remember? It’s up to you two.” Slouched in the chair closest to the window, he stretched out his legs and folded his hands over this stomach. “If you like her, hire her. If you don’t, then you better get used to answering your own phones.”