It Happened One Night Shift

She glanced at Gareth as she turned to her sleeping patient. His strategy had worked—she wasn’t thinking about the gruesome chore ahead, all she could think about was the kiss.

‘Good grief,’ she said, screwing up her nose as a blast of alcoholic fumes wafted her way. ‘Think I should have put a mask on.’

‘Aromatic, isn’t he?’

‘It’s Martin, right?’ she enquired of Gareth as if they’d been professional acquaintances for twenty years. As if he hadn’t just kissed her and rocked her world.

Gareth nodded. ‘Although he prefers M-Dog apparently.’

Billie blinked. ‘I’m not going to call him M-Dog.’

Gareth laughed. ‘I don’t blame you.’

‘Martin,’ Billie said, raising her voice slightly as she addressed the sleeping patient.

Gareth shook his head. ‘You don’t have much experience with drunk teenage boys, do you? You need to be louder. You don’t hear much in that state.’

She quirked an eyebrow. ‘You talking from experience?’

He grimaced. ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

Billie returned her attention to the patient. ‘Martin!’ she called, louder, firmer. But still nothing.

‘Allow me,’ said Gareth. He gave the teenager’s shoulders a brisk hard shake and barked, ‘Wake up, M-Dog.’

The teenager started, as did Billie, the demand cutting right through her. It was commanding, brooking no argument.

And very sexy.

Had he learned that in the military?

‘Hmm? What?’ the boy asked, trying to co-ordinate himself to sit up and failing.

Billie bit down on her cheek to stop from laughing. ‘I’m Dr Keyes,’ she said as Martin glanced at her through bloodshot eyes. ‘I’m going to put some stitches in that nasty gash in your head.’

‘Is there going to be a scar?’ he asked, his eyes already closing again. ‘Me mum’ll kill me.’

Billie figured that M-Dog should have thought about that before he’d gone out drinking to excess. But, then, her sister Jessica had never been big on responsible drinking either. She guessed that was part and parcel of being a teenager.

For some, anyway.

‘Martin, stay with me,’ Billie said, her voice at the right pitch and command for M-Dog to force his bleary eyes open once again. ‘I’m going to have to put a lot of local anaesthetic in your wound to numb it up. It’s going to sting like the blazes.’

He gave her a goofy grin. ‘Not feelin’ nuthin’ at the moment.’

Billie did laugh this time. ‘Just as well,’ she said, but the teenager was already drifting off. ‘Okay,’ she muttered, taking a deep breath and picking up the syringe. She glanced at Gareth. ‘Here we go.’

Gareth nodded. She looked so much better now. She had pink in her cheeks, her freckles were less obvious and she’d lost that wide-eyed, freaked-out expression.

Billie’s hand trembled as she picked up some gauze and started at the proximal end of the wound, poking the fine needle into the jagged edge and slowly injecting. M-dog twitched a bit and screwed up his face and Billie’s heart leapt, her hand stilling as she waited for him to jerk and try and sit up. But he did nothing like that, his face settling quickly back into the passive droop of the truly drunk.

Clearly he was feeling no pain.

Gareth nodded at her encouragingly and Billie got back to work, methodically injecting lignocaine along the entire length of the wound, with barely a twitch from M-Dog. By the time she’d fully injected down to the distal end, the local had had enough time to start working at the beginning so she got to work.

Her stomach turned at the pull and tug of flesh, at the dull thread of silk through skin, and she peeked at Gareth.

‘Talk to me,’ she said, as he snipped the thread for her on her first neat suture.

He glanced at her, his gaze dropping to her mouth, and the memory of the kiss returned full throttle. ‘What do you want me to talk about?’

Not that, Billie thought, returning her attention to the job at hand. Anything but that. The military. The incident that had caused his demotion, which Helen had hinted at earlier. But neither of those seemed appropriate either. Not that appropriateness hadn’t already been breached tonight. But they needed to steer clear of the personal.

They’d already got way too personal.

‘Tell me about the patients out there.’

And so he did, his deep steady voice accompanying her needlework as they wove and snipped as a team.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_164b737b-1c83-5a1e-91e9-e9ee686cf13c)

THE REST OF the night and the two following were better than Billie could have hoped. The gore was kept to a minimum and she managed to get through them without any more near nervous breakdowns.

Or requiring any more resuscitative kissing.

Not that she wasn’t aware of Gareth looking out for her. Which should probably have been annoying but which she couldn’t help thinking was really sweet. And kind of hot.

She knew the last thing he needed was having a squeamish doctor to juggle as he ran the night shift with military-like efficiency—overseeing the nursing side as well as liaising with the medical side to ensure that the ER ran like a well-oiled machine. But he seemed to take it in his stride as just another consideration to manage.

He was clearly known and well respected by both nurses and doctors alike, he was faultlessly discreet, he knew everybody from the cleaning staff to the ward nurses, he knew where everything was and just about every answer to every procedure and protocol question any of them had.

By the time she’d knocked off on Sunday morning she was well and truly dazzled.

St Luke’s was lucky to have Gareth Stapleton.

Which begged the question—why wasn’t he running the department as he apparently used to? What had happened to cause his demotion? What was the incident Helen had made reference to? Annabel Pearce, the NUM, was good too, but from what Billie could see, Gareth ran rings around her.

Billie yawned as she entered the lift, pushing the button for the top floor. Her mind drifted, as it had done a little too often the last couple of days, to the kiss. She shut her tired eyes and revelled in the skip in her pulse and the heaviness in her belly as she relived every sexy nuance.

Not only could Gareth run a busy city emergency department but he could kiss like no other man she knew.

And Billie had been kissed some before.

She’d had two long-term relationships and a few shorter ones, not to mention the odd fling or two, including a rather risqué one with a lecturer, in the eight years since she’d first lost her virginity at university. She liked sex, had never felt unsatisfied by any of her partners and wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted.

Essentially she’d been with men who knew what they were doing. Who certainly knew how to kiss.

But Gareth Stapleton had just cleared the slate.