Tempted At Twilight

“You’re not even cleared to be back yet, and you get into an altercation with a patient’s boyfriend?”

Elias’s already injured hand was radiating with pain, a reminder of the scuffle he had gotten into, but he remained silent, knowing it was better not to speak until Dr. Lundy was done yelling.

“How can I make you head of trauma if you act so impulsively?”

Impulsive.

It wasn’t the first time he had heard that word used to describe him. Teachers. Girlfriends. Even his own family had said it. But being impulsive wasn’t always a bad thing. His rash decisions had gotten him pretty far.

“With all due respect, ma’am. One of the things that makes me a good trauma surgeon is the fact that I think and act very quickly. I saw a man grab a patient and try to yank her out of the hospital before she could be treated. I feel that my actions were necessary and in the end protected that patient from further harm.”

He was impressed with how calmly he defended himself. He wanted to scream, That guy was an abusive jackass. Somebody should have kicked his ass a long time ago. But he kept that in. Sometimes he did think before he acted.

“You punched him!” she roared. “Hard enough to break his nose, and even if I cared about his face or the potential lawsuit that might be coming, it doesn’t compare to how much I care about your hands. What good is a surgeon who cannot operate? Right now, you are a highly paid pain in my behind.”

He had never heard the normally proper chief speak that way, but he had never seen her this enraged before, either. “I was only in the hospital to try to make myself useful. Even if I can’t operate, I can work in the ER. I can still see patients.”

“No, you cannot. I handpicked your orthopedic surgeon and your occupational therapist. They have both reported to me that you are nowhere near able to return to surgery, that even if you weren’t a surgeon, that you would need to be on light duty. Working in the ER in the biggest, busiest hospital in Miami isn’t anyone’s idea of light duty. And taking into account your penchant for championing the abused and less fortunate, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ban you from the hospital until you are medically cleared.”

“You’re banning me!” He’d never thought it would have come to that. At most he’d thought she would yell at him and relegate him to paperwork, which he would be fine with, because he loved being in the hospital. He loved the sights and the smells and knowing that what he did made a difference. He didn’t have much else in his life at the moment. His siblings were all very happily married and busy with their own families. There was no special woman to go home to. His life revolved around the hospital. He ate all his meals there. He slept there much of the time. Hell, all the people he socialized with worked there. He wasn’t sure what he would do with himself if he couldn’t come to work.

“Yes, you are banned. I have put an alert out to all the security guards that if they find you here, you are to be escorted out. Your swipe card has been deactivated.”

“You’re treating me like a criminal!”

“No, I’m treating you like an asset that needs to be protected.” She took a calming breath. “You are probably one of the most talented young surgeons I’ve seen in years, and you are excelling in a difficult, highly specialized field. You want to take over as head of trauma, but how can I promote you if I can’t trust you to act rationally? Your hand is not even a quarter of the way healed, and you go and punch someone. Did you think about your career? Did you think about the potentially irrevocable damage you could have done to your future?”

The truth was he hadn’t thought of it at all. He’d just acted. That big guy dragging that scared woman through the ER had made his blood boil. He wished he could say that if it happened again, he would have called security or ignored it, but he knew himself too well. Hand damage be damned. He still would’ve knocked that guy on his ass and given him a big taste of his own medicine.

He had two sisters. He hoped some guy would do the same for them if they were ever in that situation.

“You have nothing to say to that?”

“Nothing that wouldn’t cause you to yell at me again.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Go home, Dr. Bradley. In fact, leave Miami. You’ll be out of commission for quite some time. Do something you wouldn’t normally do. But considering the way you broke your hand, maybe you should sit in a room and not move for a couple of months.”

A couple of months.

A nauseating twinge rolled in his stomach. He didn’t think he could sit at home for a couple of months. He was immediately mad at himself again for breaking his hand. He had been doing one of those extreme mud runs with his brother and brother-in-law. He had crawled under barbed wire and had been submerged in a fifty-foot pool of mud. He had even run through fire, only to get tangled in the cargo net. He was on his way down when his foot got caught, and as he yanked it free, the runner just above him lost his balance and they both fell. The other guy had landed on top of Elias as he had put his hands out to break his fall. It was almost a twenty-foot drop.

He had replayed the incident in his mind a thousand times that day, but there was no way he could have prevented it. No way he could have changed the outcome. He had badly broken his hand and wrist, the pain so extreme he had passed out for a moment. He had to have surgery, from which he had yet to heal. His hand had already been swollen and practically immobile before he punched the guy. He was surprised he’d even been able to make a fist. Lord knew he couldn’t do anything else with it. But that was the power of adrenaline.

His older brother, Carlos, was a baseball superstar who had been on the disabled list for nearly a year because of a ruptured Achilles tendon. Elias had lectured him about overdoing it, demanded that Carlos rest, acted like the smug doctor he was. But when he was doling out that advice, he’d never thought he would end up in nearly the same situation.

“Get out of my office, Dr. Bradley. You have been working nonstop since medical school. You’re a young man. Take some time to enjoy yourself.”

He stood up and left the hospital. It wasn’t bad advice. He just didn’t know how the hell he was going to do it.

* * *

Cricket Warren glanced at her phone...again. Only four minutes had passed since she’d last looked, but those four minutes seemed like a hundred years to her. She was seated in the bar area of a small oceanfront restaurant on Hideaway Island, waiting for a ghost from her past to appear. Well...maybe ghost wasn’t the right word, but she wasn’t sure what to call the person she was supposed to be meeting. They certainly weren’t friends. They never had been. Just two people who happened to be born to parents who ran in the same social circle.

“Miss? Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink?” the bartender asked her from behind the bar. “It’s still happy hour for another fifteen minutes. Drinks are half-price. Our special is pineapple margaritas. They come in a pineapple cup. Everyone seems to like them.”

Cricket was tempted. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she must look kind of sad sitting in a bar by herself, twiddling her thumbs. “Oh, I probably shouldn’t. I’m still waiting for my friend.”

“Your friend is late,” a man said. He was sitting at the end of the bar with a domestic beer in his hand. His back had been to her most of the time she was there, his eyes glued to some sporting event on the large television over the bar, but she had definitely noticed him. She didn’t have to see his face to know he was one of those hypermasculine men whose pheromones filled the air and made otherwise sensible women turn into a pool of senseless goopy jelly. His was broad backed, tall, muscular. He sat up very straight, which Cricket’s mother would have appreciated. He wore his inky-black hair in overlong curls, which might have been considered boyish or feminine on another man, but worked on him. He was brown skinned, some beautiful shade that she couldn’t begin to describe. And just when she decided that she had better stop cataloging his features, he turned to face her.

Well...damn.

He might be the most gorgeous man she had ever laid eyes on, and a tiny spark of recognition went off in her brain. She had seen this man before, but she couldn’t immediately place where she would have met such an extraordinary-looking human.

Maybe in her dreams.

“Yes,” she said quietly, hoping he wouldn’t hear her embarrassing breathlessness. “My friend is quite late.”

“Have a drink. They won’t get mad at you. And if they do, they aren’t the kind of friend you need.”

She opened her mouth to speak but then hesitated.

“I’ll buy you the drink. My sister-in-law loves those pineapple things. You should try it.”

Cricket was twenty-nine years old. She spoke four languages fluently and had studied with the best and brightest around the world, but she’d never had a stranger offer to buy her a drink in a bar.

Ever.

But then again, guys never made passes at pudgy girls with two PhDs who were named after bugs.

“Say yes,” the man said to her, the corner of his mouth curling in an appealing way.

She swallowed hard and warned herself not to be the awkward person she was ninety-nine percent of the time. “I need to know who I’m saying yes to.”

“Elias.” He got off his stool and walked over to her, his hand extended.

“Cricket,” she responded absently as she took note of his hand. Normally she introduced herself as Cree, because scientists named after bugs didn’t usually garner respect, but this time she had forgotten and introduced herself by her given name.

He had recently had surgery. There was a barely healed incision running from his wrist all the way up the palm of his hand and one along his thumb.

“Do you inspect everyone’s hand you shake so closely?” he asked. It was then she realized that she hadn’t shaken his hand at all—she was holding it with both of hers as her thumb ran along the still-angry incision line.

“You shouldn’t be shaking my hand. Yours is swollen. You should wave, or do that head-nod thingy that guys do.”

“Would a wink suffice?” He took the chair next to her at the four-top.

“Oh, no. Winks can be kind of creepy, don’t you think?”

He smiled at her, fully this time, showing off a set of perfectly white teeth. He became even more gorgeous, if that were possible. “They could be sexy, too. I guess it depends on who is doing the winking.”