NYC Angels: One Night in Manhattan

“Don’t tell me you finally met a woman who caught your interest and she turned you down flat.”

“Fine. I won’t tell you.” Brandon didn’t look directly at his friends, just took a sip of the soda he’d not really planned to return to when he’d gone to the bar to introduce himself to the most alluring woman he’d ever met.

“Wow.” Ryan glanced toward where Olivia sat talking with the bartender and studied her intently. “She really turned you down?”

What was with his pals? It wasn’t as if any of them hadn’t ever struck out. Okay, maybe it had been years, but they were all just as single as he was. Not that he wasn’t happily single. He was. He’d devoted his life to the children’s hospital, not to pursuing women. He hadn’t regretted that devotion. How could he when his own sister had benefited from Angel’s hospitality many years before? Had inspired his becoming a doctor?

“He’s not even denying it,” Ryan accused incredulously. “Ouch. She must really have been less than impressed by our boy.”

“Man, not boy,” Brandon corrected. “Just because you all find me irresistible doesn’t mean everyone does. Unfortunately.” He turned slightly toward the beauty who’d caught his eye with her long black hair, ivory skin, and big green eyes. She still chatted with the bartender, toying with the straw in her drink, and looking way too vulnerable sitting alone at the bar. Everything about her called to him as surely as if he heard the beat of her heart beckoning him to return and dance to her tune.

“Uh-oh. Somebody has it bad,” Ryan teased, slapping Brandon’s shoulder playfully.

Maybe. Definitely, he’d never been instantly taken with a woman before. For that matter, he couldn’t even recall the last time a woman had interested him. He barely dated and when he had, the relationships never lasted more than a few weeks.

“One has to wonder at her sanity for blowing a guy like you off,” Becky mused, shaking her head in wonder.

“Ha, if you heard his lame pick-up lines, you’d have blown him off, too,” Ryan assured, taking a swig of his longneck then glancing toward the bar. “I should go introduce her to a real man.”

“There’s a real man here? Besides me?” Brandon made a pretense of glancing around the table.

“Where?” he teased, although the thought of some other man catching Olivia’s eye, possibly getting that invitation to share a drink and dinner with her, made him want to spit nails rather than joke around. “Oh! You meant you.”

Everyone at the table burst into laughter, ribbing Ryan, who perhaps hadn’t ever struck out with a woman. Never that Brandon knew of, but Ryan didn’t discuss his life outside the hospital.

“A real man, eh? Who was it who had his manhood shot down? Not me,” Ryan reminded, not looking in the slightest concerned by the teasing.

Brandon took another sip of his drink and shrugged as if the rejection had been no big deal.

“Just as well since I’ll be in sunny California a month from now working on my tan while you pull out your winter coats.” A couple of groans went around the table. “Would hate to leave a pretty little thing behind with a broken heart.”

“You guys are awful,” another of the neurology department nurses teased. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were all womanizers.”

“Guess it’s a good thing I’m leaving before you figure out the truth,” Brandon countered, leaning back in his seat, thinking how much he was going to miss his colleagues. They were so much more than mere coworkers. They were his friends. His family.

His only family.

No, he wouldn’t think about Bev, how he’d been responsible for ruining her life and would spend the rest of his making up for that wrong. Just as well for Olivia that she had given him the boot. Smart woman.

Becky’s lips pouted. “You could always change your mind about leaving. Angel’s needs you.”

From having been a family member of a patient who had received loving care at New York’s first and finest free children’s hospital to dedicating his own life to serve other children there, the Angel Mendez Children’s hospital’s was the best thing that had happened to Brandon. Ever.

But he wanted to do more to help his patients. Lots more. His decision to research new treatment modalities for brain injury had been the right one.

His gaze went back to the bar and collided with brilliant green. Long black lashes swept down and pink tinged Olivia’s high cheeks, as if she was embarrassed at having been caught watching him. Then, through the throng of people moving between them, he watched as her gaze lifted to his.

In that instant, everything in the loud, crowded room peeled back to where it was just the two of them.

No words were mouthed.

No words were needed.

Their eyes conveyed everything.

She felt everything he did. She wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her. He knew she did. Feeling the tightening in his gut, the way his breath failed to fully oxygenate his lungs, he amended to almost as much as he wanted her.

As if she truly could read his thoughts, she nodded. No smile, no come-hither look, no crook of her finger. Just a nod.

That was all it took to set him into action.

“Excuse me, guys. You’ll understand if a better offer has come up.”

“A better offer?”

All his friends turned toward the bar, saw Olivia looking their way. She didn’t attempt to hide her interest in him, just sat there, proudly waiting for the storm brewing between them to engulf them both.

Lead him to the wind and rain. He was ready to be blown away by the gale of a lifetime.

“Well, I’ll be. Guess our boy didn’t strike out after all,” Ryan mused, scratching his head and pretending to be perplexed at how that could have happened.

“Man, not boy,” Brandon called over his shoulder, wondering at how his heart pounded against his rib cage, at how his blood rushed through his veins, at how excitement electrified every cell in his body.

He had never picked up a woman in a bar before. Not even during college. He hadn’t lived the life of a saint by any means, but his sexual experiences had been with women he’d known and respected, women that he’d had a mutual understanding with that he had other life obligations and wasn’t interested in a relationship, just fulfilling physical need from time to time. Was that what this was? Fulfilling physical need?

It was the most this could be because he’d signed a contract to go to California. He’d handed in his resignation, was leaving New York and starting over where the sun shined all year long.

Only, at the moment, he couldn’t imagine anything brighter, hotter, than the woman staring right into his soul.

***

What was she doing? Olivia asked herself for the hundredth, maybe thousandth time, since she’d met Brandon’s gaze and nodded.

She didn’t do this. She just didn’t.

Yet here she was unlocking the door to her just-moved-into apartment, a gorgeous stranger at her side.

She wasn’t so foolish as to think inviting a man she’d just met into her apartment was a wise move. Yet, she wasn’t afraid.

Perhaps it was because of what the bartender had said.

Perhaps it was because of the easy camaraderie he’d shared with his friends.

Perhaps it was the easy conversation that had flowed between the two of them while she ate her dinner and shared her sweet potato fries with him in what had been both fun and a seduction all its own.

Perhaps it was something instinctive that said he was trustworthy. He was someone she should crack open the spine to, so to speak, and study the contents within because discovering his story would change her own story forever.

Perhaps it was the crazy chemistry that had fallen over her the moment she’d glanced up into his handsome face.