Luke

“Is that all you think about, food?” Guy asked, and slapped his pockets. “Sorry, I’ve got nothing.”

With a sigh, Faith pulled a granola bar from her own pocket and after splitting it three ways, stuffed her portion in her mouth. When she realized they were staring at her, she stopped in mid-chew, not easy with homemade granola. “What?”

Guy shook his head at Shelby. “She’s going to deny it, so don’t even bother to say anything.”

“Say what?”

“Say that the sparks bouncing between you and the good Dr. Walker are threatening to burn the place down,” Shelby said.

“Sparks?” Faith laughed. “Of course there’s sparks. We rub each other the wrong way. I’m just sorry you’re picking up on the temper between us. I know that’s not good for a calm work environment.”

Guy and Shelby looked at each other, then grinned.

Faith eyed them warily. “What now?”

“We’re talking about sexual sparks, Faith,” Guy told her.

“You remember the word sexual, right?” Shelby lifted her brow suggestively. “Even though you haven’t had any sex since the nineties.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Faith forced another laugh even though, pathetically, Shelby was right. “Of course I remember….” Sort of. “But there’s nothing between us, sexual or otherwise.”

“Really? ’Cuz I could have heated my lunch burrito off the heat between you two.” Guy studied his fingernails. He’d painted the pinkies dark purple, which matched the stripe in his hair. “Probably would have burned it.”

Faith’s stomach growled. “You had a burrito?”

“Concentrate, hon.” Shelby patted her perfect hair. “The good doctor is an amazing specimen. We know you noticed.”

Faith would rather talk about burritos, extra fat please. Of course, that’s why Shelby looked like a glamorous actress playing at being an overworked medical professional while Faith looked like…well, like an overworked medical professional.

“All that rough-and-tumble masculinity, combined with his take-me-as-I-am attitude. Wow.” Shelby fanned herself. “And his bedside manner…made my knees weak.”

“Mine, too,” said Guy, also fanning himself.

“So…” Shelby, a woman who liked men as much as Faith liked…air, looked at her. “Are you going to do him?”

Faith nearly choked on the last swallow of granola. “Not everyone is interested is ‘doing’ a man who is overly confident and too gorgeous for his own good.”

“Speak for yourself,” Guy muttered.

Shelby looked at her watch. “Look, sex is supposed to be fun. I realize you might have forgotten that, but…”

No, Faith remembered that much about sex. Barely. “I remember, but at the moment, I have to go talk to a seventeen-year-old who wants birth control pills.”

Both Shelby and Guy suitably sobered. “Well, don’t tell her how fun it is,” Shelby advised. “Kids shouldn’t know that.”

Faith walked down the hall, practicing her abstinence speech in her head, but it seemed old-fashioned, even if she wholeheartedly believed in it for all seventeen-year-olds. But these days she had to be more realistic, and she needed to be armed with more advice than look but don’t touch.

It turned out there wasn’t just seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Stone in room seven, but her boyfriend as well, if the fact that they were thigh-to-thigh and holding hands meant anything.

Oh, and one Dr. Luke Walker, sitting right in front of them, all comfy cozy in the third patient chair. Elizabeth and the boy were smiling, and so was Luke. He was leaning back, one long leg crossed over the other, looking utterly at ease as he discussed the advantages of condoms for sex, every single time.

All three of them looked up at her when she entered, and Luke handed her Liz’s chart.

“Thanks for the appointment,” Elizabeth said to Dr. Walker, and with a smile at Faith, she and her boyfriend left.

Faith looked at Luke. “What are you doing?”

“Your receptionist asked me to handle some of your patients. You’re backed up.”

You’re backed up. Not we. Of course not we, he wasn’t a part of them, he was simply fulfilling what he considered a punishment by his hospital. “What did Elizabeth say?”

“She refused to discuss abstinence so we talked about STDs until she turned green. Then we talked about condoms.”

Faith would’ve given them the same talk about sexually transmitted diseases so she had no idea why she felt the need to argue with him. Had she wanted him to disappoint her? Was she that shallow simply because he had been?

He yawned, and in an absent gesture, scratched his chest. Then he looked at his watch.

“Long day?”

They stood so close she could see his eyes weren’t just that light see-through blue, they had specks of a darker blue dancing in them. Combined with the shadow on his jaw and his sleepy eyes, he seemed edgy, almost unbearably, effortlessly…sexy. Damn him.

And he still smelled like woodsy soap and one hundred percent perfect pure man. How annoying was that when she knew the only thing that she smelled like was disinfectant soap.

Pass the chocolate, please.

“Long couple of nights,” he admitted, and something about the weariness in his voice caught her because she suspected this was an actual moment of vulnerability, something he didn’t often show to a mere mortal like herself.

Then Shelby poked her head around the corner. “There you are. Amy Sinclair, in room three with another migraine. We’ve got aromatherapy and acupressure going but she asked for you, Faith.”

When she was gone, she felt Luke’s tension and braced herself.

“Aromatherapy.” He said this like it was a bad word. “As in…candles?”

“Essential oils.”

“For a migraine?”

“Or for any of a hundred other things. With essential oils you can treat sinus problems or use the oils as a sedative. Or even stimulate cell regeneration. They’re also useful as an antiseptic—”

“You realize there are conventional medicines for such things.”

“Conventional medicine hasn’t worked for this patient.”