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  This was all very curious.

  “Dr. Rhoades.” One of our nurses stuck her head in through the lounge doorway. “Dr. McKnight from the emergency department is on the phone. He says he’s got a facial laceration consult. You’re on call tonight, right?”

  “You’re on call tonight?” Hilary asked. “Why didn’t you trade with someone since it’s your birthday? I could’ve done it if you’d asked ahead of time.” Her tone was a combination of surprise and condemnation. I’d obviously reinforced her belief I was deliberately keeping busy with work to avoid social obligations. But really, I just wanted the extra money. Every penny I made was being tucked away for my future house. I had my heart set on a place right on the shoreline, and those did not come cheap.

  “I like taking call. And besides, everyone else has kids to go home to.” I turned to the nurse. “Please tell him I’ll be right there.” I could deal with this patient and still make it to dinner on time. I just wouldn’t be able to run home to my apartment and change first.

  I raised my hand and waved to the remaining birthday crowd. It had thinned, and I realized my other partners had already returned to work.

  “Thanks, everyone, for the wonderful birthday party. Sorry to carb-load and dash, but duty calls.”

  A few voices called out another round of birthday wishes as Hilary and Gabby followed me into the waiting room. I turned back toward them before leaving the office.

  “And a big, fat thanks to you two for spilling the beans about my birthday.” I shook my finger at them, but once again, Hilary was unimpressed by my impotent frustration, and I was secretly glad. I had to admit, I felt a little warm and fuzzy down deep inside, knowing the group had gone to this trouble on my behalf. Sure, maybe they just wanted cake, but they had all clapped when I blew out the candles.

  “Não há problema.” Gabby smiled. “By the way—”

  Hilary interrupted her sister. “I know you secretly wanted us to make a fuss.”

  I laughed out loud at her misplaced certainty. “No, I really didn’t. But I appreciate the gesture.”

  “Someone needs to teach you how to have fun, Evie. Live a little.” Her smile was oversized for the occasion.

  Gabby reached over and squeezed my arm. “I could send my friend Axel over to your apartment later for a foda pena. He’s lots of fun.”

  “What’s a foda pena?”

  “It’s a pity fu—”

  “Shh!” I hissed and made a chopping motion across my throat.

  Delle, the receptionist, had deftly and strategically positioned herself behind them to listen to our conversation. Honestly, the woman weighed more than a linebacker, but she could sneak up and eavesdrop like a professional assassin. She wasn’t brigade leader of the birthday ninjas by accident.

  I made my way from the plastic surgery center office down two flights of stairs and several hallways before arriving at the emergency department. Everyone I encountered along the way greeted me with a broad smile and even a few chuckles. Either news of my birthday had spread or I still wasn’t accustomed to how friendly the locals were.

  The Bell Harbor ED was a busy place, but not nearly as chaotic as where I’d trained in Chicago. Emergencies around here tended to be of the beach resort variety, and the whole department had a polite atmosphere. Not that there weren’t car accidents and heart attacks and dramatic things of that sort, but nobody around here ever got stabbed or shot. There weren’t gang signs spray-painted on the side of the ambulance bay, and I hadn’t seen a strung-out hooker in months.

  I pushed open the metal doors. A nurse in green scrubs seemed to skip a step at my entrance, then she too smiled wide. Her dark, wavy hair was twisted up in a bun, and I was nearly certain her name was Lecia, but since I wasn’t positive, I just smiled back. Nurses really hate it when you call them by the wrong name. I learned that the hard way in medical school.

  “Hi, Dr. Rhoades. You’re fancy today. Are you here for the face lac?”

  “Fancy?”

  She pointed at my head.

  Oh!

  No.

  Really?

  I reached up, and yep, there it was. The tiara. I yanked it from my head, ripping out hair along with it. How could I have forgotten the flippin’ tiara? No wonder everyone kept grinning at me.

  “Sorry. It’s my birthday,” I mumbled and tossed it into the nearby trash can. I brushed my hair back from my face, feeling heat steal over my cheeks. I bet I was turning splotchy too. Oh, the joys of being fair skinned. “And yes, I’m here for the face lac. What’s the story?”

  She led me toward a curtained area. “Twenty-seven-year-old Caucasian male versus a fifth of whiskey and a boat dock.”

  “What?”

  “He ran into a boat dock while drunk driving a Jet Ski. Broke the fall with his face. But according to his story, he did not spill any of his drink.”

  Her brows lifted as she nodded, clearly impressed by the order of his priorities. She pulled his chart from the rack and handed it to me, adding, “But he’s pretty, and he doesn’t want a scar.”

  She shoved the curtain to the side while I looked over his stats.

  Tyler Connelly. Twenty-seven. Good vital signs. No employer listed. I stepped closer to get a better look.

  He was tall and broad. I could tell that much, even as he lay on the stretcher. His eyes were closed, and his hair was messy with the sort of blond highlights that came from spending hours in the sun. That explained the tan too, which covered all that I could see except for his face—which had a slightly ashen pallor and showed signs of bruising on one side. A white section of gauze was taped along his jawline, from under his chin halfway back toward his left ear.

  I tucked the chart under my arm. “Mr. Connelly, I’m Dr. Rhoades.”

  A soft snore came from the bed.

  I looked at the nurse, who was fussing with a blood pressure cuff.

  “Well, you’ve obviously managed his pain well enough,” I said drily.

  She chuckled. “We haven’t given him anything. Whiskey, remember? He was half-anesthetized when he got here.”

  “On a Tuesday afternoon?”

  It wasn’t unusual for emergency department clientele to be drunk, but this patient didn’t look like your average derelict. He was muscular and well fed, and even with the pale hue and gauze stuck to his jaw, that was one aesthetically pleasing face. Rugged model material. Not that I was affected by that sort of thing. But damn, this was a good-looking man.

  I moved right up next to the bed and raised my voice. “Mr. Connelly, wake up.”

  He twitched and opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and a little glassy, but even so, they were still the prettiest, lightest blue I’d ever seen in my life.

  I glanced at his chart once more.

  Twenty-seven.

  Unemployed.

  Intoxicated.

  Damn.

  And damn again.

  He looked at me and blinked—slow—as if his brain was downloading the instructions on how to do that. Then a lazy smile lifted one corner of his mouth.

  “Wow,” he said on a sigh as he closed his eyes again. “Sexiest nurses in this place.”

  The real nurse chuckled again, then leaned in close to his ear and shouted, “Hey! Sleeping Beauty! Wake up. This is the doctor. And she’s going to put stitches in your face, so you might want to show a little respect.”

  Oh, I liked her! Whatever her name was.

  His eyes popped open at her words, and he blinked faster. I could see his gaze slowly coming into focus. He looked me over, as if taking in a mental inventory of all my various parts.

  “You’re the doctor?”

  I got that reaction a lot. The price of being a short, curvy redhead in the land of tall, lab-coated men and their biggie-sized egos. But if my mother had taught me anything, it was how to nev
er let anyone make me feel like less than I was. I wasn’t about to be reduced by an unemployed twenty-seven-year-old who had nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than get drunk and play with his man toys. I crossed my arms and lifted my chin, making me at least half an inch taller.

  “Yes, Mr. Connelly. I’m Dr. Evelyn Rhoades, a board-certified plastic surgeon. I hear you had an accident today, so I’m going to take that bandage off your face and take a look. Got it?”

  I set the chart down and moved over to the other side of the bed.

  “Sure. Yeah. Of course.” His small nod ended in a grimace, maybe due to pain caused by his injuries, or more than likely, the onset of his inevitable hangover. The aroma of alcohol permeated the air around him. Not the stale, sour stench that usually accompanied homeless alcoholics. This was more of a sweet, cloying smell, like bubbly pink champagne left out after a party. Mixed with cocoa butter. Apparently my booze-swizzling patient was not so irresponsible as to forgo sunscreen.

  “Are you in any discomfort, Mr. Connelly?” I asked.

  “I’m fine.” His glance told me he had more to say but that whatever it was had nothing to do with his medical condition and everything to do with his impression of me. He seemed intrigued but a little suspicious.

  “Dr. McKnight is treating his arm and shoulder,” the nurse said. “We’re waiting on some X-rays, but he doesn’t appear to have any fractures or signs of concussion.”

  I pulled on purple latex gloves. “It sounds like you could have been hurt much worse, Mr. Connelly. Statistically speaking, you were lucky.”

  His ridiculously silver-blue eyes met mine. “Yeah, I’m a lucky guy.” He started to chuckle but seemed to reconsider and coughed instead. His hands moved guardedly to his chest, indicating some level of pain. Even though he was covered by a blue-speckled hospital gown, I noticed all kinds of muscles flexing and squeezing as he did that.

  His, and mine.

  Damn you, Gabby and your foda pena!

  I nudged a black rolling stool closer to the stretcher with my knee while a voice in my head reminded me he was twenty-seven. And unemployed. And drunk.

  And a patient! There was that little matter as well.

  “Mr. Connelly, I’m here to address your facial injury, so let’s deal with that first.”

  I ignored the way his gown slipped off his shoulder as he readjusted on the bed. I ignored the edge of his deltoid tattoo peeking out from the shifting fabric too. It didn’t allure me in any way. I was a professional. I would simply concentrate on his injury, not his physique. Just because Hilary and Gabby thought I needed some sexual gymnastics, and just because it had been ages since my last horizontal workout with a man, and just because it was my birthday, this man-boy from Neverland was certainly not what I needed. What I needed was to get to work.

  The nurse started setting up a suture tray without being asked, while I gently peeled off the gauze.

  My patient had a jagged laceration running along the edge of his jaw, ending at his chin. It was about three centimeters long, deep but not all the way to the bone. Still, a wound like this would require a multilayer closure, and he’d most definitely have a scar. I could keep it minimal, though. I’d leave him dashing rather than disfigured. I could do that. I had mad skills.

  “You’re going to need some stitches, Mr. Connelly. Have you ever had stitches before?” I pressed at the skin.

  He chuckled again. “Plenty of times.”

  “Are you accident-prone?” I’m not sure why I asked him that. It wasn’t medically relevant, but something tugged at me, an inconvenient curiosity about how this patient spent his time.

  “No. I just don’t like sitting still.” His voice was deep, with a pleasant raspy quality. The kind of voice that might make a less professional woman think illicit thoughts. Fortunately for him, and for me, I wasn’t that kind of woman. Most of the time.

  “What types of injuries have you had in the past?” I asked, while continuing to not peek at that tattoo.

  He sighed, as if pondering my question hurt his head, which, under the circumstances, it probably did.

  “Dislocated shoulder, torn ACL. Wrist fracture. Split my forehead snowboarding once.” He reached up and touched the corner of his right eyebrow, indicating a pale scar.

  I might have noticed that scar had I not been avoiding eye contact. I leaned closer to examine it. He turned toward me just as I did, and I found myself thinking it was diabolically unfair that any man should have such thick, dark lashes while mine required copious amounts of mascara.

  “Do you want to hear them all?” he asked. “I told the other doctor everything.”

  I straightened up again and glanced at the nurse. “Could you hand me the chart, please?” She did and I flipped through it, taking in the laundry list of his previous injuries thoroughly documented by Dr. McKnight. Broken bones, sprains, contusions. This guy was either clumsy as hell or a full-throttle adrenaline junkie. And he looked a little too muscular to be clumsy.

  “Well, Mr. Connelly, aside from all the physical damage done to your person before today, would you say you’re in generally good health?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ma’am?

  Oh. That one stung. I was a feminist through and through, but no woman under seventy-five wants to be called ma’am. He may as well have called me granny. Sharp, useless distress pierced my lungs. Maybe this birthday thing was bothering me more than I realized. I suddenly felt . . . dare I say . . . crotchety?

  “Don’t you think it’s rather reckless to be on a Jet Ski while drinking whiskey?”

  Oh, yes. That was most decidedly crotchety. I could feel my lips pinching around the word whiskey like a prohibition-era preacher’s wife.

  But my facially gifted young patient just laughed. “Yeah, the whiskey was a bad decision. But I gave up beer for Lent. Plus I didn’t plan to be on the Jet Ski. That was sort of an accident.”

  I couldn’t imagine how one accidentally ended up on a Jet Ski, but really, this was none of my business. It wasn’t my job to pass judgment on this unleashed puppy. It was only my job to fix what he’d broken. Not to mention the fact that I was pretty sure Lent was somewhere around Easter, and since it was June, he was obviously not going to give me straight answers anyway. Time to mind my own business and get to work.

  “Well, let’s give you some stitches and get you out of here.”

  The nurse turned, and I finally caught sight of her ID badge. Her name was Susie. Where the hell had I gotten Lecia? This was precisely the reason why I needed to be careful addressing anyone by name. I could not be trusted to get it right. I could list all the muscles in the human body, but ask me to name the clerical staff in my own office, much less random nurses in the emergency department, and I’d be sunk.

  “Thank you, Susie,” I called out as she walked away to tend to another patient.

  I got myself situated with my instruments and supplies at hand and set about suturing this laceration. This was what I excelled at. Not names. Not chatting. This was my groove. The buzz of voices and pings of medical machinery blended into a common hum around me. This was the background noise of a better portion of my life, and I typically found the commotion soothing.

  Not so much today as I tried to focus on the wound in front of me. But it wasn’t the noise or the chaos of the busy emergency department distracting me. It was Mr. Connelly’s face. From a purely scientific standpoint, his appearance was mesmerizing. He had a nearly perfect symmetry to his features, right down to his matching dimples, and very few people have that sort of balance. It was fascinating. That’s why I kept looking at him. For science.

  As a scientist, I also couldn’t help but appreciate the broad musculature of his wide shoulders or the sinews of his forearm, which moved when he folded his hands over his lean, flat abdomen. There was probably a six-pack under that gown too. Not to me
ntion some other fine example of well-proportioned mass.

  Wow. Was it warm in here? I think it was warm in here. Or maybe this birthday had triggered my first perimenopausal hot flash. Because I couldn’t possibly be getting this hot and bothered just because Mr. Connelly was attractive. That kind of thing never affected me. I created beautiful faces for a living. And besides that, he was only twenty-seven years old, for goodness’ sake. Eight years younger than me. And he’d called me ma’am!

  This was Delle and Hilary and Gabby’s fault, putting crazy, lusty thoughts into my head. That’s what the problem was.

  Now maybe if I was a twentysomething-year-old woman, this agitation would be logical, in spite of his apparent lack of common sense or gainful employment. Or then again . . . maybe it wouldn’t. My twenties had been spent in medical school, and then residency, and then a fellowship after that. I’d studied while my peers had partied and slept around. They had gone on spring break, and I had taken that extra time to volunteer at a free clinic. My parents taught me work always came before play. And this guy was all play.

  Still, there was a secret part of me who missed never having been frivolous and carefree and stupid. Not stupid enough to play chicken with a boat dock, but maybe stupid enough to be drunk in the middle of the week.

  An unexpectedly remorseful sigh escaped before I could catch it.

  “You getting bored?” My patient’s eyes were closed again, but a little crook bent the corners of his mouth.

  “I’m doing a procedure, Mr. Connelly. I’m never bored during a procedure,” I answered.