“There’s a snake coming down the side of your trailer—right behind you. It was about to slither onto your . . .uh, chest.”
“What the fuck?”
And then she was climbing on me, her arms locked around my neck, her legs circling my waist.
“Whoa.” Out of instinct—and okay, yes, it wasn’t exactly a hardship—I cupped her ass with my hands to keep her from sliding down me.
“Are you fucking serious? Is there a fucking snake near me? Holy fuck.”
“I think you may have just broken the record for the most F-bombs in one sentence.” I turned a little and gestured with my head since my hands were full. “It’s pretty cool, actually. See, it’s just undulating along the ridge there—”
“It isnot cool. Not fucking cool at all. I hate snakes.” She bent her head, burying her face in the crook of my neck as though to block out her view of the reptile. “Palmetto bugs, mice, frogs, skinks . . . whatever, I can deal, but snakes are my hard limit.”
I chuckled, enjoying the feel of soft female wrapped around me. “This one is harmless. It’s just a black snake.”
“I don’t care what color it is.” Her voice was muffled, her lips moving against the sensitive skin on my neck, and my body began to respond, even as I willed it not to.
Clearing my throat, I shifted Emma a little higher so that she didn’t feel my rising, uh, interest. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but there are a couple of different kinds of poisonous snakes in this area, and sometimes it’s hard to tell those from the others. I didn’t think you’d want one perched on your shoulder, regardless.”
“Oh,God.” She moaned, and I swallowed hard. My reaction was only natural, I told myself. When a woman had her hot center pressed against me just north of my dick, her ass in my hands, her tits resting on my chest, and her warm breath brushing over my cheek—not to mention her sex voice singing orgasm phrases into my ear—and a man was going to get a little excited.
“It’s really okay.” I didn’t want to put her down, but I knew I had to do it. Turning my back to the trailer and to the apparently terrifying snake, I stepped off the small deck and set Emma on her feet in the weeds. “Stand here, and I’ll relocate Senor Snake to someplace that is not near your home.”
“You’re not going to kill it, are you?” Emma wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering even in the lingering heat of the day. “I mean, I don’t want it living with me, but I don’t want it to die, either. I get that I’ve invaded its space, not vice verse.”
“Nah, I’m not going to kill it. I’ll just take it over yonder. It’ll be happier in the trees, anyway.” I approached the little guy slowly and grasped him behind the head. Even though his bite wouldn’t kill me, I was well aware that a snake bite didn’t tickle, and I didn’t need that. He tried to rotate around to see who’d interrupted his slow wander down the warm metal siding of Emma’s trailer.
“Be cool, dude,” I told him as we tromped toward the tree line. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just helping you find some new digs.”
Whether he understood me or was just still Zen from sunbathing, he was very chill, relaxing in my hand and slithering away lazily once I deposited him on the forest floor.
“Godspeed. Watch out for owls and hawks. Oh, and if you decide to go visit that trailer again, stay incognito, okay? I’d prefer you don’t give my naturopath heart failure—or chase her away from Florida.”
As I walked back, I realized I’d been speaking the truth. As much as Emma Carson annoyed me every time she contradicted my orders or brought up a different angle to one of my opinions, I had to admit that she made our wing a better place to beat cancer—and it was possible that she made me a better doctor.
Not that I intended to tell her that right now.
“You’re safe.” I came to a halt at one end of her trailer, leaning my hand against it. “And I extracted a promise from him that he wouldn’t return without your express permission.”
Emma rolled her eyes, but I saw her lips quirk. “I’ll just bet you did. I hope you threatened him with a restraining order, should he show his flickery little tongue around here again.”
“You know it.” I was quiet for a moment, watching her. She looked softer here in the twilight, less sure of herself than she did strutting down the hallways of St. Agnes. Or maybe it was the recent snake scare—it was possible that having showed me that weakness made her uncomfortable. “I was beginning to think you were . . . impenetrable.”
“Oh, really? In what way?” She squared her shoulders, straightening her spine. “How am I not able to be . . . penetrated?”
There was just a hint of amused suggestion in her tone. “Maybe that’s not the right word,” I allowed. “It seems like nothing shakes you up. You have this . . .sense of being right. Like you know it, and you never doubt your decisions or what you’re doing.”
A slow smile turned up her lips. “That’s what you think aboutme, huh? Funny, I had almost the same impression of you. You don’t exactly come across like a team player, Dr. Girard. I battle every day just to get my input across to you.” She hesitated. “Having confidence in myself and in my skill set—how I treat patients—if I didn’t have that, I’d have been trampled over a long time ago. At the hospital where I was a resident, there wasn’t time for self-doubt. You found the answer, and you stood by it as right until it was proved otherwise, if in fact it was.” She shrugged. “I like the pace down here a lot better. I appreciate being able to get to know the patients and to get a clear sense of their needs. But I guess my default is always going to be to assume that I have to fight for my way.”
“It’d be nice if we were working on the same side, wouldn’t it?” I pushed off the trailer and approached her. “Maybe instead of both of us assuming that the other is undermining him—or her—we could start from the place where we’re a team. Where we believe we both want the same outcome.”
Emma nodded slowly. “That would be nice.” She took a deep breath, and her T-shirt stretched over her rack. I made a concerted effort not to look. “Should we call it a fresh start, then?”
“Yeah. Let’s do that.”
“Okay.” She fisted her hands and shoved them into the front pockets of her shorts. “You know, I’m not afraid of snakes because I’m, like, a girly girl. I had a—a traumatic experience. When I was ten, we were at my grandparents’ summer home in the mountains. My cousin Biffy—he was a little jackass. He lived to torture me—he hated that I wasn’t afraid of him or anything else. One afternoon, he caught a snake and dropped it down the back of my T-shirt. The thing bit me.”
“Holy shit.”
