1
CALLIE
I’m rushed off my feet. It’s a normal, chaotic morning at the hospital.
“Hi!” Smiling, I peek around the curtain to the patient I’ve been told to dress their wound, and there’s a male thundercloud, half in a dark-blue suit that’s rumpled but still looks amazing in a way that says it can only have been expensive. His jacket is discarded, and his white shirt has been ripped open at the shoulder. He has a short grey beard peppered with black. His silver hair is in disarray, and his mouth, oh wow, his mouth is a line of perfect irritation expressed with soft pink lines. He looks absolutely furious.
And gorgeous. Mature, with darkness and authority.
He’s surrounded by younger men, mostly in a variety of black T-shirts, and a couple in suits. They seem exhausted.
The man on the bed looks up, right into my face, and it’s a jolt like lightning. Electricity crackles in the air between us. His blue eyes are the colour of the midday sky. His jaw is square, and his nose is straight, with elegance a nose has no business having. Every part of his face is almost a cliché of being the ideal, with just enough character added forflavour. He’s older, for sure, but the sort of older that has grown into himself. As though when he were younger he’d have been too shiny and perfect, but age has made him more compelling.
Does everyone feel like this when they look at this man? I’m caught in a freeze-frame. I couldn’t move even if a bomb went off. There’s something about him. I’m utterly captured.
“Who are you?” he snaps.
For a second, I can’t close my mouth or speak, so the correct answer is “a fish”. I can’t stop staring at this man, and I have zero thoughts in my head. Nothing. Nada.
Then I see that the ugly circular wound on his upper right arm.
From a bullet.
Ope.
I take a deep breath, and put on my cheeriest, don’t kill me, expression. “I’m Callie. I’m the nurse who’ll help you with dressing that wound.”
Patients tend to respond better to me when I make the effort to be happy. Especially when they’ve been shot at.
And are like a bear with a sore head.
“Hurry up about it,” he growls.
Or, arm, as the case may be.
I take in his wound with a practiced eye, figuring out what I’ll need. “I’ll be back in a minute with the dressings.”
“I don’t have all day.” He scowls.
I clearly misread that moment between us. He’s a total grump.
“I need to get items from the store cupboard,” I explain brightly, and draw away, pulling the curtain around again.
“This is totally unnecessary,” he grumbles, just before I’m out of earshot.
But he’s still there when I return with all the things I need, and one of the younger men is standing facing the man on the bed, with his chin up and his arms crossed, as I nip through the closed curtain. “You passed out, Sir. What were we supposed to do?”
“I was fine,” the older man grunts, and the younger man gulps, visibly nervous.
Or scared? Why?
Hmm. Am I really asking that question? This is London. There’s only one type of person who gets shot and then has a gaggle of men around him.
A mafia boss. But they’re usually super rich? They don’t need to go to normal hospitals like this.
“Our medic was dead, you were down and looked like you were about to die, and we made the call that we needed you to live.” The young man is really trying to hold his own.
For a second, I stand there like a lemon, staring. But collecting my wits, I approach the bedside of the patient. His men—that seems an appropriate term for them—part respectfully to allow me access.
