Page 8 of Late Harvest

The ice cracked a bit. “You always have my gratitude, Brinder. You’ve gone from being one of my favorite residents on rotation to now being my boss. And a really good one at that.” She gifted his sister’s husband a close-lipped smile.

Bash studied her. No, she wasn’t beaming. He had a sense Scrub Angel didn’t do that often—or ever. Still, though small, it held real warmth behind it. Freaking Brinder gets a smile and he doesn’t? He wanted her to smile at him like that. Or bust out laughing, so he could hear that captivating velvet tangoing with amusement. See sapphires light up and sparkle.

Brinder guided her toward the door. “I’ll walk you out.”

Last chance. Last chance. Don’t fuck it up.

“Happy surgerying!” he called after them.

The only response? Amani’s stifled laughter behind him.

Bash banged his head softly against the wall.

“I thought you’d be smoother.” Amani smiled at him, only teasing kindness in her eyes.

“Me too, Amani,” he sighed as his brother-in-law returned for their lunch. “Me fucking too.”

Chapter Four

I am a badass warrior, and my worth is non-fucking-negotiable.

-From Remy’s Badass Bitch daily affirmations

Remy

The protein shake served its purpose, filling the empty cavern of her stomach. She’d been going nonstop since swimming her daily laps at the community center at four thirty in the morning. The yogurt and an apple, followed by her hasty inhalation of a cardboard-like fiber bar prior to her previous case, were paltry sustenance compared to her schedule. She’d have to gulp down something more substantive later in the surgeons’ lounge or she wouldn’t make it through her last case and final rounds of the evening.

She’d been tempted to put off dealing with the Dr. Lynch issue until the following day, just so she’d have a moment to breathe and eat something semi-decent. But she was reluctant to let it go even that long. This wasn’t the first time the resident had been caught engaging in…extracurriculars…during her shift. It had only taken one look at the young doctor’s mussed hair, puffy lips, and the hickey blooming on her neck to know what had prevented the woman’s timely appearance on the ortho unit.

Resigned to her least favorite part of her job—managing rogue team members—Remy had paged her resident after finishing her last case of the morning. Sammy Lynch had responded immediately this time, and Remy had frog-marched her wayward resident down to Brinder’s office.

He had an open-door policy, and Remy took full advantage. Brinder was a strong chief medical officer, and she knew he would handle the situation. Her trust in him, as well as the hospital president, was key to her decision to leave Johns Hopkins last year and join St. John the Evangelist, which was becoming a highly regarded academic hospital in Charlottesville under the leadership of Brinder and the president, Agnes Greco-Martin.

Remy knew she was fortunate.

Fortunate. And also so damn tired. It had been a chaotic week and she still had a long afternoon in front of her.

Remy sighed, rolling her shoulders to loosen the tight muscles.

Lucia slid in next to her at the scrubbing sink as Remy pressed a knee against the panel, turning on the water as she unwrapped the single-use scrub soap. “Did you get something to eat?”

“Enough.” Remy smothered a yawn. Soon adrenaline would kick in. It always did. “I downed a protein drink on the way to meeting with our next patient.”

Her PA nodded. “The room is prepped and he’s sound asleep.”

Her next case was a young hockey player, in to fix an ACL he’d shredded while faking out an opposing player. A quick surgery, and then she had two more surgical cases—back-to-back knee replacements. Then it was final rounds in the post-anesthesia care unit and a quick trip back to the ortho unit to check on an elderly knee revision patient whose heart had been throwing irregular beats most of the day. She was hoping the increase in electrolytes and the potassium and magnesium in his IV she’d ordered would do the trick. If not, she or the lead hospitalist on the unit would have to send him to the ICU.

“Excellent, Lucia.” Now, she was a top-notch PA. Unlike Truculent Troy.

Lucia leaned in conspiratorially. “I heard we have a VIP in the hospital today.”

Remy scrubbed higher on her arms, blinking against the image of Bash Wheatley that unfortunately, and to her great frustration, seemed to be burned on her retinas. Tall. Maybe five or six inches taller than her own five-foot-seven. And brawnier than expected. His biceps popped under the crisp white button down tucked into a pair of jeans that hugged muscular thighs. Dark hair cut short in the back and on the sides, but left longer on top. Huge brown eyes with eyelashes most could only achieve at the hands of a skilled makeup artist. That troublemaker’s grin, with a dimple in one cheek.

Of course she knew exactly who he was before Brinder introduced them.

Sort of hard not to. He was Hollywood royalty. His grandfather and great uncle were stars from Hollywood’s golden era, and Bash’s parents were Oscar winning stars in their own rights. As was his sister, Honor, whom she’d met several times since joining Evangelist. Suffice it to say, anyone with a pulse knew the Wheatley family.

And Remy, unfortunately, had a pulse. One that had beat at an unnerving pace from the moment she’d opened Brinder’s office door to find a ridiculously handsome movie star lounging sexily against a wall until…