Читать книгу The Shy Nurse's Rebel Doc - Алисон Робертс - Страница 11
ОглавлениеTHE SUN WAS low enough in the sky that Blake had to shield his eyes as he walked through the car park. He almost didn’t see the figure standing beside the little red car.
No. Not exactly standing. Samantha Braithwaite had one hip resting on the bonnet, close to one of the headlights. She looked like she was waiting for something. The roof of the car was down so maybe she was waiting for the interior to cool off?
He had to walk past her to get to his bike. It would have been rude not to acknowledge her, so he nodded.
She nodded back.
‘I got your note.’
Blake’s steps slowed. Uh-oh...
He’d left that note a couple of days ago. He’d had a day off the next day and he’d barely seen her today with the department having been so busy so he’d forgotten that it could have been annoying. That she might have thought she was getting a ticket for parking in the wrong place or something.
But Sam was smiling now. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It was nice to know that someone was impressed but...’
Blake had stopped walking. He raised an eyebrow.
‘But how did you know this was my car?’
Oh, man... She had been waiting for something, hadn’t she?
She’d been waiting for him.
He shrugged. ‘It’s a distinctive car. I saw you getting into it. On your first day here, I think it was.’
She slid off the car. The way she caught the length of her hair and pushed it back over her shoulder came across as a defensive gesture. An understandable one, perhaps, and Blake felt a slight twinge of remorse. He hadn’t intended to remind her of the humiliating incident of dropping a bedpan in front of everyone.
‘Fair enough. And you ride a Ducati.’
His eyebrow still hadn’t lowered. Maybe because he remembered that she’d been watching him ride away that day. That he’d revved a bit more than necessary.
That he’d liked that she was watching him.
Dangerous territory, here. It would be oh, so easy to keep talking. To flirt with her a little, even. He willed his muscles to tense, ready to keep moving forward. Oddly, they weren’t co-operating.
‘That’s right.’
‘Seven-fifty Sport, I believe.’
Good grief. She knew about bikes? His eyebrow had dropped now. His jaw probably had as well.
‘My brother was into bikes.’
‘Ah.’ Past tense. ‘So he grew out of his wilder inclinations, then?’
Sam seemed to have found an interesting oil stain on the asphalt. ‘Something like that.’
It was time for him to move. To wish his new colleague a good evening and then go and get on with what was left of his own.
‘So...do you know what happened? To Jess, I mean. The girl with the long QT syndrome?’
‘She was kept in for some tests but I expect she’s been discharged by now.’
‘I meant her management. Did she get put on beta blockers? Or is an implantable defibrillator on the cards?’
So she’d been waiting for him just because she wanted follow-up on a case they’d both been involved with?
Very professional but a bit odd to be doing it in the car park when she could have approached him at work at any time. Usually, if women went out of their way to talk to him, they had a very different agenda in mind.
Sam didn’t wait for him to respond. ‘I guess it depends on the genotype and the exact QT interval when it’s been corrected for things like gender and age.’
‘Yeah... You got it.’ A warning bell was ringing somewhere in the back of Blake’s mind. Sam clearly wanted to keep this conversation going.
She wanted...something...
He actually took a step forward to suggest that he had someplace else he needed to be. It could go two ways. Either she’d take the hint and give up or she’d reveal what it was that was really on her mind.
It appeared that Sam could ignore hints.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’m friends with Harriet Collins. From ICU?’
‘Yeah... I know Harry.’
‘She’d told me about the Specialist Disaster Response team. I heard all about that last callout you had, to that bushfire?’
Blake waited politely for the question he was supposed to answer but Sam seemed to be searching for what she wanted to say.
‘And?’ he prompted.
The movement of her chest as she took a deep breath caught his eye. That hint of cleavage in the low scoop of her T-shirt was even more eye-catching. He looked away swiftly.
‘And it’s the sort of thing I’d really like to be able to do myself. To be somewhere on the front line, in a crisis. To be part of an emergency response when it really counts. When it can be a matter of life or death.’
If he’d wanted to flirt with her, this was an ideal opportunity. He could make himself look pretty good by sharing a few war stories, too, if it went that far.
But it wasn’t going to go that far.
It wasn’t going to go anywhere at all.
‘You get that yourself. We get plenty of life or death situations in ED.’
‘But it’s not the same. We’ve got any amount of backup and resources in ED. It’s...’
There was a frown line between Sam’s eyes as, again, she tried to find the words that would explain exactly what she meant.
She didn’t need to explain because Blake understood perfectly well. Working in a well-equipped emergency department wasn’t as exciting. Or challenging. You didn’t have to dig deep and find out what you, as an individual, were really made of.
