“No!” Margaret sat straight up, not an easy feat with forty pounds of belly, and grabbed Luke by the collar. “No scrubbing, no changing! I want to push now!”
With her fists embedded in his shirt, Luke simply nodded calmly. “We can do that,” he said in a soft, utterly authoritative yet kind voice, accepting gloves from Faith and snapping them on. To everyone he said, “I’ll deliver in my street clothes.”
Faith had just scrubbed and was already moving around to the foot of the bed. As a nurse practitioner she’d delivered more babies than she could count, simply because the doctors tended not to make it in time. Since she’d opened the clinic, there’d been hundreds more. Delivering babies was her favorite part of the job.
But Luke beat her to it. Leaning in, he murmured for her ears only, “She’s obviously low pain tolerance, let’s get her an epidural—”
“Her chart says she requested no drugs when she arrived.”
He leaned in closer, stooping a little to stand eye-to-eye with her, and since they were eye-to-eye, she had no trouble seeing his carefully reined-in anger. “You don’t believe in epidurals?”
“She requested to do this naturally,” she repeated.
“Ah, the barbaric way then,” he said. “Have you ever had a baby naturally, Faith McDowell?”
“No, and I’m fairly certain you haven’t either. There are plenty of other methods of easing pain—healing touch, herbs, imagery, pressure point therapy—”
“Let the patient decide against conventional pain meds,” he said in a low, harsh whisper. “Let her decide in the moment, as in right now, not before she knows what she’s getting into. And don’t let your beliefs drive the decision, that’s unfair.”
“Fine.” She shoved her chin in the air. “Clearly you have this situation under control. I’ll tend to the other patients.”
Without responding, he turned his attention to Margaret, his big body leaning over hers protectively, talking in that same low, gentle voice he’d never used on Faith.
She should be thankful for small favors, because that voice he didn’t share with her made her tummy quiver and her legs feel funny. Boneless.
She really wished she’d had some chocolate.
MARGARET DELIVERED A beautiful eight-pound girl—without the epidural.
Faith delivered herself a pounding tension headache, the kind she’d had daily once upon a time, when she’d worked at the hospital.
“I need a new set of scrubs,” Luke told her a couple of hours later on a rare two-minute break between patients.
“Fine.” She strode down the hall, jerked open the supply closet and flipped on the light. She could smell him behind her, and one would think after hours of working with patients and running at a fast pace, he’d at least smell like it, but no. He smelled delicious, quite frankly. “How do you do that?” she asked grumpily.
“Do what?”
“Still smell good.” She didn’t point out how annoying that was. Or that her nose was straining to catch the scent of him.
“My mother always told me to smell good.”
That startled a laugh out of her. “Really?”
“No.” He was smiling. Good Lord, he shouldn’t do that, because like his voice, it did funny things to her insides. “My mom didn’t tell me anything,” he said. “She had the nanny do it.”
“Ah. Poor little rich boy, Dr. Walker?”
“Luke. And nah, not rich. My mother just didn’t like messy things, and my brother and I were about as messy as they came.”
No. No, she didn’t want to hear this, that he was human, that he’d had a mother who hadn’t mothered him, that he had a brother he’d obviously shared a lot with, that he…that he just might have had as lonely a childhood as she.
She found him a pair of scrubs, and as she pulled them off the shelf, she fought back a laugh. Pink flowered scrubs. Smiling at the petty revenge, she turned around to hand them to him and found him much closer than she’d anticipated, as he’d stepped into the supply room behind her, craning his neck to check out the shelves. The last time she’d been this close to him, this morning, in fact, he’d been only half-dressed and tousled. Now his short, spiky dark hair had been combed, though his jaw still showed a shadow, probably because she’d given him the bum’s rush, not giving him time to breathe, much less shave. It didn’t change the potency of being this close to him. So close she could have leaned in a fraction of an inch and—
“Nicely stacked.”
She watched his lips move, heard the words, and her jaw fell open as she looked down at the front of her scrubs, which so effectively hid her breasts. She had no idea how he’d—
“The shelves,” he repeated slowly, frowning at her reaction. “They’re nicely stocked. Organized.”
Nicely stocked. Stocked, you idiot. Good God, she needed to get it together. This was her arena, her clinic, and lust, or whatever had happened to her genes and hormones since she’d set eyes on him, didn’t have a place. Nope, no matter how big, bad and pulse-jerkingly magnificent the man standing close enough to grope was, she needed to ignore it all. “Um…thanks.” He’d complimented the clinic. Okay…maybe this could work, maybe they could find a happy medium—
“For a froufrou clinic,” he added.
Nope. No happy medium.
3
FAITH DECIDED IT MUST be a full moon, as besides their scheduled massage therapy, acupressure and aromatherapy appointments, they had an unusual number of women in labor, walk-ins and emergencies.
Either a full moon…or curiosity about Dr. Luke Walker. She decided it didn’t matter. She loved knowing people came to Healing Waters for help. She ended up eating lunch on the run, which she hated to do but it couldn’t be helped. And by late afternoon, she felt that familiar light-headedness—the one that signaled her resistance was down—and still had that monster headache that wouldn’t quit.
If she didn’t want to get sick, she needed a break, horizontal on her couch in her office. And she’d get it, she promised herself, as soon as she saw the seventeen-year-old waiting for her in room seven who wanted to get on birth control pills without her mother’s permission.
“Psst.”
Shelby and Guy were huddled behind a tall potted palm, frantically waving her over. With a low laugh, Faith looked conspiratorially right, then left, then joined them in their usual gathering place to exchange patient charts and any new gossip.
“Tell me one of you has something chocolate,” she said hopefully.
“Is that all you think about, food?” Guy asked, and slapped his pockets. “Sorry, I’ve got nothing.”
With a sigh, Faith pulled a granola bar from her own pocket and after splitting it three ways, stuffed her portion in her mouth. When she realized they were staring at her, she stopped in mid-chew, not easy with homemade granola. “What?”
Guy shook his head at Shelby. “She’s going to deny it, so don’t even bother to say anything.”
“Say what?”
“Say that the sparks bouncing between you and the good Dr. Walker are threatening to burn the place down,” Shelby said.
“Sparks?” Faith laughed. “Of course there’s sparks. We rub each other the wrong way. I’m just sorry you’re picking up on the temper between us. I know that’s not good for a calm work environment.”
Guy