Live.
There had been so many times she’d come close to having sex. She had wanted to, but she’d always chickened out, the one difference now being that she’d never been so turned on before. Never, because she’d never let them through her walls. Walls that were there for a reason. This time was different. Once she crossed that threshold there was no turning back.
She wouldn’t. There were no plans to marry in her future. No plans for children. Her own miserable childhood and her own parents’ unhappiness had steered her off that path. She wasn’t saving herself for anyone, but she didn’t want to die a virgin.
When she was old and gray, she didn’t want to look back and have regrets in her life. She wanted to look back and see that she’d taken a chance, that she’d lived.
Whatever the consequences were, she could own this moment. She could control this moment and never regret it. One night of passion and she wouldn’t get hurt.
No promises had to be made. No fear of shattered hearts and abandonment.
Steeling her courage, she grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
He cocked an eyebrow but came with her as she led him toward the exit. “Where are we going?”
“To the hotel attached to this bar.” And that’s where she led him. Through the double doors and into the hotel lobby.
Clint pulled her back, holding her close. “Whoa, are you sure?”
“Positive.” And to drive her point home she pressed him against the wall and kissed him again, releasing every last hang-up and doubt out of her system.
She wanted him.
Badly.
His hands moved over her back until they cupped her butt, gripping her as he brought their bodies even closer together with the hard ridge of his erection against her stomach as a moan rumbled in his chest.
When they came up for air, she felt a bit dazed and out of breath.
Did she really just make out with a stranger outside a country-and-western bar?
Hell, yeah, and it was so good.
“Should I get us a room?” Her voice shook a bit.
Did I really just ask that?
“No need. I’m staying here before I head back to the base for deployment. It’s my last hurrah.”
“Then lead the way.”
Clint led her down the hall they’d been making out in. His room was at the very end.
Her pulse thundered in her ears. Usually at this point her common sense would take over and she’d bolt, but her common sense must have scarpered because she was ready for this.
So ready.
The door opened and Clint flicked on the lights as she stepped over the threshold. When the door shut and he locked it, she pulled him back against the wall, her lips finding his.
This time there was no need to stop and talk about where they were going to go and what they were going to do.
They were alone. This was going to happen.
He hoisted her up and her legs instinctively wrapped around his waist. He walked toward the bed, carrying her, his head buried in her neck.
“You have protection?” Ingrid asked, as his lips traveled down her neck.
“Always.”
“Good.”
And as he pressed her down on the bed Ingrid reveled in the moment. Her moment of rebellion, of living dangerously.
It was only one stolen moment that she’d always remember.
Tomorrow he’d be gone, on his way to deployment, and she’d be an ortho attending at Rapid City Health Sciences Center.
Tonight, though, she was his.
Tonight she’d live. If but just for a moment.
Seven months later
“PAGING DR. WALTON. Dr. Walton, please head to the emergency room, stat.”
Ingrid let out a sigh, not because she’d been paged but because she was hungry. The baby was kicking furiously, and there was a great chicken-salad sandwich with a big old dill pickle just two inches away from her mouth.
She was also dead tired, but that was to be expected. She was turning into a house apparently. A giant mountain of a woman who was forced to perform surgeries like a puppet on a string—dance, puppet, dance.
She glanced over at Dr. Maureen Hotchkiss, who’d just wandered into the ortho lounge and who sat down like she had no bones left in her body.
“Hey, Maureen, fancy going to the E.R. for a big, fat old pregnant lady?” She tried batting her eyelashes, but that never really got her anywhere.
“Sorry,” Maureen said. “I have to go check on my cast for a kid with a greenstick fracture of the upper ulna in a moment, and there’s no way in heck you’re big. Neither are you fat. It makes me sick.”
“You’re blind.”
Maureen snorted. “No way. You’re hormonal and delusional. Go on, I’m sure it won’t be that bad. I’ll watch your sandwich.”
“Don’t touch my sandwich or you’re dead meat.”
Maureen winked. “No promises.”
Ingrid chuckled and with a sigh of regret set her sandwich down. She stood up with relative ease. Her pregnant belly wasn’t a big issue now, but she imagined in a couple more months she wouldn’t be moving through the hospital’s hallways very fast.
Though she’d try her damnedest to keep up with the best of them. Right now she had control, but in a couple of months, well, she didn’t like to think about it.
She stretched and then headed toward the E.R., which thankfully wasn’t a long walk. When she got there, there wasn’t too much activity and no one in the nearby beds looked like they needed an ortho consult.
“Who paged me?” Ingrid asked the charge nurse, Linda.
“Oh, Dr. Allen paged you. He’s in room 26B.”
“And it had to be me?” Ingrid gave her best pouty face. “What about Phil?”
Linda’s glasses slid to the end of her nose as she looked at her. “Dr. Reminsky is on vacation and she’s not an ortho attending.”
Right. Oncologist and the all-inclusive Caribbean vacation that she and Philomena had been talking about taking when Ingrid was promoted. The one she had had to cancel because of her new circumstances. Don’t live a little was Ingrid’s new philosophy. She swore she’d never be so reckless again in her life.
She sighed. “Right. I’d forgotten she left this afternoon for that. Thanks, Linda.”
Linda gave her a sympathetic smile and turned back to her paperwork.
She’d never met Dr. Allen before. He was new, and she hoped that he was a decent guy to work with, since she seemed to get all the trauma pages. Ingrid shuffled down the hall and knocked on the room 26B’s door before opening it. “Hi, there, did someone page ortho?”
Dr. Allen had his back to her, but there was something about his stance that tugged at the corner of her mind.
It was when he turned around. “Hi, Dr. Walton …”