His first thought upon having seen her, standing across the office from him, her eyes wild and obviously frightened, had been predatory but restrained. The door hadn’t slammed. He hadn’t raised his voice, not once, but she’d still looked at him as if he’d been a barely leashed bear about to eat her up.
The thought, the sexual grind of it—sudden and unexpected—made his lower abdomen contract and start to heat.
Damn. Look harder, find the flaw.
He scanned her features. “Are you ready for this?”
The grim set of her soft mouth said no, but that wasn’t the flaw.
“Yes.”
Her lie was a flaw, but not in her appearance. Still not helping.
Neither was her silky, brilliantly colored hair. Sorrel, it was like sorrel.
Still not the flaw—even if it prompted him to think of her in equine descriptors. Disturbing, but his flaw if it was one, that and a dearth of words to name that rich color. Earthy brown with fire and gold mingled in. Not her flaw.
The braided knot she wore it in suggested length and would’ve looked very professional but for the curling lock in the front that bounced free no matter how frequently she tucked it behind her ear. She looked more as if she should be selling some upscale shampoo than wearing scrubs. Which she wasn’t wearing yet.
“Locker room first,” he muttered, trying to put himself back on track, then continued picturing horses because it seemed like the thing to do. A way to keep himself from dwelling on the fact he was taking her somewhere to take her clothes off and change into the scrubs she’d been given. He shouldn’t be thinking like that. She was practically a child.
That was the flaw. The thing he could cling to: common damned decency. She was too young. That would keep his unexpected flare of interest under control.
He locked his gaze to her nearly black eyes. “Did you work at all as a nurse before pursuing your advanced license?”
Her brows came together, forming the only line he could see on her face, and taking away a little bit of that wide-eyed vulnerability he kept seeing when he looked at her.
“I worked as an RN for three years before returning to school for another two years.”
“And you were licensed three years ago.” He remembered that as well. Laws existed to keep him from asking her age, but he could ask questions about her experience and qualifications, which would let him estimate.
Eight years ago she became an RN. It would’ve taken at least two, but more likely four, years to have become an RN. Likely twelve years of combined work experience and education. She was certainly no younger than twenty-eight, but probably closer to thirty.
Didn’t look it, but it was still enough of a gap for him to work with. Coupled with his track record with not getting involved on any personal level with colleagues at Christmastime helped solidify his determination. That and duty. He might not know when the danger his gut warned against would arrive, but he knew it would come.
The elevator finally dinged, and he stepped in with her right behind him. Both of them remained silent for the rest of the journey. All he heard outside the hospital’s PA system, and the lullaby music that played announcing a birth in the hospital, were her rapid footfalls to keep up with him in the hallway once they reached their floor, and the plummeting of his own thoughts.
“Locker room,” he finally stated, pushing in. “What locker were you assigned?”
She gave the number, two down from his own locker, naturally, and he led her around the middle bank of lockers to locate it. She pulled a small envelope from her pocket with the locker number written on it. Key. Good.
Time to hurry this up.
“Two minutes.” He checked his watch, then gestured to the locker. “Get changed, come out to the hall. Two minutes.” All the time he was willing to spare for babysitting.
He exited the way they’d come, back to where he wouldn’t be tempted to peek at her undressing—despite the self-disgust that came with it, he knew it’d be a struggle to contain the desire to look as he heard her peeling off that creamy blouse and black trousers.
Safely outside, he leaned and shifted his attention from picturing horses, in an attempt to control his thoughts, to the cases he’d left being seen in Emergency. Specifically, the man who vibrated with ill intentions and who’d given Lyons something more than paranoid ideas, gave him genuine cause for concern.
Was she done? How long could it take to change?
It had been so long since he’d felt a tiny spark of desire, he didn’t quite know what to do with it. Even if it was in any way appropriate. His younger brother, newly involved with one of their peers, had recently accused him of being dead from the neck down, and he hadn’t exactly been wrong.
For the past year, he’d felt very little, aside from bouts of irritation and maybe a little paranoia, both of which served his purposes. Kept him sharp. He got irritated with people because stupidity and incompetence were pet peeves, and he paid close enough attention to his surroundings and everyone around him to stay safe, so he saw all the stupidity that went on. None of that inspired his libido.
Even before the shooting, he’d suspected violence and darkness lay at the heart of every person on the planet. That event had just driven the point home. Even the wide-eyed nurse practitioner changing in the other room had something wrong with her, deep down. Never mind her timid manner. Innocent masks were still masks.
He had darkness, he knew. Wolfe had it. Most people tried to fight that darkness, most of the time, or used coping mechanisms to cover it. Wolfe’s jokes and sarcasm. His minute-by-minute reminder of the need for restraint and vigilance.
He checked his watch just as the second hand rounded twelve again. Three minutes past his two-minute limit.
No one took that long to change into scrubs. It was two simple pieces of clothing and a change of shoes.
He knocked on the door, as if it weren’t a large public employee space, and before the sound had stopped resonating in the wood, his comm buzzed, a broadcast message immediately following. Four words.
All hands on deck.
His gut tightened.
All hands.
Departmental code for large-scale emergencies, when they expected to receive more patients than they were equipped to deal with. The kind of numbers that could only constitute a large group tragedy.
Right. Time for civility was past.
Decision made, he pushed into the locker room.
“Sabetta, what the devil is taking you so long?” He rounded the corner and found her wearing the scrub bottoms and shoes, but nothing above that save for a lacy pink bra that momentarily wiped his brain of any other thought besides the desire to stare, and absorb how delightful the pale pink lace looked against her tanned skin.
She had one foot braced against the locker beside hers, her blouse clamped between her elbow and her ribs, and both hands on the locker’s latch, trying to wrench the thing open.
“It’s stuck.” She sounded breathless, as if she’d been fighting it for a while.
Slower than he’d like, his brain started to work again. He could either ask for details, spend time opening it himself or deal with it later.
All hands.
Deal with it later. That would get her clothed the fastest and time mattered.
“Put your top on,” he bit out, dragging his gaze away, and opened his own locker instead of even attempting to wrestle hers into submission. As soon as he had it open, he began shoveling