Page 7 of Careless Whisper (Modern Vintage Romances #11)

Elias

I felt like an absolute ass, and not only because of what I said to Reggie outside the locker room but because of what it revealed.

Jealousy .

Raw and stupid.

God, I’d actually accused her of sleeping with Luther, who I’d learned—after—from the grapevine, had a long-term partner and made gingerbread houses with him every damn Christmas. The worst part wasn’t that I was wrong; it was that I’d let her see I gave a damn about who she was fucking.

She’d laughed, and it hadn’t been out of amusement but pity.

I needed a drink. Or a lobotomy? However, since lobotomies had become obsolete in the country in the early eighties—nineteen eighties, so that’s its own kind of fucked up—I went for the drink option, ending up at The Triangle Pub, a spot just off Boren Avenue near the hospital.

The place had dim lighting, good whiskey, always a few scrubbed-up residents hunched over nachos, and a back booth that had somehow become sacred to Harper Memorial’s attendings.

I’d come with Sanjay (neuro) and Zara (peds).

They’d been trying to rope me into trivia night.

I didn’t understand their fascination or interest in it, but they swore by it as a stress reliever.

“Man, you look like someone put a central line in your neck without local.” Sanjay clinked his glass against mine.

“Just tired,” I muttered and realized I seemed to say that often, all the time, ever since I moved to Seattle and laid my eyes on the gorgeous Nurse Sanchez.

Sanjay studied me carefully. “Tired of what or who?”

Before I could answer, Zara’s eyes flicked toward the entrance. “Incoming. Nurses.”

Of course, it was because my life was a shitshow for going against better judgment to take this job where I knew she’d be.

She looked amazing, and not because she was trying, not in that oversized black sweater and tight jeans.

She laughed at something Luther said as they stepped in, and it went straight to my dick.

“You laugh with your whole self,” I told her when we were sharing an ice cream after a shift in the on-call room, fighting over who got more licks.

The ice cream had melted, and there had been more licking…and…damn it, now I was hard as steel, ready to pound nails.

A few of the younger nurses trailed behind Luther and Reggie. Delaney was among them, wearing a tight, red dress, and she had a look on her face that made me brace.

Some nurses had iron-clad rules about not fucking attendings, and some had the opposite tenet of only fucking attendings. Delaney fell in the latter group.

She made a beeline for our booth once she got a drink at the bar. “Dr. Graham”—she brushed her shoulder against mine as she slid in next to me—“didn’t think I’d see you here.”

I offered a noncommittal smile. My eyes weren’t on her—they were on Reggie.

“Reg, Luther, join us,” Zara invited.

Reggie looked like she’d prefer to have a root canal without an anesthetic. Luther, who I was discovering was a provocative motherfucker, waved to Zara and looked at me pointedly. “We’re fine here…your booth is over-crowded.”

See what I mean?

Zara frowned. “You having trouble with Luther?” she asked me.

“No,” I murmured.

“Luther gets like this,” Delaney chirped .

Sanjay, who nailed pretty much anything that moved from what I’d learned, smiled at Delany, enjoying all the cleavage she was showing.

Zara rolled her eyes. “Trivia night not doing it for your stress relief, Sanjay?”

Sanjay grinned. “I dabble in several different kinds of stress relief.”

Reggie and Luther chose to sit at the booth behind me with a few others, which meant I couldn’t watch her the way I wanted to. I could hear their conversations, though, which were centered around one of the nurses’ partners, who was not doing his share of vacuuming.

“The asshole thinks it’s my job. Luther, why do men think it’s a woman’s job to vacuum?”

“I’ve got no idea, babe; at my place, Gio does the vacuuming, and he’s no woman.”

Delaney droned on about a difficult family consult that afternoon, how she’d handled it with “grace under pressure”.

Christ!

Reggie walked by, headed to the restroom, and I wanted nothing more than to follow her and…

“We can’t, Eli.” Reggie had been scandalized the night I followed her into the handicapped bathroom at the doc bar in Boston and shut the door behind us.

“Gigi, I need inside you,” I muttered, lifting her onto the counter, pushing her dress up .

“Eli, carino.” She cupped my face and kissed me just as I entered her.

“You know”—Delaney pressed into me, her lips nearly touching my face—“Reggie acts like she’s better than the rest of us, but honestly? She’s overrated. I’ve been doing her cases for weeks with you, and it’s not that hard, not if you’re a good nurse.”

I stiffened, pulling away from her.

“Honestly,” she continued, swirling her drink, “I don’t know why everyone tiptoes around her like she’s so damn special.”

A voice cut through the noise. “You done?” Luther stood next to our booth, arms crossed over his massive chest, looking like someone who could take down a linebacker with a glare. Well, like he used to when he played for U Dub.

Delaney paled.

“You don’t talk about her like that,” he admonished. “Especially not behind her back.”

“I wasn’t?—”

“You got a problem with Reggie; you tell it to her face, got it? Don’t suck face with attendings and talk shit about a colleague.”

“She wasn’t sucking my face,” Zara interjected, I think, to add levity to a situation that was getting a bit too heated for fucking trivia night.

Delaney blinked fast. Her face crumpled just a little. She stood quickly, muttered about needing air, and walked out, leaving her drink next to mine .

Luther turned to me then, expression flat. “ You ”—there was no doubt he was talking to me—“are the reason Delaney is doing what she’s doing.”

“I—”

“Reggie’s one of the best surgical nurses I’ve ever worked with,” Luther spoke over me. “And she’s spent the last month getting your scraps because you’re still pissed about something you won’t even talk about. And neither will she.”

I didn’t respond because he wasn’t wrong.

“But the past is the past, yeah? She deserves better,” he continued. “From everyone. Especially you, as the head of our department.”

Then he turned and walked back to his booth.

I stared at my drink. It didn’t help. So, I drank some of it. That didn’t help much, either.

Somewhere along the line, I’d become that guy. The attending everyone despised; the one who buried nurses over ego and let personal history cloud professional judgment.

Reggie had done nothing but her job, and I was making her pay not for Boston, I realized now, but because I still wanted her.

Sanjay breathed out slowly and whistled softly. “Well, this was not the stress reliever we thought it would be.”

“Wait till trivia begins,” Zara tried to assure him and me. Mostly me.

“Rain check.” I drained my drink, threw some bills on the table to cover my tab, and left the bar. Delaney wasn’t the only one who needed some air.

When I got home, the night concierge gave me a sympathetic look as I stepped into the main lobby.

“There’s a woman waiting for you in the inside lobby,” he whispered carefully. “I didn’t let her upstairs—she’s not on your guest list.”

I frowned. “Who?—?

“A Dr. Maren Loring.”

“ Fuck .” The epithet slipped out.

“You want me to send her away?” the concierge asked, concerned.

I shook my head. “No, it’s fine.”

I went inside the interior lobby and saw Maren perched elegantly in a sleek chrome chair. She was done up—her blonde hair curled up in lush waves, her coat draped over one arm, and her lips painted blood red.

“Elias.” She rose with a soft smile. “It’s so good to see you.

It’s not good at all! “It’s nice of you to visit.”

She hugged me and kissed my cheek. I patted her back and tried to get her the hell away from me.

“You should put me on your list so I can wait for you in your apartment,” she suggested, tucking her hand into my elbow.

Like hell!

“I’m staying at the Four Seasons, here for some meetings with the folks at UW Medical. And I was thinking maybe you could get me to see some of your funding people at Harper Memorial.”

Kill me now!

I didn’t press the button of the elevator, even though we stood in front of it. I moved Maren a little away from me as if it was so I could look at her.

Talk about making a statement!

I smiled the best I could. “It’s been a long day. Maybe we can catch up another time?”

She looked shocked. “Are you saying we can’t sit down for a drink at your place?”

“I’m really beat, Maren.”

She pressed the elevator button. “Elias Graham, stop being so rude,” she admonished in a mother to toddler affect.

This was the problem with people like Maren, friends you grew up with, they took liberties, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it.