Page 8 of Healing Her (Pulse Medical #1)

She placed her hands at the base of her spine and arched backwards, sighing in satisfaction at the sound of her lower back popping.

It felt like she’d been walking for miles and miles in her tiny little office.

Well, she probably had been. She’d been rehearsing and rewriting this presentation for Oakridge investors for hours.

The investment panel was due to convene in two days.

She desperately wanted to get Oakridge the money to buy a perfusion pump.

It would be invaluable to the program, a far better option than the special coolers and ice pack system the hospital currently used.

Jen couldn’t believe they didn’t already have one. Or two. Two would be great .

Coffee. Coffee was what she needed. Both Bryce’s little coffee cart and the cafeteria were closed, but she remembered there was a decent enough coffee machine in the surgeons’ lounge.

She’d get herself a cup of coffee, then DoorDash herself some kind of dinner.

That would get her back on track. Tucking her phone into her pocket, she left her tiny office and wandered through the largely silent hallways of the surgical floor.

Sure enough, in the dimly lit lounge, there was a very large and fancy Keurig with a gratifyingly wide variety of pods, including, she noticed with delight, a few peppermint mocha flavored ones that must have been bought for Christmas.

Quickly, she located a clean mug and got the coffee started.

The festive odor of chocolatey peppermint filled the lounge as she scrolled through the DoorDash app, looking for something, anything, that sounded good.

She was at that point of being hungry that she couldn’t make a choice, but she knew she needed to.

As the Keurig finished dispensing its Christmas-flavored elixir and shut off, the door to the lounge creaked open, catching Jen’s attention. Curious to see who else was night-owling it this evening, she looked up. “Oh,” she blurted out. “It’s you. Hello.”

Doctor Ashley-Never-Ash Proctor slipped through the lounge door, a sour expression on her face.

Jen had made absolutely sure to steer clear of her since their confrontation three days ago, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled to see the woman now.

While the patients and staff Ashley had lost her cool in front of had all received direct, personal apologies, Jen was acutely aware that she herself had received no such thing—and as the target of the ire, even if it had been partially deserved—well, she did feel she was also due at least a small apology.

And to her surprise, it looked like she was finally going to get one. “I saw you coming down here, and I wanted to get you alone,” Ashley began, her slightly curled lip and furrowed brow indicating the exact opposite sentiment.

With effort, Jen stifled the cheerful, mildly inappropriate quip she felt rising in her throat. Instinct told her it would not go over well.

“I wanted to apologize,” Ashley went on, and boy, did she make it look like those words were coated in acid in her mouth. “My behavior the other day was completely unprofessional. I shouldn’t have confronted you in front of everyone like that.”

“I accept your apology,” Jen replied with a nod. “Thank you.”

Silence stretched between them as she returned to her quest to locate a late dinner.

Ah. Italian sounded very good right now.

Baked spinach and ricotta tortellini. Don’t mind if I do , she thought happily as she punched her order in.

Judiciously, she added tiramisu. Calories were good for her brain.

And caffeine. She remembered her coffee and turned to get her mug from the Keurig. Ashley was still standing by the door. “Can I make you a cup of coffee?” Jen offered, wondering why she was still there. “Or I’m ordering dinner, can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you,” Ashley replied stiffly. “I’m not hungry, and I can make my own coffee.” She walked over and began poking through the coffee pods.

Jen shrugged and moved to sit at one of the empty lounge tables.

“Suit yourself.” She sipped her coffee as she finished off her order and sent it in.

Covertly, she was also watching Ashley as she moved around the coffee station.

She looked tired, Jen observed. And very pretty.

The green silk blouse she was wearing was very flattering in cut and color and paired well with the tight camel-colored pencil skirt that hugged her sleek curves.

Wisps of her brown hair had escaped her tight French twist, softening her face despite the pinched look hovering around her mouth.

What would it take to get her to relax? Did she even know the meaning of the word?

But as soon as she thought that, Jen dismissed it.

The Good Doctor Proctor did at least have some notion of relaxation, or at least a sense of how people had fun.

She hadn’t gone to the Indigo Lounge for a book club meeting, after all.

Yet most of the time, she seemed absolutely uptight as hell.

She must have a permanent migraine, surely.

Ashley looked back over her shoulder, face fixed into the same mild scowl she seemed unaware that she put on whenever she saw Jen. “What? Do you need something?”

“No,” Jen replied, and then, before she could stop herself, she corrected. “Yes, actually. Do you ever pull the stick out of your ass?”

“Excuse me?” The way Ashley’s jaw dropped almost to the floor would have made Jen howl with laughter if she didn’t know full well how that would escalate the situation. “How dare you?”

“It’s a genuine question. Crassly worded, I admit,” Jen said, pushing herself to her feet.

She walked over and took the empty coffee mug from where it was hanging limply in the other surgeon’s hand and stuck it under the machine spout.

“Isn’t it exhausting being such an uptight control freak?

I know you must know how to let go, but do you ever? ”

“This is preposterous,” Ashley sputtered.

“Yeah. But think of it as lancing a wound. I would like us to work together, we’ve got to get this bad energy out from between us in order for that to happen.”

“Uh, it’s not happening, because I’m not working with you. My patients will remain far, far away from your rogue door-to-door salesman pressure tactics.” A snort, an actual snort of contempt shot out of that perfect, prissy nose. And that got Jen’s back up in a whole new way.

She could take bad attitudes, misfired tantrums, and even a frankly wild overreaction to having a drink spilled on oneself, but actual, palpable ignorant contempt for innovation and education in the so-important field of organ donation?

That was too far. That hit too close to Jen’s tender widow’s heart, and she stepped right up to poke a finger into the woman’s chest. “It astounds me that a surgeon with your intellect, skills, and education can be so blindly, willfully ignorant. Why do you hate the idea of educating patients so much?”

“It is unnecessary to bring up the specter of organ donation to people who are already stressed about going into surgery.” The statement was delivered with such pomposity, Jen couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

But she was on a mission. “Well, for starters, it would help if you quit referring to it as a specter , for God’s sake. Organ donation is a gift. I think even you know that.”

“Of course it is,” Ashley spat, with an eyeroll of her own. “And our patients know it is too. But they do get upset when it’s brought up unnecessarily.”

“It’s not unnecessary if we—oh, forget it.” Annoyance was bubbling much too close to the surface, and the one thing Jen felt she had over this rigid nitwit was that she hadn’t yet lost her cool. She was too hungry for this argument to go well.

But to her surprise, as she turned to retrieve her coffee, she felt a restraining hand on her left arm. “Stop right there,” came the impatient, irritated command. “You don’t get to walk away from me after you insult me, Doctor Colton.”

Jen yanked her arm away, disturbed that an electric thrill had shot through her at the touch and at the commanding voice Ashley had used. She shook her arm, trying to make the tingling stop. “And you don’t get to order me around.”

Ashley stared down at her, mouth tight, eyes opaque. An odd energy stretched between them, making the hairs on Jen’s arms rise up, her stomach twisting with a strangely eager tension. She didn’t know what to say, but she opened her mouth and inhaled?—

Surprise rushed through her as Ashley’s hands cupped her face and pulled her up into a kiss so instantly incendiary that she felt her core grow warm and heavy at the first taste of the other woman’s tongue.

It had been so long since she’d felt something like this, the rush of electricity, the heat bubbling between her legs.

Since she’d tasted another woman’s mouth, let her tongue flicker along the soft warmth there.

And she’d never experienced the kind of commanding, take-charge intensity that was thrilling her now.

She and Nina had shared a sensual, deep connection and their dynamic had always been balanced.

Not like this, nothing like this. Jen reached up and twined her arms around Ashley’s neck as the kiss deepened.

The hands holding her face firmly in place as her mouth was invaded and explored were somehow delicate yet strong all at once, definitely a surgeon’s hands.

She’d never been with another surgeon before, she realized. She’d been missing out.

More thrills shot through her as Ashley’s hands moved to her thighs and she was hoisted up onto the countertop next to the coffee machine.

Eagerly, Jen spread her legs wide and tangled her fingers into the lapels of Ashley’s lab coat, pulling her in close.

Her black linen skirt rode up, leaving the damp gusset of her pink cotton panties exposed and pressing up against Ashley’s waist.

When Ashley’s hand slid along the bare skin of her thigh, Jen thanked God that she’d decided against wearing pantyhose that morning.

Her nipples peaked hard, brushing against the lining of her bra and sending little electric jolts directly to the pulsing heat between her legs.

Even the way the edge of the countertop was biting into the soft backs of her thighs was somehow erotic, increasing the pleasure of the encounter tenfold.

And Ashley’s mouth was so supple and hot, her tongue plunging into Jen’s mouth in a way that made her nearly slide off the counter when she thought about how that tongue would feel on her clit, what it could do.

Those nimble surgeon’s fingers were plucking now at the leg of her panties, then the waistband, slowly working their way in under the elastic.

Jen held her breath in anticipation, her mind swirling as she imagined Ashley’s slender fingers sliding along the slick heat of her labia, the precision with which one wet fingertip would graze over her clit?—

The lounge door creaked, and Ashley jumped away, almost pulling Jen off the counter as she did. Still dazed with lust, Jen was only barely able to snap her knees together and smooth her skirt back over them. She glanced at the door to see who’d interrupted.

It was a little blonde nurse who often worked the late surgical shifts. Aubrey, Jen remembered. Relatively fresh out of nursing school. Jen swallowed back her disappointment and smiled as she slid down off the counter. “Hi, Aubrey. Everything okay?”

Aubrey glanced between the two surgeons, uncertainty written all over her open, freckled face. “Sorry to bother you,” she said softly, her fingers curled around the edge of the door. “DoorDash dropped off your food with me at the desk. They said they’d been trying to call you?”

Patting her pockets, Jen looked around, wondering where her phone had gotten off to.

Then it appeared under her nose. She looked up to see Ashley holding it stiffly out in front of her.

“You dropped this,” the younger surgeon said, her voice as pinched and cold as if they hadn’t just shared a scorching gusset-burner of a kiss.

Jen blinked and took her phone. Sure enough, there were a number of missed calls. She was grateful the delivery driver had taken things into their own hands while she’d been so thoroughly distracted! “Thanks, Aubrey. I’ll come get it in a minute. I appreciate you coming to let me know.”

“Welcome.” The nurse vanished out the door, pulling it closed behind her and leaving Ashley and Jen to regard each other soberly. Jen tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Doctor Proctor…”

Ashley smoothed the flyaway hairs around her face back and tugged at her blouse, whose silk placket looked irretrievably rumpled after their encounter.

She frowned down at it before glancing up at Jen, her face utterly smooth, devoid of any hint of her feelings.

“My apologies, Doctor Colton. That got out of hand. It won’t happen again. ”

“Oh, no, I don’t—” Jen began, but she went quiet at a wave of Ashley’s hand.

“Very unprofessional of me. I…” Ashley swallowed.

“I’m sorry.” Briskly, she walked over to the lounge door, her heels clicking on the tile.

When she arrived at the door, hand on the knob, she glanced back over her shoulder at Jen, her face still unreadable.

Without any further word, she twisted the doorknob and slipped away.

Jen rubbed the back of her neck. There was no way she was going to be able to concentrate on her presentation at this point. And she had no idea how she was going to work with Ashley now.