Chapter 5 Chapter 5

"What are you staring at?"

Katherine jumped, her entire body jolting as if she'd been shocked. The baritone voice exploded in her ear, and her arms jerked reflexively. Charts that had been stacked precariously beside her elbow tumbled to the floor in a catastrophic cascade of paper and clipboard, the clatter echoing through the nurses' station like an announcement of her incompetence.

Every head swiveled in her direction.

Heat flooded her face as she bit back a string of curses that would make her brothers proud. She ducked behind the desk the moment AJ's gaze swung her way, his eyebrows raised in amused curiosity. Down on her hands and knees, she gathered the scattered charts with trembling fingers, taking her time even after they were all collected. Five seconds. She'd give herself five more seconds for him to lose interest and walk away.

Please let him walk away.

"Hi."

"What?"

Katherine's head snapped up to find a pair of expensive loafers planted beside her. She followed the line of pressed slacks upward until she met the smiling face of Doctor Kenneth Lyle squatting beside her. Her attending. The cardiologist she was shadowing, who she'd suspected for weeks now harbored some kind of attraction to her.

"Oh! Hi Doctor Lyle. I was just picking this up."

"After you were caught drooling over Adrian Ross," he snickered, his green eyes dancing with mischief.

Katherine snorted—an inelegant sound that matched her graceless sprawl on the floor. She scrambled to her feet, dumping the charts on the desk with more force than necessary, and immediately began fussing with her hair. Anything to occupy her hands. Anything to distract from the uncomfortable ache throbbing at the bottom of her belly, that hollow, wanting sensation that AJ's presence seemed to trigger automatically.

Her fingers stilled in her hair when she realized AJ was still watching her.

That amused smirk played at the corners of his mouth—the same expression he'd worn when she'd walked away earlier. The redhead beside him was still chattering away, her hands gesturing animatedly, her body angled toward him in blatant invitation. But AJ's eyes were locked on Katherine over the woman's head, nodding absently at whatever the gymnast was saying, clearly not paying attention to a single word.

"You're staring again," Kenneth chuckled, his voice pulling at her attention but not quite capturing it. "Don't tell me you actually believe he's an Adonis. I thought nurses were the only people susceptible to his charms."

"I am not falling for his charms," Katherine scoffed, finally tearing her gaze away.

But even as she turned her back toward AJ, she couldn't help watching him over her shoulder. It was pathetic. She was pathetic. Her teeth sank into her lower lip while her tongue swept over the full curve of her mouth, wetting lips that had gone suddenly dry.

Her spine straightened involuntarily when AJ's eyes darkened with unmistakable desire.

She watched, hypnotized, as he stepped around the redhead—casually dismissing her mid-sentence—and took a deliberate step toward Katherine. The fluorescent lights overhead seemed to blur and soften. The noise of the busy nurses' station faded to white noise. To Katherine, he seemed to be floating toward her, moving with predatory grace, his focus narrowed to her alone.

Her heart crashed to her stomach when he winked at her, his lips spreading into that sly, devastating smile.

"Oh, dear God," she swore under her breath, feeling the unmistakable rush of moisture pooling between her thighs.

Just like that night. Just like in his car when he'd looked at her with those same dark, hungry eyes and she'd melted into a puddle of want and need and desperate inexperience.

"Katherine?"

"Mmmh?"

She forced herself to turn toward Kenneth, though her body screamed in protest at being denied the view. Every cell in her body oriented toward AJ like a compass finding north. She smiled—a brittle, unconvincing expression—and took a deep breath, willing her mind to override the primal demands of her traitorous body. Her heart hammered against her ribs, an out-of-control percussion that made her wonder if Kenneth could see it battering against her chest wall.

"Maybe I could give you a heart transplant," Kenneth laughed, though something sharp edged his tone. "Replace it with a man's heart. Though oddly enough, he has some men swooning over him too. Others wanting to be him, and the rest—" his jaw tightened, "—emasculated whenever they're around him. He makes men feel ugly just by existing in the same room."

"What about you?" Katherine asked, genuinely curious about which category he'd place himself in.

There was no comparison between Kenneth and AJ, really. Kenneth was attractive in a safe, approachable way—blonde hair cut conservatively short, green eyes that crinkled when he smiled, talented hands that worked magic on ailing hearts. He was a seasoned surgeon, respected, accomplished. But he didn't make her pulse race. Didn't make her forget her own name. Didn't make her body remember things it should have forgotten two years ago.

Everyone in the hospital was already talking about AJ's talent with a mixture of awe and resentment. The departments were fighting over him like dogs over a bone. Neurology and Trauma were the last two standing, each deploying increasingly aggressive recruitment tactics. She knew Kenneth was relieved AJ had taken his interests elsewhere, away from Cardiology.

"My knees are steady," Kenneth said, his voice tight. "I don't quake under the glare of his toothpaste commercial smile."

"What about his surgical talent?"

The words escaped before Katherine could stop them. She saw Kenneth's expression shift, something wounded flickering across his face, and she immediately wanted to snatch the question back. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"That's alright." But it clearly wasn't. The steel in Kenneth's tone could have cut through bone. "Just because he's talented doesn't give him an excuse to be a jackass."

Kenneth had been the wonder kid before AJ arrived. The youngest to complete certain complex procedures. The one everyone whispered about in hallways. But now Kenneth was thirty-five, and AJ was ten years younger, breaking records Kenneth had set just a few years ago.

"He's not a jackass, he's just…"

Katherine looked over her shoulder again, the compulsion irresistible. A swarm of women had materialized around AJ like bees to honey. Weren't there sick people somewhere needing actual medical attention? But if AJ wasn't a jackass, then what was he?

The question burrowed into her chest, demanding an answer.

She needed to find out who the true AJ was. She had to know. Because she couldn't live with herself knowing she had given up her virginity in the back seat of a Range Rover Sport to a jackass. The memory crashed over her with visceral intensity—the leather sticking to her bare skin, the awkward fumbling as they'd tried to find comfortable positions in the cramped space, the sharp sting of pain followed by pleasure she hadn't known existed.

That night had meant everything to her. Her first time. The moment she'd crossed from girl to woman. She'd given him something she could never get back, something precious and irreplaceable. And he'd held her afterward, stroking her hair, murmuring things that had made her believe it meant something to him too.

But it hadn't.

The realization settled over her like ice water. She was just another notch on his bedpost. Another conquest in a long line of them. An unforgettable night for her—the night that had changed everything—wasn't even worthy of a footnote in his memory.

She'd lost her virginity to a man who couldn't even remember her name.

The injustice of it burned in her throat like acid.

"He's just what?" Kenneth sneered, pulling her back to the present. "Let me guess, he pitched his tent in your panties. Now you can't see him for what he really is."

Something inside Katherine snapped.

"And maybe you're just pissed off that someone ten years younger than you, barely out of medical school, beat your time at replacing a heart valve." The words poured out, sharp and vicious, propelled by hurt she'd been carrying for two years. "A final year intern who, by the way, isn't even specializing in Cardiology. Who only got the surgery because they were trying to use it as a bribe to lure him to the specialty. I heard you didn't have any Heads of Departments fighting over you either."

Kenneth's face went white, then red. "Wow. You've really got a hard-on for this guy."

"I haven't—I just…I just—"

She just what?

Katherine's mouth opened and closed, words failing her completely. She'd just insulted her attending physician, potentially torpedoed her entire residency, and she couldn't even articulate why.

Because AJ had been inside her body but couldn't be bothered to remember her face?

Because she'd spent two years replaying one night while he'd moved on before the sun came up?

Because some pathetic part of her had hoped that when they met again, he'd remember, and it would mean she'd mattered, even just a little?

God, she was an idiot.