Full Package

But when her thumbs dig into my muscles, I don’t think anymore. I shut off my mind and give in to the extraordinary feeling of her hands on me. I moan and murmur, “Feels so good.”


I can sense her shifting behind me. Moving her face closer. Her lips are near my hair. “Good. Let me make you feel better.”

She makes me feel worlds better, even though I didn’t really feel bad. But I feel spectacular as she works my shoulders. It’s better than good. It’s good everywhere, including below the Mason–Dixon line, where there’s a huge statue pointing out how much better than good this is.

It’s arousing.

It’s a turn-on.

With my eyes closed and her hands massaging me, my mind floats away, picturing her sliding her hands down my chest, reaching for the bottom of my T-shirt, tugging it over my head.

My dick hardens more as I imagine her return route—those soft, strong hands playing across my abs, traveling up my stomach to my pecs, exploring me.

I let out a breath. It sounds like a turned-on groan. Because I don’t stop the fantasy there. As she touches me, I imagine her hands gliding into my hair, her lips brushing across my neck, her scent everywhere.

And then I see myself doing the next logical thing.

The only thing.

Flipping around, sliding her under me, pinning her wrists above her head.

And fucking her.

Even though I’m only her friend, even though I’m keeping it on the level, all signs in my head and body point to a different agenda.

Josie Hammer turns me on, and that’s a big fucking problem.





13





A few days later, I find a clear plastic bag from her bakery on the coffee table. There’s an assortment of mixed nuts inside—pecans, walnuts, and peanuts, too. Dangling from a yellow ribbon is a notecard.



* * *



Thanks again for coming to the rescue this past weekend. What would I do without a nut lover like you?



* * *



I smile and save the card, then pop some nuts in my mouth on the way to work.



The next few weeks at the hospital pass in a blur of gunshot wounds, chest pain, shower falls, drug overdoses, boiling water spills, and an apple where the sun doesn’t shine.

The man who became intimately acquainted with the fruit told me he fell on a basket of Granny Smiths while sweeping the floors. “I like to keep them around, easily accessible. Apples are good for you,” he’d said, while explaining away his . . . predicament.

In his case, the apple a day didn’t keep the doctor away.

There was also an afternoon shift when the paramedics rushed in an incredibly polite British man who had collided with a wooden post at a construction site. “I seem to have acquired a splinter,” he’d said, of the half-foot-long piece of wood in his ribs.

Ouch.

Today, we encountered a surprise baby.

When I return home, I tell Josie the story as she slides a lasagna dish out of the oven to check on it. I lean against the doorframe of the tiny kitchen, savoring the aroma of her cooking. “The girl was eighteen. She came in complaining of food poisoning. When we informed her she was pregnant and dilated to ten centimeters, she told us she was going to sue us for defamation of character.”

“Well, naturally. Being told you’re pregnant by a doctor is complete and absolute grounds for a courtroom trial, I’m sure,” she says as she closes the oven door. “Five more minutes for this.”

“Then she started pushing, and when the baby came out, her first words were, ‘It’s not mine. It needs to go back to its mama. Send it back to its real mom.’”

Josie frowns. “Awww. Poor baby.”

I nod. “Yup.”

She tilts her head. “Do you think she just didn’t want to be pregnant and was trying to deny it, or was she mentally unstable?”

“Hard to say. The girl’s not the first one to come into the ER saying she didn’t know she was pregnant.”

“But if she doesn’t want the kid, what happens to the baby?”

I shrug as I grab a grape from a glass bowl on the counter and pop it into my mouth. “Don’t know. That’s for the hospital social worker to figure out.”

“I wish there was something we could do for the baby,” she says softly.

“It’s going to be fine. The baby is healthy,” I say, since that’s really all I know.

Worry is etched onto her features as her brow furrows. “But how do you know it’s going to be fine?”

Her question gives me pause. Makes me think. “I don’t entirely know, but I trust that the appropriate people will help both of them.”

She sighs heavily and shakes her head. “But for a second, just think about what happens next. What is life going to be like for either one of them?”

I shrug, half wishing I could give her the answer she wants, and half wishing she’d stop asking. I don’t always like to contemplate what happens next to my patients. Next isn’t always pretty. Next isn’t always good. I do all I can do in the exam room. I can’t start marinating on the pieces of everyone’s life that I have zero control over.

She peers at the clock on the stove. “I can’t help it. I feel bad for both of them.”