Chapter 20

20

He’d always hated working the emergency department on weekends. That was when all the imbeciles and idiots—the drunks and the handful of druggies that populated Value—found their way, through stupidity, to the hospital. He was so damned sick of sewing up some low-IQ idiot who had cut himself on a glass bottle, trying to impress some bar-hopping wannabe-hooker. Most of the women that frequented the two bars in Value were the kind that you had to be hellaciously drunk to get within twenty feet of.

Doug hated seeing Genny wasting her time on losers like that. But she treated them like they were the most important patient she had ever seen. Like she did every patient she had.

Hours passed, and they had little to no time to stop. To breathe. Genny’s ponytail started to droop. Her scrubs top was wet right there on the front where a baby had spit up on her. She was rumpled and disheveled and not at her best at all.

She deserved so much better than this.

He just wanted to scoop her close and tell her he would rescue her from this world.

Once they were together, she could retire from working the emergency room. There were dayshift positions available. He had an opening in his own office—he worked the emergency department two times a week, since they were such a small hospital—she didn’t have to do this dirty, seedy part of the medical industry life.

He wanted to be her hero.

He stepped closer to her after their most recent patient. “Sweetheart, why don’t you let me buy you dinner in the cafeteria? Take a break, rest?”

She shot him a look. The endearment had just slipped out, but…she was his heart. How was he expected to hide that? “No, thank you. I’m going to take a break in the break room.”

Doug bit back his anger. Why was she so damned resistant to him?

There had to be a reason.

And that reason was probably another man.

Of course it was.

Why wouldn’t it be?

This was a small hospital. Most of the physicians here were younger, many were single. Barratt County didn’t quite pay what the nearby Finley Creek hospitals did. Once a man married here, he generally started looking for better pay and benefits and career growth opportunities. And Finley Creek was just about an hour away.

Other single men were practically coming out of the woodwork here. Hell, only one of the pediatricians in this entire building was married. He’d married a nurse from NICU two months ago.

The single nurses and female physicians and support staff and techs basically had their damned pick of available single doctors just looking for women to play with after the stress of the day. The smart ones captured those men however they could.

And Genny was perfection—beautiful, kind, sweet, and loving. Of course some other man would have seen that. Would want her for their own. They’d look through the dross and see the gold in her.

Would maybe be enough to turn her head.

He was going to find out who it was.

He watched her walk away. He knew where she was going—Dr. Fisher, that blond bitch who thought she knew everything, always met her in the break room near this time of night.

Justin came up to his side. “Still trying with Hiller’s sister? When you going to give that up?”

“I’m not giving up. She’s…hell, I can’t get her out of my head.”

“Some women are like that. And some like playing hard to get.” Justin gave a feral grin as he watched a familiar blonde come out of the restroom at the end of the hall by radiology. Dr. Fisher waited for Genny, and they took off together—like the two practically always did. Justin was more relaxed than usual—he’d probably snuck off to the basement with that nurse practitioner he liked playing around with so much. Barricuda-bitch, that was how Doug had always privately thought of her. “Men like us…enjoy the hunt.”

That Doug did. But Justin took it to the extremes, and was a real animal where women were concerned. Often not in a good way. The other man was ruthless—in everything he did. “I’m getting tired of playing, now, though. I want for keeps. Kids, that kind of thing. I hate going home to an empty place. You hear if she’s involved with anyone else here?”

The other man always knew exactly what was going on everywhere in this place. Justin shook his head. “Just the usual rumors. Some thought she was a little too close to Fields when that friend of hers was upstairs. But I heard it from a friend of mine the guy’s practically another older brother. And not one she likes all that much. I don’t think he’s an obstacle. She has a thing for lawyers, though. Maybe it’s Bowen Carrington?”

He hoped not. There was no way he could compete with a wealthy attorney like that. Doug still had med school loans to pay. And Carrington had all that money from his great-grandparents. He didn’t need to work at all. Fields probably didn’t either. He had had everything handed to him, money, success—women. If Fields caught Genny’s attention, Doug wouldn’t stand a chance.

He had lost to that man far too many times before.