Even her friend, the blonde pregnant woman, was more Alex’s type than Josie. Staring at this skinny little pixie of a woman, he’d been dumbfounded to find every sensor in his body going mad. Four months ago he had seen her for the first time, and the sad part was that he had squandered every single opportunity to say something, anything, other than “hi” to her.
When she walked in the room wearing a lab coat and whatever clothes were on under that, it was as if her mere presence was enough—actually interacting with her was too exquisite. What a great lie he told himself—the bottom line was that he was too much of a pu**y to actually come out and introduce himself, get to know her, ask her out and see if whatever triggered this animal instinct in him that made him clam up and be a stupid eighth-grade boy was real.
Life was hectic. It was easier to go to a bar, pick up some chick, take her home, bed her, date her for a few weeks, and then end it all amicably—or not—than it was to actually understand why Josie triggered that reaction in him. Attraction like this was something he needed to protect, pregnant with possibility and yet not quite ready to be born.
Maybe tonight was symbolic. Perhaps the pregnant woman’s baby, the new life that would emerge in the next few hours or days, would give him a reason to conceive his own new relationship, let it gestate, and see what kind of life came from it.
Hot breath on his shoulder surprised him as he waited for the elevator. “You don’t have to do this, you know?”
He turned, stunned out of his own thoughts to find himself staring down at Lisa, who looked up at him, her nose piggish and bulbous, nostrils flared as if she were pissed off about something. “Don’t need to do what?” he said.
“Don’t need to go up on labor and delivery. Collins is up there, they don’t need you right now.” Collins was the other OB resident on shift tonight. Known as the barber of Boston, he was ready to slice and dice at will, with a C-section rate that pushed forty percent. If Collins got to that case first, Alex knew the inevitable outcome.
“So he’s up there,” Alex said as derisively as he could. He turned away and stared at the silver doors, willing them to part so that he could get on the elevator.
Lisa took a step away. “It’s about that woman, isn’t it?”
Hardening his body, Alex steeled himself and said, “What I do is absolutely none of your business, Lisa. Go back to whatever work you have.” It was lame. He knew it was lame, but it was what he needed to say because otherwise he was going to say something laced with profanity. And he wasn’t that kind of guy, no matter how much she was making him wish he was.
Sniffing, she turned away and flounced off, to the extent that someone with a stick up their ass could flounce. The elevator doors opened and as he took a step forward his mind processed, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, the fact that there before him, in the flesh and in full, stood Josie.
She stared at his chest and then looked him dead on and said, “Alex Derjian?”
“Yes?” he said, taking two steps onto the elevator and turning toward her. How did she know his name? He touched his chest, the spot where she’d just stared, and realized his name tag had it in block letters. His heart began to race and an impulse to reach out and touch any exposed flesh on her body permeated him, making him take a long, slow, deep breath to hold back. What the hell is this? he wondered, the elevator air starting to swim, the heat transmitting out of his skin and seeking to envelop hers.
“Sherri Newsome asked for you up on labor and delivery,” she said in a neutral voice, clipped like a nurse coming to a doctor with a request.
“Oh. Oh,” he said. “Is it about a patient?” he asked, hoping it was about her friend, the blonde.
“Yes. She needs a quick consult.” Her eyes were full of fear and concern, but also something harder, the chocolate irises framed by the whites of her eyes and almond-shaped sockets that framed everything and gave her a pixie-ish look.
She really was quite enchanting, almost Icelandic looking, like a softer version of the singer Björk. She had the body of a dancer but no height. If she was five feet tall he’d be surprised, and she made him feel like a giant, like a moose of a man. That was hard to do for someone who barely hit six feet and topped out, at best, at 180, with loads of muscle on him.
With a practiced turn she pressed the L&D floor button and the pneumatic hiss of the doors caught his attention, making him turn and look out to find Lisa glaring at them both, her face like stone as the doors closed. He turned back to Josie, stunned to be in her presence and relieved to be away from Lisa.
“Hi, I’m Alex.” Reaching his hand out to shake her hand, he was giddy with the opportunity to have a social convention he could use to access her skin.
She reached back and shook his hand, eyes widening at the genesis of their touch that connected the two. His palm embraced hers, soft and hard at the same time, commanding and tender as if he had to wring as much as possible out of this gesture. He pumped her hand two times and then slowed.
“Josie,” she said, quietly. “Hi.” She broke eye contact, looking over his shoulder and then directing her attention back, the skin around her eyes warming and narrowing a bit, face breaking into a smile. “Josie Mendham, nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” he said, maintaining contact for as long as possible. Knowing that he would look like a creeper if he didn’t let go, he reluctantly withdrew his hand, the feeling of losing contact like having the wind knocked out of him.
Either a fireball entered the elevator and exploded in her head and her cl*t or she had just met her equivalent of Laura’s two soulmates in a single body. With one touch, Alex—just another resident, just another doctor in a hospital working a twenty-four-hour or forty-eight-hour shift, the kind of guy she’d met hundreds of over the years—had transformed everything. Transformed the air in the elevator, transformed the entire experience of bringing Laura in to L & D into…transformed something about Josie herself.
His touch had seismically split her in two, tectonic plates altering her emotional landscape. How could one person do that? she wondered as their eyes locked and he shook her hand slowly, the tactile sensation of his palm pressed against hers like some sort of a battery recharging every cell in her body, warming her, making parts of her throb with a frequency that she hoped he could feel with his tongue someday.
Or now. Now would work.