Heart Beat by Diane Benefiel

Author:Diane Benefiel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary romance, nurses, doctors, five stories, romance anthology, first responders, medical professionals, saving lives, love and sacrifice, everyday bravery
Publisher: Boroughs Publishing Group

Chapter Three

Marci Lark was going to be the death of him. If he didn’t strangle her first.

Jake ran his hand around the back of his neck. He was trying. He really was. More than once he’d reminded himself that he was the newbie in this office and that apparently Dr. Esquivel was pleased with her work. But it was like she was trying to get on his nerves. Thirty-minute appointments that should have taken fifteen. Counseling. Tea and sweet talk. Any minute now she’d probably pull out a candle and recommend aromatherapy. Why couldn’t she simply make a diagnosis and send them out the door with something that worked?

And if he’d been guilty of questioning her work, she was sure as hell guilty of questioning his. Oh, not out loud. But the smirks and the eye rolls said more than words would have. Yes, he believed in using medication. Because it worked. And it wasn’t his job to be everybody’s buddy. He was being paid to deliver health care. So that’s what he would do, deliver the best health care he knew how. They could find good buddies on their own time.

He made his last entry into the file and checked his iPad. There were a couple of patients waiting, but he was due a break and Marci was coming off hers. Dr. Esquivel was holed up in his office doing a pile of paperwork required by the state. Which was considerable with a PA and a nurse practitioner working for him.

Texas had yet to grant the same kind of autonomy to PAs and nurse practitioners that they enjoyed in most of the rest of the country, and Dr. Esquivel had to sign off on their prescriptions and such. Jake chafed under the restrictions, but it was what it was. He’d half expected the doctor to question some of his decisions, especially with Marci’s style being so different, but the doc hadn’t questioned anything yet, and Jake hoped he wouldn’t.

He wandered into the breakroom and popped a coffee pod in the machine. Marci was rinsing her mug at the sink. She glanced over and murmured a quick greeting before she walked out.

She’d found time to change her hair color last night. Instead of the eye-popping fuchsia, it was now cotton candy pink. Her lipstick was pink as well. Today she paired the pink hair with lime green scrubs with orange hippos, a combination that should have clashed, but remarkably went together well. It was downright cute on her. In fact, he found everything about her downright cute. The hair, the eye-popping scrubs, everything.

Which irritated the hell out of him. For the thousandth time he wished women like her didn’t appeal to him so much. He wished that she didn’t appeal to him so much. But the attraction had been growing since that afternoon at the theater. And it damn well wasn’t one-sided.

He hadn’t missed the veiled peeks at him when she didn’t think he’d notice. Her interest she tried so hard to hide was evident, even when she was treating him to a curled lip or sarcastic rejoinder.

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