Believing Again Read Free Page A

Google homepage she shut it down. This was stupid. She would ask him about his practice and what his deal was with the clinic the next time she saw him.
    As to whether he was married, engaged, or otherwise paired up, that was irrelevant. Wasn’t it?
    Idiot
, she chastised herself.
Let it go. You have work to do
.
    • • •
    Two days later, Danny was on her computer trying to catch up on her reports when she was interrupted by a deep male voice coming from over her shoulder.
    “So, is it true what all those cops on TV shows complain about? You guys spend all your time doing paperwork?”
    She turned to see a grinning Jake Abrams, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, staring down at her with a look she was sure could boil water. It certainly seemed to be moving her blood in that direction.
    With the jeans he wore a cream-colored cable knit sweater over a red turtleneck. The other morning he’d been in dark trousers and a tweed jacket with a white shirt open at the neck and no tie. Very doctor-like. Dressed like this, he looked more relaxed, unruffled.
    Hot.
    It unnerved her to have him towering over her the way he was. He’d moved in so close she didn’t see how she could stand up without bumping against him.
    She tried to laugh off her uneasiness. “Yeah, our job consists of hours of paperwork, frequent stretches of painstaking legwork nailing down boring details, and the occasional moment of sheer terror. Although the sheer terror moments have decreased significantly since I made detective and stopped busting down drug house doors or pulling over strange cars weaving back and forth on the freeway. How about your job?”
    Her attempt at humor managed to take the heat in his eyes down to a more manageable level, thank God.
    “There are some similarities,” he said. “The long hours. The paperwork. Boring administrative details, although not so much the legwork. And my sheer terror isn’t worrying about what someone might do to me but what I might do to them when I have them on an operating table in front of me.”
    The heat reappeared in his eyes and an image flashed through her mind. She was spread out in front of him, not in surgery surrounded by a crew of operating techs dressed in scrubs but in a bed. Neither one of them was dressed. She could feel the mattress move as he lowered himself onto the sweet smelling sheets, saw his hand reach for her …
    Shit. This had to stop. She felt flustered and said the first thing she could think of. “What’s your specialty?”
Dammit. Next thing I’ll ask is, “What’s your sign?”
“I didn’t think to ask the other day.”
    “Thoracic surgery. Didn’t you Google me?” The smug smile was back. “I sure as hell Googled you.”
    Not sure if she was more embarrassed that he somehow knew what she’d been tempted to do or that he had done it himself, she said, “I doubt you found anything of interest.”
    “You play basketball for a city league team, you volunteer with the Sunshine Division at Christmas, you earned a commendation for outstanding service. No mention of a Facebook, LinkedIn, or blog presence, no pictures of a social life, a boyfriend, husband, or lover. Did I miss anything?”
    She cleared her throat and squirmed in her chair. “So, a thoracic surgeon. A lot of call for that at the vets’ clinic?”
    Cocking his head, he smiled, as if to say, “I’ll let you get away with not answering for now.” Then he responded to her question. “I did graduate from medical school before I went on to cracking open chests. I can still treat ordinary ailments with the best Doc-in-a-Box clinic.”
    “But you must do a lot of trauma work in your regular practice. Is that how you ended up in the Guard?”
    The flirty twinkle disappeared and a cool expression took over his eyes. He was deathly serious, his mouth a thin line. “That and a misguided sense of patriotism.”
    “What’s misguided about serving in the military?”
    “I learned pretty quickly