Love on Call Read Free

unsure how to finish the sentence. His fingers touched her and she was unaware of her injury, only that they sent a charge through her. Again she questioned why he was in Emergency. If she had to have another doctor take care of her, why not Mark Peterson or Jason Abrams? Why did Brad Clayton have to show up tonight?
    â€œOpen your eyes,” he said again. Mallory did as instructed. “You’re not acting as I expect you to.”
    How was she supposed to act? She was a doctor. She should know this. Where was her training? All those years of schooling seemed to vanish when she looked into his deep brown eyes.
    â€œTell me how you feel,” Brad said.
    How she felt? She’d been at the hospital for nearly a year, and he’d never even looked at her. Yet her first day as a resident, she’d passed him in the parking lot and wondered who he was. He was moody, quiet, sometimes cynical, and he looked right through her, the same way he would look through a ghost.
    â€œI feel fine. I’m just tired. I’ve been on duty for fourteen hours.”
    â€œSo you need some sleep?”
    â€œDr. Clayton, I can go back to work.”
    Brad took another swab and cleaned away the blood that had trickled down her neck.
    â€œIt’s only a scratch, right?” Mallory questioned.
    â€œWith your skin type there won’t even be a scar.” His hand brushed her neck. It felt like a caress. Mallory forced her eyes to stay open. She couldn’t stop the tingling sensation that streaked through her at warp speed.
    She took a deep breath when his hands moved past her collarbone and continued to the bloodstain in the white blouse she wore under her lab coat. Again Mallory’s lids swept downward. The sensations that rushed through her at his touch made her want to keep her eyes closed and give in to the fantasies that she often imagined in the quiet of her bedroom.
    â€œI’m sending you home,” he said.
    Her eyelids fluttered. “Why?”
    â€œOther than you’re too tired to keep your eyes open, you’ve had a really bad shock.”
    â€œI’m fine,” she insisted.
    â€œAnd you’re no use to the patients in this state.” He continued as if she hadn’t spoken.
    â€œYou can’t send me home.”
    Holding a bandage, he moved around to face her. “Do you think anyone is going to question my decision?”
    She thought about the long hours she’d been on duty, the episode with Wayne Mason, the cut on her neck and Brad’s authority at the hospital. He was liked, well-respected, a brilliant surgeon, even though he was moody and unpredictable at times. She knew no one would object to his decision.
    â€œDo you live alone?” he asked.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI want to know if there’ll be someone to check on you.”
    â€œThere isn’t. I do live alone.”
    â€œCan you call a friend? I don’t think you should be on your own tonight.”
    Mallory hesitated, then said, “I’ll call my sister.”
    Brad gave her an inquisitive look, but said, “Good.”
    Her sister lived in Atlantic City, an hour from Philadelphia. She was a kindergarten teacher and couldn’t come up on the spur of the moment and spend the night with her. There was nothing wrong with Mallory. She didn’t need a baby-sitter. Yet if she told him that he would never believe it.
    The truth was she had very few friends. She’d only been back in Philly a year, and most of that time she’d spent at the hospital. She’d lost touch with her oldfriends, and her work at the hospital kept her too busy to make new ones. She’d gotten close to one of the nurses, Dana Baldwin, but Dana was on duty tonight. So she would go home alone. She would be fine. Exactly as she had told the good doctor.
    â€œI’ll have someone call you a taxi.”
    Mallory sat up and swung her legs to the side of the gurney. She felt no dizziness