Outside The Lines Read Free Page A

doesn’t even hurt anymore. You probably don’t need to look.”
    Blake’s gut bottomed out somewhere in the vicinity of his running shoes. He’d seen enough pain to know she was up to her pretty, freckled shoulders in it, no matter how tough her veneer. But damn it, this woman was no ordinary patient.
    She was no ordinary anything.
    “From what your chart says, I doubt that’s accurate.” Despite the circumstances, she was still a patient in need of medical care. And as a doctor, it was his responsibility to give it, the sooner, the better. “Let’s just see what we’re dealing with here.”
    Blake stepped in to pluck a pair of gloves from the box on the wall and start the exam, but Jules’s mouth became a slash as she served up a head shake both definitive and tight.
    “No.”
    Just like that, he was sitting at the kitchen table with the note in his hand, eight years younger and heartbroken as hell.
    “No?” His pulse cranked through his veins, hand still hovering above the glove dispenser. “Are you seriously refusing medical care?”
    “I got medical ca re. The nurse gave me one of these cold-thingys, and I’m feeling much better. Really, I’m good to go.”
    Oh yeah, no. Not a chance. Nobody left against medical advice on his watch. Not even Jules. “You have a second-degree burn that needs to be looked at and treated. You are not good to go.”
    “Excuse me?” One auburn brow shot up, but he wasn’t backing down.
    “I said—”
    “Okay, I think that’s enough.” The and-I-mean-it voice came not from Jules, but from the spot right beside the bed, and oh hell. He’d forgotten all about her friend sitting there. The woman’s face plucked a chord of familiarity in his brain, and Blake did a hasty run-through of his mental batch files to try and pin down the connection.
    She saved him the trouble. “Serenity Gallagher. You treated me a few months ago for a concussion.”
    Ah, right. The break-in at the diner. New place over on Fourth Street. “I remember.”
    “ He was your doctor when you got clocked on the head?” Jules asked, the words pinched with surprise.
    Serenity nodded, splitting her gaze between him and the spot where Jules sat glued to the gurney. “ Yes. So now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, would you mind telling me what the hell is going on? Clearly, you two know each other.” She turned an expectant look on her friend, and despite the self-preservation instinct that was screaming full-bore for him to cut this conversation in half and just treat Jules’s injury, he crossed his arms and followed suit.
    “I…we…uh.” Of course she still fucking blus hed when she was nervous. And of course it still heated his own face in return.
    Along with some anatomy due south.
    Jules tried again. “Blake…that is, Dr. Fisher and I are…we were…”
    Nope. He’d never heard her say it out loud, not even when it happened. And he sure as hell didn’t want to start now.
    “Engaged,” he said, refusing to drop her gaze. “Eight years ago, Jules and I were supposed to get married.”
    #
    Jules sat perfectly still against the pancake-flat hospital mattress lining the gurney beneath her even though every primal instinct in her body screamed at her to run.
    “Burns can become serious if they get infected. It was smart of your boss to suggest you stay for treatment.” Blake positioned a narrow plastic basin over the rolling tray table in front of him, methodically filling it with clear liquid from a plastic container marked with the word sterile . He checked, then re-checked all the little gizmos on the tray beside the basin, and damn it. All that precise focus and quiet intensity still drove her crazy.
    And not in the bad way.
    “She told you she’d personally help restrain me if I tried to leave,” Jules managed, buckling down hard over the emotions climbing the back of her throat. “That’s hardly a suggestion.”
    “Do you want to wait for her to come back