looked up, her expression rueful. “Not unless you can surgically reattach this.”
“I could carry you,” he suggested.
She made a great show of assessing him from the chest up. “You probably could. And that would be very gallant. But I wouldn’t try it if I were you.” Despite the spunky words, she put her hand on his arm for balance as she removed the other shoe.
“So you’re determined to go?”
“Even more now.” The look she turned on him was wry. “I have no shoes.”
“Not a problem for me.”
“That makes one of us,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll let you go quietly if you give me your phone number.”
She blinked up at him, and for a split second the idea seemed to tempt her. Then she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“You don’t want me to call you?”
“Give the man a gold star.” Regret flickered in her eyes although she probably didn’t know it was there. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the interest, but women like me don’t date men like you.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Okay, how about this? My parents aren’t in the south of France or even north Las Vegas for that matter. It was the truth when I told you there’s no money in my family.”
“I believe you. That’s not why—”
“Look Dr. Can’t-take-no-for-an-answer. I don’t want you to call me. You’re a jerk at work. You yell at the help. You have a terrible reputation and no one likes you, including me. And everyone thinks you’re inflexible.”
He laughed. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“No, I really don’t.”
“If it’s not already clear, I’d like to see you again.”
Something flashed in her eyes when she said “Yeah, well, we all want things we can’t have.”
Before he could stop her, she turned and vanished in the crowd, ending his lucky streak. The most interesting woman he’d ever met had just shut him down.
At least he knew her name. It was a place to start.
Chapter Two
Tired and cranky the morning after her big night, Cindy and her “clean cart” rode the elevator to Mercy Medical Center’s second floor. If she’d known her raffle ticket to the ball included a sleepless night because of Dr. Charming, spending the evening at home in her slippers and sweats would have won out over borrowed finery and broken heels. She still couldn’t believe that Nathan Steele, the legendary NICU doc, had asked for her phone number. If he’d known she worked in housekeeping at the hospital, the fairy tale would certainly have ended differently.
The elevator arrived at her stop and the doors whispered open. She pushed the cart, holding a mop, trash receptacle and trigger bottles filled with antiseptic spray, down the hall. After rounding the corner, she came to a screeching halt. Nathan was standing right outside the neonatal intensive care unit.
He was looking at his phone, probably a BlackBerry or whatever was the latest expensive communication technology crammed into a square case barely visible to the naked eye. She wouldn’t know. Her cell phone was old, her calling plan the cheapest available on the market, only for emergencies. Which running into Dr. Steele definitely was, but nothing an old, cheap cell phone could handle.
The good news was that he hadn’t seen her yet. She could turn around and hide someplace until he was gone, but there was work to do. She was already gowned in the white, paper coverall with the snaps marching up the front that the unit required. Except for the disposable blue booties over her sneakers, she looked like a bunny. If only this uniform included a bag to put over her head, he wouldn’t know her because her ID badge was hidden beneath the protective clothing.
Then she got a grip and realized he overlooked her on a daily basis. There was no reason to believe that had changed because the night before he’d flirted with her outrageously and asked a woman he didn’t recognize for her number. The dancing had been really nice, too.
With head held high, she walked past him and stopped at the double-door entrance to the NICU. The cart wasn’t allowed inside. With all the sensitive equipment, electrical cords and highly skilled personnel hurrying between the isolettes, there wasn’t room to spare for the clunky cart. Housekeeping paraphernalia was necessary but not even in the same league with the pricey, sensitive and technical tools that saved the babies.
Cindy picked up one of the trigger bottles and was just about to approach the automatic opening door when she felt someone behind her. The hair at her nape prickled and her skin flushed with heat that had nothing to do with the hot suit. She could be wrong about the awareness, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t. The same thing had happened once before. Specifically, last night.
“Cindy?”
It was him. Not only that, he’d called her by name and as far as she knew he hadn’t looked at her. She turned, bracing for this unprecedented happening. And there was Dr. Charming with his meticulously mussed hair and swoon-worthy square jaw. He was dressed in scrubs, which weren’t particularly appealing, except that he was wearing them.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked.
“I recognized your perfume.”
Well, damn. Why did he have to be a smooth talker on top of everything else? “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Interesting development because last night you had all the answers.”
If he really believed that, she’d put on a pretty good performance. “About that—”
“So this is where I know you from.”
“Scene of the crime.” She’d let him connect whatever dots he saw fit to explain why she’d made him guess her identity.
“Crime being the pertinent word. It wasn’t my finest hour. I owe you an apology.”
At the speed of light he’d figured out that she was the housekeeper he’d chastised the day before. Pigs must be flying outside the window because this was an unexpected and unprecedented turn of events.
Doctors never apologized to housekeepers, partly because they were the ones who cleaned up after the high and mighty and just disappeared into the landscape.
“Excuse me, but I could have sworn you used the word apology.”
“I suppose your hostility is logical.”
“Really? You think?” She rested her free hand on her hip. “Maybe because I was found guilty without benefit of a fair trial? I didn’t touch that baby in the NICU.”
He nodded. “I saw movement. It was a peripheral vision thing—”
“NICU housekeeping 101—never touch the babies. Stifle any rogue maternal instincts and beat them into submission. It was the first thing I was taught and I learned my lesson well.”
“There’s a good reason for the rule. The babies are incredibly fragile. It’s tempting to want to hold them because the heat shield on the Giraffe is up. For a good reason. The neonates need a lot of attention and we need fast and easy access to them.”
She knew the Giraffe was the commonly used nickname for the highly specialized isolette that could move up, down and other directions just by pushing a button.
“I know how frail they are,” she said. “I understand that the goal is to keep the environment like a mother’s womb, warm and quiet. And that begs the question—If calm