that their daughter was seriously ill, they’d go to a different hospital’s emergency room. All of Brooke’s careful explanations, all of Jamie’s professional courtesy, would result in nothing. West Central Texas Hospital was wasting resources that could have been better spent on a dozen other people.
Worse, those parents would never relax and appreciate that they had a healthy child. Brooke couldn’t help but think of her mother and how grateful she would have been to have a four-year-old girl with a common cold. Instead, when Brooke’s sister had been four, her mother had spent a week sitting at the bedside of a child in a coma, until Brooke’s sister had passed away.
It had been so long ago, close to twenty years now. Brooke rested her elbows on the high counter of the nurses’ station and let her head drop into her hands. For just a moment, she pressed her fingertips against her temples to relieve the stress. It was impossible to treat a four-year-old little girl and not think of her sister.
If those angry parents in room two only knew how much worse their lives could be, how much more serious their troubles could get. People should thank their lucky stars when their lives were normal. Boring. Routine. Brooke’s mother was right: security and predictability were the keys to a good life.
“Dr. Bamber asked that you give him a call when you have a moment,” the nurse at the desk said.
Brooke frowned. She wasn’t waiting on any radiology reports. “About which patient?”
The nurse, the blonde and single one from a few nights ago, beamed at her. “No patient. I think it’s personal.”
So, Tom was going to ask her out again, and he wasn’t waiting until chance brought them together to do it. He was predictable. He was exactly what she needed in her life, if she needed any male companionship at all.
The glass doors slid open. A patient arrived on a gurney, paramedics walking on either side. No eye candy. No one from Engine Thirty-Seven.
Brooke was annoyed at the way her heart had skipped a beat when the doors whooshed open. She was disappointed at her own disappointment. This little game of Zach roulette did not amuse her. She had a chance at normalcy and predictability and a perfectly nice date with a perfectly nice guy. She should be satisfied. She’d call Tom. Soon.
“I’m going to grab a quick cup of coffee,” she told the nurse.
The emergency two-way radio that resided permanently at the nurses’ station sounded. Another ambulance was on its way. She lingered and listened as the nurse communicated with the crew, until Brooke heard it was not Engine Thirty-Seven.
Impatiently, she pushed through the door into the kitchenette.
There Zach was, standing there as calm as could be, reading the work schedule pinned on the bulletin board. She hadn’t braced herself to see him, so the sight of him took her breath away. His hair, which had darkened to a medium brown over the winter, was once more becoming streaked by the sun now that warm weather had returned to Texas. His jaw was square, clean-shaven, and his uniform—
Zach wasn’t in uniform. Brooke had never seen him in anything but black. Now he wore a pale blue shirt, cuffed halfway up his forearms and tucked into his jeans. His boots were brown, not black, and they were cowboy boots, not steel-toed work boots. He looked about as delicious as a rugged man could look.
Brooke wished, with a sudden ferocity that knocked her off guard, that she could say to hell with logic and predictability and Tom and instead take a chance with Zach. What would it be like to let him make her laugh after hours instead of settling for a quick grin at work? To flirt, to tease, to touch a man without knowing where it would lead or how long it would last?
That would be dangerous living.
He glanced her way to see who had opened the door. When their eyes met, he smiled.
She nodded coolly. “What are you doing here? You’re not...” She gestured toward his jeans. “...working.”
“Looking for you, of course. I hoped you’d be done with your shift, and we could catch that drink.”
“It’s nine in the morning.”
“We could drink coffee.” He stepped closer to her, close enough that she could see how the blue of his shirt made the blue in his eyes more pronounced. Close enough that the quiet bass of his voice filled the air between them. “I know a vintage record store that has a coffee bar. They play heavy metal on vinyl, but they top your lattes with just a whisper of foam. If you were just coming off a hard night shift, it would be a great combination.”
“Oh.”
“I came in and checked the schedule yesterday. I thought you were working overnight and might need to wind down this morning, before going to bed.”
There was practically a purr in his voice. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Was he trying to seduce her at nine in the morning? Seduce her with heavy metal music played on vinyl records in one of Austin’s funky coffee shops? The man must not have any sense of what she was like as a person. She wasn’t the kind of woman who drank coffee in places like that.
Maybe I am. I’ve never tried it.
She leaned back against the wall, tucking her hands behind herself, in the small of her back. Away from him. “I switched shifts. I’ve got ten more hours today. I won’t be done until seven, if that.”
His easy grin said it was no big deal, nothing to worry about. He nodded toward the schedule on the wall. Her schedule. He hadn’t left anything to chance, after all.
“I see that. I’m covering a short shift today for a friend in an ambulance company, eleven to six. I can be showered and shaved and ready to take you out tonight when you get off at seven. Say yes.”
She hesitated. As flattering as it was that he’d apparently meant it when he’d said it wasn’t a joke and he really wanted to buy her a drink, he was still that playboy paramedic who flirted shamelessly with everything and everyone female.
She lifted her chin, wishing she weren’t so tempted to add herself to his fan club. “What if I said no?”
His smile didn’t slip, but he looked a little surprised at her question. “I’d be disappointed, but I understand long shifts. If you’re tired, you’re tired. I was matching up our schedules when you came in. I’m starting twenty-four hours tomorrow, but we could make it the day after tomorrow.”
“I meant what’s your plan B for tonight, if I can’t make it?”
He placed one hand on the wall near her head and leaned closer to her. That mostly-blue gaze never left her face. “I’d head over to the firehouse after work. Shower. Crash on the couch in front of some mindless sports.”
“Alone?”
He tilted his head a little to the side, studying her. “Yes, alone. I want to go out with you. If you’re unavailable, I don’t want to go out.”
She snorted a little, not the most ladylike sound, but her disbelief needed an outlet. “Be serious. If I said no, you’d get over that disappointment fast. You could take any other woman out for drinks. You’d have another date lined up before I could snap my fingers.”
He wasn’t smiling now. “Women aren’t interchangeable. If I want to spend time with you, then no one else will do.”
“I’ve watched you flirt with every woman you set eyes on for eight months.”
“That doesn’t mean I date every woman I see. When I’m interested in one woman, then she’s it.”
She did frown at that. “Really? Judging by your behavior around here, it’s been a long time since you decided one woman was enough.”
“I’d say it’s been four years. Almost five.”
That startled Brooke into silence. Such a specific answer—the man had his secrets, then. A past. It was hard to imagine Zach devoted to