Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
I staggered to my feet and stumbled to the bathroom like a newborn giraffe. It wasn’t until I slammed the door shut and the darkness closed around me that I finally began to believe the words that little voice in my head always tried to convince me were a lie. The words that had gotten me through. The words that had made it possible to breathe in the endless darkness. The words that were only a lie in those empty moments before the pain took it all away and I became whole again.
I’m okay.
CHAPTER ONE
LINCOLN
SIX MONTHS LATER
The kid was a pretty good liar; I had to give him that.
If I hadn’t forced him to shake my hand during the informal introduction, I never would have guessed that the lightness in his voice was practiced and the confidence in his stormy gray eyes was forced.
But for some reason or another that I didn’t want to give much thought to, I’d made the decision to step forward and extend my hand rather than remain where I was and just offer a cursory nod as he was being introduced to me. I’d been able to tell right away that he hadn’t wanted to have any kind of physical contact with me but, admittedly, my gentlemanly side had stepped out of the building the second I’d laid eyes on the gorgeous man, and I’d instigated the physical contact anyway.
I’d known there would be sparks long before his skin came into contact with mine, but as I studied his stunning eyes to see if he felt those same sparks, the second his palm met mine, the nurse in me took over and I forgot all about what it would feel like to have his lithe body pinned beneath my own as I drove into him over and over. I focused instead on how clammy and unnaturally cold his skin felt. I’d come to learn that summer evenings in Minnesota weren’t always the warmest, but the guy’s skin felt only a few shades warmer than the many ill-fated patients whose hands I’d held as they’d taken their last breaths.
A dozen different potential diagnoses went through me in those brief seconds but that was all it took to know that his happy-go-lucky smile and polite words were bullshit.
“Lincoln,” I said after Ford introduced me as Linc, the nickname everyone knew me by. I tried to convince myself I was only giving the guy my full name rather than the shortened version of it because I needed the few extra seconds to catalog as many physical signs as I could. I absolutely did not care what my name would sound like on his lips.
I did not.
Now who’s the liar?
“Lincoln,” the young man said softly as if testing the sound of my name.
He may as well have run his sinful tongue over every part of my body.
“Theo,” the man added with a nod.
It was the same name he’d been introduced to everyone else with but the way he’d said it to me felt different somehow.
“Theo,” I repeated dumbly.
Like me, Theo had blond hair, but his was several shades darker than my own naturally curly hair and while my locks were long enough that I could tie them back with a hair tie, Theo’s were short and perfectly groomed.
Too perfectly.
His eyes looked like the most dangerous of storm clouds and his lips practically invited anyone brave enough to get past those eyes to steal a taste of him. His body was lean, but it was hard to tell with the loose-fitting clothes he was wearing if it was just trim or if he was on the wrong side of skinny.
The fact was that nothing about him was what I would have considered my type, but my body seemed to have conveniently forgotten that point.
My body seemed to have forgotten a lot of things.
First and foremost, that I was supposed to let go of him at some point.
“You almost done takin’ his temperature the old way, Nurse Ratchet?” my current charge and never-ending pain in my ass, Walter, practically bellowed as he rolled his wheelchair into my leg to get my attention. It wasn’t enough to get me to release Theo’s hand, but I did finally realize the young man was indeed trying to get free of my hold with a discreet but nonetheless forceful tug.
I immediately dropped his hand.
“Come on, son,” Walter said as he motioned to Theo. “Me and Lenny will give you the real tour of the place… the one that includes all the places Ford and Sheriff Loud-n-Plenty like to do it when they think no one notices them sneaking off.”
“Jesus, Walter,” Ford moaned as his partner, Cam, my other employer, chuckled and pulled Ford back against his big body and whispered something into the younger man’s ear that had him turning red but nodding his head all the same.