Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

ELLA

PRESENT DAY

"Well, you've certainly made quick work of getting this place in shape," says a voice from the doorway of the clinic.

I look up from where I am: scrubbing the ancient, thick linoleum tiles that are peeling up near the baseboards. I wipe sweat off my brow. It's Tanya, the mayor and my former teacher. "Tanya!" I say, climbing up off the floor. 

She sweeps me into a hug. "I cannot tell you how good it is to see you here," she says. She gives me a searching look, her blonde permed hair hanging around her face. "I know this can't be easy for you, Ella."

I shrug, tears stinging behind my eyes. "It's fine, Tanya. Honestly."

Tanya waves her hand in front of her face as if literally clearing the air of the unpleasantness of the moment. "Well, that's all water under the bridge, isn't it? Whew, it sure is hot in here. Does this thing not work?" She walks over to the broken window unit and pushes a few buttons.

"It's borked," I say, getting back to work cleaning the floor. I've pulled off the dust covers, vacuumed the upholstered waiting room seats, polished the hard wood surfaces with oil soap, and have bagged up the curtains to take them to the laundromat later. "I'm getting a list together before I call the handyman Alexa recommended to me."

Tanya whips around to face me. "Which handyman?"

I shrug. "She didn't give me a name."

"Ah," she says. "Well, there's pretty much only one of them, but he's great." I see a wry smile cross her lips and I throw down my brush.

"Alright," I say. "What's going on? First Alexa, now you. What is it?"

Tanya shakes her head and rolls up her sleeves. "It's nothin, darlin'. Now. What do you need me to do?"

I set Tanya to work washing the glass windows and pull out my cell phone. It's high time to find out what this handyman nonsense is about. I dial the number. It goes to a generic, computer-automated voicemail. I wait for the robot woman voice to finish and the beep to ring out. I clear my throat, suddenly feeling nervous. I have no idea why.

"Hi, um, this is Ella Hanover. I'm the new doctor," I stutter out unnecessarily. The whole town knows I'm here. Whoever this guy is, he's going to know too. "I have a ton of work to be done out here and Alexa gave me your number. So if you could just call me back, that'd be great." I hang up, feeling like I've just left the most idiotic, least informative message known to man. That's when I realize I didn't leave my phone number. Oh well. He can figure it out.

I get back to work polishing the floors, feeling like with every layer of dirt I scrub up, I reluctantly shed another layer of California off of me.

I'm not sure how to feel about that, but there’s no sense in fighting it.

Tanya and I break for lunch that she's brought: chicken salad sandwiches and chips. We eat under the shade of an enormous oak tree, sitting on a low branch together. "So this afternoon I want to tackle peeling the paint off of the window frames to see if we can get the windows to open. It'd be nice to have some fresh air circulating in there."

Tanya nods. "Anything slightly less hand intensive?" I look down at her gnarled hands, the knuckles knobby and swollen. Tanya sees me looking. "It's rheumatory arthritis," she says. "Early onset. Usually doesn't bother me, but the humidity's been pretty bad recently, so it's been acting up."

"Have you see a specialist about it?" I ask her, thinking immediately of a dozen people in California who could help her.

She shakes her head. "Haven't had time. I'm still part-time teaching at the high school, and with my mayoral duties, it's just too much to head into Dallas."

"You should make it a priority," I say. "No reason for you to suffer."

I hear the distant sound of rubber tires on the dirt road. I check my watch. It's been a few hours since I called the handyman, but he hasn't called back. The tires get closer and closer and a cherry red Chevy pickup truck with dark window tints blows into the front circle of the clinic. 

"Geez, slow down!" I yell, wiping my hands on my jeans and walking over to give the driver a piece of my mind. "You think somebody who lives out here would know that speeding down dirt roads just makes the dust kick up a thousand times more-" 

The driver climbs out of the truck, a cowboy hat on his head, and flashes me a blinding white smile. "What can I say? I like making you mad, Ella. Once upon a time I think it was the only thing I was good at."

I feel my knees go weak looking at his tanned face, deep dimples, and emerald green eyes. I see his blonde, wavy hair peeking out from under his hat and I have a mad desire to rush over and kiss him. Then my anger comes back over me, some that's been brewing for over a decade and some that's still hanging on from him speeding down my road. "I - you, you need to drive better," I muster out.

Luke Davis laughs and I melt again. He walks around the truck and leans up against it, inches away from my body, and crosses his arms. I see that black tattoos cover his sinewy forearms. Those weren't there eleven years ago. He tilts his hat toward me. "You keep talking like that and I just might have to bend you over this truck and fuck you, Ella."

I gape at him, my cheeks blushing furiously. I'm suddenly painfully aware that I'm covered in grime and my hair is a bushy cloud of humidity and sweat piled on top of my head.

Luke reaches out a calloused thumb, licks it, and brushes it across my cheek.

I want to punch him. I want to scream at him. But all I can do is look at him, his plaid, short sleeve cowboy shirt clinging effortlessly to his body, his tight jeans hugging his muscular legs and ending in worn, brown cowboy boots.

"You had some dirt on your face, Ella," he says in a deep, Texas drawl with a voice like the gravel road he just tore down.

"Stop saying my name," I say, crossing my arms indignantly. "You don't get to say my name."

He laughs and walks around me to the back of his truck, hoisting out a worn metal toolbox. "I'm guessing you want me to start with the AC first?" he asks. But he doesn't wait for an answer. "See you inside.
Ella.
"
He says it like a taunt and I suddenly have half a mind to chase him down and rant at him. But I'm still glued to the spot in my filthy clothes, my heart racing.

My cheek burns where he just touched me, and I remember with a start that Tanya is looking over this entire affair from her perch on the oak tree. I stomp through the long grass back toward her. She has a bemused look on her face. "You knew!" I hiss at her, turning back to make sure Luke is tucked inside the clinic where he can't hear me. "You and Alexa knew! And you sent me to call him anyway!"

She laughs. "Oh, sweetie. I told you. There's only one handyman in this town."

"Well, then I don't
need
a handyman. I can fix it all myself."

"You're going to fix this place up? You'll need the next three months, sugar," Tanya says, wiping her mouth with a napkin and gathering up our picnic back into her tote bag. "I think I need a nap after all this work." She winks at me. "You two need some alone time."

"Tanya! Don't you leave me here alone with him!" I yell after her as she pulls away in her own truck. She sticks a hand out of a half-rolled-down window and waves goodbye.

"Good to hear your accent's coming back so fast," Luke says from the porch. I turn to look at him and stomp up the steps.

"You stay on your side of the clinic, I'll stay on mine," I say. I pick up my bucket of dirty water and head to the patient room. I wasn't planning on touching this space today, but there's no way I'm going to stay in the same room with Luke Davis.

Five minutes later, I realize that I'm the only one paying for my ridiculous stubbornness. None of the windows open back here, and the paltry breeze that's been blowing through the front and back doors isn’t making its way into this room. I angrily try to throw up the window sash in here but it won't budge. I let out a roar of frustration as an array of splinters seed themselves into my tender fingers.

I hear boot steps echo down the hallway and I can feel his presence before I see him. "Need some help there, California?" he asks me in a long drawl.

"No, thank you," I spit back at him. 

He flips the lights on in the room and pats the patient table. "You going to dig those splinters out yourself?"

I'm holding my left hand, which is throbbing in pain.

He fishes through the wooden drawers looking for, presumably, tweezers. "If I remember right, you're a lefty. Gonna be kind of hard, even for a big-city doctor, to fish wood slivers out using her non-dominant hand."

I sigh, realizing he's correct. I begrudgingly pull myself up onto the old, creaking patient table. The fake, plastic leather crackles under my body and my sweaty thighs stick to the surface. The sterile paper roll was practically disintegrated when I'd tossed it out earlier this morning. 

Luke finds the tweezers and turns around. He's taken off his hat and his sun kissed hair is effortlessly swept back. I wish I could make my untamable curls look like that. "Let me take a look," he says, smiling as he reaches for my hand. I flinch as he touches me. "Hey now, I'm not a rattlesnake," he says. "You're awfully jumpy, Ella."

I close my eyes to keep from looking at him. It's going to loosen my resolve if I have to see his green eyes peering into mine. "Just do it," I say. "I think there are five of them in there if I counted right."

"I
hope
they taught you counting over on the West Coast," he jokes. His hands are calloused but he touches me with tenderness. I will myself to not have goosebumps fall down my arms, but it's useless. He's stroking my palm as he turns my hand toward the light to get a better view, and the bumps erupting on my skin give me away. He smells like rain.

"Would you hurry up?" I say, hoping to distract myself.

"And stop watching your body react to me? Nah, I'll pass," he says with a grin.

"Ugh, you still sure think a lot of yourself Luke Davis," I say, my accent flaring up again.

The cold tweezers pick at my skin and I feel the pain leaving my hand with each splinter's departure. 

"You sure got yourself good. Were you giving the windowsill a massage?" he quips.

"I wanted a damn breeze through here," I say. "It's like a sauna." I wipe my forehead with my shirtsleeve and realize the fabric is already soaked through.

Luke runs his eyes down my body and licks his lips. "I kind of like it. Almost like a wet t-shirt contest."

I push him away from me. "Stop it," I say. But secretly I'm pleased at the way he's looking at me. I feel a fire burning between my legs. Only he could make me like this. And to be honest, the long hours at the hospital haven't been kind to my figure. I've filled out a lot since high school, and I was never exactly supermodel status to begin with. I'm short and thick. I know that. But the way that Luke is looking at me, I'm starting to believe that isn't a problem.

"You want me to finish this or you goin’ to keep pushing me away?" he asks, his eyes glinting at me.

I hold my hand back out to him. He searches my skin with his fingers. I finally cry out in pain.

"There it is," he says, digging in with tweezers and pulling out the final sliver triumphantly. "That should do it." He puts the tweezers onto the counter and crosses his arms. "And I didn't even need to go to some fancy medical school to get that education."

"Easy there, Dr. McDreamy," I say before I can stop myself.

"McDreamy, huh?" he says, biting his lip. "I like the sound of that. Considering you're supposed to hate me."

"Fix the damn air conditioning," I retort, my cheeks burning.

He walks over to the window. "I'll do you one better," he says.

"Forget it, it's sealed with eighteen layers of paint and the wood is swollen from-" I stop talking when he takes his impossibly muscled arms and shoves the window open easily.

He brushes his hands off as fresh air comes pouring into the room. He walks over to me. "You must have loosened it for me," he says. He reaches his arms around me and I throw my hands up.

"What are you-" Then I realize with embarrassment that he's simply reaching around me to open the other window for a cross-breeze. I'm frozen in place, his abdomen pressed against my body. He grunts as he pushes this window open as well. He stays close to me as the breeze cools off my body. His face is inches from mine, and I'm sure he's going to kiss me. "You'll have to stick around to shut them if it rains," I say breathlessly. My heart feels like it’s jumped out of my body and headed down the street at eighty miles an hour.

Luke grins at me, his dimples popping into full relief. "That sounds like a good plan. Ella," he says, whispering my name.

"Helloooo!" shrieks a woman's voice from the front of the clinic. I hear the sound of at least a dozen footsteps coming back this way.

I try to push Luke away but he's smiling and holding me in place. I push again but he doesn't budge. His stomach is rock-hard and I try and fail to not picture the rippling six pack he must have hidden under his shirt. "We don't want people to get the wrong idea," I say to him.

He grins. "And what idea is that?" He steps away from me just as the crowd gets to the door.

I see my entire high school senior class standing in the doorway. "Welcome home, Ella!" they all cheer together.

I recognize football players, cheerleaders, nerds, band geeks, and the 4-H club. "Hi," I say sheepishly. The woman leading the pack is Amy Waters, who looks exactly like I knew she would when she was cheer captain in high school: teased bleach-blonde hair and coated in silver jewelry and denim.

She gives me a fixed smile when she sees how close Luke and I are to each other. "We came to clean up outside," she says, her Vera Bradley handbag draped over her forearm, her bubblegum-pink manicured talons on full display. I see she has a huge diamond on her ring finger and I wonder what poor soul willingly entered himself into a lifetime of bondage with her.

"Um, great," I say, pushing away from Luke and through the crowd, which has filled up the entire clinic.