Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (29 page)

Before she could realize what was happening, she found herself strolling underneath a grape arbor laden with blooming mountain azaleas. A clump of flowering honeysuckle grew just to her left, filling the air around her with its heady sweet scent. Dr. Hamm paused underneath the arbor and took a long, deep breath.

Shirley paused for a moment and did the same. The perfume of the honeysuckle and azaleas helped to jolt her back to reality a bit—the pungent odor was both delightful and shocking at the same time. It reminded her of just how sensual she was feeling—in Dr. Randall Hamm’s presence, all her senses were heightened, all her emotions on edge. Every second she spent walking next to him reminded her of just how much her body ached for his touch. Every cell of her body buzzed with desire, cried out for his touch.

And yet, the man remained oblivious to her. The only things that seemed to interest him were machinery and medical procedures. Even the beautiful garden surroundings only served to remind him of his medical duties. “Nothing like the smell of North Carolina in the springtime,” he said. “Always helps me refocus after a long day in the OR. Say, have you had a chance to read up on the latest developments in quick-release intravenous deep anesthetics?”

“Uhhh, no.”

“You should. They’ve got the half-lives on some of the new drugs down to a matter of seconds. It’s actually possible now to bring somebody back to consciousness in five seconds or less. Who needs a recovery room with that kind of turnaround?”

The man was maddening. Didn’t Dr. Randall Hamm ever just stop to smell the roses? Didn’t he ever notice anything that didn’t have to do directly with his job? Like
her
, for instance?

Things just couldn’t go on like this. If they did, Shirley might lose her mind.

She had to change the subject, and fast. “Umm, Dr. Hamm, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Do you have any hobbies?”

He gave her a blank look. “Hobbies? What do you mean?”

Really, the man was too much. “You know. Things you enjoy doing when you aren’t working.”

Another blank look. “But I’m
always
working.”

“I’m sure you take a day off every now and then. What do you do on your days off?”

He paused to think. “Well, whenever I have a day off, I usually use it to catch up on reading medical journals.”

Shirley rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ever do anything
fun
?”

His eyes widened. “Fun? What do you mean?”

Shirley laughed out loud. The guy was wound up tighter than a cheap watch. “You know. What do you do to just enjoy yourself? What do you do to unwind?”

He sighed. “Well, I do happen to enjoy my work. That’s fun enough for me.”

“Don’t you ever just take time
away
from work? Don’t you ever go to the movies? Concerts? Plays? Or don’t you ever go hiking? Horseback riding? Sailing? Watercolors? Racquetball? Jogging? Anything?”

“Well, I do work out at the gym five days a week. But I consider that a necessity, not a hobby.”

You’d have to, with that hot bod
, Shirley mused. “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing,” she said. “Anything else?”

His eyes narrowed, suspicious. “What’s with the third degree all of a sudden? Did somebody put you up to this? Chalmers, maybe?”

Damn it. He was on to her already. “Umm, no,” she lied, backpedaling. “You just seem—forgive me for saying this—kind of antisocial, is all. I was just wondering if maybe you had any kind of life outside the hospital, since you don’t seem too keen on making friends while you’re at work.”

Now he looked hurt. “But I thought
we
were friends, Shirley.”

Well, that was unexpected. “W-we are,” she stammered. “But we can hardly be friends when I don’t know anything about you.”

That seemed to throw him for a loop. “I don’t know anything about you, either,” he retorted. He backed away from her slowly, as if she were carrying a deadly weapon.

“There’s no need to get so defensive,” she said. What on earth was the man hiding? “I just want to get to know you better, that’s all. Maybe this is news to you, Dr. Hamm, but getting to know each other is what friends
do.”

He relaxed, but still eyed her suspiciously. “Fair enough. I just don’t like it when people come at me with a bunch of questions, is all.”

“Well, generally that’s what people do when they want to get to know one another better—ask questions.” She studied the lines and angles on his handsome face, trying to decipher what might lie beneath. “You know, Dr. Hamm, this is probably rude of me, but how in the hell did you get to be Chief of Anesthesiology when you have almost no social skills?”

His left eyebrow raised. “What do you mean,
almost
no social skills?”

She crossed her arms just below her bosom and smirked. “I say
almost
because you’re actually pretty cool—when you want to be. You can even be funny sometimes. Like when we first met.”

One corner of his mouth tipped upward, ever so slightly. “Thanks for noticing.”

“Well, it’s pretty hard not to notice you, Dr. Hamm.” As if anybody could fail to notice a man who looked like a genetically engineered blend of George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

“Call me Randall, please.” Then he coughed, seemed to catch himself. “In private only, of course.”

“Of course.” Feeling more at east than she had in quite a while, Shirley found a small white garden bench beside the grape arbor and sat down. She patted the space beside her, inviting Randall to join her there. After a moment’s hesitation, he did. “Look, Randall. I know for a fact that there’s a very nice guy lurking somewhere underneath that aloof exterior of yours. I’ve seen a glimpse of him here and there, so you might as well stop trying to hide him from me.”

Randall’s expression softened, and his slate-blue eyes even twinkled a bit. “Well, Shirley, I must say you are a most unusual woman.”

She locked her eyes with his, and felt her stomach quaver a bit. “Oh? And what makes you say that?”

“Because you’re the first woman I’ve run across in a very, very long time who has ever been at all interested in me as a person. Most ladies I know have a tendency to take one look at me and start to drool. I’ve never been able to strike up a real friendship with a woman, and I’ve never been able to figure out why.”

Shirley giggled. For a physician, Randall was quite dense about matters of the heart. “You do have a certain effect on women, you know.”

He shrugged. “No, I’m afraid I don’t know.”

Now she guffawed. “You’ve at least taken a look at yourself in the mirror once or twice, haven’t you?”

His shoulders hunched, and tension flickered across his jaw. “More times than I care to remember.”

“Well, then surely you must realize just how handsome you are.”

He fidgeted, looked at the ground. “This conversation is making me very uncomfortable.”

“Why?”

He fidgeted some more, stared at his hands. Shirley noticed his palms were sweating profusely. “Shirley, this may be hard for you to believe, but I was a really, really ugly kid. An even uglier teenager. I’m what you’d call a ‘late bloomer.’ Very late, in fact. I was a loner growing up, and I’ve never been very comfortable in my own skin. So you might imagine that it’s hard for me to deal with all the attention I get from women. My reaction is usually just to shut down. Or failing that, to crack a bad joke.”

“I don’t think your jokes are bad,” Shirley said. “I think they’re pretty funny. I wish you’d crack them more often.”

“Well, I would, but I have to spend an awful lot of time coming up with them. You know the old saying—you can’t rush great art.”

Shirley laughed heartily—again. “See, what did I tell you? You’re hilarious—when you want to be.”

Randall cast his eyes down to the brick-paved walk. Was that a blush on those rugged cheeks of his? Why yes, it was. She felt her crotch quiver as she realized that even stone-faced Dr. Randall Hamm had a sensitive side.

“I learned as a kid that if I told jokes, it greatly reduced my chances of getting beat up,” he said. “It helped a little. But I still got beat up an average of three times a week until I turned eighteen. And it probably would have continued well into college, except for the fact that I went to Earlham College, a Quaker school run by pacifists. Throwing a punch there got you expelled.” He paused, grinned. “And by the way, I’m not a Quaker. I just went to a Quaker college to, well—“

“To keep from getting beat up?” Shirley finished his sentence for him, and looked down to see that she’d placed a hand lightly on his elbow. She had no idea how it got there. But it was there now, feeling the hard, rippled muscles of his forearm underneath the thin, rough cloth of his scrubs. And Randall didn’t seem to mind at all.

Maybe there was hope for the two of them.

After a long moment, Randall backed away from her. He got up from the bench and continued walking down the brick paver sidewalk, pausing to admire a clump of purple foxglove. His expression was blank again, his body language rigid and closed. He was back to his old, mysterious, impenetrable self again. He gazed at the larkspur for a moment, kicked at the pile of mulch it was planted in. “Did you know that larkspur is the base plant for the heart drug digitalis?” he said, and coughed. He shifted back and forth on his feet, suddenly an awkward teenage boy in a grown man’s body.

“No, I didn’t know that,” Shirley replied. Her heart sank. Just when she thought Randall was starting to warm up to her, he’d run for cover again. She feared she’d never get close to him again—not even a little bit.

As if to confirm her fears, Randall glanced at his watch. “Well, I guess we’ve spent enough time messing around. We ought to get back to work. I’m sure The Dragon Lady is beginning to wonder what happened to you.”

“I’m sure,” she said with a sigh.

“Well, I guess we should get back to work, then. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around the OR.” He gave her a half-hearted wave, then turned on his heel and walked back towards the hospital, strutting so fast it was practically a run.

Shirley watched him go, stunned. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway? The nerve of him, asking her to go on a romantic walk through the hospital gardens, opening up to her, revealing his sensitive side—and then clapping himself shut like a frightened clam and taking off! Talk about rude city people—where did
he
learn manners? A barn?

Dr. Randall Hamm might be ravishingly handsome, impossibly sexy, mysterious, and alluring all rolled into one—but he was damn near impossible to figure out. Just when she thought they might be getting somewhere, the whole thing just blew up in her face.

So much for her high hopes. When it came to Dr. Randall Hamm, Shirley was back to square one. And square one was pretty much nowhere.

****

Randall hightailed it back to his office. Damn it, this was just not going to work. He couldn’t be in Shirley Daniels’ presence for more than ten minutes before his crotch started acting up in a big way.

Down boy
, he ordered his cock for the umpteenth time. What was it with that infernal woman? Did she not understand that her mere presence was enough to send any redblooded American man into a conniption fit? And she thought
he
was the one who was clueless. She ought to look in a mirror herself.

He never should have followed President Chalmers’ instructions. He should have just packed up his office and driven five hundred miles away. He should really just find a new place to work, in fact. Because anyplace where Shirley Daniels was, he could not be. Not with the effect she had on him. As long as Shirley was around, his chances of maintaining his carefree, uncomplicated, workaholic bachelor’s life were close to zero.

And of course there was the little matter of Enola Higginbottom’s death. Randall knew far more about what had really happened in that OR than he was comfortable with. And now Shirley was starting to nose around. Chalmers had put her up to that, he was sure of it. And he didn’t like the idea of Shirley getting mixed up in that nasty business one bit.

The situation was getting dangerous, and in more ways than one.

Eleven

Shirley stared down at her gray plastic cafeteria tray. She’d bought the lunch special—Southern-fried chicken with a side of cornbread, butter beans, and cole slaw—but she wasn’t the least bit hungry. She usually liked Southern comfort food, but after her disastrous morning with Dr. Randall Hamm, her stomach was in knots. She pushed her lunch tray away and stared at the Formica tabletop instead.

Shirley hadn’t really made any friends at the hospital yet—after what had just happened, she could hardly call Dr. Randall Hamm a friend, after all—so she sat alone. The other hospital employees bustling around the cafeteria didn’t seem to notice her. She sighed as she watched the other employees chat, laugh and gossip over their trays, and missed the small-town camaraderie she’d always known back in Statesville.

She was having trouble fitting in here in the big city, that was for sure. Everyone here had some sort of agenda. Nothing was as it seemed. And everyone was rude.
Very
rude.

The only person in town who had been truly nice to her had been crotchety old Marla Crabtree. And Marla Crabtree wasn’t exactly Shirley’s idea of a nice person. She was loud, nosy, a gossip, and she talked about sex at work with total strangers. Shirley had no idea what to think about an old woman who publicly proclaimed to her coworkers that she wanted to have sex with Billy Blanks from the
Tae Bo
videos within five minutes of meeting them. It made Shirley wonder how much of herself she should really reveal to Marla. If she didn’t watch her back, she figured Marla would somehow find out about her secret liaisons with Ed and then go and blab to the whole hospital that the new girl in town was into wild threesomes with her neighbors.

Who knew what would happen if
that
news got out. And then there was the little matter of Dr. Randall Hamm. Not only was she failing miserably with him in the romance department, her secret spy mission on behalf of hospital administration was a total bust. She couldn’t exactly march into President Chalmers’ office and announce that she’d learned Dr. Randall Hamm was a late bloomer who occasionally liked to tell jokes. It was pretty clear that the hospital head honcho was after some serious dirt on him. And Dr. Hamm was still keeping himself very much under lock and key.

Which seemed to prove that the man had something serious to hide.

Shirley sighed and rubbed her temples. She was in way over her head here. If she knew what was good for her, she would pack her bags and leave Raleigh before things got any worse.

As if on cue, Marla Crabtree appeared in front of her, carrying a tray laden with fried chicken, biscuits, gravy—and two glass dishes of red cubed Jell-O. “Mind if I join you?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she parked herself in the chair across from Shirley. “Are ye gonna eat that chicken? If not I’ll wrap it up an’ take it home for Clovis. Clovis is my German shepherd. He
loves
fried chicken.”

Shirley looked up and saw with horror that Marla was already helping herself to her abandoned lunch tray. Didn’t
anyone
in Raleigh have any manners? Apparently not.

“Don’t look so upset,” Marla chided her. “It ain’t like you were a-eatin’ it yerself.”

“But—but—“

“But nuthin’. I swear, some o’ you country gals’re just way too uptight fer yer own good.” Marla finished wrapping Shirley’s unwanted lunch in paper towels and slipped it into her handbag. “It’ll keep in there just fine ‘til I get home. Don’t you worry yer head ‘bout my pocketbook,” she said in response to Shirley’s gape-mouthed expression. “It’s just a cheap vinyl purse from Wal-Mart. It ain’t like I go around carryin’ designer duds.”

Shirley shook her head and sighed. Marla Crabtree was really too much. The woman was odd, crotchety, and just plain rude. And yet, Shirley still couldn’t help liking her. “At least the food won’t go to waste,” she said. “I just don’t have the stomach to eat anything right now.”

“Yeah, ya looked a little green from ‘cross the room, so I brought ya this.” Marla took one of the glass dishes of red Jell-O from her tray and pushed it across the table at her. “Eat up. Ya need to have somethin’ in yer stomach, or ya won’t make it through the rest of yer shift.”

Shirley took the bland dessert and picked at it with distaste. “I dunno—it’s not like I have anything important to do right now. I don’t think I’m even scheduled to be in the OR again until at least tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s where yer wrong,” Marla said with a wink. “I got it on good authority they’re a-sendin’ ya in on some emergency heart surgery in ‘bout a half hour.”

How on earth would Marla, a lowly shift nurse in charge of bedpans and IVs, know anything about the emergency surgery schedule, let alone before Shirley knew about it herself? That went way beyond being a busybody. What was she, a psychic or something?

“That ain’t all ya need to be in shape fer today, neither,” the older woman went on. “I understand that President Chalmers has got ya runnin’ a little errand fer him on a certain hot young doc who works with ya, an’ I’m sure he’s gonna want some kinda report before the end o’ the day.”

Shirley’s stomach did a backflip. So much for keeping things with Dr. Randall Hamm under wraps. Shirley blinked. “How would you know anything about that?”

Marla winked again, and smiled. “Oh, a little bird told me.”

Shirley scoffed. “You must know a lot of very nosy birds.”

“Now there ain’t no call to get huffy with me, missy,” Marla said, wagging her finger at her. “I’m the only friend ya’ve got round here, an’ I’m just a-lookin’ out fer ya.”

Shirley eyed her suspiciously. “Oh, I’m not sure about that. You seem awful nosy for someone who’s trying to help. No offense intended, of course.”

“None taken, hon,” Marla replied, digging into her deep-fried lunch. “I ‘spect that a little country gal like you’d be a little suspicious o’ everybody ‘round here. Such a new an’ different place, so many new people, an’ yer stuck with that awful harpy of a boss besides. It’s liable to get to ya. Back when I was in the Army, we called it culture shock.”

“That’s what they call it now, too.”

Marla laughed, slapping her knee. “Yer a pretty funny gal, Shirley, d’ya know that?”

“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Shirley retorted, but she couldn’t help but crack a smile. All her suspicions melted away as Marla cackled even harder, then reached across the table to take her hand.

“Look hon,” the older woman said. “Like I told ya before, I been a-workin’ here at this hospital fer longer than a lotta you young whippersnapper nurses’ve been alive. There ain’t anythin’ that happens round here that I don’t somehow find out about. I got eyes on the back o’ my head, see. An’ I gotta pair o’ ears nailed to my hind end. Not literally, o’ course. I just got a knack fer findin’ stuff out. A gift, even. First picked up on it back when I was in ‘Nam, to the point that the colonel who oversaw my MASH unit used to have me work recon on some o’ the Viet Cong POWs we had in our camp. Whenever I’m around, information just seems to stick to me.”

“Wow,” Shirley said, impressed. “But why do you keep sharing it with me?”

“Like I said, hon, I’m jest lookin’ out fer ya. God knows somebody has to. Now finish yer Jell-O before The Dragon Lady comes a-lookin’ fer ye.”

Shirley obeyed. When she swallowed the last bite, she looked up and met Marla Crabtree’s dingy gray eyes. They were lined with deep crows’ feet and bloodshot with age, but they were sincere. “Well, since you already seem to know all about me, why don’t you give me some advice?”

“What kind of advice, hon?”

“What should I do about Dr. Hamm?” She paused, checked herself. “A-about what President Chalmers wants me to find out about him, I mean.”

“Well, I guess that depends on what ya wanna find out about him.”

“President Chalmers wants me to find out more about his background. Whether he has any odd associations outside of work, that sort of thing.”

Marla’s deep-set eyes twinkled. “Well, I know that,” she said. “But what do
you
wanna find out about him?”

Shirley felt herself blush. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t ya play dumb with me, missy. I know when a gal’s got the hots fer somebody. I may be old, but I ain’t blind. ‘Sides, you’d hafta be dead an’ buried not to have the hots fer that Dr. Hamm. He’s a tasty one, fer sure. I’d sleep with ‘im myself if I weren’t wrinkled an’ ugly as an old prune. Lucky fer me, I got me a membership down to the Seniors Social Dancin’ Club in downtown Raleigh. I go down there an’ pick me up a man every chance I get. Not that I get a lotta chances, since most o’ the men my age are already dead. Guess that’s why God invented vibrators.”

Shirley giggled. She’d never met a senior citizen with Marla Crabtree’s sex drive in her life. Let alone one who talked openly about vibrators at work. She made a mental note to herself to emulate Marla’s open sexual attitudes when she got to Marla’s age. “I think President Chalmers is suspicious of him,” she said. “He thinks that Dr. Hamm bolted in the middle of Mrs. Higginbottom’s operation because he had something to hide.”

Marla snorted. “President Chalmers thinks
everybody’
s got somethin’ to hide. Hell, it’s his job to do that. ‘Sides, if I was a bettin’ woman—which I ain’t—I’d put my money on President Chalmers havin’ somethin’ to do with bumpin’ off Enola Higginbottom a lot faster than I would Dr. Hamm.”

“But—“

“Don’t change the subject, hon. I said it before an’ I’ll say it again. What do
you
want to know ‘bout Dr. Hamm?”

Shirley closed her eyes, took a deep breath, conjured up the image of Randall’s ruggedly handsome face in her mind’s eye. There were so many things she wanted to know about the man—this man who was a mystery to her, and yet at the same time seemed so familiar. How did he really feel about her? How did he really feel about anybody? What secrets did he hide behind those dark eyes? What was he hiding from, and why? And would he ever choose to reveal his true self to her? To anyone? God only knew. “I just wish I knew what he was really thinking,” she said.

Marla chuckled. “You an’ me both, hon. Though I can tell you this much. Tongues are already a-waggin’ all over the hospital ‘bout that nice little walk in the garden the two of you took this mornin’. Word round the hallways is you two are goin’ steady. I ‘spect the rumor mill’ll have you two engaged to be married by the end of the day.”

Shirley was aghast. “But that’s not true! Not even
remotely
true! The only reason Dr. Hamm took me on that walk in the first place was because Dr. Chalmers ordered him to spend some time with me as part of an employee orientation.”

“I dunno, hon. Somethin’ tells me that romantic walks in the hospital gardens ain’t exactly what President Chalmers had in mind.” Marla guzzled down her pint bottle of chocolate milk, wiped her milk mustache off with her shirtsleeve. “Tongues are a-waggin’ ‘bout somethin’ else, too.”

“What’s that?”

Marla glanced furtively over both shoulders and lowered her voice. “You didn’t hear this from me, o’ course, but this mornin’ a team o’ homicide detectives showed up here at the hospital and started nosin’ around, askin’ a lotta questions. Seems to be they think Enola Higginbottom didn’t die the other day by accident. They’re sayin’ she was murdered. An’ they’re sayin’ Dr. Randall Hamm knows somethin’ about it.”

Shirley gasped. “Are you sure?”

“Sure as shootin’, hon. I saw four cops sidle up to Dr. Hamm in the hallway myself just a few minutes ago. He went into an empty office with ‘em an’ shut the door. He didn’t look too surprised to see ‘em, neither.”

“Oh my.”

Marla polished off the last few bites of fried chicken, then wiped her greasy fingers on her napkin. “So I’d be on my toes if I were you, missy. There’s no tellin’ what’s gonna happen next round here.”

That goes without saying,
Shirley thought to herself. She hadn’t even been on the job at University Hospital for a week yet, and already she felt as if she was working on the set of a soap opera. She’d wiled away so many hours in front of the soaps back in Statesville after she got fired from her job—but she never thought her own
life
would turn into one. The next thing she knew, University Hospital would be taken over by terrorists and all the employees killed off one by one—just like what had happened on
General Hospital
last season in a ploy to boost ratings.

Marla stood up and collected her tray. “Well hon, I best be gettin’ back upstairs. I’m sure all the old fogeys dyin’ up on the Geriatrics ward are needin’ their bedpans changed right about now. Take care, an’ watch yer back. Lotta sharks swimmin’ the waters today.”

“I will,” Shirley replied, following the older woman to the metal tray-collection racks. “And you do the same.”

“Sure thing, hon. An’ I’ll put my ear to the ground on what that Dr. Hamm is up to for ye. I’ll find somethin’ out, too. Like I said, good gossip has a tendency to stick to me wherever I go.” And with a wink and a wrinkled smile, Marla disappeared down the hallway.

Joanna headed in the opposite direction towards the main bank of elevators, the pit of her stomach buzzing with nervous excitement. Life in Raleigh was a far cry from her sleepy, small-town life back in Statesville. Just when she thought she was getting used to the place, someone pulled the rug out from under her once again.