Page 8 of Caught Up In You

Francie

Sarcasm is unbecoming, O-Town

“Whatcha drinking tonight, Doc?”

A low, sultry voice yanks my attention away from my phone. The first thing I notice is the pink streaks in her hair. Then my eyes drift to the tattered V-neck of her T-shirt and the swirling black ink rising out of her cleavage before landing on the devilish curve of her pouty pink lips.

Wyatt Hart. As if Francie conjured her. Because trouble?

Wyatt Hart is it.

Troublemaker, trouble-finder, just plaintrouble.

She both turns me on and terrifies me.

“You work here?” I say, blinking like a fool and trying to reconcile the appearance of my sister’s tiny punk-rock best friend, bartender at the Half Pint, all the way out here at this place so remote I’m not sure it even has a name.

Wyatt rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Doc. I work full-time slinging drinks in Cardinal Springs, and in my spare time I drive thirty miles north to freelance at this shithole.”

“Watch your mouth, girlie,” the bartender calls, but he’s smiling.

Wyatt salutes him with her beer bottle. “I’m out drinking, just like you,” she says to me. “That is, if you pull your nose out of your phone and actually order a drink.”

I glance back down at the phone in my hand. When I walked in here, I was exhausted, the kind of tired that leaves you both heavy and jittery, somehow. I feel the absence of the on-call phone, which has spent the last couple of years living in my back pocket, interrupting every moment with its trilling ring.

But suddenly that exhaustion, that anticipation of disaster, all melts away. Francie’s directive to get in some trouble? Well, trouble is standing right in front of me with a devilish grin, an acid tone, and shit-kicking boots.

She looks like she gets into trouble on the professional circuit.

And I’m interested in getting into some too tonight.

“I was supposed to meet someone, but she just texted that she can’t make it,” I say, finally managing to talk to her like a grown-ass man and not some stressed-out puddle of exhaustion.

“She?” Wyatt asks, cocking an eyebrow. “You got yourself a secret girlfriend, Doc?”

“No,” I say, liking the nickname on her lips a little too much. “Francie’s just a friend. I mean, we used to date back in med school, but it didn’t work out, and we’ve been friends ever since.”

Wyatt lets out an exaggerated groan and melts down onto the open barstool next to me. “Are you seriously telling me you’re such a good guy that you’re actually friends with your ex?”

“She’s mybestfriend,” I add, even though I know this fact is going to wind up on the wrong side of whatever balance sheet Wyatt keeps about me in her head.

She takes a long swig from her beer bottle, smiling into the glass. I have to force myself not to stare at the elegant line of her neck. “God, Doc. They should study you in a lab. Figure out away to clone you or something. Replace all the absolute dillholes masquerading as men.”

“Sorry you’ve had such bad luck,” I tell her, meaning it.

She shrugs, but I see the way her eyes flick over to the guys at the dartboard like they’ve all personally wronged her.

“So, what, you staying or going?” she asks.

I should go. If I’m not going to meet Francie, I should get in my truck and drive straight back to Cardinal Springs and crawl into bed, catch up on all the sleep I’ve missed since…well, since medical school. And there’s an ice storm coming and a flu going around. I’m willing to bet that the after-hours line at the practice is going to start ringing off the hook right around midnight. If I go home now, I can help Fatima out with calls. This is her first night on duty, after all.

But even as my brain is bullet-pointing all the reasons I should walk out of this bar, my eyes won’t stop drifting down to the flowers inked on Wyatt’s milky-white skin—what are they, roses? My fingers twitch with the urge to reach out and trace the lines, maybe dip beneath the black lace of her bra, visible at the neckline of her shirt.

“I’ll stay.”

She winks. “Good.” Then she turns over her shoulder. “Glenn, get this man a beer, would ya? He needs to unwind.”

My beer—a bottle of whatever she’s drinking—arrives quickly, and I’m glad to have something to do with my hands. Also something to do with my mouth that isn’t saying something stupid in front of this woman. I give myself till the count of five—plus three long sips—to formulate something cool, or even justnormal, to say to her.

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