Instant Gratification

Chapter 2

Stone sat straight up on the examination table, a table he shouldn’t even be at, but his stupid brother had insisted.

“You’re hurt and you know it,” TJ had said, up on the mountain. “I can’t bring you home without x-rays, Annie’ll kill me.”

Their aunt was the least of Stone’s worries at the moment, with the pretty, mean doc waving that needle around. He gave a brief thought to making a run for it, but he didn’t like to move fast unless he was on skis or a mountain bike.

The deciding factor was simple-just thinking about running made him queasy. Especially since sitting up had nearly killed him dead right there on the spot. “Oh, fuck,” he gasped, clutching his ribs as fire torched its way through his insides. “Fuck.”

“I’ve got you.”

Hard to believe that sweet-as-honey voice belonged to the razor tongued, cool-as-a-cucumber snooty doctor still waving that damn needle in one hand, supporting him with her other.

Old man Doc had warned him that his daughter was tough, edgy, and abrupt, and he hadn’t been kidding. During the time she’d been in Wishful, she’d both turned him down for a get-to-know-you drink, and then again when she’d kicked his ass on Wilder’s Run back when they’d still had snow. Since he’d been skiing since he could walk, that one had hurt, but his binding had been loose, a fact she refused to believe, and…

And, hell.

He liked her and he didn’t even know why, especially since it wasn’t reciprocated.

Not even close. Not only that, she was cold, and…and smart and funny and hot. So damn hot in those fancy trousers and those fitted silk button downs and fancy doctor coat, like she was still in New York instead of the wild, remote Sierra Mountains. It didn’t hurt that she was five-foot-seven-ish, curvy, an auburn-haired beauty who looked like Barbie’s mean sister.

Dr. Barbie.

“Keep breathing,” she said, cool, calm and collected.

Stone was cool, too. Cool and calm, and possibly maybe getting a little turned on despite the fact that he hurt like hell.

It wasn’t her slight New York accent, he decided. It wasn’t the elegant, sophisticated clothes she wore that had probably cost more than his Jeep. It wasn’t that she was stacked and far too pretty for one so tough, or that she moved with quick efficiency, wasting not a single movement.

He actually didn’t know what drew him, and that bugged the hell out of him, too.

So did the fact that he couldn’t take a breath without wanting to whimper like a baby. If he’d ever been in more freaking pain, he couldn’t remember it.

Pathetic.

“Keep breathing,” she reminded him.

Yeah, easy for her to say. Breathing burned like fire.

“Need a smelling salt?” Her eyes were baby blue, and as cool as the rest of her.

“Your dad’s better at the bedside manners.”

“Unfortunately for you, he’s not here.”

“That’s okay. You’re nicer to look at.” Everyone in Wishful loved and adored old man Doc, who for the past forty years had patched and stitched the entire population of Wishful, day or night, without complaint. Stone missed him. “But he’d have just given me the damn Band-Aids.”

“Well, then maybe you should have waited until he was back at work to…what did you say happened?” She slanted him a long, droll look. “Got beat up by three women?”

“Uh huh.” But his attention was now on her hands as she set down the needle-thank you, Jesus-and picked up a gauze.

A gauze he could deal with. A gauze he could be friends with. A gauze wouldn’t make him want to pass out. “Last I heard, you were working in New York,” he said, desperately trying to distract himself. “Running an ER.”

She hesitated briefly, then poured antiseptic onto the gauze, brushing the wound at his temple. Her blouse was smooth and silky. She had a crease down the center of her pants leg, and she wore heels that clicked on the linoleum floor. She was careful, organized, and obsessively focused. Maybe a bit anal to boot. It should have turned him off.

It didn’t.

The opposite actually, and he had no idea what that said about him. Her lab coat added a serious sexy factor to the ensemble. Her fiery hair was shiny and straight, and pulled back at the nape of her neck, held there by a pretty silver clip. The silky strands smelled good, too. God, he loved it when women smelled good. “Never noticed you coming back this way to visit.”

“My dad’s busy.”

“Not that busy.”

“Okay, I’ve been busy.” She paused. “We’ve seen each other. He occasionally came to New York to visit me.”

Ah, there it was. The war between pride and censure. She didn’t like the idea of Stone thinking she didn’t care.

Stone had one parent who’d walked. The other was dead so he wasn’t one to judge a parent/child relationship. He loved Doc, but there was no doubt the guy had made mistakes with his daughter, and he knew Doc would be the first to admit it to anyone who asked. “It’s nice to see you here,” he said. “Taking care of this place for him.”

“Just until he’s back on his feet. Then I’m going home.”

He studied her face. She was a good doctor. He knew because Doc had followed her career and bragged about her often, but something about the way she was taking care of him so efficiently and professionally made him want to ruffle her up and show her how much more fun being even a little relaxed could be. “Once upon a time this place was your home.”

“A very long time ago.”

True enough. Twenty-four years ago, her mother had left Doc Sinclair and the California Sierras, taking their six-year-old daughter with her, never to return. They’d gone big city, complete with the attitude that went with, apparently-

Whoa. There she went, picking up that big ass needle again. As she came close with it, sweat beaded on his forehead. “Yeah, I don’t-”

Her hand, gentle but firm, pressed on an uninjured portion of his chest and pushed him flat to the table, and in the next second, she stuck him.

“Ouch!”

“Hold still.”

He didn’t have a choice. She wasn’t a big woman by any means, but she had strength. Sturdy as a rock, she managed to both hold him down and shoot him full of the stuff that was supposed to make him numb. Picturing the needle going into his head, nausea rolled through him.

“You’re doing fine.” She promptly pulled the needle out and poked him again.

He saw spots.

“Stay with me,” she said.

“He’s a wuss with needles.” This from TJ, who’d apparently finally finished on the phone and was getting his ass back in the room. “They make him faint.”

“They do not,” Stone grated out, sweat pouring down his back.

Emma’s baby blues met his. “If you’re good, I’ll”-she paused to move the goddamn needle around-in his head!-“give you a sticker when we’re done here.”

TJ snickered.

Yeah. His brother was going to have to die.

Then TJ leaned over him, peering closely at the cut on Stone’s forehead. “That’s nasty.”

“Thanks, man.”

“You probably shouldn’t have tried to stop yourself with your face.” He shook his head. “Rookie mistake.”

“Again,” Stone said tightly. “Thanks, man.”

TJ looked up at Emma. “So what do you think, Doc? Four stitches? Five? Twenty?”

“Oh, God,” Stone muttered, sweating profusely.

“Maybe we should just amputate at the neck, what do you think?” his soon-to-be dead brother asked with a crooked grin. “I could sit on him for you.”

“Seven.” Emma looked at Stone. “Just seven stitches. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Stone closed his eyes as she began. TJ wasn’t sitting on him, but he was holding him down just in case, though just in case of what, Stone had no idea. The bones in his legs were imitating overcooked noodles and he wasn’t going anywhere.

He was fine with that, except…except, Jesus. He could feel the tug of the stitches, but no real pain, not that that helped when he could feel the slide of the needle going into his head.

In and out.

In and out.

Oh yeah, he might be sick…

He was doing his damnedest to pretend he was somewhere else, anywhere else, when Emma patted him gently on the shoulder. “Done.”

Thank God. He opened his eyes and met hers, expecting to find a wry amusement at his expense, but he didn’t see anything but a sharp intelligence and steadfast determination to simply do her job.

He looked at her for a long beat, admitting to himself that he was waiting for something more from her; a heat, a flicker of awareness of him as a man, a hint of an attraction, but she turned away without giving up anything of herself, heading to the sink to drop in her used equipment while Stone once again struggled to sit.

TJ helped him, but when Stone would have gotten down off the table, Emma glanced back over her shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He didn’t know, but it was going to be as far and fast from here and any more needles as he could get. “A drink. I need one. You?”

“We’re not done here, Stone.”

Oh, yes they were. So done. “We could go swimming at Fallen Rocks, it’s going to be a hot one.”

Dr. Uptight Barbie merely jerked her chin in TJ’s direction.

Stone knew that look, the intent behind the chin movement, but before he could process and move his aching-like-a-sonuvabitch body, his brother was suddenly blocking him from getting off the table.

The doc was right there, too, standing at his hip again, holding a tray filled with a stack of fresh gauzes and some antiseptic that looked as if it was going to hurt like hell. “Yeah, I don’t think so,” he said.

“You have gravel in your wounds, Stone.” She picked up a piece of gauze and doused it, then picked up a tool that looked like a fancy set of tweezers.

TJ had the decency to look queasy, which didn’t help Stone any.

“Really,” Stone told them both. “I’m good. Some Band-Aids, that’s all I need.” Why wasn’t anyone listening?

Emma eyed his shorts, specifically the areas where blood was leaking through. With a very bad feeling, he shook his head. “No. No way. They’re staying on.”

“I have to clean the wounds,” she repeated. “All of them.”

Oh, Christ. Dr. Barbie? Try Dr. Evil. She wasn’t backing down, and rather than suffer the indignity of letting her-or even worse, TJ-take down his shorts, he did it himself, and then lay there buck ass naked with his eyes closed. “I feel so cheap,” he muttered. “You didn’t even buy me dinner first.”

TJ snorted, but the doc ignored him. “I also want to x-ray your ribs and your head,” she murmured as she began the torture. “And anything else you haven’t yet revealed to me that might be cracked, fractured or broken besides your good sense.”

Wow. She was even meaner than he’d thought.

It got worse, way worse.

An hour later, she’d seen every single inch of him up close and personal, and he did mean up close and personal. She’d left no wound unprobed. He’d been stitched, x-rayed and bandaged, and feeling more than moderately violated, was finally shown the door with stern directions to ice, elevate and rest.

Dr. Evil had wanted to give him a tetanus shot, but since he hadn’t been injured on anything rusty, she’d made some crack about torturing him enough for the day, requesting he come back next week for the shot.

Yeah. He’d be back. When hell froze over.

Crawling into TJ’s truck, he leaned back in the passenger seat and sighed. “I miss Doc.”

“She fixed you up just fine.”

“Evil. She’s Dr. Evil.”

TJ smiled. “Maybe. But she’s the hottest Dr. Evil I’ve ever seen.” He pulled them out of the lot, driving through Wishful, a town holding three thousand year-round residents inside its heavily Victorian-influenced architecture.

The town had been around since the 1800s, where it’d once thrived as a vital part of the wild, wild west. The gold rush had come and gone, and then the lumber boom, but Wishful, located at over six thousand feet, had put itself on the map thanks to the ice it’d shipped out by the truckload to the rest of the country at the turn of the century.

Now it was an outdoor enthusiast’s tourist stop on the way to Lake Tahoe, and the Wilder brothers had taken full advantage of that, running their adventure expedition company on the outskirts of town, taking people on any kind of mountain outdoor adventure there was; skiing, snowmobiling, dirt biking, hiking…anything. Baby brother Cam had put up the money, having amassed a considerable fortune being a world renowned snow boarder for fourteen years. Stone had located the thirty acres for sale, then designed and built the lodge, along with a series of smaller cabins for staff and family. TJ had come up with the business plan and initial contacts, getting them paying clients and taking those clients on the longer treks. It worked. Now they spent their days giving people the adventures they’d only dreamed about.

Not a bad way to earn a living.

Unless, of course, one of the idiots-er, clients-deciding to take his own adventure without knowing what he was doing, ended up needing the volunteer Search and Rescue team’s help, of which Stone was a member. Stone had found the guy on a rope hanging off the cliff he’d slid down. He’d waited until Stone reached him to panic, sending Stone rocketing down a sheer rock fifty feet, landing him in the Urgent Care being taken care of by Dr. Evil.

“She said she was going to come check on you in a few days.” As he drove, TJ tossed a grin Stone’s way. “Maybe give you a shot of antibiotics. With a needle.”

“You are such an asshole.”

“Aw. She promised to bring you a lollipop if you didn’t cry this time.”

“A fucking asshole.”

TJ laughed and kept driving, passing town, heading toward the Wilder Lodge. The sharp, craggy mountains all around them were still brilliant green from snow melt. They’d had a hell of a wet winter and spring, and were enjoying the effects of late June. The creeks were full to overflowing, feeding the meadows. Wildflowers, swayed in the hot breeze. Stone loved each season, but at the moment, with his poor abused body on fire, he missed the cool snow of winter.

“You should have seen your face when she brandished that needle.” TJ turned at the Wilder Adventures turn-off. “I thought you were going to crawl off that table with your ass cheeks.”

That was the Wilders for you. Lots of love all the way around.

“Your bare ass cheeks.” TJ grinned. “Ah, man. Good times.”

“TJ?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

TJ nodded, trying to go solemn and not quite making it. “You’re right. That was rude.”

“Thank you.” Stone let out a long breath, trying to relax.

“So.” TJ tossed him a look.

“So?”

“What’s it like knowing she’s seen your junk, and not from your best angle?”

Stone craned his neck and gave him a death stare.

“Sorry. Not funny yet?”

Stone just sighed and closed his eyes.