The Single Mom He Can't Resist
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Janice Lynn
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14
CHAPTER ONE
“YOU’RE LOOKING AT him again.”
While her best friend plopped down in a chair at the nurses’ station, Nurse Jenny Robertson jerked her eyes away from where six feet of male physical perfection had gone into an Intensive Care Unit room at Chattanooga General Hospital.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She tried not to sound too defensive at Laura’s observation. Tristan Scott’s dark, slightly wavy hair, sky-blue eyes and infectious smile did catch her eyes too often, but she wasn’t acknowledging that to her bestie. “You just happened to look my way as I just happened to look up and he just happened to be there. That’s all.”
Roger Pennington’s hazel eyes crinkled with amusement. “That’s a lot of ‘just happeneds.’”
“A whole lot.” Laura’s gaze shifted to where Tristan could be seen caring for his patient through the ICU’s glass wall facing where they sat. A respiratory therapist, another nurse, and a tech were helping get his new admit settled. “But you and every other single woman who works here thinks our newest travel nurse is hot. Rightly so. If I hadn’t felt the immediate sparks between you two, I’d be all over that scrumptiousness.”
Roger snickered. Jenny rolled her eyes.
“If you think he’s all that, go for it.” Why had her stomach just twisted into a tight wad? Irked at herself, she lifted her chin. “You have my blessing to be ‘all over that scrumptiousness.’”
“Your blessing?” Roger leaned against the rounded station desk that separated their workspace from their patients’ rooms. “What is this, like ‘olden days’ girl code or something?”
Jenny pointed her finger at him. “You stay out of this.”
Grinning, he held up his hands in mock defense. “Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ve been friends since kindergarten,” Laura reminded. “I know you better than anyone. Deny it all you want, but you like Tristan.”
“If you know me so well, then you should know that, even if I did find him attractive and was willing to become involved, which I don’t and I’m not,” she quickly added, “I’d never choose someone I work with.”
“Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to resist dating me.”
Jenny and Laura snorted. Roger, who had dated the same woman since high school and was still completely infatuated with the ultrasonographer.
“You’d be a lonely man, Roger, if women got to choose who they were attracted to,” Laura teased then turned her attention back to Jenny. “Admit it. Tristan gets you twitterpated.”
“He’s not my type.” No one was her type. As in literally “no one.” She didn’t want a type or another man in her life. Some mistakes shouldn’t be repeated. With few exceptions, she considered herself an intelligent person. Romantic involvements made up the bulk of her big life goofs.
Roger’s face scrunched with exaggerated mortification. “Hot isn’t your type? That seals the deal. You and I would never work.”
Sighing, Jenny pushed away her tablet then swiveled her chair to face them.
“The man is a travel nurse,” she pointed out, her tone clearly equating the label to the Bubonic plague. “He’s here today, gone tomorrow. The last thing any of us needs is to get involved with someone who we know isn’t staying.”
“He’ll be here three months.”
Jenny gave Laura a “So what?” look.
“Three months is time for a whole lot of fun.” Laura waggled her brows.
“Oh, yeah.” Smirking, Roger gave her a high five.
Jenny shook her head at their antics. “I don’t need that kind of fun.”
“Girl, you need that kind of fun more than anyone I know,” Laura insisted. “How long has it been? A year? Two? Three?”
Jenny’s cheeks caught fire, or sure felt as if there were flames consuming them. Blazing infernos.
“It’s not been nearly long enough that I’ve forgotten all the heartache that follows falling in love.” She grabbed her tablet and tapped the screen a couple of times. Maybe if she looked busy, they’d leave her alone.
Roger’s tone turned serious. “Please tell me you’re not still hung up on he whose name we don’t say? He never deserved you.”
Did he mean Geoffrey or Carlos? Probably Geoffrey. He’d been her biggest heartbreak. Carlos had just been a brief reminder of why she was better off single.
“No, he didn’t deserve me, but he taught me a valuable lesson that there are more important things in life than sex.”
Like human decency and keeping promises you made to love and be true forever. People still did that, right?
“I wouldn’t be opposed to a relationship with someone who believed in forever, someone who would always be there, but I’ve yet to meet someone with staying power. Besides, I don’t miss sex,” she continued. Who had time for sex? She sure didn’t. Her life was full. “I’m abstinent by choice and content with that decision.”
“Content is the wrong word choice when you’re discussing your lack of a sex life.” Laura’s nose curled. “Girl, you need to have sex.”
“I’m not sure what I missed, but I definitely missed something.”
Flames engulfed Jenny’s face, again. She’d missed Tristan coming out of his patient’s room.
“Jenny was trying to convince me that sex isn’t important.” Laura filled him in, her dark eyes twinkling with merriment that he’d joined the conversation.
“Not if you aren’t having sex with someone special,” Jenny clarified, not sure why she felt the need to defend her stance.
Tristan’s baby blues that had all the Intensive Care Unit agog studied Jenny. “Is there currently someone special in your life?”
Was he asking if she was having sex? It had been years. It was likely to be years before she had sex again, too. Or maybe she never would. She didn’t mind. She’d liked sex okay, but it wasn’t the be-all and end-all.
The way Tristan looked at her had her wondering if one night within those muscled arms would have her begging for more rather than feeling content to sleep alone night after night. Was that why he’d occupied so much of her thoughts since his arrival? Because her body instinctually recognized his in some Neanderthalian species-must-go-on way?
The timer she’d set on her phone beeped.
“There are a lot of special someones in my life,” she assured with the smile she usually wore when her friends weren’t harassing her about her love life—or lack thereof. “Currently, the special someone in Room Three needs my attention.” With that, she rose to check on John Rossberg. John was a sixty-two-year-old who’d been admitted with acute respiratory failure secondary to viral pneumonia. Putting on her personal protective equipment, she entered his room and exhaled with relief to have escaped the conversation.
Stepping up to his bedside, she silenced the beeping alarm.
“Good evening, Mr. Rossberg. This is Jenny. You’re stuck with me again tonight,” she told the unconscious man who had been her patient the evening before, as well. “As I told you when I came in after shift change, I was glad to hear you had a good day. Your white blood cell count has started coming down and your renal function is some better. Those are really good signs.”
She liked talking to her patients, even the unconscious ones. Many of them were aware of at least bits and pieces of the world around them. She wanted to be a light in that dark world and often thought how lonely and scary it must be for a comatose patient to be aware of what was going on around them but unable to communicate.
“Your wife was here when I arrived tonight. She’s a lovely woman and sure does love you. She’s gone home for the night, but said she’d be back first thing in the morning. Have I told you that you have excellent taste? She’s such a sweetheart. She showed me photos of your grandchildren earlier this week. I told you about that, remember?”
She continued to chat while she changed out the empty intravenous fluid bag to a new one. “They are so cute and close in age to my four-year-old son, Sawyer. I know your family is anxious for you to get well so you can take your grandkids fishing. Your wife told me that was something special you do with them. Sawyer hasn’t ever been fishing, but he adores the water and fish. We visited the aquarium and he absolutely loved it. I’m hoping to get him into swim lessons this summer. He’s on a wait list at a facility near our home.”
Once she had the bag updated, she rechecked his equipment. When finished, she lingered. Yes, she was avoiding going back to the nurses’ station. Yes, if they were still there, her friends could see her and knew what she was doing. No, she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Not to herself.
“You don’t mind my staying in here a bit longer, anyway, right?” she asked her patient, patting his hand. “You’re much better company than my coworkers.”
Especially her temporary coworker.
Tristan was bothersome. He had thrown her off-kilter the first night they’d met and every work night since. He was friendly, funny, helpful, and his smile reached his eyes. Jenny might not be interested, but she wasn’t blind. Laura hadn’t been wrong in calling him hot. He fit right in with their tight-knit ICU crew.
When she’d triple-checked Mr. Rossberg’s vitals and told him all about the late spring Tennessee weather, she left the room, stripped off her protective gear and properly disposed of it, then sanitized. There wasn’t anyone at the nurses’ station when she got back there, but her reprieve didn’t last long.
Tristan came out of the new admission’s room and leaned against the edge of the desk.
“Everything okay with your patient?” he asked, giving her one of those smiles that reached his eyes, dug dimples into his cheeks, and had butterflies performing acrobatics in her belly.
Giving a polite-but-nothing-more smile, she nodded. “No new issues. I just needed to change his IV bag over and check his drips.”
“Glad to hear it.” He sounded sincere. Perhaps he was. He seemed to genuinely care about the patients. They’d had some excellent travel nurses on her unit, but the uncaring ones’ lax attitude and frequent disappearing acts always irked. Their patients were people with loved ones. Their lives mattered and nothing with their care should be taken for granted.
Nodding, she went back to charting her encounter with Mr. Rossberg and hoped she didn’t accidently insert the words Tristan, scrumptious or great smile anywhere into the record.
Tristan sat in the chair next to hers. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable earlier.”
“It wasn’t your fault you walked up on Laura being Laura,” she said without looking up.
“Still, I had no right to insert myself into a personal conversation. I’m sorry.”
Ugh. Why did he have to be so nice? And so hot?
“No problem,” she fibbed. Everything about him was problematic. His good manners, his dark, wavy hair that she longed to touch to see if it was as soft as it looked, his blue eyes that reminded her of the sky on the clearest of days, his frequent smile that reached those eyes and put an extra sparkle there, his... Ugh, yes, he was problematic. Monumentally so.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with your choice, but I can’t help but think that it’s a shame you aren’t interested in a relationship.”
Jenny’s breath caught. Was he making a general observation or implying personal disappointment?
“My choices aren’t any of your business.”
He gave a sheepish grin. “You’re right, and I need to apologize yet again for letting my curiosity get the better of me. Sorry.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” she recited, keeping her tone flat so he wouldn’t mistake it for flirting.
He chuckled. “I’m no cat.”
Possibly not, but he was a man and probably tomcatted with the best of them. No matter how fluttery he made her insides, she needed to remember that.
She gave a tight smile, then focused her eyes on her tablet. But her mind was on the man watching her from where he hadn’t budged. Trying to ignore him, she tapped on her screen in the hope of finishing her charting.
“Have I done something to make you not like me, Jenny? If so, I’d like to make that right.” He cleared his throat, causing her eyes to open and her gaze to collide with his. “Actually, what I’d like is for us to be friends. Maybe after our shift ends, we could start over by my taking you to breakfast.”
He wanted to take her to breakfast? To be friends? Jenny fought the urge to rub her temples. What was it about this night and people putting her on the spot?
There was something fragile in Jenny’s big brown eyes; something that twisted Tristan’s insides. From the moment they’d met, he’d wanted to know more about her and to erase the wariness that shone when their gazes met.
“There’s a great place in the converted old warehouse building where the apartment I’ve rented is. It’s not too far from the hospital.”
“I figured you must live close as I’ve seen you bicycling to work.”
“Cycling is great exercise and the complex really isn’t that far away.”
“Many of the older buildings that had sat empty for decades have found new life over the past few years. I’m glad.”
Pleased that she hadn’t immediately shut him down as he’d expected, Tristan nodded. “There are photos of the revitalization process hanging along the main floor’s hallway. That floor is filled with shops, a workout facility, and a few restaurants. The upper floors are apartments. Mine’s a small, furnished penthouse studio. The atmosphere is great. The food is even better.”
She hesitated only a moment before doing as he’d expected.
“It sounds nice, but no thank you. As for the other—” fatigue etched itself onto her lovely face “—you’ve not done anything.”
“Then you just don’t like me?”
There was something off in the way she related to him compared with the other nurses, one of whom was also a travel nurse who had only started a week prior to Tristan. He’d seen her laughing with the guy on several occasions and had had to tamp down the jealous flash that had hit him at how easily she’d talked with him.
“I don’t know you,” she said defensively, sounding more flustered and shifting in her chair.
“And don’t want to?” Part of him warned he should let it drop, but he might never get another opportunity to set the record straight. If there was something he could say, could do, that would put her at ease, that could have her smiling and laughing with him, then he’d jump through whatever hoops he needed to, to make that happen.
“You won’t be here long,” she observed, not meeting his eyes. “Whether or not we get to know each other is irrelevant.”
Jenny didn’t want a short-term relationship. He got that. He wasn’t looking for a relationship, short or long, but from the moment he’d met her, he’d been intrigued.
“I’ll be here for three months. That’s long enough to make friends.”
“That’s long enough to make an acquaintance,” she corrected. “Friendships take years.”
She was wrong on that, too. He’d made many good friends during his life adventures. People he could call up and chat with or go months, years even, in between seeing without awkward feelings when they reconnected.
“You don’t believe two people can meet and instantly know if they connect as friends?”
She harrumphed. “Friends at first sight?”
“Yes.”
Her expression was doubtful. “And you thought this about me when we met? That we would be friends at first sight?”
“I’d hoped we would be friends. That’s what I thought when we first met, that you were someone I wanted to be friends with. I still want that.”
He couldn’t recall having ever met someone he’d so instantly wanted to know. Jenny had been smiling at something someone had said and Tristan had been instantly hooked, wanting to see her smile again, only with him being the cause of her happiness. When she’d turned and her big brown eyes had collided with his, visions of kissing her full lips had hit him so hard he’d mentally doused cold water over his thoughts to prevent what could have been an embarrassing situation.
How he’d reacted had caught him off guard. Her standoffish reaction even more so because he’d swear that he’d seen mutual attraction in that initial moment. Whatever he’d seen, she’d masked her emotions, smiled her way through introductions, and high-tailed it into a patient’s room, avoiding him the rest of the night.
“Other than Laura, I don’t fraternize with my coworkers outside the hospital, and Laura doesn’t count since we’ve been best friends since elementary school.” Jenny’s expression became thoughtful. “I don’t spend a lot of time with Laura away from work these days, either.” She shot a tight smile. “You’ll understand why based upon the conversation you walked in on.”
Leaning back in the chair, he crossed his arms. “How long have you worked at Chattanooga General?”
Frowning at his question, she hesitated then said, “Four years.”
“That makes you what? About twenty-six or twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-five,” she corrected.
“This was your first job after graduation?”
Eyes narrowed, she nodded.
“Did you do a clinical rotation at this hospital?”
“No, I did clinicals at Erlanger, which was a wonderful experience, and then my last rotation was in Ringgold.” Her face pinched, making him wonder if that experience hadn’t been so wonderful. “Laura convinced me to apply here as it’s where she’d done her clinical rotations and she loved it. She knew I had no plans to apply in Ringgold.” Perhaps realizing she’d revealed too much, her expression darkened. “I’m glad I did, as we both landed in the ICU.”
Tristan suspected knowing what had happened in Ringgold would reveal a lot about Jenny and why she had so many walls. Probably a man she’d met there, but who knew? He’d bite his tongue rather than ask when he knew it would shut down their current conversation.
“Are you originally from Chattanooga?”
She nodded. “Not far from here.”
“Did you always want to be a nurse?” he rushed on, wanting to get her beyond where her thoughts had gone, in the hope she wouldn’t take off on some pretend nursing mission when all was currently calm on the unit.
“My mom is a nurse. I’ve always admired how she took care of people.” Jenny’s tone softened. “She’s the best, so kind and gentle with those in her care. It makes sense that I want to be as much like her as I can.”
The love and admiration she felt laced her words and Tristan felt a twist of envy. How great it must be to be so proud of your parents?
“Well, she raised you right, or maybe it’s just good caregiver genetics, because you’re a great nurse, Jenny.”
Her cheeks pinkened. “I—Thank you, but you’ve only been here a couple of weeks, so you might want to save that observation for a few months from now.”
“I knew you were a wonderful nurse after the first night I worked with you.”
Filled with curiosity, her eyes met his. “How can you be so sure?”
“You’re efficient. Constantly on task to make sure your patients get great care. Smart. Compassionate. And your coworkers love you, as do your patients. How much they do says a lot.”
“Most of my patients are unconscious, so there’s that.”
He laughed. “True, but they love you when they wake up and see the kindness on your face that matches the kindness in your voice when you’re talking to them even when you’re not sure they hear you.”
“How do you know I talk to my patients?”
“There are glass walls separating the rooms from the hallway,” he pointed out, grinning as he told her the obvious. “I’ve seen you talking to your patients. You’re constantly chatting away, even to the unconscious ones. Your face gets so animated at times that I wonder what you could possibly be saying to them with such enthusiasm.”
“You’ve met my best friend. It’s quite possible that I chat with unconscious people as a reaction to her.” Jenny’s lips twitched. “Besides, for all you know, I could be telling them to get off their tushes so I can give their bed to someone else or so I could have an easy go for the rest of my shift.”
“I’m going with my gut on this one. You’re a good nurse. The compassionate kind I hope I’d get if I were ever in an intensive care unit.”
Her cheeks pinkened again. They did that a lot, the splash of color contrasting with her fair skin. Dark hair, dark eyes, porcelain skin that brightened at the lightest comment.
“Let’s hope you never are.” She bit into her lower lip. “Is there something you’re wanting, Tristan? Because a game of Twenty Questions and flattery will not win points with me.”
Was that what she thought he was trying to do? Flatter her? For that matter, what was he trying to do? He liked his life uncomplicated. Jenny was complicated. He might not know a lot about her, but he was positive she made Riemann’s hypothesis seem as nothing more than simple mathematics.
“I want to be your friend.” More than that, an inner voice whispered. He had never dated coworkers during his short stints, not even ones who knew the score and were as footloose and fancy-free as he was. Jenny wanted someone who was going to stick around. And yet, he admitted that if she crooked her finger, that rule would be tossed to the wind.
“You’ll have to settle for being my temporary coworker,” she said without a smile or finger crook. “I’m not in the market for new friends.”
