Flaming Desire - Part 1 (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Read online

  I had been truthful when I told Serena that I liked being a mentor. I liked sharing my passion for nursing with others. I liked it here. I liked the people I worked with, or at least most of them. I took my job very seriously, right down to stocking the crash cart, staying on top of medical records, the dreaded charting and documentation.

  Melody and Serena and I had worked in the trauma unit the longest. We were here to stay though I was constantly aware that every few weeks or at least once a month, a new nurse rotated in and then disappeared.

  No doubt the high turnover was due to the high pressure, high-stress environment. I knew that many nurses didn’t realize what they were getting into when they signed on for an emergency room department shift. Here it could be gory, bloody, and scary. When a patient came into their emergency room, and most especially our trauma unit, they were usually in dire circumstances. They needed nurses that were on top of things; compassionate, skilled, and could function and make decisions quickly.

  Then there were the family members to deal with. Lots of crying and begging for information. Not all nurses could deal with that. Some snapped at the families, talked down to them, or were short-tempered and impatient with endless questions. There were days when I went home and cried in the shower, not just when I lost a patient, but because of the stress of dealing with families and their fears, pain, and heartbreak.

  “Well,” I sighed. “Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that this one—”

  “Oh-my-God,” Melody said, her voice nearly a whisper.

  I smiled at the sound of Melody’s voice as I pulled a small notepad from my pocket and began to jot down some quick notes for today’s mentoring session. I half-glanced at her, then paused, wondering at her expression. She stared at something over my shoulder. I turned to look.

  A tall, broad-shouldered and dark-haired man had turned the corner of the hallway, heading toward the nurse’s station. He must be at least three or four inches over six feet.

  As he walked toward us, his expression blank, I tried to still the trip hammering of my heart and ignored the sudden and startling clench in the pit of my stomach. The more I stared at the guy, the more my blood raced and my nerves tingled.

  What the hell?

  I’d never reacted this way to a guy’s appearance. Never. Ever. Then again, I’d never seen someone quite like this guy. He walked with confidence while at the same time oozing sexual charm, as if the pheromones exuded from his body automatically sought out the opposite sex. Or more specifically, my sex.

  I didn’t even know how to compare his appearance to anyone I’d ever met before. To say that he looked better than one of Michelangelo’s famous statues was an understatement. No, too cliché. No, this guy was living, breathing, hot, sexy flesh. Beside me, Melody and Serena also stared.

  I tried not to stare, tried to avert my eyes, even for a second, pretended to busy myself writing my notes, but the problem was I wasn’t. I felt so distracted my pen froze in mid-air. So, like Melody and Serena, I wordlessly watched him walk closer.

  His black hair looked silky smooth, a little longer on top than on the sides, but certainly enough to run your fingers through and grab a hold of if you wanted to. I wanted to. A wayward lock strayed down over his forehead, giving him an innocent, boyish look. But this was no boy. He was all man. A man with a strong nose, firm and square jaw line and lips that curled upward into what I could almost classify as a sardonic grin.

  His shoulders were broad. Just by glancing at his hands I estimated him to be extremely fit. Thick veins threaded along the back of his hand and up his forearms. He wore multi-pocketed dark blue scrub pants. Over that, a dark blue scrub top. A stethoscope dangled around his neck. His scrub top was tucked neatly into his pants, and I couldn’t prevent my gaze from straying downward. I saw the slight bulge of his genitals tucked off to the left, the outline of which were quite visible every time he took a step forward with that leg.

  Again, a surge of warmth flooded through me and I felt the heat of a blush make its way from my upper chest, along my neck, and into my cheeks. Oh my God was right. He was hot! Not just hot, but super hot. I felt the warm, burning sensation burst into life low in my belly. I quickly glanced at Melody and Serena, saw them both staring wide-eyed at the guy.

  Before I knew it, the man had paused in front of us at the nurse’s station. I felt like an idiot, staring up at him with my mouth open in stunned amazement. I could only hope that drool wasn’t running from the corner of my mouth. I focused on closing it. No drool. Thank goodness for small favors.

  “I’m Matt Drake,” he said, glancing over the three of us. “I need to report to Jessica Landers.”

  His voice was just as sexy as the rest of him. Deep, rumbling, low.

  I extended my hand. “I’m—I’m Jessica Landers,” I said. “I’ll be mentoring you for the next week.”

  He nodded. “So the DON told me.”

  He eyed me for several moments, giving me the quick body check inspection. I wondered what he thought of me. It was obvious what I thought of him, but I would be damned if I let looks interfere with my work or my job.

  Clearing my throat and focusing on the tasks ahead, I gestured toward my friends, also now recovering from the shock. “This is Serena Jackson,” I said. “And this is Melody Stanford.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said, offering each a brief handshake.

  I noted that Serena was a little slow in releasing his hand. I cleared my throat and turned to him. “You’ve clocked in?”

  He nodded, glancing around the trauma unit. For now, it was relatively quiet, only one of the bays occupied by a child who had tumbled from the swings at pre-school. Several nurses wearing varied colored scrubs busied themselves stocking the bays as well as the metal rolling supply carts with linen covers that lined the wall opposite the bays; clean sheets, new pillows, plastic sheeting that was placed between the plastic gurney mattresses and the clean sheets in between every patient.

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  Indeed. So was I, but mentoring him was the last thing on my mind.

  Chapter 2

  Just as I was about to tell Matt to follow me, intending to show him the lay of the land, Diane reappeared from around the corner and caught my attention. I turned around and abruptly bumped into him. Even though a short distance separated us, it was like bumping into a cement pillar. I bounced off him as he reached out an arm to prevent me from falling. I glanced up at him, chagrined to feel a wave of heat flood my cheeks. “Sorry, Matt,” I mumbled.

  “No worries,” he said.

  He followed my gaze as Diane approached. “What’s up?” I asked her.

  “Forgot to tell Matt about the ride-alongs,” she said.

  “Oh, I was going to tell him, Diane.”

  “Ride alongs?” he asked.

  Diane explained about the rides with the paramedics. Matt lifted an eyebrow but rather than being concerned, he looked interested. He glanced down at me and grinned.

  “Sounds exciting,” he said.

  “Since you’re an experienced nurse, I decided that we could speed up your mentoring,” Diane explained. “You okay with that, Jessica?”

  I shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

  “I should also have mentioned that, like you, Jessica, Matt here is a wildfire fighter.”

  Now that caught my attention. I glanced up at him in surprise, and not a little added interest. “You are?” He nodded and I looked at Diane. “Is that going to be a problem, with two of us working in the same department?”

  Diane looked up at Matt and smiled. “As far as I’m concerned, it shouldn’t be a problem, but I’ll talk to the emergency department head, and then we’ll run it up through administration.”

  Matt nodded and I tried to still my trip-hammering heart. Whoa. Good looking, skilled at nursing, and a wildfire fighter like me? Be still my racing heart, I thought. I tried to curb my excitement. What were the chances of that?

  Diane no
dded and then hurried off back to her office. I gestured for him to follow me down the hall while Melody and Serena turned back to updating the charts.

  “You a hotshot?”

  “Yes,” I replied, surprised. He had used the term that defined groups of wildland firefighters and the fact that hotshots weren’t just ordinary firefighters, but highly trained. Hotshots adhered to extreme physical fitness standards and were often sent into the most dangerous spots on a fire line.

  Hotshot crews were well-versed in a wide range of fire suppression tactics. In fact, I had recently returned to Santa Fe from Arizona a few weeks ago from yet another training session. With summer coming on, I was sure to be called out once or twice, as I had been the previous two years to fight massive fires in Colorado; the first time for the Waldo Canyon fire, the last one in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

  He placed a hand on his chest. “I am too.”

  His grin widened. I tried to ignore the sensations that grin elicited deep in my belly but failed. “I’ll be damned,” I said softly. “How long?”

  “Since I was eighteen… for about ten years now,” he said. “I’ve worked with the National Forest Service, the BLM, and others. What about you?”

  “The Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service,” I said. I couldn’t stop smiling. Such a coincidence. I tried not to feel giddy, but couldn’t help it. Few of my peers at the hospital understood my passion for firefighting. After all, it was dangerous, and as a hotshot, I could be gone for days, sometimes weeks, fighting fires. I had made arrangements with Diane and the hospital administration to deal with such situations. The agreement was that I would be allowed to go and fight such fires, but would take the appropriate cutback in my salary for the length of time I was gone. I didn’t mind, as the pay I received for the firefighting was pretty decent. Added to that, I didn’t usually have trouble finding people to cover my shifts, as Melody or Serena often wanted extra hours, so it had never been a problem.

  He continued to smile down at me, and once again I felt the niggling of desire. To meet someone that I worked with that shared such interests amazed me. I felt as if I had found a kindred spirit. “When did you last get called out?”

  “I was mopping up and hot spotting at the Happy Complex Fire back in September last year,” he said.

  I nodded in understanding. Numerous areas of California had been ablaze last summer, just as Colorado had been, due to hot and dry conditions. Actually, the last couple of summers had been busy. I could only hope that this summer would be calmer. “It’s a small world, I guess.”

  He nodded. “I don’t find things much more exciting than fighting a wildfire,” he commented, his gorgeous eyes reflecting that excitement. “How about you?”

  I shrugged. “My friends say I’m an adrenaline junkie, but it’s more than that.” I grew serious. “I lost a friend in a fire when I was a teenager,” I explained, feeling the tug of pain at the memory. “She was asleep in the house when the fire broke out in the middle of the night. In the confusion, the family didn’t realize that she didn’t make it out. By the time they realized she hadn’t, it was too late.” I paused, remembering. It had been a terrible time for me. Becky had been one of my best friends in high school, and her tragic and horrible death had scarred me. “Ever since then, I wanted to do something that might make a difference.”

  “More than becoming a trauma nurse?”

  I nodded. “I don’t like to be idle. Back home in Wisconsin, I joined the volunteer fire department, but when I came out here and saw the number of wildfires they had out west, and the fact that they always seemed to need more help, I joined one of the training programs.”

  “I get where you’re coming from. And I admit freely without an iota of guilt that I am an adrenaline junkie.” He laughed. “I even tried smoke jumping once, but decided that parachuting into the middle of a blazing fire might be pushing it a little.”

  “So you’re from Wisconsin?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Milwaukee.”

  “You’re a long way from home,” he commented, walking beside me.

  I noted that my head barely reached his shoulders. “Oh, I tried to apply at a few hospitals on the eastern seaboard, but with the economy and ever-decreasing hospital budgets, my first choices were off the table.” I glanced up at him. “They wanted trauma nurses with more experience.”

  “Still, you couldn’t find anything closer to home and family?”

  I shrugged. “To be honest, I wanted to get away from Milwaukee for a while… the cold snowy winters.” I laughed. “After I accepted a job here in Santa Fe nearly two years ago, I was delighted that I didn’t have to don a heavy jacket or snowshoes to shovel out my driveway or put chains on my car just to get to work.”

  He laughed.

  “I like it here. Santa Fe General is a Level-4 trauma center. I enjoy the intensity.”

  He nodded in understanding. “I worked ICU in a Level-3 trauma center in Sacramento.”

  “So what brought you to New Mexico?”

  “Closer to family.”

  “Oh? You’re from New Mexico?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m from Colorado.”

  I smiled, fond of that state. “Where in Colorado? I often drive up that way, up to Boulder. You know it?”

  He grinned. “I was born in the Springs.”

  I knew that ‘the Springs’ was short for Colorado Springs. I couldn’t remember how many times I had driven through there on my way to Boulder. In fact, I spent as much time as I could in Colorado, thinking that someday, I might move there.

  We walked slowly down the hallway past the emergency room doors, weaving our way around orderlies pulling mop buckets, doctors, administration staff carrying folders of paper, and of course, a number of fellow nurses who gave Drake more than a modicum of passing interest. I lifted my eyebrow and grinned at one of the nurses who cupped her hands and made squeezing motions as if she were grabbing handfuls of Drake’s ass.

  I had already ignored the wiggling eyebrows that Serena left in our wake, as well as the air kiss that Melody sent behind Drake. Great. I knew it would only be a matter of time before the gossip about the drop-dead good-looking ‘new’ male nurse swept through the hospital like wildfire. Then I wondered how long it would be before Megan or Vanessa caught wind of his presence. I shook my head. I didn’t really care what Megan and Vanessa did in their spare time, but I didn’t want them messing with my new nurse— my new nurse?

  I turned to glance over my shoulder at him, surprised as my heart did a little thump-thump-thump as my gaze passed over his face. No doubt about it. He was one good-looking dude. In fact, just his towering presence somewhat intimidated me, and that was extremely unusual.

  As a wildfire fighter, I had worked around a lot of guys, especially alpha males with loads of testosterone to spare. Still, never had I reacted so… so viscerally to one. Just looking at him made my insides clench, most especially the muscles between my legs. Oh God…

  Most of the time I felt completely in control and comfortable mentoring new nurses, but then again, Matt Drake wasn’t exactly new. Most of them lacked confidence with their new environment, but this guy acted like he had been working here for months. Not surprising, really. He walked with confidence, curious about everything going on around him without asking a single question. He looked, he processed, he understood. It took me a bit off-balance.

  For the first time since I’d begun mentoring, it was I who felt a little awkward, and it wasn’t because I hadn’t mentored a male nurse before. I had. Jack had been one of them, a few months ago. He had tried my patience on new numerous occasions because he was so easily distracted. Most of the time, when he went off to check on something he inevitably ended up in the emergency waiting room talking to family members waiting with bated breath for information—information he was ordered not to deliver without the express permission of the doctor in charge. Other times, I’d send him on an errand to do this or that o
nly to find him in a different department altogether, talking to fellow staff. On more than one occasion, I had gone to check on him, only to find him chatting up the patients while the doctor waited impatiently for vitals…

  While I encouraged all my new nurses to be friendly and try to comfort their patients—and family members—I also knew the emergency room was not always conducive to that. Still, I encouraged all the nurses that I mentored to be compassionate, patient and understanding, but the emergency room was in a constant state of flux, an environment that was constantly changing for better or worse.

  On many occasions, I took an extra minute or two to comfort a child, a family member, but sometimes it was impossible. Everything moved quickly down here, and for very good reason. Some patients didn’t understand that, and family members even less so. I supposed that to a lot of them, the staff in the emergency room department seemed cold, callous, or uncaring when actually the opposite was true.

  I glanced up at him as I reached for the supply room door. “This is where the bulk of the supplies for the crash carts are kept.” He looked in and nodded. “If you take a look at the system I set up for each of the carts, you’ll see how I have it set up.” I gestured to a sheaf of paper attached to a clipboard hanging on the wall beside the door. “Of course, if you have a better method of keeping track of everything you take out of the room and which cart you’re resupplying, feel free to say so. Every cart has a number stenciled onto the side of it.”

  He nodded, quickly passing his gaze around the supply room. “What about—?”

  His question was interrupted when the communication system near the nurse’s desk blurted out an incoming patient. From where we stood at the end of the hallway, I only caught brief snatches of the situation. Accident. Two victims, both adults. ETA three minutes out.