Heart Trouble Read online

  “Yeah, I’m packing.” Christ, was that ever a loaded statement, considering his dick had been half-hard ever since she’d walked up to him.

  Her eyes turned smoky. “Oddly, I’m quite turned on by that.”

  It was Sean’s turn to laugh out loud at her directness. She sure didn’t pull any punches. He wanted to kiss her right then and there, among other things. “Well, that’s a new one.”

  If he wasn’t mistaken, she blushed. “Seriously? A woman has never said the thought of you packing heat is a huge turn-on? What’s wrong with the women you’ve dated?”

  For one thing, none of them were anything like you. He grew somber, studying her incredible smiling face. The desire to get closer to her was palpable, both physically and intellectually. “You want to get out of here? Go grab a cup of coffee someplace quiet, so we can talk some more?”

  Her pretty lips parted to reply. Unfortunately, that was when all hell chose to break loose.

  Chapter Two

  A woman’s piercing scream broke through the din of the bar. People pushed and shoved, trying to get closer to the action or farther away from it. The bar’s staff came out of the woodwork to get the excited horde of partiers under control.

  “Somebody please, help us!” a female voice shouted. “Please! Oh God, he’s not breathing!”

  Erin froze in the commotion, then turned to look for Tess, the shouted plea for medical help like a bucket of ice water dumped over her lust-fogged head. She didn’t have time to analyze that she had indeed been thirsting for more of Sean, the smokin’ hot cop.

  Sean grabbed her arm when she started to enter the agitated crowd. “Erin, wait. It’s not safe to go—”

  She peeled his fingers from her bicep, flirty vixen persona floating away like smoke. “I’m a doctor.”

  His mouth opened in surprise, then closed, an unnamed emotion darkening his features as he stared at her face intently. He must’ve believed her though, because he began pushing his way through the crowd, barking at people to get out of his way as he pulled Erin along behind him.

  “Erin!” Tess shouted, kneeling in the chair at their table so she could see over the thick sea of people.

  “Let’s go,” Erin ordered with a wave of her hand, her medical training superseding everything else.

  They reached the man lying on his back on the floor of the bar. Erin pushed the onlookers back and dropped to her knees, ignoring the biting grit of sand and God only knew what else grinding into her flesh. The tight dress rode farther up her thighs, and she was probably flashing part of her ass, but modesty took a backseat to necessity.

  “My name is Erin Taylor. I’m an ER doctor at Baptist Hospital. Get this crowd back now. I need the music off and the lights on, and somebody damn sure better have already called 911!”

  A low murmur vibrated through the thick mass of bodies. Staff forced them back, the music died a quick death, and bright halogen lights flashed on, temporarily blinding everyone.

  Erin focused on her patient.

  The guy looked to be in his early thirties, pale as cotton, and unconscious. When Erin pressed her fingers to his throat, he had no pulse. She immediately started chest compressions.

  “Tess, check to see if they have an AED.” Tess scrambled off to do as Erin asked. “Sean?” she said.

  “Talk to me, Doc,” he answered, bending down near her shoulder. She found it strangely comforting that he was still close by.

  “Get these people out of here. Threaten to shoot them, arrest them, whatever you have to do.”

  “Handled,” he said in a stern cop voice.

  Behind her, Sean took over, and the shuffling of feet followed among the grumbling of people wanting to watch someone die before their eyes.

  Tess came running back. “No AED.”

  “It was worth a shot.”

  Everything around Erin moved in slow motion as she tried to force life back into the young man. Too young to be lying there dying on the dirty floor of a bar. A pretty girl paced beside them, tears streaking down her ashen cheeks in sooty tracks, her hands clasped together in front of her mouth as she pleaded with God to save…

  Erin blocked out the sound of her voice in order to concentrate.

  Fate sure had an odd way of fucking with her. One minute she was encapsulated in a bubble of lust, feeling almost high just by breathing the same air as someone else, flirting her ass off like she knew what she was doing. The next minute she was pushing on some stranger’s chest wall hard enough to break his bones. Almost, but not quite. He’d be lucky if he came through this with nothing but a sore sternum or a cracked rib.

  “Where is that goddamn ambulance?” she grumbled.

  “They’re on the way. Traffic is bad because of the concert at the coliseum,” a staff member said. She’d turned down two free tickets to that concert yesterday, offered by a colleague who’d had friends back out on him unexpectedly. If only… She shook off the thought, a foolish waste of energy now.

  She glanced up as Tess pressed her fingers to the man’s throat, checking for a pulse, before giving Erin a tiny shake of her head. The pacing girl sobbed harder.

  Sweat trickled down Erin’s breastbone and along her spine. Her shoulders and wrists ached from the exertion. Sirens registered through the background noise, the blessed sound of a gurney rolling across the concrete floor of the bar, the paramedics speaking to her.

  “Erin?”

  Dan Murphy, a paramedic friend, touched her shoulder. She blinked, then let him ease her out of the way so he could take over.

  “You did a great job,” Dan said, nodding encouragingly. “We’ll take it from here.”

  Had she done a great job? He still wasn’t breathing on his own. He had no pulse. Best she could tell, that spelled failure.

  Strong hands helped her to her feet, but she didn’t turn her head to see who it was. Her senses told her it was Sean. One of the paramedics split the front of the man’s T-shirt with a pair of scissors. Another attached leads from the Automated External Defibrillator to his bare skin. They administered oxygen through a handheld mask and bag.

  “He’s in V-Tach,” the paramedic said.

  Good, that meant they could shock him to try to restart his heart. Erin held her breath as they zapped him once, twice. Then Dan said the sweetest words. “We’ve got a rhythm.”

  God.

  Erin’s knees went a little weak. She bent forward, squeezed her eyes closed, and said a quick prayer of thanks. It had been a while. Maybe he would remember her.

  Someone touched her again. She straightened and opened her eyes. It was the crying girl. She flung her arms around Erin’s neck in a choking hug, sniffing, and thanking her profusely.

  When she pulled away, Erin nodded, embarrassed. “Just doing my job. They’re rolling him out. You should go too, so you can give them all his personal information. What’s his name?”

  “Henry,” the girl said with a watery smile, waving as she trotted out the door of the bar, following her loved one.

  “Henry,” Erin repeated.

  “We’re taking him to Memorial because it’s easier to get to with the concert traffic,” Dan said over his shoulder. “You look smokin’ hot by the way,” he added with a cheeky grin.

  Erin groaned and wilted a bit. Great, she’d never live the ridiculous outfit down.

  “Wow, that was intense,” Tess said, wiping her damp throat with a clean bar towel. She offered one to Erin, but she declined. “You okay, babe?”

  Erin moved her head in what she thought might be a nod, adrenaline tightening her muscles until she could barely move, let alone speak. “Could use a drink.”

  “It’s on the house, Doc,” the bartender who had waited on her earlier offered.

  Sean placed his hand in the small of her back and gave her a gentle push. “Let’s sit down.”

  “I’d rather swallow my drink and go home.”

  The bouncers were still keeping the doors blocked, so they had some breathing room.
Staff members worked at cleaning up any signs of the trauma that had just occurred. Life would go on. In a few minutes the place would be buzzing with renewed energy once again, as if nothing had ever happened. Erin wished she could put it all behind her that fast.

  They stopped at the table where she and Tess had been sitting. Sean pushed the drink into her hand, and she turned it up, swallowing it all in one fiery gulp. She set the empty glass down, looked over at him. His badge was now clipped to his belt in plain sight. He smiled but didn’t say anything. Erin stared back, taking him in through a more critical eye than before. He was even better looking in the bright light, if that was at all possible, and his eyes were dark green. She felt a funny fluttery sensation in her stomach when she looked at him, but attributed it to lingering nerves or the punch from the alcohol she’d just swallowed.

  “You’re bleeding,” Tess said, gesturing toward her knee. Erin tore her gaze away from Sean’s and glanced down. Blood had caked below her right kneecap and was creeping down her shin in a slow trickle.

  “I must’ve cut it on something when I knelt down on the floor.”

  “Sit,” Tess ordered. “I’ll go grab a first-aid kit. Jeez, I feel like I’m at work.”

  Erin climbed onto a chair. Sean spun another around in front of her and straddled it. Swiping a condensation-soaked napkin from the tabletop, he began carefully cleaning the streak of drying blood from her leg. It was a bit unnerving, having his warm fingers wrapped around her calf while he ministered to her. And she couldn’t deny there was a distinctive jolt of awareness at the contact points.

  She’d likely have bruises on both knees by tomorrow. Not near as worrisome as Henry’s predicament. He wasn’t out of the water, not by a long shot. Lots of things could still go wrong before he recovered.

  When Sean got too close to the actual injury, Erin flinched, and he raised his eyes to hers.

  “So,” Sean started. “A doctor.”

  “Jesus, I hope so, or I may be getting sued.”

  He laughed. “And how is that similar to a mechanic?”

  “Didn’t I try and fix him?” She halfheartedly waved her hand around. “Get him running again? Bleh, stupid analogy. Forget I said it.”

  “No, it works.” When he smiled, Erin felt her stomach do that weird somersault thing again. His hand was still wrapped around her calf, his thumb making little circles on her skin as his gaze roamed her face.

  Tess came back with the first-aid kit, interrupting the weird intensity of the moment. Erin sat still and let her play doctor for a change. There was a small sliver of glass wedged into her skin that Tess scraped out with her fingernail.

  “There. All done,” she said, smoothing on an adhesive bandage.

  “Tess, this is Sean… Sorry, I don’t know your last name.”

  “Rembert.” He shook Tess’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Tess. I assume you work together at Baptist?”

  “Tess is a nurse in the ER with me.” Erin stood, and her pinched toes protested. Wincing, she grumbled, “I would pay someone fifty bucks for a pair of used flip-flops right now.” More than ready to leave, she reached for her clutch. Which wasn’t where she’d left it. She looked under the table, around on the floor. Nothing. “My clutch is missing.”

  “What?” Tess asked, her voice going up an octave. “After what you did here tonight, someone stole your purse. Unbelievable!”

  Sean frowned, mouth pressed into a thin line as he planted his feet on the floor and stood. “I’ll check with the staff. See if anyone turned it in.”

  “And I’ll go look around at the other tables and in the bathroom. Maybe they took your cash and dumped the rest of it,” Tess said.

  Erin sighed and rolled her head around on her neck. This had been one hell of a night, even before her purse went missing. She routinely handled chaotic eighteen-hour shifts in the ER, barraged with gunshot wounds, car-accident victims, and feverish puking kids, and still managed to walk out the door wired like a cokehead. Somehow tonight had drained her dry, perhaps because she was out of her element with no one to back her up except Tess. Not that having Tess as backup hadn’t been reassuring—it had, but that man’s life had rested squarely on Erin’s shoulders, and it had been heavy.

  Sean returned, his grim expression doing nothing to detract from his rugged good looks. “No one turned it in, but the manager told me to give you this.” He offered a folded stack of what looked to be at least five one-hundred dollar bills.

  Erin took one look at it, frowned, and shook her head. “I don’t want that.”

  “Take the money, Erin. If anyone deserves a reward tonight, it’s you.”

  “Forget it.” She pushed his hand away. “Give it back. Tell him to write a check to Hospice or the Boys and Girls Club. Or better yet, send it to Memorial Hospital to help cover Henry’s medical expenses.”

  Sean met the manager across the floor and relayed her message. When he returned, he asked, “What was in your purse?”

  She blew out a long breath, thinking. “Not a lot. About two hundred dollars in cash, driver’s license, hospital ID, and my apartment key. I didn’t bother with a wallet tonight, and we brought Tess’s car.”

  Tess returned empty-handed. “Nothing,” she grumbled. “I checked the garbage cans, under the tables and booths, every nook and cranny. It’s not here.”

  “Look, it’s my fault the stupid thing got stolen in the first place for leaving it unattended, no matter what the circumstances were. Let’s just go. Tess has a spare key to my apartment, I can replace the other stuff next week, and at this point, I don’t care about the money,” Erin said, some of the irritability from earlier returning to temper her mood. She was mentally and physically drained, her toes hurt, and she was ready to trade the tight dress for a hot shower and her pajamas.

  Sean escorted them out of the bar without saying a word, but the tight expression on his face told Erin he was not happy about something. They stopped beside Tess’s car.

  “Tess, I’ll take Erin home. Are you safe to drive?”

  Their jaws dropped. Tess managed to speak first. “Uh, yeah, sure,” she said, frowning in confusion as her eyes darted back and forth between Erin and Sean. “I never finished my second drink, and that was before the guy collapsed. Erin, are you okay with that?”

  Erin blinked at Sean, summoning the energy to argue. Before she could protest, he said, “You had your apartment key stolen along with your driver’s license, which has your address on it. Do you think it’s possible for someone to forget you in that dress tonight? Especially after what just happened in there?”

  A chill crept up her spine when the implication of his words sank in. She shifted on her aching feet, chewing the inside of her bottom lip. At her hesitancy, Sean pulled his wallet out of his pocket, flipping it open to show her his driver’s license, his police identification, and then his badge again so she could compare the numbers. He thought he’d read her as being wary because she couldn’t be sure he was telling the truth about being a cop. The sad fact was the thought hadn’t crossed her exhausted mind, even though it should have. Warning bells should’ve been clanging away inside her skull. Instead, all she’d heard was the whiney inner voice of discomfort.

  “I’ll sleep on your couch, and in the morning we’ll call a locksmith.” He held up his hands. “No funny business, I swear.”

  Sean Rembert, the sexiest and nicest cop she’d ever laid eyes on, sleeping on her couch, mostly naked, ten steps from her bedroom door. What was funny about that?

  Chapter Three

  Erin was quiet on the ride to her apartment.

  She’d caved rather easily when he’d told her he was spending the night on her couch, considering the storm force she’d been earlier, commandeering the situation, ordering people around, saving that man’s life. But then he’d provided a valid argument against leaving her alone tonight too.

  It never hurt to be overly cautious.

  It could have been fatigue, or it could have
been apprehension at having him in her home. Sean hoped there was a healthy dose of fear mixed in there as well, because of what he’d said. In his line of work, he’d seen horrible, unthinkable things happen to women. He didn’t want Erin to suffer that same fate.

  Christ, he’d stood in absolute awe of her after he’d gotten over the shock of finding out she was a doctor. A saint in sin’s clothing. Something he was still trying to get his tired brain to accept.

  He doubted he’d sleep much tonight, knowing she was near, warm and soft in sleep, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d pulled an all-nighter. Wouldn’t be his last either. He’d sat on stakeouts for days at a time, watching a suspect’s movements, needing a hot shower, a decent meal, and a comfortable bed. An unfortunate part of the job requirement. Erin’s couch would be a cakewalk compared to the seat of his car.

  “Thanks for your help earlier,” she said, weariness making her words slow and measured.

  “No problem.”

  “He could’ve died right there on the dirty floor of that bar,” she murmured, staring forward through his windshield. “Beneath my hands.”

  “But he didn’t. He’s lucky you were there. Have you ever had something like that happen before? Where you had to act so quickly?”

  She turned her head to look at him, the flash of the streetlights illuminating half her beautiful features in steady, welcomed doses. “No, that was my first time working on a patient outside the ER. I’m used to having colleagues there to back me up, help me make decisions, sterility and a semblance of order.” She looked away again, out the side window. “I was terrified.”

  That was a heavy admission, considering how strong he found her to be. He ran his knuckles down her forearm. “It didn’t show.”

  She sighed, dropped her head back on the seat, and remained quiet for the rest of the ride except to tell him where to turn and her condo number when they pulled into the complex. It was a nice place in a good area of town, somewhat upscale, but not gated, and within walking or biking distance to the St. Johns River.