Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 99967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“Deal.” I grin and grab my coffee, my sack lunch and purse, and we leave Xander’s house, lock the door, and head for Ava’s pretty little Lexus. “Thanks for the ride, by the way. I’ll buy something sooner or later.”
“You could drive Xander’s car,” she reminds me as she fires up the engine.
“He drives a Maserati,” I remind her. “No way. With my luck, I’ll get in a fender bender that costs more to fix than I make in a year.”
She smirks at that as we pull away from the house and toward the highway that leads us to Bitterroot Valley.
Silver Springs is a neighboring town, less than thirty minutes away, and Xander lives roughly halfway between the two towns, so it’s extra convenient for me to live at his place. Much less of a commute this way.
And Ava’s office is in Bitterroot Valley too, so I’m on her way to work.
Super handy.
“When do you start the night shift?” she asks.
“I have three days of days, three days off, then four nights on, then two days off. That repeats. I’ll be a zombie, but it’s fine. I don’t mind the night shift. I’ll do my best to have a car by then, though, because there is no world where you should have to get up at, like, five to pick me up from work.”
She nods and reaches over to pat my leg. “Thank you. Not just for the car thing, but for coming home when I told you I needed you.”
“You should have told me months ago. I’m your family, Aves. If you need me, I come home. That’s the rule.”
She lets out a gusty breath. “Well, there wasn’t a position open at the hospital that you’d want.”
“Are you telling me that you kept an eye on the want ads so you could talk me into moving home?”
“I’m not not telling you that.” She laughs and puts on her blinker to turn into the parking lot. “What will you do if you run into Dr. Big Dick?”
I choke on the coffee I just sipped and do my best not to spill all over myself.
“Ava!”
“What? It’s an honest question.”
Ava’s the only one in the world who knows what happened last Thanksgiving, five months ago. As soon as I walked into her condo, she started drilling me because she said I had freshly fucked written all over my face.
“I’ll say hello. I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about it. Besides, he’s in the ER, and he works in his clinic. We’re in separate parts of the hospital. I probably won’t run into him.”
“Famous last words,” she mutters, then smiles sweetly. “For what it’s worth, I hear the Blackwell family is nice. Tucker knows their oldest brother, Brooks.”
Of course, he does.
Because this is a tiny community, and we were destined to have some overlap somewhere.
“How does your brother know his brother?”
“Brooks owns the auto shop here in Bitterroot Valley. I guess Tuck uses that shop. And they’d probably be about the same age.” She shrugs a shoulder. “Also, sidebar, there’s a new bookstore in town. We need to check it out. It’s all romance.”
Okay, that grabs my interest.
I listen to a lot of audiobooks while I hike, and I always have my e-reader on me at work for when the night shift is quiet, and I’m just making sure all the sleeping babies are safe and happy.
“Yes, please,” I reply as she pulls up to a stop. “On my first day off, it’s happening. Okay, have a good day, dear.”
“I’ll pick you up when you’re done,” she says with a grin. “This is so fun.”
With a shake of my head, I climb out of her car, wave, and walk inside. I head right up to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and set my personal things in the locker assigned to me last week, then walk out to the nurses' station, where my supervisor, Liz, grins at me.
“You’re here,” she says. “Welcome. You can set your water right here. This will be your computer today.”
I nod and sit down, and a half hour later, I’ve been shown pretty much everything there is to know, along with current patients, doctors in house and on call, their numbers, and I’ve met my fellow nurses.
Thankfully, I already know the computer system, as I’ve worked with the same one several times before, so there won’t be a learning curve there.
“We rotate duties,” Liz says. “Some days, you’ll be on grower duty, watching over the little ones who need to get bigger before they go home. On other shifts, you’ll be with the sick babies. Today, I have you flexing between the two, along with any issues that come up from L&D.”
I nod but internally roll my eyes. I am not a labor and delivery nurse. Some people are excellent at that, and I respect them, but it’s just not my calling.