Jennifer Snow – Fighting for Keeps (страница 7)
Lindsay laughed for the first time that day as she pushed his arms away from the counter. “Seriously, this place is infested, don’t touch anything,” she said, disinfecting the counter with sanitizer wipes for the millionth time and handing him the sanitizer, which he refused. “And I sent Victoria away because she’s pregnant and the virus can harm an unborn child.”
“Oh, wow, didn’t know that.”
She flipped through his paperwork to make sure everything was there. “So, everything came back normal and you’re cleared to fight.” She’d delivered the good news through clenched teeth.
He took the paperwork. “Why do you disapprove of fighting so much?”
She was sure they’d had this conversation already. “It’s pointless and brutal. Two men hitting each other... I guess I don’t see how that can be considered a sport.”
“There is technique involved,” he said. “And a lot of training and conditioning...”
“I’m sure there’s more to it than I know.”
“What are you doing later?” He blocked her path to the waiting area.
“Working.”
“You’ve used that lie already.”
She pointed to the crowded waiting room. “It’s hardly a lie.” Today.
He grinned. “Okay, so what you’re saying is if you didn’t have to work tonight, you’d have dinner with me?”
“Not at all. What I’m saying is, if I didn’t have to work tonight, I would need to come up with a lie.”
* * *
“I...JUST...DON’T...GET...IT,” Noah panted between punches on the heavy bag an hour later.
On the other side Brandon held the bag as he continued his rain of jabs and strikes on the worn leather. “Look, man, I’d like to help you, but women troubles are not really my thing.”
“We haven’t even made it to troubles yet, she just straight-out refuses to even have dinner with me because I’m an MMA fighter. It’s actually kind of prejudiced.” Noah threw one final jab, then hit the mat at his feet in push-up position. “I mean, it’s like she assumes fighting is all I am.”
“Isn’t it?” Brandon asked, adding a stack of weights on his back.
Noah struggled with the last two, his forearms burning after the intense twenty-minute circuit set. “No way.”
He wondered what his coach would think if he knew about the outreach program. Since coming to Brookhollow, he’d made some great friends, Brandon and his brother Jordan included, but he was careful about what he chose to reveal about himself.
The families he’d met in the small town were so different from his own. They were supportive of one another, divorce was rare and his friends... Though they’d had their struggles they had never had to wonder where their next meal would come from or have to help their passed-out father to bed after far too many drinks.
Revealing the good he was trying to do would only spark conversation about the bad in his past. And he’d moved away from that. He wanted his friends to see him as the man he was now.
“I’ve got other things going on,” he said noncommittally as he rolled onto his back and brought his left knee and right elbow together in a crunch.
“The thing is,” Brandon admitted, “I’m not getting your attraction to her.”
“You’re kidding, right?” How could the men in this town be so blind to Lindsay’s appeal? She was smart, beautiful, kind... Impossible to reach. He was no stranger to chasing a pretty woman, but he’d believed her when she’d said she wasn’t interested. He just wasn’t sure he could accept that answer. Not this time. Not with her.
“Okay, maybe I’ve pegged her wrong. So enlighten me. What does it for you?”
“For one, she’s a knockout.” Noah did his twentieth crunch and his stomach started to burn. He loved that feeling, so he pushed on.
“I’ll give you that. She’s definitely one of the more attractive women in town,” Brandon said.
Noah let out a deep breath as the crunches got tougher and his abs hardened.
“And she’s educated,” he huffed, recalling how Brandon’s sister had filled him in on all the details on Lindsay the first night he’d noticed her at Bailey’s Thursday-night self-defense class at Extreme Athletics.
“She’s amazing with her patients.”
“Okay, so, maybe it’s a Florence Nightingale syndrome. You get hurt a lot, she has morphine?”
Noah shook his head as he stood. His buddy would never get it. Once opinions and stereotypes were formed in small towns, they were tough to shake. And Lindsay fit a clear stereotype in Brookhollow. He knew firsthand how annoying it was to be pegged a certain way and never given the benefit of a doubt. That was why he kept his past a secret from his friends. “Never mind.”
“Okay, maybe I can see why you like her, but, man, she
“Believe me, I’ve noticed.”
It only made him want her to even more.
His entire life he’d met with challenges and adversity and he’d been successful in overcoming a lot. Could he meet the challenge of the five-foot-two, brilliant blonde who held firm to her own prejudice about him?
* * *
LINDSAY CRINGED AT the sound of the clinic door opening. The fourteen-hour shift continued with no end in sight. Her feet ached, even in her practical nursing shoes, and the last thing she’d eaten was half a protein bar as she’d rushed from one patient to another.
All she wanted was a cigarette, but each time she reached into her purse for her emergency pack, she heard her niece’s teary plea.
This day couldn’t end soon enough.
As she turned toward the door she almost wished it
“Noah, if you have another self-inflicted injury—” She stopped when her gaze fell to the picnic basket he carried, the smell of fried chicken from Joey’s diner on Main Street filling the tiny waiting room.
Several patients, who’d been waiting hours to see a doctor, stared longingly at the basket and she had to swallow to stop from salivating.
“You brought your dinner into a medical clinic where people have been waiting for hours to see a doctor?” Talk about insensitive.
“It’s not for me,” he said, moving the magazines aside on the waiting room table. Setting the basket down, he opened it.
Lindsay’s eyes narrowed as she watched him remove two large buckets of the chicken and a stack of paper plates and napkins...and Tina’s famous potato salad...
Her weakness.
“Everyone, help yourselves,” he said, opening a grocery bag and handing out apple juice to the kids.
The waiting, hungry patients didn’t need any more prompting as they passed around the plates and the food.
Huh, that was...unexpected. And a little bit fantastic.
He took a smaller container from the basket. “Here. I wasn’t sure if greasy, fried food was your thing, so I brought you a BLT, with a side order of potato salad.”
Above and beyond. Who would have thought?
“Thank you. This was really nice of you.” She hesitated, still a little dumbfounded, but more than a little starving.
“Take a few minutes to eat. They are.” He nodded to the group devouring the impromptu food delivery.
“Okay.” She headed down the hall, but paused when she noticed he wasn’t following her. “You coming?” Her question must have surprised him as his eyebrows shot up.
He smiled. “No, you’re busy. I just wanted to stop by to take care of the pretty lady who’s taking care of everyone else.”
She felt her cheeks go red. “Well, thank you. Again.”
“Anytime,” he said over his shoulder as he left.
Unwrapping the sandwich where she stood, she watched Noah cross the parking lot to his motorcycle. So dangerous, so carefree—he really was the kind of man who preferred to live life on borrowed time.
She could never be with a man like Noah, but she had to admit, with each delicious bite of her BLT, she was beginning to feel huge regret about it.
LINDSAY YAWNED AS she shut down her office computer. The children with chicken pox and the men with poison ivy had all been treated and she’d finally been able to lock the walk-in clinic doors. If she couldn’t smoke, a glass of wine and a bubble bath were the next best thing waiting for her at home.
She stood and was about to turn off the clinic lights, the last one to leave, when she noticed the half BLT she’d left on the desk four hours ago.
Immediately her thoughts went to Noah. He was trying. But, unfortunately, she didn’t see a way around his career. It was too bad, she thought, because there was no denying the spark between them.