Jake (California Dreamy) - By Rian Kelley Page 0,11

staff locker room and found her cubby which she’d stocked with clean scrubs, lotions, tooth paste and mouth wash. She even dug a bottle of water and an energy bar out of a plastic shopping bag hanging from a back hook. She dressed quickly, went through a brief hygiene check, and peeled back the wrapper on her dinner as she hustled back to the floor.

How was Jake able to figure her out so quickly? He was observant and practiced at making quick applications of what he saw. Skills that probably kept him alive when he was in the Middle East, or wherever he did his tours of duty.

But Ivy was also pretty much what you see is what you get. She put it all out there, even if it meant having to rein it in later—or have someone else do it for her.

Her body reacted to the memory. Maybe the heat she was feeling should stem from embarrassment, but that wasn’t it. Not even close. Jake made her burn. Yeah, their game had gotten out of hand, kind of like a dry bush bursting into spontaneous flame. It had been a long time since her imagination was pushed into play. Eye candy was about as exciting as it got for her and usually she was jogging and unable to take more than a passing appreciation of the view.

Jake made her forget to breathe. And that was before he’d kissed her.

That thought was quickly followed by a curling through her body that was anything but warm and exciting. It was a realization that was weighted with dread.

Her reaction to Jake was high school. It was hormonal. It was purely sexual.

Wasn’t it?

She’d done that already and didn’t care for a repeat. She’d paid dearly for what she’d thought was love.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Ivy lived by this nugget of wisdom. How she wished she had been strong enough at sixteen to follow it.

But she had sharpened her instincts since then. She had learned a thing or two about self-preservation. She had built up her confidence and knew she was a woman of great value. None of this had come easy. It had taken years. It had been a process—a good counselor, going back to school, a job where she gave good and gave daily, and reconnecting with her sister. So why weren’t there warning bells going off inside her head? Why wasn’t her body on full fight or flight alert?

Ivy joined the shift change at the white board just inside pod c—the intensive care unit for children emerging from surgery. It was seven-ten. The briefing was already a quarter of the way down the list of patient names and needs. Ivy put Jake to the back of her mind. As she worked through the hours, monitoring ventilators, adjusting filters and pausing over each of her patients to stroke a chubby cheek or coach them through the ‘cough up’—extubation—Ivy was aware of her body, still on slow-simmer from her time with Jake.

Occasionally, an errant thought passed through her mind. Jake’s sense of humor—she’d seen a spark here and there, when the tone of their conversation became suggestive—or his quiet disapproval. He was definitely not impressed with her casual acceptance of her circumstances, and yet he had appreciated her plan of action. And there was a lot more to Jake. She had seen the shadow play in his eyes when he was stirred by a memory. Something or someone had caught up with him, only for a moment, but he had changed. Grown somber.

Jake ran deep. And in that, there was no comparison to Trace. Her ex-husband had been all about baseball and when that was lost, so was he.

Jake was made of stronger stuff than that. Whatever haunted him, was not consuming him.

The thought was calming for Ivy. She knew more about Jake than she’d thought. And maybe she could fall back on another of her go-to mantras—proceed with caution. Although the idea of slow with Jake didn’t appeal to her at all.

Ivy was checking over the last of her patient charts and sipping a cup of fresh-brewed coffee when Genny found her.

“You’re not going to get anywhere without these.” The nurse held out the set of Ivy’s car keys. “That was some kind of car trouble you had last night.”

A second nurse came up beside them. “I would love to look half as troublesome,” he agreed.

“Too serious to be sunshine,” the nurse continued. “But