The Thunderbolt - Lori Wilde Page 0,3

to see if he was looking at her, but he was rinsing his elbows in the deep stainless-steel sink. Lacy took advantage of the moment and allowed her gaze to linger upon him, absorbing his essence, rejoicing in his overt masculinity.

He exuded strength and power. A woman would never be afraid if she had a man like Dr. Sheridan to protect her. Then, as if feeling her eyes upon him, he raised his head and boldly winked.

Ack! Busted.

Lacy blushed and dipped her chin to her chest. Thank God for her mask. It covered most of her face. The only things that could give away her errant thoughts were her eyes. As long as she didn’t meet his gaze directly, she could get through this surgery.

Hurriedly, she kicked off the water with her knee then turned, hands up, and headed for the operating room.

She could feel Bennett’s gaze burning her backside. Lacy gulped and hoofed it across the floor, willing her hips not to wiggle. She was concentrating so hard that she didn’t even see the orderly pushing the supply cart.

“Lacy.” Bennett called her name. “Look out.”

His warning came too late. She turned but not quickly enough.

Wham!

The cart broadsided her. Supplies teetered. The orderly swore.

Lacy reached out a hand to keep the supplies from falling, but her sleeve caught on a shelf.

She jerked back.

Boxes began their slow slide to the floor. Catheters and instrument trays, specimen bottles and packages of syringes, an avalanche of equipment falling on her.

Lacy tried to leap out of the way, but her sleeve remained snagged. Before she could hit the ground, Bennett was there. His arms went around her waist, holding her steady and his breath seared warm against the nape of her neck.

Lacy flushed to her roots. He must think her the clumsiest woman in the entire universe.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered.

And she thought wildly, inappropriately, Yes, you do.

2

After they finished their third scrub of the morning, they re-gowned and entered the operating suite at the same moment Dr. Laramie strode in.

Bennett started a conversation with his superior, effectively letting Lacy off the hot seat.

Mentally, she castigated herself for her oafishness. What was the matter with her? She had better get her head in the game. She couldn’t be dropping instruments higgledy-piggledy during the surgery simply because the latest hospital heartthrob distracted her.

She returned to her stool and her instrument tray.

Not long afterward, the patient, a sixty-five-year-old retired construction worker who’d suffered a heart attack, arrived on a gurney, and their work began in earnest.

Lacy tried to focus on her job, handing Pam, the circulating nurse, the equipment she needed to prep the patient—antiseptic swabs, sterile towels, bags of saline. On automatic pilot, she moved through the activities she performed with experienced ease several times a day. Her mind restlessly toyed with thoughts of Dr. Sheridan.

Calm down, Lacy.

She couldn’t afford to make rash assumptions. Too much was at stake. She needed to give her emotions a chance to cool off. Maybe this is only happening because her twenty-eight birthday was looming, and her biological clock is ticking.

It sounded good, anyway. Her rational mind tried to slacken the stampede racing through her stomach, but her heart wasn’t buying one word of it.

He’s the one, he’s the one, he’s the one. Her blood sang through her veins.

Helplessly, her eyes sought him again. She observed Bennett from behind as he spoke in low tones with the anesthesiologist, Dr. Grant Tennison.

She admired how the material of his scrub pants stretched across his backside. She noticed that the hair poking out from the back of his surgical cap and trailing a short distance down his neck was thick, wavy, and black.

More validation. Lacy had always pictured herself with a black-haired, brown-eyed man.

I want to curl up on the sofa and read the Sunday paper with him, she thought.

She wanted to roll over in bed every morning and find him snoozing on the pillow next to mine. She yearned to go to the supermarket with him and pick out favorite comfort foods together. She hungered to feed him ice chips from a spoon when he has a fever. She ached to learn how he brushed his teeth and put on his shoes and buttered his bread. She longed for him to ask her opinion—does this tie go with this suit? Or should he grow a mustache? She wanted him to worry when she wasn’t home in time for dinner.

This man was everything she had ever wanted and so much more.

Drop dead