all the times he’d been there to save her, she was somehow conditioned to his touch.
Why not? It made just as much sense as anything else. “Once again, thanks for saving me. You always seem to be there at the right time.”
“Just my luck,” he said. He shot her a smile, and she understood all over again why the doofy first-shift nurses got all twitchy whenever he looked at them.
Objectively, he was probably one of the most gorgeous men on staff at FCGH—with the unusual gray eyes and the caramel hair and the perfect smile. Not to mention the hard, toned body that looked damned good in a white coat.
Him, Rafe, Virat, and Cage eclipsed every other man in the building. There was no way she’d ever deny that.
There was something about his gray eyes now that was so different than it had been before. Before the evil pharmacy tech had gotten her hands on him. Back then, he’d been an arrogant jerk. He’d defined everything Izzie had hated about male physicians.
He seemed so different now.
Mostly with Nikkie Jean. Izzie didn’t think he was attracted to her friend. Not at all. Maybe at Ariella’s wedding he had been—back before the storm had struck—but now, he was almost brotherly where Nikkie Jean was concerned.
That had Izzie softening toward him, too. Nikkie Jean deserved people to love her and want to take care of her more than anyone Izzie had ever known. Nikkie Jean had met him before the pharmacy tech had wrought her destruction on him—Nikkie Jean said that woman had broken a part of Allen. A part he had yet to repair.
That had made Nikkie Jean, who usually feared male physicians from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes, almost protective of Allen.
Nikkie Jean said he had changed for the better.
He did seem to hover over Nikkie Jean whenever Caine wasn’t around. All strong and protective.
There was still speculation around the hospital because of how Allen seemed so close to Nikkie Jean.
Nikkie Jean said the rumormongers could go stick it up their noses. She was adopting Allen as her big brother, no matter what.
“Well, thanks again,” Izzie said, feeling beyond awkward.
“Maybe, Nurse Izzie, in another lifetime you and I were good friends. That’s why karma or fate keep putting us in the circumstances.”
“Do you believe that?” She fell into step next to him.
“Do I believe in other lifetimes or fate? I’m not so certain what I believe anymore,” he said quietly. “But in recent times, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. I’ve had to tell myself that maybe everything does happen for a reason. Why else has all of this happened to people around us lately? To you? Nikkie Jean? Annie? I just don’t know.”
Izzie couldn’t think of an answer.
She heard an echoing confusion in his words, too.
A confusion she still hadn’t figured out even hours later.
49
Izzie had returned to W4HAV a week ago. Annie and Nikkie Jean had been with her. Had held her hands while she’d stepped inside.
They’d done it together.
They’d been greeted by everyone in a surprise welcome-back party that had left both Nikkie Jean and Izzie balling. Everyone had been there. The lobby where it had happened had been repainted the softest peach. Izzie’s favorite color, Ariella had made certain to let her know that was deliberate.
So that what she had experienced there wouldn’t be forgotten. They’d even added another emergency exit, right in the spot where Izzie had first landed after she’d crumbled.
There was a plaque dedicated to her in the lobby.
Izzie had never been at such a loss for words.
The windows had new blinds and the furniture had been completely rearranged. It looked different. Deliberately.
She understood why they had wanted to do that, and she really appreciated it. Izzie had needed to do this, to go back. To take control of that again. Nikkie Jean, too.
Nikkie Jean had needed W4HAV far more than Izzie ever had.
The trauma Nikkie Jean had experienced as a teenager was horrific, and the regular counseling she’d received at W4HAV, even before the grand opening—which had been delayed once again because of the shooting—had been Nikkie Jean’s lifeline to sanity, as Nikkie Jean had put it.
Tonight, Izzie was going back on the rotation at W4HAV. Someone always womaned the phones in case someone in need called in. Someone would be there.
It was her turn again. Finally.
She needed to do this for herself. Maybe she was the one most in need now.
It was