Winning my Best Friend's Girl - Piper Rayne Page 0,2

this mystery girl could very well be a game-changer for him.

I mean, doesn’t that happen to everyone at some point if they’re lucky? A man finds a woman who makes him believe in marriage and makes him ready to push away the possibilities of all other women?

“Does she have a name?” I ask as we finish climbing from the third to the fourth floor.

“Stella.”

I turn back to face him. A two-by-four crashes down between us with flames across the length of it. I step back and my head hits something hard and unforgiving and I crash to the floor.

Two

Stella

“Morning, Stella.” Allie’s at the nurses’ station when I arrive at Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Room for my shift.

“Afternoon actually,” I say, snapping on my badge.

“I’ve been here too long. Winter is still approaching, right? I didn’t miss it because I’ve been here so long?” She forks her salad while clicking buttons on the computer. One thing I’ve discovered about Allie in my first week here is that no one multitasks like her.

I chuckle. “You’re good. But thanks for the reminder. I’m worried I’ve lost my ability to drive in the snow.” I check out the board to see which patients we have in-house and what sort of issues I’ll be dealing with.

Transferring hospitals in the middle of my residency left me feeling uneasy. Someone was looking over me when I sneaked into town without anyone knowing. I’ve kept up with Kingston Bailey enough to know that he works for the Anchorage Fire Department, so there’s a possibility I might run into him here. My only saving grace has been that he smoke jumps in the spring and summer, which allowed me to have a false sense of security these past months. But that’s done with now that we’re deep into autumn. I still sneak in and out of Lake Starlight like a thief in the night.

I’m not scared of Kingston Bailey. Well, okay, I am, but not in terms of my physical safety. Kingston and I shared an attraction that terrifies me, yet we never even explored a relationship. He’s the one guy who made me forget the consequences of my actions—and I most definitely prefer to stay in control. I stayed away from Lake Starlight for eight years, and I’m only returning now because of my mom’s lupus diagnosis.

After I talked to her doctor—a phone call she still doesn’t know happened—I decided to move my residency from a crowded New York City hospital, where I’d treat anything from gunshot wounds to pneumonia, to Anchorage, where the cases are usually less life-threatening. I won’t get the experience here that I would’ve had in New York City, but I never saw myself as a big city lifer anyway.

“It’s like riding a bike. Just make sure you get snow tires.” Allie chomps down on her salad. “How are you adjusting here?”

I shrug. “So far so good.”

No one knows that every time a paramedic brings in a patient, a knot forms in my stomach, worried that the medic on duty might be Kingston. I never told him I was transferred to the hospital his fire station transports patients to. I even stood across the street from his apartment like a creeper, but my bravado fizzled when he stepped out of his apartment with Owen. I watched the two men whose friendship I destroyed once upon a time, and all that turmoil festered back up inside me. They laughed as they slid into a truck, and I didn’t want to ruin that. Kingston’s new truck suggests he’s no longer a boy who has to drive his brothers’ hand-me-downs.

“We like having you here. The nurses talk about you more than Romeo.” She stabs her fork into the salad. “And believe me, we discuss Romeo all the time.” She rolls her eyes.

“Romeo?” I chuckle.

I’ve met a lot of new people over the past week, and I’ve always thought of myself as good with names. I never wanted to be the doctor who didn’t refer to her patient by name, so I practice with the association game. There’s no way I would’ve forgotten a Romeo.

“You haven’t met Romeo?” Allie leans back in her chair and fans herself. “He’s one of those men who should be a model in a magazine or a cologne commercial or something.”

Having five more minutes before Ralph runs me through his patient list, I sit down next to her and laugh. “That sounds a little far-fetched.”

She shakes her head, eyes wide. “Just wait. You’ll know