Fragged: A BWWM Military Romance
Fragged
Paige Notaro
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without the express written consent of the author. This book is licensed for personal use only.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
©2015
Paige Notaro
Cover Design:
©2015
SilverLight
Also by Paige Notaro
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Other:
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to my loving family who tolerate me when I tune out for whole days to write.
It is dedicated to my friends and fellow authors who have helped so much through this journey.
Most of all it is dedicated to my fans. Thank you for reading!
1
Big White Lie
CHAPTER ONE
Rosa
I waited for my lunch date, not knowing that this would be the day I met the most perfect specimen of a man I’d ever seen. Even as I saw my date walking towards me, I couldn’t tell.
After all, it wasn’t him.
“My god,” my date said, stopping as he reached the covered patio table where I sat. “And I thought you were radiant even in scrubs. Look at you now.”
I managed a teacup of a smile. “That’s really sweet, Dr. Sygard.”
He scraped back the chair and sat down, his eyes never leaving my face.
I really had hoped typing my dark hair up in a bun and wearing an oversized t-shirt would make me look trashy. The air was thick as a wet marshmallow and I was already sweating.
But the Atlanta sun was peeking through the skyscrapers on either side of the street. Even in the umbrella’s shadow, my arm glowed like dark honey.
“Please, Rosa,” Dr. Sygard said. “Call me Lem when we’re outside the hospital. Of course at work, we’ll still have to keep things under wraps.”
He held a finger to his lips. I hadn’t even opened my mouth.
Lem beamed at me until I looked down at the menu. I already knew what I was going to order. I would have so loved to have it already on the way so I could speed this whole thing along. I had seen enough to know this would go nowhere.
Besides, the whole thing was purely to get Mamá’s tiny feet off my back.
“He’s such a gentleman, Rosa,” she would invade my room to say.
Or “He is a doctor, Rosa!”
Once, she’d even tried “He’s so handsome.”
Truthfully, Lem wasn’t awful to look at. He was at least half a head taller than me. Plus, unlike a lot of weirdos that came out the other end of med school, he knew how to dress. Then again, he’d probably had his own stylist in the mansion he grew up in.
He was wearing into a soil-brown sweater and dark pleats that made him look like a professor. With his wavy brown hair, copper eyes and narrow features, he had an intensity that some girls would like.
Girls who might swoon at the MD on his hospital badge perhaps, or the black card he surely had in his wallet. Girls who were into the refined and aloof type who kept their desires hidden until they wouldn’t cause a fuss.
I wasn’t one of those girls. Give me a man with a fire. A man who burned for something he might never even get, but who bled and sweat for it anyway.
The relationships never lasted, of course. I understood that by now. At least they left their mark. That was all you could expect in this world.
“Feel free to get anything,” Lem said. “Even the lobster.”
“Lobster?” I flipped the placard back and forth, then rolled my eyes. “Oh, hah hah.”
“You picked the place, my dear.”
Great. He loved to go British when he was in a good mood. “I did. I like to pay for my own thing on first dates.”
“I respect that. But, Rosa, come on.” He edged in. “It’s me. This isn’t out first rodeo.”
“Sitting together at the hospital cafeteria doesn’t count as a date.”
“I know, I know. I’m just saying even if we somehow don’t make this work, we’re still friends. You’re not obligated to anything.”
Obligated to something? Where was his mind at? “I never said I was. Friends should pay for themselves anyway.”
He threw up his hands in surrender. “Alright.”
The waitress came up and took our orders. I got a Cuban sandwich - tasty and fast - but Lem went for a baked pasta. The waitress had to yank my menu away from me. It was the only shield I had.
“So tell me about yourself, Rosa,” Lem said, taking an indulgent sweep of my body. “There’s so much I’m seeing about you for the first time. I can only imagine that there’s a lot more that I have yet to experience underneath.”
I couldn’t bite back my tongue at that. “You shouldn’t expect so much.”
“Oh, you thought…?” He laughed heavily. “I’m a doctor not a Neanderthal. I meant your history, nothing more.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. If he had at least owned up to what he had said, that might count for something. But no, he would nibble at me until he was sure he could sink his teeth in without getting hurt.
“You know my history,” I said. “I bet you looked me up on Facebook. Or was it Linkedin?”
“Both.” He laughed his fake laugh. “I’ve been sort of hoping for this day for a bit. But now that we’re here I almost wish that this was my first taste of you. I wish we didn’t have the work relationship coloring our views of each other.”
The relationship in the hospital was the only reason this lunch was even happening. My mom had become infatuated with him at the Christmas party last year.
It was also the only reason I hadn’t downed my diet root beer and left. I loved being a nurse at Peachtree Memorial. The last thing I need was bad blood there for spurning him too soon. Lem was powerful, and he had never hidden he was into me. This was a chance to wean him off his puppy love for good.
“I actually don’t know much about you,” I said. “I definitely didn’t look you up online. Why don’t you tell me about yourself, first.”
“Oh, you’re interested?” He leaned in, swirling his glass of water.
“That’s what I’m here for, right?”
“I guess the past is the key to finding the path to our future.”
I managed to not roll my eyes.
Lem happily launched into his spellbinding story of a boy who overcame a privileged childhood, expensive private schooling and mild gluten allergies to satisfy expectations and become an above average cardiologist.
I’d been planning to feign disinterest, but I didn’t even need to. There hadn’t been a whiff of hardship in his account. It was less a story than a bunch of facts lined up. People said I had a big mouth to my face. Well, at least it had gotten me into situations worth sharing.
I nodded now and then, but inside I was secretly happy. Finally, I had more than a hunch for not wanting to be with Lem. This was a man who had never fought for a thing. He hadn’t suffered more than maybe a couple sleepless nights before exams.
How could a man like that have any idea of how to keep you safe?
“Have you ever worked overseas?” I asked suddenly.
“Overseas?”
“You know, Doctors without Borders. Red Cross. That sort of thing. Helping the poor and all.”
“Ah, I plan to.” He looked off, frowning like he could already smell the slums. “Those are certainly great organizations. I just am not sure how much my skills would apply.”
“I think they take any doctor.”
“You might be right.” He clapped his hands. “Of course, I
have
spent time in other cultures outside of work. My family has a beach house down in Costa Rica. It’s not a long flight from Atlanta. We could do it on any three day weekend.”
“I’ve seen Central America,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “Your mom was telling me about your history.”
Ah, Mamá.
I loved her, but she could not keep her damn mouth shut. There was no doubting that I got it from her. I might look more like my much darker father, but I was definitely my mother’s daughter.
Lem did not qualify to hear about any of that story though.
“I grew up mostly in Atlanta,” I said. “Before that, Miami. I’ve been in the US most of my life.”
“I can still hear a trace of an accent,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s quite sexy.”
“That’s probably from Miami. We had a bastard Spanish of our own down there, with the Cubans and Venezuelans and all the others.”
“I bet. I bet.” He looked deeply entranced.
I took a deep breath and launched into some of the least interesting stories about my childhood. About babysitting my sister Elsa, or going to work cleaning houses with my mom in the summers, or having to teach myself English when we moved to the US in fourth grade.
I wanted to show him how different we were, but I ended up getting a bit lost in myself. I started talking about the little bodega stand I’d opened to help the family when I was ten. The boys all used to play soccer on this big concrete plot after school. I started selling lemonade during breaks, but I ended up making more money selling bandages to the kids who scraped their legs.
I had put the bandages on myself. Those kids had been my first patients. I felt a chill just thinking about the smiles they gave me.
We were still too young for my touch to mean anything. I was still innocent to a lot of things in the world.
I snapped out of it and realized that I
had
succeeded in boring Lem. His attention had drifted - but only as far as my chest.
His gaze returned to my lips, and that didn’t feel much better.
“And your father?” he asked.
“I didn’t mention him for a reason.”
He decided to give me an umpteenth reason not to like him. “But did he leave you when you were young?” he asked.
“He died before I turned ten,” I said, through grinding teeth.
“I’m so sorry,” he said with all the compassion of a Halloween mask.
This must be why two of his patients had written he was the most “heartless” cardiologist they’d seen.
Mercifully, the food appeared. I stuffed my mouth, but chewed slow. Lem made a show of savoring his dish and complimenting my pick of restaurants. I just nodded politely.
Taste had not really entered the equation. My friend, Lilly, and I had only stumbled in here one night after nursing school because we had four dollars and fifty cents between us. It wasn’t enough for a meal, but we could split a thing of cheese fries and biscuits.