Smooth Irish (Book 2 of the Weldon Series) (4 page)

“
Trust me,” Alexi said,
pulling Nan to the dressing rooms. “What can it hurt to try it
on?”

“
I’ll look like a
fraud.”

“
Why?”

“
Because…” Nan didn’t have
an answer, and she hated to think it was because Alexi might have a
point to what she’d said earlier about being afraid to live life.
“I don’t guess it will hurt to try it on.” Nan followed the
salesperson to the dressing room, grumbling. “How do you know
there’s even going to be a party? What if you can’t replace the
orchestra?”

“
Don’t worry,” Alexi said
then laughed. “I’ve got it handled.”

The dress, reminiscent of vintage
forties style, looked like a dream, and could be worn with or
without the sleek cape. Nan felt and looked like a million in it.
She bought it.

“
Now we’ve got to go
home,” Nan said, walking out of the boutique. “I’m out of funds for
at least the next thirty years.”

“
We can go now,” Alexi
agreed, looking entirely too pleased, as if she’d been the one to
buy the killer dress. Nan frowned, wondering if she had missed
something.

By the next day, she’d forgotten
Alexi’s pleased look, having replaced it with a frown of her own in
the restroom mirror at work. Nobody told her that lingerie should
come with warning labels. Labels that said
Danger—silky underwear is hazardous to your peace of
mind
. Every time the body-warmed silk slid over her
sensitive skin, Jackson crossed her mind. It was humiliating. She
marched from the nurses break room in a huff and ran right into
Head Nurse Litton.

“
Nurse Miller, I was just
looking for you. May I have a word with you in my
office?”

“
Of Course,” Nan said,
wincing at her supervisor’s stern visage. Head Nurse Litton ran the
Labor and Delivery Department like a captain ran a tight ship.
Everything from her cropped hair to her short nails was as crisp
and practical as her starched uniform and manner.

Heat flooded Nan’s cheeks. Following
the head nurse, Nan slid into the empty chair in the office sure
she was about to be lectured for being distracted.

Nurse Litton frowned down at the file
opened on her desk before speaking. “Seems we’ve run into a problem
on the Nurse’s Trouble Shooting Committee. Since you were working
when we met last, I'm sure you’re unaware that Sandy Mason had to
resign as spokesperson for the group. Her husband is being
relocated with his company. To sum up a long meeting, it was
proposed that the nurses vote for a candidate to replace Sandy. You
received the most votes and I have to agree with our co-workers,
you’d be perfect for the position. We need a Nurse in touch with
the staffing problems who will tactfully address issues like the
antiquated way the pharmacy insists on packaging medications. Your
Lois Emerson Merit Awards will go a long way in making the hospital
board take our grievances seriously.”

Nan swallowed the lump of surprise in
her throat along with the knot of trepidation that formed. She
didn’t feel qualified for the position for one thing. Then,
secondly, to do an effective job for the Nurse’s Trouble Shooting
Committee, she would have to be willing to argue with the board on
behalf of her fellow nurses—an action that wouldn’t necessarily
endear them to her and put her in the best light as a choice for
the scholarship. But, then, it was a tremendous that her fellow
nurses had that much confidence in her.

She’d always been a “behind the
scenes” advocate for changing the nurses work environment, which
was up toward the top of the “most stressful job to have list,” and
got worse every year as hospitals faced rising costs with fewer
funds.

“
I’m flattered. I don’t
know any other way to say this, but I don’t think I’m qualified for
the position. Sandy Mason has a Masters degree in Nursing Science
and Business Management. I don’t.”

“
Sometimes it’s not the
college credits that count. Sometimes it’s the effort and work
experience that matter more. I think you’ll do just
fine.”

Nan drew in a deep breath. “I’m going
to need to think about this.”

Head Nurse Litton smiled. “Take your
time. And rather than giving me an answer, why don’t you try next
month's meeting with the hospital board on for size? If you’re
still uncomfortable with the position afterwards, then we can look
for a replacement.” Nurse Litton snapped the file closed,
indicating Nan’s dismissal.

The knot that had been in Nan’s throat
sank to her stomach and stuck. Thanking the head nurse for the
honor, Nan had no choice but to leave things at this point for now.
In truth, it was the perfect compromise. She could do her best to
meet up to the honor the nurses had bestowed on her, and then if it
wasn’t the right job for her, she had a way to pass the position
on.

If only it were all that simple. Twice
in the next month she was going to be brought before the notice of
the board. She could only pray that she made a favorable impression
at the banquet, so that any negative issues she addressed at the
trouble shooting meeting would balance out the board’s opinion of
her.

* * *

“
Hell hath no fury like a
southern storm,” Nan muttered in dismay as she paced across her den
to look at the lightning slashing the Saturday evening sky.
Pre-banquet cocktails had started fifteen minutes ago and Brad had
yet to pick her up.

She was a porcupine of sharp
nerves--worry over the possibility that Brad could have crashed in
the storm, anxiety over making a good impression during the dinner
with the hospital board, self-conscious over her new dress, and
just plain irritation at her continued preoccupation with the he
who-she-would-not-name person. Not thinking his name was her newest
tactic in trying to free her mind from thoughts of him. She didn’t
think it was working, but she was sticking with it until she came
up with a new plan.

The phone rang and Nan rushed to
it.

“
Nan, it’s
Brad.”

“
Thank goodness. Are you
all right?”

“
Fine. A patient of mine
ran into a few complications and I haven’t felt comfortable leaving
the hospital until now. Can you meet me at the yacht
club?”

“
Sure,” Nan said, forcing
herself to take a breath rather than ask Brad why he’d waited so
late to call her. She could have gone to the yacht club, been on
time, and missed the heaviest part of the storm raging
outside.

“
I’ll meet you there.”
Brad hung up.

Nan blinked as the dial tone rang in her ear.
Considering the yacht club was five minutes from the hospital and
almost thirty minutes from her place, Brad was only going to be
fashionably late, while she’d be miserably so. And growing later by
the second. Nan hurriedly gathered her stuff and had to settle for
a large green garbage bag as rain gear. Her raincoat and umbrella
were in her nurses’ locker at the hospital thanks to Channel Two’s
meteorologist and her travel umbrella was already in the car. She
would definitely have to switch her loyalties to another station.
The weatherman’s prediction of calm and cool missed the mark by a
wide country mile. The night was as steamy, wet, and wicked as a
coed sauna.

The whole way there she had to creep
at a snail’s pace as the storm lashed and wailed. Its towering fury
made her and her second-hand BMW seem very miniscule, like she was
the fly and it was a King-Kong sized swatter.

The relief she felt as she pulled into
the Savannah Star Yacht Club’s parking lot was short lived. She
wasted two minutes waiting for a valet to appear through the
driving rain. When no one showed, she gave up and searched for a
parking space. She found one in the last row and the far end of the
parking lot.

Bolstered with a deep breath, she dashed into the
thunderstorm. Her only protection from the gale force wind and
driving rain were a mini umbrella and a trash bag. She wielded them
like a sword and shield, determined to hold onto her enthusiasm for
the evening. She refused to let irritation be a third party on her
first date with Brad. After all, she fully understood duty to a
patient. How many times had she herself stayed over when she felt
she was needed? Plenty.

By the time she’d walked ten feet, a
wet hand had wiped out the sophisticated touches she’d added to her
appearance. Her burgundy silk cocktail dress lost its elegant flair
and the svelte hairstyle she’d spent an hour on went haywire. This
couldn’t be happening.

Tonight she’d wanted everything to
iron out without a wrinkle. Instead a major kink developed,
knotting her confidence with it. She couldn’t sit with the hospital
board looking like a drowned rat.

She’d run a long way from the shy
little girl who’d grown up poor on the backside of a country road,
and the storm was doing its best to blow her back there, like
Dorothy in the
Wizard of Oz
.
But unlike Dorothy, Nan knew her heart’s desire would never be to
return to where she came from. Only bad memories resided
there.

Hurrying toward the distant lights of
the yacht club, she ignored the niggling thought that Brad, a man
brilliant enough to make neurosurgical history, surely could have
saved her the grief of trudging through the storm of the century.
Why hadn’t he called earlier?

The harder she pushed against the
wind, the longer the parking lot grew. The storm swelled around her
to frightening proportions. Her heart pounded and a tiny shiver of
fear raced up her spine. She shouldn’t be out in this mess. She
should have waited for the storm to ease, no matter how late that
would have made her.

Neither her umbrella nor the garbage
bag staved off the dragon bite of the lashing wind. Lightning
strobe lit the sky and thunder set her ears to ringing. Suddenly, a
wind gust ferried up from behind like a freight train. It flipped
her umbrella inside out, blew her dress up, and knocked her off her
three-inch heels.

She fell face forward against the hood
of a pick-up truck with an inelegant whoosh and lay stunned a
second; the breath forced from her lungs. Rain drenched her black
lace underwear, and the pooling droplets of water on the hood
soaked the front of her dress.

“
Mary Poppins you’re not,
sugar. But you’ll do,” a familiar and unwelcome voice
drawled.

“
Oh!” Mortified, Nan
snapped upright just as a warm hand brushed her derrière. Jackson!
Of all the rotten luck. What in the hell was he doing
here?

She refused to acknowledge the
pleasurable shiver tingling through her. Instead, she spun around,
ready to do harm with her warped umbrella.

Having a man inadvertently see the
lingerie she and Alexi had splurged on irked. Having that man be
Jackson really rattled her cage. Nan refused to even think for a
minute that her fantasies about Jackson played any role in her new
underwear purchases.

Lightning briefly illuminated the
strong curve of his stubble-rough jaw, devilish smile, and raven’s
wing hair whipping in the wind. Damn, the man had no right to look
so sexy in the middle of hell. He stripped off his black leather
jacket, pushed her umbrella aside, and leaned in close.

“
You bait a nice hook,
sugar.”

“
You. You Peeping Tom!”
Her search for something sophisticated and deadly to say fizzled as
ridiculous.

“
Careful. You’re giving me
ideas for a new profession.”

She didn’t have a chance to reply
before his leather jacket descended over her head and his strong
arm encircled her.

“
Tell me how sorry I am
later, sugar.” He plucked the inverted umbrella from her, popped it
back right, and held it before them as he propelled them toward the
back door of the yacht club, not the least daunted by the storm's
fury. But then, Nan didn't think much got past Jackson's thick
wall. She gritted her teeth, irritated. Both the timing of
Jackson's appearance and the man were too welcome for her peace of
mind.

She tingled from the heat of his arm
about her, the feel of his lean, hard body next to her, and the
tangy scent of musk and leather enveloping her.

“
Here we go.” He hustled
her into a lit hallway.

Anxious to rid herself of his scent,
she slid off his coat. Cool air assaulted, making her too aware of
the heat from his body behind her, touching her, like he’d said on
the phone.

Can’t you feel me? I’m right up against you. Feel
the heat? My hands on you… my mouth.

She shivered. The creamy watered silk
walls, crown molding, and plush carpet contrasted sharply with her
soggy, bedraggled state and she turned to face him, feeling like a
swamp rat. He'd moved closer and her chest landed smack up against
his hot, very male one.

“
Where are we?” Drawing
back, she teetered, dropping his coat.

“
Backstage of the ballroom
and just where we need to be." He grinned and settled his hands on
her hips. When he spoke, his deep voice rumbled right to her core
and set off a series of delicious quakes. "It’s been a while,
sugar. A long while. You hung up too soon last week. We didn’t get
to the good part.”