"Yesterday I had to listen to her fuss until I got up and used that darned walker." Bridget paused for breath, readjusting her oxygen tubing. "Now I'm back in the hospital."
Garrett ran his hands over Jennifer's mother's leg, checking pulses and the level of edema.
"Maybe if you'd gotten up more frequently you wouldn't have the clot," she wryly informed her mother, trying to clear images of Garrett's hands caressing her legs, stroking his fingers over her calves, up her thighs, higher. It had been so long since she'd been touched, since she'd wanted to be touched.
"I swear you and that physical therapist were trying to kill me." Bridget crossed her arms, a stubborn look on her face. "About did."
Garrett finished his exam. "Following hip surgery, you need to walk as much as possible as soon as possible."
"Easy for you to say," Bridget harrumphed. "You aren't the one they cut."
"True," he agreed, his gaze locked with Jennifer's.
Her breath caught at the silent message. He was attracted to her.
"But I agree with Jennifer. You need to ambulate every chance you have someone to assist you."
Sweat coated Jennifer's skin. Just hearing her name roll off his tongue should not send her into hot flushes or inner thigh meltdowns. Nonetheless, her core temperature could thaw the polar ice caps.
"I should have known you doctors would stick together." Although her tone sounded disapproving, Bridget's eyes held a gleam that made Jennifer nervous. Or, more likely, Garrett was the one who made her nervous.
"I have your best interest at heart," Jennifer reminded her, stepping back from the hospital bed. Perhaps a little distance between her and the yummy doctor would restore internal circuits and cut down on global warming. Surely this crazy roller coaster of emotions was a result of worry over her mother and being in Huntsville?
"Uh-huh. That's why you moved to the other side of the state," her mother accused.
"I offered to move you with me." She'd had to get away, bury herself in work. She couldn't have survived otherwise.
"Where do you practice?" Garret asked.
"Madison, near Gulf Shores. I visited the beach one summer—" the summer before her father had died, why did those she loved always die? "—and wanted to go back. After my divorce, I did. Permanently."
"My only family, and she moves." Bridget drew in a pitiful breath.
Jennifer sent an apologetic look to Garrett and changed the subject. "How were her labs?"
"I'm still here, you know," Bridget reminded.
"We know," Jennifer and Garrett answered simultaneously.
Their eyes met. Sparks flew.
Being attracted to her mother's doctor was a complication Jennifer didn't need.
Being attracted to a Huntsville man, who was so fine his middle name must be Heartbreak, was a complication she didn't need.
But she was.
She hadn't wanted a man's touch since before Carrie's death. Hadn't even realized she'd shut that part of her mind and body down.
With her mother seriously ill and while staying in a town that held only pain, now was not the time to remember she was a woman beneath the lab coat and stethoscope she hid behind.
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