Up by Five (2 page)

Mac chuckled. “I’ll bet.”

Conner crossed to the mirror above the sink on the other side of the room.

“You okay?” Sara asked.

He gave her a wink. “Will you kiss it better if I say no?”

“Come here. I’ll give you something for it.” Mac’s tone held a mix of frustration, humor and warning.

Mac used that tone a lot when Conner was around.

Conner dabbed at the cut. “Nah, I think I’m good.”

“You’re gonna need butterflies at least,” Mac said. “Want me to do them?”

Did he want Mac applying the adhesive strips he would need to keep the wound closed? Did he want Mac that close to him period? Uh, no.

“I’m good. Think I can handle it.”

Mac shrugged. “Fine. If it helps, you can tell everyone I hit you.”

Conner grabbed a new paper towel and turned. “Why would I tell them you hit me?”

“Isn’t that less offensive than having a woman hit you?”

“I think it says a lot if a woman feels that strongly about me.”

“Wait, the dreamy Conner Dixon who is desperately seeking the one woman who can heal his slightly broken heart since the woman he pines for is married to another might actually
piss someone off
?” Mac asked sarcastically.

“Don’t forget the part about no other woman being quite able to measure up to the one I’m hung up on.” He glanced at Sara, who rewarded him with one of her blushing smiles.

He knew she was flattered. He knew she found the whole thing a little funny. He suspected that she liked seeing her husband’s possessive side—which was why the flirting-with-Sara thing really only happened when Mac was around. But Conner also knew that Sara knew he didn’t mean anything other than the part where he thought she was great.

Not that he’d ever admit it to anyone, but if Sara did, by some huge miracle, want to have an affair—or more—with him, Conner would say no.

One, he wouldn’t break up a marriage.

Two, he wasn’t really the man Sara thought he was.

And three, Sara Bradford Gordon was the type of woman to immerse herself fully in someone’s life, wrap herself around every finger and tangle her issues up with his in a heartbeat.

He knew how this went. He’d been a fill-in father for his four sisters since he was seventeen. Now they were all happily connected to other men. Good men. Friends of Conner’s, in fact. At the time it was happening he’d had more than a few reservations—to put it mildly. But now…he was
free
.

He didn’t want to share a living space with, not to mention worry about, argue with or take care of another woman. Ever.

“Why would
you
hit me?” Conner asked, wanting to get the story straight if he decided to go with it.

Mac cocked an eyebrow. “Really? How many nurses saw you with that damned rabbit?”

“Hey, careful, that ‘damned rabbit’ is going to be sitting in your daughter’s nursery,” Sara protested.

Mac shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

“Of course it is,” Sara said. “It goes perfectly with our baby-animal theme.”

Mac rolled his eyes.

Conner smiled. He’d found out about the theme from Sam, Sara’s brother. Inadvertently, of course. Kind of.

“Anyway,” Mac went on, “as many women as possible saw the rabbit and deduced why you had it. It’s not such a stretch to think you said or did something to make me want to hit you, is it?”

No, actually it wasn’t.

Conner nodded. “Okay. You hit me. Because Sara was so happy to see me she threw her arms around me and kissed me.”

Mac scowled. “No.”

“Come on, it would have to be something big.”

“No.”

“How about the baby looks
a lot
like me?” Conner asked. He fought a smile and took a step toward the door as Mac drew up even taller.

“How about I really hit you and then we don’t have to match our stories up at all?”

Conner didn’t think Mac would actually hit him…but if he did, it would freaking
hurt
.

“Gee, look at the time,” Conner said, heading for the door. He had a shift to get downstairs for anyway.

“Sorry you couldn’t stay longer,” Mac said dryly.

“Bye, Conner,” Sara said sweetly.

He pulled the door open then blew her a kiss. “See ya, gorgeous.”

The door bumped shut before he could hear Mac’s response.

Gabrielle Evans came up short as she stepped into the break room. Conner Dixon was bending over the little sink in the corner, applying butterfly sutures to his eyebrow line.

The paramedic in her made a quick note of the cut, blood and sutures, but the woman in her simply could not ignore the bending-over thing for the first thirty seconds.

The guy really did very nice things to a pair of pants.

Then she got back to the blood thing. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Why do people keep saying that to me today?” Conner asked.

“You’re
bleeding
? And treating yourself?”

“Yes.” He muttered an expletive as the box of sutures fell off the edge of the tiny countertop and scattered.

“Here.” She crossed to him and knocked his hand out of the way when he reached for the strips. She gathered them up and slipped them into the box, then looked up at him. “Let me.”

He started to protest and she paused, a strip in hand, eyebrows up. “Really?”

“I’ve got it,” he muttered.

“Don’t be dumb.”

He dropped his hand from his head. “Fine.”

She opened a strip and stepped close to apply it. She reached for his forehead, then noticed the two strips he’d already stuck in place. They were terrible.

She sighed and gripped the end of one, pulling it off quickly.

“Hey! Ow!”

“
I’ve
got this,” she told him. “Those were sloppy.”

She tossed the used ones away, then leaned in to apply a new one. She pinched the edges of the cut together while laying the adhesive strip over it.

And ignored that Conner smelled really good. Or tried to anyway.

“Dammit.”

“What?” Conner asked.

She realized she’d said it out loud. She met his eyes—and it hit her that she’d never been this close to him before. Well, maybe in the field working on a victim or something, but never somewhere she’d
noticed
how he smelled.

“Um…”

“Gabby?”

He frowned, which pulled his cut skin away from her fingers.

“Dammit…what?” he asked.

“Oh. Um…” she thought fast, “…glue.”

The
last
thing she needed was to make some stupid you’re-so-cute-Conner blunder. All the women at St. Anthony’s fawned over him—well, except for her and Sierra Katz, the two female paramedics on his crew.

She liked Conner. He was a good guy deep down, an ace paramedic and pretty damned funny a lot of the time—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. And of course she found him attractive. He was one of those guys any woman would have to admit was attractive. Because even if slender but solid, football-playing blonds with big green eyes and an easy smile weren’t your type, he saved lives for a living and oozed charm like he exhaled carbon dioxide.

But she didn’t giggle when he smiled at her and she didn’t forget what she was going to say when he spoke to her and she didn’t trip over her own feet when he came into a room.

At least, not usually.

She’d seen all of that happen with other women. And she’d seen the effect it had on Conner.

He was cocky all the time. He became downright insufferable when a woman acted stupid over him.

But he really did smell good.

“It needs glue?” he asked. “Damn.”

It maybe didn’t technically need glue, but it wouldn’t hurt him and it would save her pride.

She was not the type of girl to stumble over a guy. And even if she were, the guy would
not
be Conner.

She’d grown up with three men like Conner. Her brothers were also handsome, charming and too smart for their own good. But having seen them at their worst as well as their best certainly took some shine off—of them and off of all men. It was very hard to impress Gabrielle Evans.

She knew a lot of things. She knew poker—she could hold her own at a high stakes table in Vegas and walk out with more than a little pocket change. She knew how to save a life—she could start a line in a trauma victim faster than any paramedic in the city. In a burning building. With gunfire overhead. And a tornado bearing down on the city.

But there was something Gabby knew even better than poker or being a paramedic.

And that was men.

“What did that to you?” she asked, forcing herself to turn away and dig the glue out of the box of supplies Conner had open on the table.

He hesitated just before he said, “Mac.”

Glue in hand, she came to stand in front of him again. “Mac? Gordon?”

“Yep.”

Gabby avoided Conner’s eyes and concentrated on the gash that bisected his eyebrow and slanted off toward his temple. She applied the glue, then again pinched the edges together and held.

“So the woman who hit you must have been wearing a ring.”

She felt Conner’s surprise, but she kept her eyes firmly on her task.

“You don’t think Mac would hit me?”

“I think if Mac wanted to hit you, he’d have done it a long time ago. Like when you kissed his wife.”

She saw Conner’s mouth curl in her peripheral vision.

Conner had this stupid crush thing going with Sara Gordon. Gabby knew it wasn’t real, but he sure hung on to it. Like when he’d helped pull Sara out of the burning youth center, then planted a big old serious kiss on her.

Mac hadn’t hit him then.

“No way he’d hit you for a stuffed pink bunny.”

Gabby could feel Conner’s gaze. “How’d you know about the bunny?”

She gave his cut another hard pinch, decided the glue was going to hold and let go of him.

“Because your nefarious plan worked. All of the nurses were talking about it. I heard about it when I went to get coffee.”

Conner was full-out grinning now. “Mac will get to hear that talk for days.”

Gabby sighed. Yep, he was just like her brothers—bigger was always better. Bigger rivalries, bigger contests, bigger arguments, bigger dares.

She propped a hand on her hip. “So who really hit you?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“A woman, though. An ex-lover, I’m guessing.”

He cocked his recently bandaged eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

“Because you have three types of women in your life—future lovers, past lovers and sisters. Your sisters and your future lovers wouldn’t hit you, so…”

Of course, one of his sisters—the youngest and sweetest, Olivia—
had
hit him once. And Gabby had been in the front row for that one. He’d totally deserved it. Still, his sisters generally thought Conner walked on water. The only females
more
enamored with him were the ones that wanted to date him.

“Fine, it was a woman. And a misunderstanding. And a big, gaudy ring.”

Gabby snorted. “I believe the woman and the ring part.”

He shook his head. “Seriously. A misunderstanding. About…what I wanted.”

“Uh-huh. Like putting ‘forever’ at the end of all your sentences? Like when you said—” Gabby dropped her voice an octave, “—‘baby, I gotta be with you’, she heard, ‘baby, I gotta be with you forever’?”

Conner pushed up from where he’d been leaning against the sink. “First of all, that is a terrible impression of me. Second, I never call women ‘baby’ and third, it was more like when I said, ‘suck my cock’, she heard, ‘suck my cock forever’.”

Gabby didn’t even blink. If Conner wanted to shock her or shut her up with foul language or blatantly graphic or sexual talk, he was going to have to do a lot better than that.

She had three brothers, a dad, several uncles and a bunch of male cousins. All of the uncles and cousins lived nearby and were a regular part of her life. Her dad and one uncle were mechanics who owned a shop together. Another uncle owned a bar. Another farmed and another was a veterinarian. Growing up, she’d thought it was normal to put “fucking” in front of most nouns. Fucking engines, fucking cows, fucking weather, fucking politicians—it didn’t matter.

Her brothers and cousins were no different and often forgot she wasn’t one of the guys. They didn’t just swear. They talked about women and sex and body parts at the kitchen table like it was a locker room.

One of her brothers, Reed, was a public defender, Grant was a cop and Josh wanted to be a firefighter. Gentlemanly language was—well, she didn’t even know what that was.

Women sucking on cocks though…that one she knew a little bit about.

“I understand why you wouldn’t be inclined to put a definite time frame on a blow job,” Gabby told him, repacking the first aid kit he’d pilfered the sutures from. “But maybe you need to be more specific with these women. Like, ‘suck my cock until I come so hard I can’t stand up’.”

She snapped the lid shut, then turned to find Conner staring at her, his mouth hanging open.

“What?”

“You just said…” He trailed off, clearly unable to repeat it.

That was funny.

She grinned. “You didn’t think I know what happens when cocks get sucked?”

He was looking at her like she’d broken out in green hives.

The break room door swung open. “You took a giant pink bunny up to Sara Gordon?”

Conner’s face was still comically baffled as Sierra entered.

“He did,” Gabby confirmed, turning away from him before she started laughing.

Conner went for the more obvious girlie girls. Gabby was sure most of them knew what they were doing in the bedroom, but Conner liked the ones that got all made up even to go to Trudy’s, who wore high heels even when shooting pool—though most of them sucked, from what she’d seen—and the ones that drank pretty fruity drinks.

Maybe those girls didn’t talk like truckers.

But most of them couldn’t overhaul a transmission, didn’t know the difference between a straight and a royal flush and had never won a hot-dog-eating contest either.

So there.

“You just strutted in there with that stupid rabbit, didn’t you?” Sierra asked, grinning at Conner.