Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (28 page)

Shirley could hardly believe her ears. The President of University Hospital was actually
ordering
her to spend time with Dr. Randall Hamm! It was a dream come true.

Or then again, it could also be her worst nightmare.

“This is a top-secret operation, by the way,” President Chalmers went on. “Nobody is to know about this, except you an’ me. An’ whatever you do, don’t do anything that’ll make Dr. Hamm suspicious. The guy’s already too tightly wound as it is.”

“Well, it this is supposed to be so secret, how will I get Dr. Hamm to spend any time with me in the first place?” Shirley asked. “He’s not exactly social. Every time I’ve tried to have any kind of conversation with him, he always finds some excuse to disappear.”

Shirley knew she had to tread lightly here. If President Chalmers got any inkling of her true feelings for Dr. Hamm, the whole plan was doomed.

The gruff old administrator paused to think. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll cook up some story ‘bout how I want Dr. Hamm to spend some time socializing with all the new nurse-anesthetists as part of a nurse retention effort. Chalk it up to high turnover an’ the nursing shortage. Tell him to take you to lunch, show you the ropes ‘round the hospital a bit. He’ll probably bite. He knows he’s ‘bout three steps away from bein’ fired here as it is. Sound fine?”

Shirley nodded.

“Good. You keep me up to date on what you find out, now. And remember, this is our little secret.”

“Yes sir,” Shirley replied. She turned on her heel and trudged out of President Chalmers’

office.

And then, her entire lower half went up in flames.

Ten

Shirley strode back into The Dragon Lady’s office, a huge grin plastered on her face. Her tiny boss jerked bold upright in her chair. Clearly this was not the expression she’d expected Shirley to have after being grilled by the hospital president.

“Well, I’m back,” Shirley sang. She was walking on air. She even made a point to do a little dance in front of The Dragon Lady’s desk, soft-shoeing it with her Nurse Mates on the linoleum.

Her boss was aghast. “What happen? Why you so happy? President Chalmers never make people happy! He grumpy and mean! He make my life hell!”

“On the contrary, I found President Chalmers to be quite the Southern gentleman,” Shirley sang. “Really, what a nice man.”

“I thought you in big trouble!” The Dragon Lady squawked. “Why you so happy? I thought they going to fire you! I thought they going to fire
me!”

Shirley reached out and patted Beth Peking’s tiny, red-taloned hand. “Don’t worry. Both our jobs are safe, I promise. Everything is just fine. Fine and dandy.”

The Dragon Lady eyed her suspiciously. “Either you lying, or you crazy. Nobody go into President Chalmers’ office the day after somebody die in OR and come back singing and doing stupid dance. Something really fishy going on here.”

Shirley decided it was high time she changed the subject. She glanced at the nurse-anesthetist schedule on the wall, noticed her name wasn’t on it. “Well, since it looks like the trouble from yesterday has blown over, I think you can put me back on the OR schedule,” she said. “When do I scrub in? I’m anxious to get back on track.”

The Dragon Lady sighed and shuffled some papers. “I no have any OR openings until this afternoon. Meantime, you review procedures. Unless you want to go to Labor and Delivery, help on epidurals.”

Shirley winced. She’d never liked Labor and Delivery. The sight and sound of screaming pregnant women in labor had never appealed to her. “I’ll take a pass on that. Just give me a procedures manual and I’ll get started.”

“Suit yourself, country girl,” The Dragon Lady sighed, and thrust a heavy procedures binder into her face. “Now get out my office. I busy today.”

With pleasure
, Shirley thought, and headed for the door.

And ran smack-dab into Dr. Randall Hamm.

“Pardon me, Shirley,” he said, his expression unreadable—as usual. “I’ve come to speak with your boss.” Shirley made a motion to leave, but Dr. Hamm held up a hand to stop her. “It’s concerning you, Shirley, so you should probably stick around.”

The Dragon Lady turned eight different shades of green.

Dr. Hamm plopped down in one of Beth Peking’s hard, uncomfortable chairs. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this unannounced, Ms. Peking, but I got a directive from the President’s office today to spend some orientation time with your new hire here.”

The Dragon Lady’s face went from green to purple. “O-orientation time? Why? Shirley
my
employee, so it
my
job to do orientation, not yours!”

Dr. Hamm cleared his throat. “Well, yes, under normal circumstances that would be true. But apparently President Chalmers is concerned about the high employee turnover in the nurse-anesthetists’ department—I say that with all due respect to you, Ms. Peking—and since he doesn’t want the nursing shortage at this hospital to get any worse, he is assigning new nurse hires to work directly with senior physician staff as part of a new employee retention program.”

The Dragon Lady coughed, then appeared to swallow her tongue.

“Since the directive comes from President Chalmers himself, I take it there will be no objections if I borrow Ms. Daniels for a few hours today?” Dr. Hamm went on. “I know she’s not on the OR schedule today, but then again, I’m not either. I’ll be showing her around some of the more technical areas of the Anesthesiology department, and then I’m thinking I’ll take her to lunch. Strictly business, of course.”

The Dragon Lady whimpered and sank deep into her chair, almost disappearing behind her desk.

“Well, Shirley, we best be off, then, before Ms. Peking changes her mind.” Dr. Hamm took her lightly by the arm and led her out into the hallway. He was by far the most upbeat she’d ever seen him, but she still couldn’t read his true feelings or intentions. Dr. Hamm wore his poker face all the time, and today was no exception.

Shirley’s mind raced with all sorts of ideas of how she might take advantage of this golden opportunity. She’d become quite adept at seduction, after all—after all the sexual adventures she’d gotten into lately, getting Dr. Randall Hamm into her bed ought to be easy. But it just wasn’t that simple. Something about this gorgeous, mysterious man made Shirley clam up on the outside, even as she was heating up on the inside. She felt like a shy, giddy schoolgirl in his presence, and all her hard-won seductress skills just seemed to fly out the window. As she timidly followed him down the hallway towards the bank of elevators, she felt transported back to her teen years—her limbs and belly tingling with hormones, her mind addled by desires she was too young and inexperienced to understand.

She might not be young and inexperienced any more, but when it came to a man like Dr. Randall Hamm, Shirley might as well be a virgin wallflower. She was way out of her league, and she knew it.

“Well, Shirley, I must say I was a little surprised when President Chalmers asked me to be your orientation buddy,” Dr. Hamm said as he pressed the “DOWN” button on the elevator. “But I can see where he’s coming from setting up a program like this. We’ve really had a problem with employee turnover among the nurses, especially the nurse-anesthetists. But if you ask me, the best thing this hospital can do to retain nurse-anesthetists is fire Beth Peking. As I’m sure you’ve already figured out by now, that woman’s a real piece of work.”

Shirley’s mouth had gone cotton-dry from nervousness and excitement, so all she managed in response was a guttural “Mmm-hmmm.”

The elevator arrived. Dr. Hamm stepped right on, seemed to pay no notice to the fact that Shirley was actually trembling now, that her forehead was dappled with a light coating of sweat. It was a damned good thing that the man didn’t have X-ray vision, because if he did, he also would have noticed the fact that Shirley’s panties were soaked through with pussy juice. And it was only a matter of time before the crotch of her blue scrubs started showing a wet spot, too.

Shirley followed him onto the elevator. Dr. Hamm started droning on about some mundane new technique of intravenous anesthesia administration, but Shirley didn’t hear a word he said. She was too busy trying to keep from crying out as the sexual tension built and built between her legs, threatening to spill over the floodgates and bring her to climax without him even laying a finger on her. Even with his wooden demeanor and impenetrable, businesslike façade, the man was a walking, talking sex machine. Just breathing the same air that he did was enough to bring a woman to orgasm.

And then, just as soon as Shirley thought she’d managed to get a hold of herself, the elevator lurched, the lights flickered, and Shirley toppled forward into Dr. Randall Hamm’s chiseled arms.

That did it. Shirley bit her tongue to keep from crying out as a series of intense pleasure-spasms wracked her body from head to toe.

Shirley had read about women having spontaneous orgasms in romance novels, but she never thought it could actually happen in real life. But she supposed where Dr. Randall Hamm was concerned, anything was possible.

Dr. Hamm gently grasped her forearms and set her upright just as the elevator started moving again. “Are you all right, Shirley?”

She managed a small nod. Her cunt was still on fire, and threatening to go over the edge once again. The feel of his hands against her body, even through the rough fabric of her scrubs, was pure electricity.

Dr. Hamm abruptly let her go, as if he’d touched something hot. Probably because he had. Shirley’s whole body was up in flames.

“Looks like we got stuck for a minute there,” he said. “They really need to replace these old elevators. We’re lucky we didn’t get stuck.”

Shirley grumbled something unintelligible. She didn’t think they were lucky the elevator wasn’t stuck—quite the opposite. She had a feeling that if it had gotten stuck for a good long while, she just might have had an opportunity to seduce Dr. Hamm for real, instead of having his mere presence send her body into uncontrollable orgasmic fits. Not that she was complaining, but—

“Shirley, are you sure you’re all right? You look a little—ahem—flushed.”

Flushed?
How kind of him to notice. Of course she was flushed, damn it. She’d just had two orgasms from standing next to the guy. “I’m ahhhh—I’m just a little claustrophobic, is all,” she lied just as the elevator made it to the lower level and the doors slid open.

“Well, all that’s good to know. I was getting worried about you. Thought you might be having a fainting episode or something.”

Oh, I’m having an episode, all right
,
she mused.
She ground her teeth in frustration as she followed Dr. Randall Hamm into a large vaultlike room filled with medical equipment.

“If you’ll just follow me, Shirley, I’d love to give you a sneak peak at the new chemical vaporizer that’ll be getting installed in the main OR next month. It’ll really improve our procedures for delivering inhaled anesthesias.” Dr. Hamm rubbed his hands together, as if he were anticipating a gourmet meal. For the first time ever, Shirley noticed that he seemed genuinely excited about something.

A lightbulb flickered on inside her brain.
So that’s what makes this guy tick,
she thought.
Technology.

Well, that could be interesting. Very interesting.

If only she knew more about it.

Dr. Hamm wandered through the rows of dusty equipment and scattered metal boxes until he came upon a large tanklike device covered in buttons and sophisticated electronic panels. “Here it is,” he said. “The Avery Intubator/Aspirator 6-5000. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Well, it’s a machine,” Shirley chirped. She didn’t realize sterile plastic-and-metal medical machines could be beautiful. But Dr. Hamm was right—it
was
beautiful. It was sleek, almost like a piece of Art Deco architecture—beautifully designed with polished chrome trim and glossy polished enamel instead of the drab beige plastic and dull, blocky builds of more traditional medical machines. Instead of the familiar flashing red numbers and circa-1980s digital displays Shirley was used to seeing, the machine had crystal LCD displays in full color, and the ability to calibrate and distribute anesthesia doses at the touch of a single button. Best of all, the machine was self-explanatory—no more wasting rime in week-long training sessions every time the hospital upgraded its equipment. No wonder Dr. Hamm had fallen in love with it.

Now, if only she could make him fall in love with
her.

Dr. Hamm ran his hand up and down the sleek, polished side of the machine. The man was actually
caressing
it. Shirley never thought she’d see the day that the sight of a man touching an inanimate piece of medical equipment would turn her on—but lo and behold, it was happening.

“There’ll be a training seminar on the new machine next week,” Dr. Hamm said, delicately running his fingers along a piece of polished chrome. “But I wanted you to get a chance to see it sooner. It’s really going to make your job easier. And mine, too.”

“I—I can see that,” Shirley stammered, still staring at Dr. Hamm’s fingertips as they did their delicate little dance on the edge of the machine. She closed her eyes, imagined the feel of those fingers on her cunt as they made the same motions on the most intimate parts of her body as they were on that damned inanimate object—
ooooooooohhhhh.

A light tap on her shoulder jerked her out of her reverie. “Shirley, are you all right? You seem a little distracted.”

A
little
distracted? Well, that was the understatement of the century. “Like I said before, I’m just a little claustrophobic,” she lied. “It’s just very cramped down here, is all.” In truth, the huge room wasn’t cramped at all, but she was running out of excuses.

Dr. Hamm just shrugged. “Well, I guess we can go back upstairs, then. How about we take a break for lunch? Maybe stroll the grounds? The hospital has lovely grounds. I encourage all my residents to take walks in the fresh air whenever they can. Helps clear the lungs. And God knows we inhale a lot of unhealthy fumes in our line of work.”

Shirley nodded. She’d left the OR dizzy from anesthesia fumes more times than she could count. And she was feeling plenty dizzy this morning too—for reasons that had nothing to do with her job. “That sounds like fun,” she managed, then took several long, slow deep breaths in a futile attempt to get a hold of herself. All that did was make her feel lightheaded. That combined with the fact her entire lower half was on fire made for a very dangerous combination.

Why, oh why did she let President Chalmers talk her into this whole charade? As much as she wanted to get closer to Dr. Randall Hamm, she was beginning to wonder if maybe the man was hazardous to her health.

In a daze, she followed Dr. Hamm back to the bank of elevators. The walk through the hospital lobby and out to the grounds was a blur—Shirley was only able to keep herself steady by fixing her gaze at the level of Dr. Hamm’s ankles. If her eyes strayed any higher, she’d see the curve of his powerful calves, the rippling of his powerful back and shoulders underneath his scrubs—and she’d be done for.