Nurse Lovette Read Online Free PDF Page B

lips trembled and she tapped the desk with the tip of her ink pen.
    “No one has ever made me feel like you do,” Avery confessed, risking everything.
    Darby ignored the declaration. “Do you want to make another appointment?”
    “Definitely,” Avery blurted.
    “I’m on the schedule at the hospital tomorrow. How about next week?” Darby blinked as she looked up and a shard of guilt and disappointment sliced through Avery.
    Next week? What about now ?
    No. She’d have to try her best to be patient. Besides, she’d pushed Darby and clearly the nurse wasn’t ready to explore getting into another relationship. But damn it, Avery felt like a kid in a candy shop, ready to dive feet first into this new aspect of her sexuality.
    “Next week will work for me,” Avery said, trying not to let her disappointment show. “And I’m sorry about…today. I got carried away.”
    Darby finally smiled. “Understandable.” She penciled the date and time on an appointment card and pushed it through the window. “See you then.”
    Avery tucked the card into her purse and, still confused, walked out the door. How could Darby be so cool after what had just happened between them? It hadn’t been clinical. It had been real. Avery would have sworn it. They’d connected. Like lovers.
    And strangely enough, for the first time in her sexual history, Avery wasn’t closing her eyes to shut out the real world or grasping at fantasies in order to find release. She’d longed to touch and be touched, to kiss and be kissed, to lose herself in another’s—no, Darby’s —arms.
    Avery slid into her car and switched on the ignition. Maybe it was time to schedule an emergency appointment with Dr. Milburn.
    * * * * *
     
    Darby didn’t move until she’d heard the sound of Avery’s car pull out of the driveway.
    It was happening all over again. In spite of everything she’d done to prevent forming some sort of personal relationship with Avery, Darby found herself powerless to resist the other woman.
    Avery had ignited a spark inside Darby that she didn’t want to ignore. It went against every promise she’d made to herself. She needed to be in control. She needed to exert dominance over her patient so she could, at least for those brief moments, experience some sense of being in charge of her own life.
    In the real world, she was at the mercy of the doctors, the senior hospital staff, even government funding. Every day, more and more jobs got cut. Some of her friends had lost their positions or had seen their pay slashed and their benefits dwindle away.
    And then there were her patients on the palliative-care floor. The families all told her how much they appreciated her efforts, but for Darby, making the terminally ill comfortable until the last breath left their bodies was beyond difficult. She could give them morphine or something for anxiety. She could raise their beds or hold their hands but there wasn’t one damn thing she could do to save them. All— all —of her patients died, and she would never get used to it. No matter how many times she heard the characteristic death rattle, she would never become accustomed to the helplessness she felt while watching a human life slip away.
    Her eyes drifted shut and she forced her thoughts away from her job and back to Avery.
    Avery…naked and beautiful and vulnerable, and lying on spread wide on the examining table.
    Darby’s stomach somersaulted over just how quickly the tables of a different kind had turned—at how she’d allowed herself to become the vulnerable one.
    A faltering breath escaped her lips. No more. She clenched her fists. Somehow, she had to stay in control.
    Or she would just have to stop treating Avery.
    * * * * *
     
    “I don’t know, Dr. Milburn,” Avery said. “I’ve never considered that I might be attracted to women. I thought all this was about my…fetish.” Her voice dropped to a whisper at the word.
    “It’s very possible you’ve been socially