Better Than Me (A Remington Medical Contemporary Romance) Read online

“Always. I already pulled Mr. Baumgartner’s chart,” Parker said, grabbing the tablet he’d placed on the table in front of him and handing it over to Jonah. The group began to disperse, each of them saying their goodbyes and departing, and Natalie shifted her thoughts back to the surgeries in front of her.

  It wasn’t until nearly lunchtime that she realized she’d forgotten to ask Mallory for his brother’s name and number.

  6

  Jonah would give his left goddamned nut for an apartment with two showers. When he’d moved into the place a couple of years ago, he’d known beyond the shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t likely to ever need an extra bedroom, let alone another full bath. With no close family and less than zero plans to have a relationship with a shelf life of more than forty-eight hours, the 1BR/1Bath route had been a no-brainer. Hell, the half bathroom that had come with the deal practically grew cobwebs for how little it was ever used. He had the futon in his den, true, but that was more sentimental than anything else. The old thing was a throwback from his med school days, the only thing he hadn’t let Vanessa purge during their time together. She’d complained that it didn’t go with any of the high-end, custom-made furniture she’d ordered for their loft, semi-sweetly enough that it had passed as gentle teasing, but with a layer of truth beneath that told Jonah in no uncertain terms that she’d have been thrilled to see the futon go. He’d never quite been able to pull the trigger, though. In the end, that futon had been the only thing he’d kept from their relationship.

  He hadn’t even escaped with his pride, and fuck if that didn’t make him a sucker, even after all this time.

  At least the futon had staying power.

  But Jonah had far more pressing issues at hand right now; namely, that the sun would be considering its Friday morning date with the horizon in the next half an hour, which meant Natalie’s alarm was likely to go off at any moment. Their schedules had kept them separately busy yesterday morning, so trading up for the shower hadn’t been an issue, and they hadn’t talked about it as they’d shared dinner last night. But today, Natalie had a fairly early surgery on the schedule. She was going to need to take a shower, and that meant that for the second time in forty-eight hours, she’d be warm and wet and naked not ten feet from where he currently lay in bed.

  He hadn’t heard her come into his room the other morning, although that wasn’t horribly shocking since he was a sound sleeper. Knowing Natalie, she’d probably gone out of her way not to wake him. But he’d surfaced from sleep a few minutes later in his usual state of drowsy arousal, his cock hard and his mind drifting along to the sound of the spray, and the suggestion of the very undressed woman enjoying it.

  For one darkly sexy, half-asleep moment, his imagination had drawn the details of what Natalie looked like in the shower. Her hair glinting gold in the water, sliding between slim shoulder blades. Her high, pretty breasts covered in steam and spray, her nipples playing peek-a-boo with the bubbles as she washed her body, her hands stroking over her belly. Her hips. Her soft, smooth thighs…

  And then Jonah had realized who he’d been thinking of, his conscience dispatching his hard-on in a blink and his defenses forcing him to stay in bed and feign sleep until she’d tiptoed out of his bedroom ten minutes later.

  No matter what his dick had told him in a moment of hazy impulse, the rest of him knew the truth. Natalie wasn’t for him. She deserved better than the one-time joyride that was all he was willing to deliver. For Chrissake, she’d said she wanted as much in the lounge the other morning, in front of all of their co-workers, no less. Jonah’s knee-jerk, fuck-no reaction to the idea of her going on a date with Mallory’s brother had blindsided him, its presence and intensity so unexpected that he’d been unable to keep his mouth shut. He’d been able to duck and divert well enough—for every decent guy with decent intentions, there were a hundred dillholes, so, really, his unease wasn’t horribly unfounded. Only a shitty best friend wouldn’t want to ensure her safety. Still, the whole thing had left him on edge. He needed to blow off some steam and get Natalie and her soapy, sexy tits out of his head, once and for all.

  “Damn it,” Jonah muttered, throwing the comforter and sheets from his shoulders and stabbing his feet into the floorboards. He needed her at arm’s length. All this proximity was killing him. The little suggestions of her—her shampoo in his shower, the dinner leftovers neatly packaged and labeled in his fridge, her car keys next to his on the table by the front door—were like tiny eye-openers, each one making him hyper-aware of all the things he’d never let himself realize when Natalie wasn’t directly in his space.

  For now, his best option was to get out of said space, at least until he could find someone willing to distract him properly and be done with this insanity. Grabbing his cell phone from his bedside table, Jonah shot off a text to Connor, Emmett, Drake, and a handful of guys from their circle of friends at Station Seventeen and the Thirty-Third District. Drinks at that new club on Hanover at 8? First round is on me. Then he took his toothbrush for a quick spin, thanking his lucky fucking stars that his gym had good showers.

  Jonah reached for the drawer where he kept his workout clothes, cursing under his breath when he realized a second later that it was empty. He’d shoved a bunch of stuff into the dryer last night, then promptly forgotten about it. Padding down the hall, he tugged open the bi-fold doors keeping his washer and dryer neatly tucked from view and clicked on the light…

  And found himself standing in a jungle of Natalie’s unmentionables.

  Jonah’s pulse flared, his eyes going fuck-me wide as he took in the sight in front of him. Red satin, teal silk, the pale pink lace from the other night, all of it was draped over the retractable laundry line spanning the space over the appliances, making the tiny closet look like a lingerie factory had exploded inside of it. He watched his hand reach up as if the arm attached to it was completely on auto-pilot, his brain telling it to cease and desist while his dick—the treasonous bastard—cheered the move on. His fingers brushed over the closest item (which was the petal pink bra, because of course it was), his blood heating and his imagination shoving the image of Natalie wearing it and a smile and nothing-freaking-else front and center.

  “Mmm, morning.”

  Her sleepy voice floated up from the spot beside him, damn near sending him into A-Fib.

  “Shit!” Jonah whipped his hand back to his side, jerking his chin to look at her. Get it together. Right. Now. “I mean, uh, good morning.”

  “I didn’t know you’d be up so early,” she murmured past a yawn, thankfully oblivious to his sort of startled, definitely aroused state. “Sorry for the mess. I’ll just get this stuff out of your way.”

  She nudged closer to him, her forearm brushing his as she reached up to the line for a pair of red lace panties like nothing-doing. Her blond hair was sleep-mussed and loose around her shoulders, the very nipples Jonah had just banished from his imagination pressing against her tank top in the world’s most provocative good-morning-to-you, and sweet Christ, he needed a way out of this, fast.

  “I thought we had an agreement about…this stuff,” he said, waving a hand at her ridiculously large collection of lingerie. But the joking nature with which he’d intended the words fell sadly flat.

  “I promised not to put them over the shower curtain rod,” Natalie reminded him, dropping her pink bra—his favorite, apparently—into the laundry basket beside her feet. “But I have to hang them up to dry somewhere.”

  Jonah exhaled, grasping for logic or air or, okay fine. Anything that would work to keep her thongs out of his brain pan. “Can’t you just put them in the dryer like normal clothes?”

  “If I want to ruin them.” Brows creasing, she stopped what she was doing in favor of turning to look at him. “Come on, Jonah. It’s not as if you haven’t taken hundreds of bras off hundreds of women.”

  “Not you,” he croaked. Do not look at the thong in her hand. Do not think of all the ways you could remove it from her hips with your tee
th. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

  But Natalie’s brow crease increased. “I know this might be a shock to you, but I am, in fact, female. I wear bras. I also wear thongs, and have ovaries, and get my period. It’s kind of what we do. It’s also something you knew about me when you said I could move in with you.”

  “I do know,” Jonah said, the irony of exactly how much he’d begun to realize her femininity not lost on him.

  “Okay, so what’s the big deal, then?”

  He opened his mouth to tell her that the big deal was that now that she was living here, he was too aware of her bras, of how sexy her tousled hair was when she’d just rolled from bed, of how much he’d liked sitting down and talking with her this week over dinner instead of eating silently on his own. But then he stopped himself short.

  He didn’t just want to tell her. He wanted to do something about it. He wanted to kiss her, to lift that tank top over her head and taste those nipples that plagued his imagination until she moaned in pleasure. He wanted to yank off her pajama pants and lift her onto the dryer and do unspeakably filthy things to her pussy with his tongue.

  And she wanted a boyfriend. Someone to fall in love with, who would marry her someday and adopt a horde of kids with her.

  Jonah would not—absolutely could not—be a long-haul guy. For fuck’s sake, he had reasons for that, ones he’d known forever and that had only been hammered farther into place over time. But they were the only thing he’d ever kept from Natalie, so he gathered up a devastating smile, dialed his voice to its most easygoing setting, and said, “Ah, I’m just giving you a hard time, Kendrick. No worries. I’m headed to the gym, so the shower’s all yours.”

  Then he grabbed his laundry and ran.

  THE VELVET CURTAIN was exactly what Jonah had expected it to be. Although he’d never been to the club before, he knew the prototype like he knew his last name. Low lighting punctuated by pops of red and gold coming from strategically placed fixtures. Tall, plush booths designed for privacy, yet still visible enough not to encourage anything highly illicit or illegal. The gigantic, black-lacquer bar stocked to the nines with top-shelf liquor and staffed by stunningly beautiful bartenders of both sexes, and yep, Jonah could’ve drawn a detailed map of the place, sight unseen.

  It was perfect for what he needed tonight; namely, a nice, stiff drink and a pretty partner willing to trade a few hours of her life for a couple of screaming orgasms.

  “Hey, Sheridan. How’s it going?” Kellan Walker, one of the firefighters from Station Seventeen, stepped in to greet Jonah with a steady handshake and a genuine smile.

  “Walker. Hollister,” he said to the auburn-haired detective standing next to the guy, who also happened to be Kellan’s fiancée’s partner at the Thirty-Third. “Good to see you guys.”

  “Hell, if you’re buyin’, I’m in,” Hollister said with a laugh.

  “I’m a man of my word.” Jonah lifted a hand to get the bartender’s attention, ordering a trio of beers. “After this week, I could use a drink.”

  “Don’t let Sheridan fool you,” came Mallory’s voice from behind Jonah as he and Connor walked up to join them at the bar. “His week wasn’t all that bad. After all, he landed a pretty roommate.”

  Jonah’s heart thumped faster, but he kept his expression neutral and his smile in place. “Dude. Kendrick’s place was totaled. I’d be a pretty crappy friend not to let her crash with me for a few weeks.”

  “I hear you, man. You two have always been tight. Ah, could we get two more of those, please?” Mallory asked the bartender as she brought the beers Jonah had ordered over with a smile.

  “Sure thing.” Her big blue eyes landed on Jonah’s and held. “Did you want to start a tab…”

  The lead-in was so obvious, he couldn’t not fill in the blank. “Jonah.”

  “Jonah,” she purred, leaning in to put her admittedly spectacular cleavage on display. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Celeste. I’ll be taking care of you tonight.”

  His brain knew that she was A) gorgeous, and B) very likely to take care of him in more ways than one if he showed interest. But the rest of him remained oddly non-committal about her dark-haired, overly made-up beauty, even though he tried to convince it otherwise. “It’s nice to meet you, too. I’ve got this round, but after that, these guys are on their own, so I’ll pass on the tab.”

  “Are you sure I can’t get you anything else?” Celeste asked, her bright red lips curving into the slightest pout, but Jonah shook his head.

  “Maybe later. But for now, just the check, please.”

  Jonah took care of the bill, then turned back toward his friends, all of whom were—ah, hell—looking at him with varying degrees of disbelief.

  “Are you feeling alright?” Mallory asked. “Because in case you’ve gone both blind and stupid in the last two minutes, that woman is smokin’ hot and totally into you.”

  “She’s pretty,” Jonah agreed, because objectively, she was. “But what kind of friend would I be if I asked you guys to hang out, only to ditch you before we’ve even had a drink?”

  “The kind of friend who got laid with all of our blessings?” Connor suggested. The conversation thankfully paused as Celeste brought Connor and Mallory their beers, and Jonah was able to shrug off his unease at not being into her.

  “The night is still young, and she’s clearly not going anywhere.” Maybe after he’d had a drink, he’d be able to loosen up a little bit. After all, finding someone exactly like Celeste was what he’d come here for in the first place.

  “So, how’s it going living with Kendrick?” Mallory asked, taking a long draw from his beer. “Is familiarity breeding contempt yet? You do like your space.”

  Jonah’s face got hot at the thought of Natalie’s bras hanging in his laundry room and the way her shampoo made his bathroom smell all flowery and nice. Familiarity was breeding something, alright, and by something, he meant unrequited lust.

  “Nah,” he said, stuffing the thought back and dousing it with beer. “Everything’s fine. It’s actually pretty cool.”

  Mallory’s brows went up, his beer halting halfway to his lips. “Now there is something I never thought I’d hear you say about living with a woman.”

  Jonah fought to keep his pulse in check, but before he could work up a reply, Kellan beat him to it.

  “I don’t know,” he said, smiling as he leaned back against his bar stool. “Isabella and I have lived together for a year now, and I think it’s pretty okay.”

  Hollister laughed. “Seeing as how you two are getting married in a month, I sure as shit hope so.”

  “Okay, I might not be the most unbiased example,” Kellan admitted, and funny, he was still smiling. “But still, cohabitation isn’t all bad.”

  An odd feeling expanded in Jonah’s gut. “Natalie and I are just roommates. Temporarily,” he added for good measure. “It’s a very different thing than what you and Isabella have going on.”

  “That may be. All I’m saying is that it’s not all bad to have someone to go home to. Even if you’re just roommates.”

  The conversation drifted to other topics, like the Rogues season and all of their mutual friends and what they’d been up to lately with work and cases and calls. It was a carbon copy of pretty much every guys’ night out in the history of man, the sort of thing Jonah almost always enjoyed. And he wasn’t having a bad time—he didn’t get to see Hollister or Kellan all that often, so the fact that they’d come out was cool. But the longer they all sat there, with one beer turning into two and Connor and Hollister breaking off to flirt with a blonde and a brunette who had settled in at their end of the bar, the more restless Jonah became.

  He’d come out in search of something to get his mind straight, but the more he looked for a distraction, the more he missed Natalie. For every woman all decked out in a form-fitting dress, he wondered if she was still in whatever jeans she’d put on after work, or if she was already back in those cute plaid pajama pants she’d
been wearing this morning. He wondered what she’d had for dinner, whether she’d made a quick meal or if she’d actually indulged in cake, like she’d joked about the other night. And the more he thought about her, the more distracted he became from finding a distraction.

  Which was dumb as shit, not to mention counterproductive. He needed to get his head really, truly screwed on right, once and for all.

  Turning toward the bar, Jonah leaned in until he caught Celeste’s eye, motioning the beautiful brunette over so he could settle up for his second beer and get the hell out of there.

  7

  Natalie cuddled up with a mug of soup in one hand and the TV remote in the other. She’d overheard Jonah and Connor talking about some guys’ night thing in the lounge this morning, so she knew better than to expect to see him until he rolled out of bed at o-noon-thirty tomorrow. Or maybe that was when he’d roll in, she thought with a pang. After all, he was single and stupidly hot, not to mention pretty notorious for hooking up with someone new whenever he went out. Common sense dictated that there was a more than decent chance he’d spend the night in someone else’s bed.

  “Don’t be silly,” she chided herself, clicking the TV on and scrolling to the cable menu. The activeness of Jonah’s sex life was hardly a news flash, or any of her business. She was taking steps to get her own personal life in gear, having finally asked Mallory for his brother’s number yesterday. True, she hadn’t actually put it to use yet, but she’d been slammed with cases, plus, she’d had to juggle a bunch of phone calls to her insurance company and Agnes.

  Between the bathtub, having to do another surgery on Annabelle, and all the other insanity that went with a busy, high-pressure job, Natalie should be grateful for a quiet night in, she knew. And while she did usually enjoy having a rare evening to herself—her favorite station was even doing a rom com movie marathon of classics like When Harry Met Sally—something about tonight felt odd and stiff. Jonah had told her to make herself at home, and she did feel comfortable in his apartment after having spent a whole week here. But the place was so quiet without him in it, sharing a laugh with her over dinner or busting her chops over her laundry or helping her try to find a clinical trial for Annabelle.