Page 37 of Too Guarded to Love

“My phone? You have it?”

Nic sat next to her and touched her arm. “Your accident seemed suspicious, and I figured there was a reason you stomped on it, so I took it and gave it to Ryan. Maybe he can salvage the data.”

“Of course I can,” Ryan grumbled.

Olivia turned to Nic. “Thank you for rescuing my phone. That’s incredibly helpful. There’s a message on there from a patient I need.”

“From Harlee Slater? I got it. Your incoming call record indicated she contacted you shortly after your plane landed.” Ryan read from his center screen. “World champion barrel racer. Got into a near-fatal accident a few years ago. Lost her husband and her horse. Disappeared from the public eye for a while but has been spotted training again recently.”

Damn, Ryan was good.

“You were the doctor who got her back in the saddle?” Kane reached for a banana from a large bowl of fruit in the center of the table, not waiting for an answer. “Nice job, Livvie. That must look good on your resume.”

“It does, but I don’t care about what treating Harlee will do for my career. I care about her.”

He handed the banana to Olivia. “You look pale. Eat this while you tell us why you were meeting her at the beach?”

“Well…” She peeled the banana.

Nic leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well?”

“I’ll get to that, but first I should backtrack to where I left off in the conference room before I got all swoony and passed out.” She pinched the top of the banana and peeled down the skin. “I was suspended from the hospital because of my alleged mistakes. Jonathan suggested I should start fresh somewhere and proposed that we move to DC.”

Kane choked on his energy drink. “You’re fighting for your job, right?”

She glared at him. “Of course, I am.”

“Good girl.”

Heat rushed through Nic at the thought of another reason he’d like to call Olivia a “good girl.”

She rolled her eyes at her brother. “Do you think I’d really give up without a fight?”

Shit. Now Nic was thinking about how he’d punish her if she rolled her eyes at him.

Olivia stared at her banana. “Jonathan’s the one who thought I should give up.”

Yet another reason Nic wanted to rip the asshole’s head off.

“Jonathan had this plan about the two of us moving to DC and working at the hospital downtown. While I like the idea of being closer to Gran and Kane, I made a promise to Harlee to get her back on the professional rodeo circuit. When I was put on suspension, Jonathan said it was a sign that I needed a fresh start and proposed. I told him off for not supporting me, fumed for a few days, and then booked a flight to come here. I dumped him the second time when he surprised me at the airport with news that he’d signed a contract with the downtown hospital, convinced them to hire me too, and mentioned to my director in Atlanta that I was considering another position.”

Nic smacked his steel knuckles into his flesh-and-blood hand. “Jerk.”

Olivia brought the banana to her mouth. “I may have used those words a couple of times when I told Jonathan where he could shove his proposal and his job offer.”

Nic tried to look anywhere but her lips. It didn’t work. “And you didn’t tell him why you were in town or where you were heading?”

“Nope.” She bit the tip of the banana.

Nic swallowed. His libido revved. He didn’t dare look at Kane. If the lust coursing through his body showed a thread of evidence in his eyes, he’d get punched again. “At the hospital, Jonathan said he figured you’d driven to your friend’s house. Why wouldn’t he think you’d gone to Kane or Gran’s?”

“Don’t know, and that’s strange because he talked incessantly about meeting Kane. He was kind of obsessed with him. He may have asked me to marry him, but I think Kane and his bionic leg were his real loves.”

Kane nudged his shoulder against hers. “What’s not to love?”

Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Where should I begin?”

“With how smart I am?”