Before the Rain Breaks Page 7

  Not now.

  He had let Vince know that he’d caught Ray in the act, and that he was one hundred percent certain that it had been Ray.

  Vince had promised to pass the information on as soon as he saw his son.

  Neither man expected that to be anytime soon.

  Fin came around the corner of the hall. Relief hit her eyes when she recognized him. “I need to check on Annie again. And Nikkie Jean.”

  Virat nodded. Fear for the two women had settled in his gut and wasn’t going anywhere.

  But they were both doing well now; he’d checked with Rafe and Allen, who had assumed control of their care. Both would be ok.

  Watch for the

  Finley Creek: Disaster trilogy coming soon!

  Dr. Nikkie Jean Netore felt like the biggest fool when she walked into the Barratt County Hospital, her hand wrapped ignobly in a cartoon owl-printed kitchen towel. The towel had been a housewarming gift from her friend Jillian when she'd bought her small house just inside the Barratt county line.

  Jillian had said the owl looked just like her.

  Nikkie had reluctantly agreed. She was brown haired, hazel-eyed and wore prism-laced glasses over contacts. When she blinked, she probably did look like a cartoon owl.

  Now she was just a bloody owol. A bloody stupid one. Had it not been her dominant hand that she had injured, Nikkie Jean could have set the stitches in her own wound. But it was, and even as a surgeon at Finley Creek General Hospital, she couldn't stitch with her weaker hand.

  Barratt County Gen was closer to her new home than FCGH, the hospital where she spent most of her days.

  Nikkie stepped up to the intake desk and said excuse me to the man bent over a file.

  Well, said it to his back.

  He spun.

  Nikkie Jean took a step back. She didn't expect to see the man in front of her. "Dr. Holden-Deane! I..."

  She had just left him ninety minutes ago at FCGH, when he'd excused the surgery department from a meeting he'd called to address a recent surgical department audit. She hadn't been home ten minutes when she'd sliced her hand open on a window that had been shattered by that afternoon's storms.

  Dr. Holden-Deane glowered. Not that surprising; he was usually glowering at someone. "You have me confused with someone else. May I help you?"

  She blinked up at him—Dr. Rafe Holden-Deane was at least six foot six and had three feet wide shoulders. Not to mention the dark hair, the eyes so dark they looked black, and the slightly olive skin tone. She pulled her glasses off her face and rubbed the rain off them as best she could one-handed.

  Nope.

  She might be half-blind—at least without the glasses, anyway—but she wasn't wrong. The hair was possibly a little longer. The scar over his eye was definitely different.

  But...she wasn’t wrong completely.

  But Dr. Holden-Deane didn’t have a dragon tattoo on one strong arm.

  The doctor standing in front of her was a dead ringer for the FCGH chief of medicine. Her friend Jillian's husband. "I...I'm sorry, but you look just like my boss at FCGH. Dr. Holden-Deane. Enough to be his identical twin."

  Which, if rumor was true, Rafael Holden-Deane had.

  If possible, his expression darkened even more. Yeah, he really did resemble her cantankerous boss right down to—almost—the last freckle. "Is that why you've come here today, Miss..."

  "Dr. Nikkie Netorre. And no—" Most definitely not. Her hand was really starting to hurt, too. Time to get back down to business. "I came here because I have...this little problem. And I need stitches. Barratt County is closer to my home than FCGH. I figured the sooner the better." She held the bloody owl up for him to see. "I could have dealt with it myself, but it's my dominant. I can't set the stitches."

  She'd tried. But done a really bad job.

  She didn't want to jeopardize her ability to operate on patients for a few stitches that would heal in two weeks.

  Nikkie took her first real look around.

  Barratt County looked just like the hospital she had just left. Only smaller. Even the wall decor was the same. It was like FCGH in miniature. With the Holden-Deane clone in the middle of the intake desk glaring at her, it was like she'd entered the twilight zone. Freaky.

  "It looks like FCGH around here."

  "I believe we share the same decorator." He beckoned to a nurse. "Chloe, take Doctor—"

  "Netorre. Pediatric surgical resident.”

  "Take Dr. Netorre into exam room 1. I'll be with her shortly."

  Nikkie Jean obediently followed the young nurse. She'd been in exam rooms thousands of times now. No big deal. She’d spent thousands of hours in exam rooms and hospital rooms—on both sides of the equations. She could deal.

  But first chance she got, she was going to text Jillian about the man who looked so much like Jillian's husband. Well, a pirate-y version of Jillian’s new husband, anyway.

  She’d always had a thing for pirates.

  ***

  Dr. Caine Alvaro glared at the woman as she followed Chloe into the exam room.

  She hadn't said anything he hadn't heard before.

  Eventually, he would have to address the source. He wasn't an idiot. He'd seen photos of the man she had said he resembled. Dr. Rafe Holden-Deane, ironically head of the larger hospital an hour away, had been in the local news frequently since Caine had relocated to the area from Amarillo a few weeks ago.

  He did resemble Holden-Deane. No wonder. They were identical twins, as far as his father had told him. Before the old bastard had died from too many years of booze and stupidity six years ago. Caine had known about his brother since about a year before that.

  What he hadn't known was what he was going to do about it. He'd spent six of those years in the military, paying for medical school the hard way. Six weeks ago he'd taken the job in little Value, Texas, after spending a year in Abilene and a year in Amarillo. He needed the peace of a small town again. To see kids running, shrieking with laughter.

  To see his kids making the roots he’d never had.

  It was a big adjustment from what he had seen in the Middle East.

  This woman wasn't the first to mention his resemblance to the man now running FCGH. Caine and his brother's paths would cross eventually. Of that he had no doubt. It was just a matter of time.

  He hadn't appreciated that girl staring at him like he was a monkey in a circus. Blinking up at him like he was a mirage she was trying to make certain was real. He scowled again and tossed the file he had been studying on the counter for JoLyn to put away.

  He'd deal with this Dr. Netorre and get her out of his hospital and on her way back to the larger, better, more wonderful Finley Creek Gen.

  And Dr. Rafael Holden-Deane.

  He stalked into the exam room as the woman was giving Chloe her pertinent medical history. She spoke clearly, with the tiniest bit of an East Coast accent. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, long honey-brown and lightly curled. She wore dark pink rimmed glasses that made her hazel eyes look far too big for her face.

  She barely came up to his shoulder. Maybe. She may have been even shorter than that. He listened as she gave her birthdate again for their records.

  Thirty. She'd just had her thirtieth birthday a few weeks ago.

  Dr. Netorre was listing previous surgeries and he listened. One was ocular in nature. Surprising. Most surgeons had near perfect eyesight. This one didn't. "How well do you see?"

  She turned toward him. He might have been mistaken, but he almost thought she rolled her eyes at him. He’d bet this resident was the trouble-making kind. "Very well—with the glasses and contacts simultaneously. I'm not blind. Just half—in my left eye. The right one is just lazy; it’s never bothered to keep up. I’ve scolded it and scolded it. It never learns. How well do you?"

  She shot a smile filled with perfect teeth and dimples right at him.

  He just grunted. "How did you hurt your hand?"

  "Tree branch went through the at
tic window. I cut my hand on the glass."

  "Let's take a look. How long have you been at Finley Creek?"

  "Eight months. But I attended med school there, then went home to Pennsylvania for a few years. Now I'm back here. Studying under Allen Jacobson."

  He took the edge of the dish towel wrapped around her hand and started pulling gently. She hissed out a small breath. He shot a quick look at her face.

  When she wasn’t talking or smiling she was cute, rather than beautiful. Kid sister type. Nerd. The kind a boy wouldn't look twice at, but a man would see her for the treasure she was. She was unmarried, or so she’d told Chloe. Lived alone, didn't smoke, or use alcohol to excess. She spoke easily about what had happened—even how she had tried to treat the injury herself, but stopped. She and Chloe fell into an easy discussion of shared acquaintances. She was apparently a chatterer.

  Caine dealt with the three-inch gash across her palm. Any deeper and she could have had trouble performing surgery in the future. He didn't tell her that. He suspected she knew. "Three weeks. No using it for at least three weeks."

  "I think two is more than appropriate, don't you?" Hazel eyes met his. He scowled. He did not like to be second guessed. Especially by little surgeons-in-training like this one.

  "I am being cautious, Dr. Netorre. You've injured yourself more than I think you realize. Three weeks, not a moment before. Are you certain you removed all the glass?"

  "It was just the one piece, but I flushed it thoroughly. I just couldn't suture it myself."

  It didn't surprise him that she'd tried. Not in the least. "No. You couldn't."

  It took him fifteen minutes to get a row of tiny stitches across the delicate flesh of her palm. Luckily, the injury was to the outer edge of her hand. That would make it easier for her to regain full range of function. Her skin was pale, delicate, her hand small beneath his. She shouldn’t scar too badly, at least.

  When he looked up, she was staring at him. "What?"

  "I'm sorry. You really do look like Rafe. Same scowl, too. Although you look far more like a pirate than he does. I think it’s the hair, and your pet dragon there. Does he have a name?"

  Rafe. Caine’s scowl deepened. "You always call your boss by his first name?"

  "He's a friend, so I do when off the clock. Well, he's married to a good friend of mine. I was in their wedding last month. I handled the guest book." She said it softly, her face not that far from his. "I studied genetics. Rafe has scars on his forehead you don't have. Your hair is a lot longer. That’s about it."

  "My scars aren't all visible. And there's plenty of damned differences between us.”

  Watch for the rest of Caine and Nikkie Jean’s story, coming in the Fall 2019!