Read Online Long Simmering Spring by Elisabeth Barrett - Free Book Online

reply. Instead, she plopped the big file on her desk and began to skim through it. She was astounded, and then annoyed, by what she saw. Blindsided, indeed! He shouldn’t be in her office. At all.
    She was fuming when she entered the patient room. He was sitting on the high metal patient table, his long legs nearly touching the floor and his posture military perfect. His upper torso was encased in a tight-fitting black T-shirt, showing off his flat stomach and narrow hips. In the confines of the small patient room, he looked downright enormous. Who looked that good, even on a patient table?
    Closing the door, she turned to Cole. “You’re a veteran, something I completely forgot about when Cloris told me you were on my schedule this morning. That means your health care is covered by the government. You didn’t really come in here because your leg hurts, Sergeant First Class Grayson.” Julie slapped the files onto a nearby counter and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “What do you want?”
    “Like I said, I’m here for a checkup.”
    “Uh-huh,” she said, doubt infusing her voice. Good thing he hadn’t cracked a smile. He’d have been out of her office so fast his head would be spinning.
    “All right,” he said, cocking his head, “I admit I came in here for another reason, too.”
    That was more like it. “What’s that?”
    “I wanted to check on you to make sure that you were all right after the incident yesterday. You’re okay with the solution I proposed?”
    “Yes,” Julie said, her anger beginning to defuse. “I thought it was fair.”
    “Good,” Cole said. “I sent Hank out on patrol to cover the rest of my shift, and then I talked with the boys for a long time. Found out that Chris’s dad just got laid off. Seems like he roped Ben into working out some of his frustration. Wrong way to go about it, but still, those boys deserved a second chance. They’ll make things right with you, and thanks to this lesson they’ll sure as hell stay out of trouble from here on.”
    “It was . . . kind of you to do that,” she offered.
    “Hank was pleased with me, of course. He’s all for forgiveness and atonement.”
    Julie had heard the talk about Hank Jacobs. He’d entered divinity school, but dropped out after a year to attend the police academy. Hank was rock solid, and she was glad Star Harbor had been the beneficiary of his decision. Still, Hank hadn’t caught and disciplined the boys; Cole had. “You had a lot of discretion. That situation could have ended very differently.”
    “It could’ve, but it didn’t.”
    No, it didn’t. He had done those boys a huge favor and he knew she knew it. But had he done it for them—or for her? “You could have called me to tell me that instead of showing up in my office under false pretenses.”
    “I’m not messing around with you, Doctor. My leg is killing me and I don’t want to haul up to the VA so some geriatric geezer can take a look at me.”
    Julie smiled, despite herself. “Geriatric geezer, hmm? They have some young doctors working there too, you know. One of my best friends did her orthopedics fellowship at the VA.”
    Cole gave a little snort. “I’d have liked seeing a doctor under sixty, but the problem’s not with my bones. It’s actually an old wound that’s scarred over pretty badly.”
    “I see,” she said, though she knew there were any number of specialists at the VA Hospital who would be much better equipped to handle this kind of injury. “Are you sure you want me to look at you?”
    “Yes,” Cole said, an intense, unreadable expression on his face.
    They weren’t talking about the scar anymore. And once she went down that path, she knew by the serious fireworks between them whenever they were around each other—let alone the few instances when they’d touched—that there’d be no going back.
    “C’mon, Doc,” Cole said softly, his expression fierce and hot. “Please.”
    There was that word. This