3. Have a backstory ready. Andrew was playing the part of her boyfriend and they’d faked it before, so it should be easy as long as he stuck to the plan. Plus, she and Reed were doctor friends and had plenty of history.
4. Pay attention to the staff and security. Maverick could be considered both, since ownership meant wearing many different hats. He knew she didn’t belong here, but he didn’t know the profound impact she might have on the event. And best to keep it that way. Which made her feel awful, but necessity trumped honesty in this situation.
“You’re thinking really hard over there.” Maverick’s voice brought her focus back to him. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he teased.
She smiled up at him. “Worried?”
“Hardly.”
“I should get back to my party.”
“Or I could call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”
She huffed out a breath. “You wouldn’t dare.”
He lifted his arms off the fence and tipped his cowboy hat in a show of brawn and authority. “You know the deal, Shortcake. No funny business.” With that, he turned and walked away, leaving her to fume.
How had she landed herself in this much hot water so darn soon?
Chapter Two
Two days earlier…
The man on the computer screen had salt-and-pepper hair and Paul Newman eyes. And for the past fifteen minutes, he’d made Kennedy Martin’s palms sweat. “Why emergency room medicine?” he asked.
Finally. A question she had a quick and easy answer for. Make that two answers.
She ran her hands along the bottom of her crisp white collared shirt. It was the only material available, since she wasn’t wearing any pants. (Comfort was key with big interviews and, since she was visible only from the chest up, she’d opted out of clothing her lower body. Not her best decision, however, given her sweaty palms.)
“The first reason is there’s never a dull moment. A man once came in to the emergency room via ambulance with burns on his lower extremities. His tennis shoes were charred and the bottoms of his jeans were burned away, but thankfully his skin wasn’t too bad. He’d been in his backyard using a propane weed burner and things got out of control. I smelled alcohol on his breath and asked him if he’d been drinking, and he said, ‘Nooo, ma’am.’ I was practically tipsy just from standing next to him, so I looked him straight in the eye and as professionally as possible said, ‘Sir, you are a liar, liar, pants on fire.’ The paramedics standing beside me cracked up, and the man was so drunk, he did, too.”
Dr. Weaver, chief physician at the most respected hospital in Boston, laughed. Excellent.
She wanted this job more than anything. Needed it. A new start, a different big city. She’d miss Los Angeles, but an opportunity like this didn’t come along very often.
“A sense of humor is always good,” he said.
“The second reason is more personal. When I was fourteen, an emergency room doctor saved my life. Long story short, scar tissue from a surgery I had as a newborn broke off and triggered a bowel obstruction. No one could figure out why I was in pain, since things seemed generally fine. Until they weren’t, and I went into sudden heart failure. An ER resident discovered I was crashing and alerted the attending minutes before I would have passed out. They rushed me into surgery just in time to save me.
“I was really scared, and the ER doctor in particular made me feel like everything was going to be okay. When there was a complication after the surgery”—Kennedy closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath—“I remember picturing Dr. Hawkins’s overconfident expression and hearing him say I was strong and had my whole life ahead of me, and that made me fight to survive. Once I recovered, I knew I wanted to give that same hope and assurance to people facing medical emergencies.”
Dr. Weaver nodded from behind his desk. He jotted something down on a notepad before glancing at the thick black watch on his wrist. “Having been through something like that definitely gives you a special perspective.”
“It does.”
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
“Running an emergency room,” she said without hesitation. She almost said “running your emergency room” but didn’t want to be presumptuous.
“Is that all?”
She took a second to study him. Was he asking about her personal life? Was he a family man, a proponent of a strong work-life balance? “I’d like to get married and have kids, but there’s no guarantee on love.” She pressed down on her knee to stop it from bouncing. After what happened with her ex, the mere mention of the L-word still made her twitchy.
He gave a brief nod—in commiseration or dismissal, she wasn’t sure—and she hoped she hadn’t given the wrong answer. “It was a pleasure speaking with you, Miss Martin. I’ll be in touch within a week if we’d like you to fly out for a final interview.”
“Thank you very much for your time and consideration, Dr. Weaver. I sincerely appreciate it and hope to hear from you.”
“Take care,” he said and ended the video chat.
Kennedy closed her laptop and relaxed in her chair, relieved to be done with her second interview. If she got that third, in-person invitation, she’d be another step closer to her dream job. She played their conversation over and over again in her mind as she stared out her bedroom window. A lone cloud in the August sky shaped like an anchor gave her hope. She wasn’t about to sink. Not yet anyway.
“Ned!” Ava called out, arriving inside Kennedy’s room like a tornado and flopping down on the bed. “I can’t take it anymore!”
Kennedy stood and dropped next to her younger sister on the white comforter. They lay shoulder to shoulder on the queen-size bed, being close their preferred position. “It being…?”
“Homework! Duh. I hate summer school. Why did I think this was a good idea?”
“You didn’t. Mom and Dad did.”
“Oh, right. The broken parental unit who decided to band together and force their youngest daughter to take classes so I graduate on time.”
Kennedy thought about the extensive med school loans she’d be paying off for the next gazillion years. “It might suck now, but you’ll be glad later.”
“I need you to save me.” Ava rolled onto her side, propping her head in her hand. “Can we get pad thai and watch a movie?”
The number of times Kennedy had saved her sister were too many to count, but that was okay. Saving people—literally and figuratively—kept her heart and head in a happy place.