Follow Your Heart: Fairfield Romances, #2

By L.R. Reeves

He didn't believe in himself. But she was willing to believe for him.

 

When a kitchen mishap lands brawny baker Geoff in the ER, inked-up city girl Bria nurses his wound…and a big crush. Beneath the tattoos that criss-cross her skin, tough-talking Bria's a big softie. And beneath the layers of flaky, buttery pastry dough, sensitive Geoff is a strong and determined spirit, rebelling against his father's expectations to live his dream.

 

But when crises loom, can their fledgling relationship withstand the heat?

 

Find out if it's a recipe for love…or a recipe for disaster…in Follow Your Heart, Book 2 of the Fairfield Romances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glasswing Press
• Release date: Mar 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733782753

Book preview

Chapter 1

BRIA

Numerous scientific studies have shown that there is no actual link between the full moon and increased hospital admissions. But as anyone who has worked in an emergency department will tell you—that’s bullshit. Everything’s crazy during a full moon.

Which meant that after a case of kidney stones, a bad dog bite, two cases of the flu, one of strep throat, and an elderly lady with chest pain, coupled with the fact that I’d eaten nothing more than peanut butter crackers since my shift started over ten hours ago, I was understandably tired and grumpy.

It hadn’t helped that Dr. Ashvale had been on duty when I’d arrived, and he’d been in rare form too, full of barked orders and scathing comments. At least he was off shift now.

You’re all good to go, I told my chest pain patient, who I had just spend the last ten minutes walking through how to take her medication and what to do if her symptoms persisted, and handed her discharge papers across to where she sat perched on the bed. She gingerly took them, making an obvious effort not to make contact with my tattoo-covered hands, as if the decoration might be catching. I suppressed both an eye roll and a scathing comment, and left her there to head back to the nurses station, where I sank gratefully into a chair. The change in hospital policy to allow visible tattoos was recent, and fortunate, as I wouldn’t have been offered the job otherwise, but I had forgotten how close-minded small towns could be.

Will this day ever end?

My coworker, Claire, threw herself down next to me and slouched dramatically. I swear, you’d think it was Friday the thirteenth, and a Monday, and a full moon all rolled into one!

I snorted. Friday and Monday at the same time; that’d be something else. Besides, I nudged her shoulder. You’ve only been here for two hours.

Yeah, well, it feels like a million, she said through a yawn. A second later she sat up, squinting at the camera set into the desk which showed a view of the hallway leading from triage. Uh-oh.

I glanced at the screen and sighed in commiseration. It looked like there was no reprieve to be found just yet. We both watched the hunched figure in the wheelchair, rolling down the hallway with the guidance of Kristen, the charge nurse. I rolled my shoulders and tilted my head to the side, cracking my neck. Only just over an hour to go, I reminded myself.

Claire, who had been leaning over my shoulder just moments before, seemed to have conveniently disappeared by the time Kristen had escorted the hunched figure into a room and came out to assign his care. I schooled my glower into a resigned shrug, accepting her answering apologetic grimace, then squared my shoulders and headed toward the room.

Mr. Templeton was one of the small handful of patients the nurses tended to refer to as frequent fliers. I couldn’t even count how many times he’d been in to the emergency department already this year, and it was only going to increase as the weather got colder. It was a tricky situation. On one hand, he took staff and resources away from other patients, tying up rooms and often wasting the staff’s time. But on the other hand, November in Indiana was no joke when you were homeless. And it would only get colder from here.

Oh, it’s you, he grumbled in his gravelly voice as I pulled back the curtain and entered his room. He looked me over with his trademark sneer, his milky eyes catching on my tattoos. You know that skin came from God. You insult Him when you deface it.

The effort it took to keep my face pleasant was monumental. Probably deserving of an award. I consulted his chart. What seems to be the problem today, Mr. Templeton?

As if I didn’t already know.

My back is killing me. I need something for the pain.

Well, let me check your vitals and we’ll get the doctor in here to see what he can do for you.

Mr. Templeton was in rare form that morning. He cursed at me and called me names as I checked his pulse (Degenerate! Blue hair is unnatural!), spit out the thermometer (Useless untrained idiot wasting my time!), and knocked the blood pressure cuff out of my hands twice before I was able to wrap it around his scrawny arm and get a reading (You look like a felon!). As usual, all his stats were normal, and aside from the nearly overwhelming stench of alcohol wafting from his pores, which was nothing new, he seemed to be in reasonably good condition for a sixty-something-year-old homeless alcoholic.

I closed my ears to his insults and was only shaking a little by the time I finally made my way out to the nurses station. I leaned over the desk and took a few deep breaths. It’s nothing new, I reminded myself. I’d heard it all before, from him and many others.

And it was true. I’d been hearing it for years. Ever since I’d moved back to small town Indiana after years in the city. Even though I’d grown up here—not in Fairfield, but another small Hoosier town not far away, nearly identical in both population size and small-town mindset—it was still a bit of a culture shock moving back again.

My parents had both grown up in big cities—Chicago for my mom, New York for my dad—and moved to Indiana for my father’s teaching job when I’d been a toddler. Splitting my time between our home in Indiana and visiting grandparents in the cities, I’d learned quickly that I preferred the anonymity and relative cultural freedom of the metropolitan environment.

The teasing started in middle school. As I grew bigger, my hometown seemed to grow smaller around me, the teasing increasing as the differences between me and the other kids grew, and it wasn’t until I left home for college in Chicago that I began to finally find a group of people I fit in with.

That was when I’d gotten my first tattoo. It had been on my eighteenth birthday, a tiny rose picked off the wall and applied to my hip, my terrified hand clutching tight to my laughing roommate as I put on a brave face and tried not to pass out.

I’d laughed when the artist had warned me that tattoos were addictive and people rarely stopped at just one. Not for me, I’d told him. One was all I’d ever need.

That had lasted less than two months.

It certainly hadn't helped when my roommate began to date a tattoo artist. And when the tattoos had led into piercings, and then colored hair after that, well, they were all just different forms of self-expression, right? Just new ways for me to feel at home in my skin, something I’d never managed to accomplish before. A collection of beautiful artwork that conveniently covered up my differences.

Besides, it had never seemed like any big deal at the time. I’d never felt out of place in Chicago. When I came home to visit my parents, they’d just roll their eyes and shake their heads and ask what I’d done this time, and I’d enjoy the ease of their non-judgmental company before escaping back to the city.

I certainly hadn’t imagined I’d ever end up back in rural Indiana.

Claire appeared next to me at the nurses station, shaking me out of my reverie, and I reminded myself that not everyone here was as judgmental as Mr. Templeton.

She sent me an apologetic glance and squeezed my arm. Sorry I left you with Mr. Templeton. The last time I had him he puked on me.

I shuddered in sympathy. Oh, man. Usually he holds his alcohol better than that.

Yeah. Back pain again?

I nodded, and forced myself to think charitable thoughts. I think last night was the first drop below freezing, too. Poor guy’s probably cold. I might just let him sleep for a bit after Dr. McClimon checks him out.

’Poor guy?’ Have you heard the way he talks to you? Claire gave me a look. Besides, we’re not a hotel, you know.

I know, I sighed. But we’ve got the room, at least until the next wave comes in. I’ll discharge him when we need the space.

We were a small hospital, with an even smaller emergency department, but by some luck the full moon rush seemed to finally be quieting down. At the moment I had two of my assigned beds empty, and my only patients were Mr. Templeton and a new guy who had just been brought in from an ambulance and shown into room five. It couldn’t hurt to let the man rest for a bit before kicking him back out into the cold. Even mean, judgmental people deserved a break, though sometimes it was easier to tell myself that than others.

I ducked away from Claire’s disapproving look and went to check on my new guy. Less than an hour to go now.

Geoffrey Ashvale? I’m Bria, your nurse—

I was reading the chart to get an overview of the patient as I pushed past the curtain—bad knife wound on his arm, likely needed stitches—and was therefore unprepared for the panicked gasp of the wild eyed, messy-haired young man perched on the edge of the bed as he cut me off mid-sentence.

Who’s the doctor on duty?

I eyed him strangely. It’s Dr. McClimon, I answered, checking him over. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved green t-shirt, one sleeve of which was currently soaked through with blood. He was clutching what appeared to be a dish towel tightly around his forearm, and his eyes were wide and slightly manic. I was just beginning to wonder if I’d need to call for a psych consult, when the man let out a