Secret Seduction by Lori Wilde Page B

about what had happened last night. When it came down to it, Vanessa needed him, and since he hadn’t been able to protect his wife, he was damned determined not to screw this up.
    Guarding Vanessa was his chance at salvation.

    4
    THE MONDAY MORNING brow lift on a thirty-something Austin musician wanting to look younger for her new album cover, went quicker than Vanessa expected, thanks in part to her accomplished team.
    She loved working with the circulating nurse, Lisa Patrone, and the anesthesiologist, Dr. Brad Mertz. She and Brad had even dated a couple of times, but although they liked, admired and respected each other, the lack of sexual chemistry had kept them from becoming anything more than friends. How come it always seemed the guys who were perfect for her just didn’t seem to elicit sparks and the guys who were all wrong for her charged her up like gangbusters? Vanessa shook her head. Mother Nature was an odd creature when it came to sexual attraction.
    Lisa was in her midforties, married to a firefighter, with her first grandchild on the way. She’d been at Confidential Rejuvenations for her entire career. She had a passion for haunting garage sales for a bargain and she was always gifting her co-workers with tokens of her affection. She also made one mean guacamole salad, but refused to share her recipe.
    The only newbie in the operating suite was Senator Garcia’s daughter, Chloe, and even though the girl was rather withdrawn and still in her externship phase, she was turning out to be quite a talented scrub nurse. Like all good scrub nurses, she could anticipate Vanessa’s needs and have the appropriate instrument ready right when she needed it.
    “Are you going to the special doctors’ staff meeting Covey and Butler called?” Brad asked as the four of them moved the still-unconscious patient from the OR table to the recovery room gurney.
    “I was hoping to skip it,” Vanessa admitted, “but we finished up ahead of schedule and now I don’t have a good excuse.”
    “I’ll save you a seat.” Brad winked at her over the top of his mask. “Near the door in case it runs so long we want to sneak out.”
    “Good plan. Butler can get long-winded.”
    “No kidding. He went on for twenty minutes at Mark Lawson’s funeral.”
    Vanessa followed Lisa and Chloe as they wheeled the patient into the postanesthesia care unit that adjoined the operating room. Vanessa wrote orders on the patient’s chart, double-checked her surgical handiwork, then headed out in time to make the 10:00 a.m. assembly.
    Pulling off her surgical cap, Vanessa let her hair tumble about her shoulders as she walked into the conference room to find most of her coworkers already seated. Elle’s fiancé, Dante Nash waved and she waved back before slipping down beside Brad as Butler and Covey entered the room.
    She tried to settle her scattered mind and pay attention to the proceedings, but she kept thinking about her mysterious midnight lover. Surgery was the only place where she’d been able to compartmentalize and shut out the memory of what she’d done on Friday night.
    Why had she slept with Tanner?
    You know why. Deep inside you’re a very bad girl and all the university degrees in the world can’t hide who you really are.
    She was damaged goods and that’s all there was to it. She could climb as high as she wanted in her career, but she could never escape who she was or where she came from or the things she’d done to survive.
    Jarrod Butler and Covey made their way to the podium on the small dais in the comfortable conference room where they held the monthly Morbidity and Mortality meetings to review the mistakes they might have made in caring for patients and to improve their performance as physicians.
    Like everything else at Confidential Rejuvenations, the room screamed money. From the solid walnut podium, to the state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment to the plush leather swivel chairs they sat in. It was a far cry