Will & Patrick Meet the Mob by Leta Blake, Alice Griffiths Page A

bone about everything, that’s for sure.” Patrick turns back around and pokes his head around the corner again. The brunette nurse who cries whenever Patrick berates her for being an idiot walks by but doesn’t notice him, thank God. Grabbing Will’s hand, he darts across the hall into the physician’s changing room.
    Once they’re at his locker, Patrick works the combination and Will crowds up behind him, breathing in his ear. “You really have no concept of personal space, do you?” Patrick asks.
    Will backs away half an inch, but Patrick can still feel his heat along his back. 
    “I’m allowed to have things of my own, you know. Not everything has to be absorbed into the wonder that is Will Patterson.”
    “The wonder of me?” Will says, nudging closer again, his hips brushing Patrick’s ass. “You think I’m a wonder?”
    “Stop fishing.”
    “I like fishing.”
    “Whatever. Get off my back. You’re making my ear all ew.” Patrick makes a show of sticking his pinky in his ear canal and wriggling it around.
    Will leans against the opposite locker. “Seriously. Why are you sneaking around?”
    “I don’t want to be seen here. Obviously.”
    “If this is about Shane Hammond, you know you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
    He had to marry a stubborn man, didn’t he? “I’m not ashamed of what’s happening with Shane Hammond. I did the best I could for him, which was better than anyone this side of Pluto could have done.”
    Will snorts. “There’s my super-sexy narcissist. But seriously, what’s up with the secrecy? You’re making me nervous.”
    Patrick scowls and stuffs his few personal effects into the bag at the bottom of the locker. He removes his coat and stuffs it in the bag too. “Give me yours.”
    Will hands his coat over, eyebrow raised. He clearly knows he’s busted Patrick at something ; he just hasn’t figured out what.
    “Stop looking at me.” Patrick stuffs Will’s coat in the bag and zips it up.
    “No. With my dad in town, and so many loose ends dangling, your sneaky behavior isn’t very comforting.”
    Patrick studies Will’s brown eyes, their soft, concerned warmth filling him with that tender emotion that he hates and loves, and loves to hate. “All right. You win.”
    Will’s eyebrows shoot up. “I do?”
    “Don’t act like you’re surprised.”
    Will grins.
    Patrick squeezes the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Follow me. And try not to draw attention to yourself.”
    Addison Rowe’s room is exactly two doors down and one flight up from where they’re standing now. Patrick has Will check for patients or nurses at the two corners along the way.
    Once Will gives him the all clear, Patrick walks into Addison’s hospital room with Will on his heels. He should tell Will to get out, because this is his patient and this is privileged, but, then again, she’s not his patient right now. Which is why he’s not supposed to be in here.
    “Hey, kiddo,” Patrick says, motioning for Will to shut the door. “How do you feel today?”
    Addison Rowe’s wide, sunny smile is Patrick’s favorite thing about her, and the fact that she never fails to break into it as soon as he walks into her room fills him with warmth and a fuzzy near-happiness.
    “I’m great, Dr. McCloud.” She pushes her long, brown curly hair behind her ear and grins at him. Her black eyes twinkle when she smiles. “I’m so relieved to see you.”
    “No trouble breathing?”
    “Not the last few days.”
    “No pain or prickling sensations?”
    “Yeah, but not any worse than before.”
    “And they’re keeping you on the good drugs?”
    “That’s what you tell them to give me, right?” Addison laughs, her eyes darting from Patrick to Will where he lingers near the entrance to the room, and then back again. “Hey, Will, what are you doing here?”
    Of course she knows him. Patrick isn’t surprised. It’s Healing, and Addison is fifteen, close to Caitlin’s age, and for all Patrick