Virginal Valentine Read online

  Virginal Valentine

  A Dirty-Sweet Medical Romance

  Barbra Campbell

  Copyright © 2020 Barbra Campbell

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Cover design by Hans Campbell

  If you’d like to stay up to date on my stories, subscribe to my newsletter:

  https://BarbraCampbell.com

  For Melissa and Kathy in my reader group. Thanks for your patience waiting to get to meet Ty.

  And thanks to April… I wouldn’t have written a bald guy, but geez, once I started looking around, I was sold. The internet research wasn’t bad either!

  Chapter 1

  Missy

  The playing cards slid smoothly through my fingers as I shuffled the deck. I pressed downward with my thumbs forcing the cards into place with the handy Bridge my grandma had taught me… seven therapeutic times in a row. A Harvard University study backed up seven as the magical number of shuffles, but people considered me a total nerd if I cited studies on card shuffling, so I kept the knowledge to myself.

  My phone dinged… the specific chime alerting me to a Facebook post. My shoulders slumped and my heart grew heavy. Jacks, Queens, and Kings were far nicer than real people, my co-workers in particular. We worked at Mercy General Hospital but that didn’t mean the personal relationships were merciful.

  I ran my fingers over the length of the cards, enjoying the smoothness of the orderly stack. One game, then I would deal with social media. That wasn’t the arrangement I’d made with myself though. I took a deep breath and grabbed my phone.

  After another day of being ridiculed on social media, I’d promised myself to be done with it. I’d signed up originally thinking it would be a buffer, allowing me to have friends without having to be in close physical proximity to any of them. Foolish. Giving people access to me at all hours of the day and in the privacy of my home was more of a burden than the social crutch I’d hoped it would be.

  All I ended up accomplishing was seeing how many people were willing to click the Thumbs Up or Laughing Face buttons on posts I didn’t find humorous. I mean, was it really that hysterical to put stupid sayings on pictures and send them to a million people? Apparently it was to everyone but me. My need for order and logic stripped me of those pleasures.

  My hospital co-workers had nicknamed me the Mouse of Mercy. I fit the mousy stereotype, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be reminded of my isolation.

  I’d tried casually mentioning I didn’t care for the name but I’m not sure anyone had even heard my comment. The art of interjecting audible contributions into group conversations was lost on me. The self-imposed consequence of not being able to defend myself against social media chatter was to get rid of it.

  Opening the app on my phone, I clicked on the three bars in the top right, scoured the settings, and ultimately decided they didn’t want you to be able to get rid of their app.

  Switching to my laptop, I found the section that would let me hide my profile. Why I had such a need to be a part of a social outlet that drove me nuts was absolutely insane, but I hovered the arrow over the option to deactivate my account without deleting it.

  A moment of worry flickered through my mind. I wouldn’t be able to see Doctor Torres’s page anymore and I questioned if having unrestricted access to pictures of him was worth wading through the sea of insanity from other people’s posts. An even bigger worry was if he could tell how many times I’d looked at his pictures. If he knew, he had the decency not to humiliate me by making the obsessively stalkerish number public.

  I’d witnessed him turning down advances by numerous women and yet I’d fantasized about a life with him. It wasn’t the white picket fence or the statistically impossible number of kids. It was carnal. It was wrong. Sex was for reproduction. But every time I saw him, my heart beat faster and my unwholesome thoughts took me to more and more sinful places.

  There was something about Dr. Torres that made order and logic unnecessary, upending my solidly controlled lifestyle. That in itself was unnerving. My immoral attraction to him felt like a house of cards… beautiful and fascinating but impractical, useless, and easily destroyed.

  Experience had told me I’d be the one to get hurt.

  I forced myself not to open his profile to take one last look at his sexy smile, sleeve of tattoos, and bald head that contrasted his swoon-worthy stubble. I hadn’t had a thing for bald guys until I met him.

  Pressure built low in my belly at the thought. I swallowed and tried to convince myself he wasn’t perfect.

  Why did people get tattoos? How could you possibly know you’d have the same taste in artwork in a year, much less a decade?

  Why did I want to know if he had more tattoos than were visible on his arm? He was wrong for me, but the heaviness in my chest insisted he was right, so sinfully right.

  A pang of guilt filled me with agony. Why did I let Ty strip me of the moral high ground I’d been raised to honor?

  I mustered strength.

  I clicked the deactivate button and was on my way to social media freedom and virtuous living.

  Sadness washed over me. Was there any redemption? I consoled my sorrow with a cup of cocoa.

  I’d be happier in the long run. My co-workers weren’t outright mean, but they liked to poke fun at each other. Maybe I was too thin-skinned for their humor. Maybe they were jerks.

  I grabbed the deck and debated which kind of solitaire to play, settling on Clock solitaire, my favorite. The idea of getting all of the kings in one stack, all of the queens in their stack, and so on offered a happiness to my soul. Everyone was with their people. Except me. Another sip of cocoa.

  Giant friend circles and wild Girls Night Outs weren’t my thing, but I craved cuddling up on my couch with a warm body. And if the warm body was anything like Doctor Torres’s, all the better.

  Chapter 2

  Dr. Torres

  Taking a breather between patients, I walked into the break room. I’d put off asking Missy out long enough and I hoped she’d be there.

  Several staff members were enjoying coffee and cake, someone’s birthday.

  My hands clenched. Missy stood at the edge of the group, the odd man out while everyone gossiped about whatever they were reading on their phones. How could I get her alone?

  Jessi, one of the nurses, snapped a group selfie and started tagging people, announcing each one as she typed their name in, Dangerous Dave, Mouse of Mercy…”

  Pretty much everyone laughed except Missy.

  After quietly saying she preferred being called Missy, she excused herself from the group and rushed out of the doorway. No one even acknowledged she’d spoken.

  I reached to stop her but she tucked her arms close and rushed past. Ready to accomplish a good deed for her I started to tell the group not to use that nickname, but an emergency came over the intercom and the party ended.

  My heart sank and my desire to protect Missy kicked into high gear.

  Never one to hang out at social events or even take part in idle chatter in the break room, she’d been elusive to me. Other than catching her staring at me a couple of times, and an incident when she opened her phone and my picture was on the screen, I wouldn’t even believe she knew I existed. I’d politely pretended not to have seen the picture of me and my cat on her phone. It was a Facebook post that anyone could have seen, but I loved knowing she saw it.

  And yet, I wanted her to be mine. Wanted to protect her. Wanted to make love to her. Precisely why I hadn’t asked her out. My inability to think straight around her scared me. If I came on too strong, she might close me out forever.

  Her inner circle of friends was so small I wasn’t sure it existed. I’
d friended her on social media hoping to find a way to her heart, but no matter how many times I checked her page, she didn’t post, didn’t have anything in her About section, and didn’t even show off pictures of her pets or food. Other than being tagged, she was a ghost.

  If she protected her heart half as tightly as she protected her personal life, my work was cut out for me.

  At home that evening, I decided to contact her through Facebook. Wasn’t social media the ideal outlet for reaching out to someone but letting them decide how and when to respond? No pressure, unless you counted what was going on in my balls. They were freaking ready to blow every time I thought of her, but she was so sweet, so shy, so opposite of me. Did I have a chance?

  My cat stalked me from her fancy cat house and pounced onto the couch the second I sat down. Being loved was nice, but I was hoping to get it from someone a little more human. Miss Fluffy Tail worked her way under my arm, assumed her position on my abs and chest, and started working her claws near my neck.

  Shifting her paws onto my shirt, we found an agreeable location for her show of affection. I scratched her head with one hand and opened Facebook with the other. Typing Missy’s name with my thumb, I scanned the names the search box pulled up but didn’t see hers. Had I spelled her name wrong? No.

  I carefully scooped Miss Fluffy Tail up and set her on the cushion beside me. Leaning forward, elbows on my knees, phone in both hands, I tried again. Nothing on Messenger either. Was she gone?

  My confusion was interrupted by Fluffy jumping onto my shoulders. The cat didn’t have boundaries. She liked to snuggle around my neck. It might have been a dominance thing, but I pretended she simply enjoyed being close.

  The loud rumble of her purr assured me she was oblivious to my panic.

  “Where’d she go, Fluffy?”

  “Meow.”

  Very helpful. I thought back to the nickname in the breakroom. Had it bothered her enough to shut down her account?

  My arms ached to wrap around her, tell her everything would be okay. She was so timid. How often did people unknowingly hurt her? If only I’d said something in the breakroom faster. Or maybe Facebook was glitching and I was working myself up over a problem that wouldn’t exist tomorrow.

  Either way, I was asking her out. I’d get over my fear of scaring her and talk to her at lunch.

  ***

  I scheduled my lunch break to coincide with Missy’s. Even though she always brown bagged it, she ate in the cafeteria instead of the break room. Making my way through the line, the oatmeal raisin cookies caught my attention.

  She’d brought oatmeal cookies numerous times. The only question was if I could buy an extra cookie and appear suave offering it to her.

  When I finished at the register, I headed straight for the table she always claimed. The corner, no window, her back to the wall, but her nose always in a book, never scanning the room. I made sure to stop and address her from several feet away to avoid startling her.

  “Hi, Missy.” My voice came out far more frog-like than I normally sounded. Off to a great start of sounding suave.

  A pause while she swallowed and put her bookmark in her book… she looked up and flinched when she found me staring.

  Was I scary? Not everyone liked tattoos and shaved heads.

  She smiled, then after a million disastrous scenarios raced through my mind, she said, “Hi, Doctor Torres. Is everything okay?” She glanced at her watch.

  “It’s fine. Call me Ty. I was wondering if I could share your table?” My throat had cleared and I no longer played the role of frog prince, although if that’s what it took to get a kiss…

  Shifting her gaze from her food, to her book, to the empty space across from her, and then to the empty tables beside us, she reached her arms around her items and pulled them closer even though she was taking up less than half of the table. With a nervously sweet smile, she said “Sure, I was just reading a book.”

  Holding up the book, she stuck it in her purse.

  I’d set my tray on the table and was in my seat by the time she looked up again. “You enjoying it?”

  Her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open enough I imagined slipping my tongue in.

  I tore my gaze away from her lips but realized I’d licked mine, like a goddamn predator ready to pounce. I had to focus. “The book, are you enjoying the book?”

  “Not really, but I’m compelled to finish something once I start.” She lowered her head and toyed with a chip.

  “I like a girl who’s not afraid of commitment.” Damn.

  The chip crunched in her fingers, and not a little, she crushed it into tiny pieces. “That’s nice,” she eked out.

  “I meant it’s good to see things through, not judge too quickly. Sometimes there’s more than meets the eye. You gotta give people a chance.” People? I thought we were talking about books.

  She studied me curiously.

  Her eyes sparked with something I’d never seen before and melted me like a candle in a volcano. And that’s exactly what our first conversation was doing to me, making me feel like I was a volcano ready to blow. But with any luck I was keeping it cool on the outside, the calm mountain sitting there innocently, giving no indication of the fire burning inside. “Perhaps I should eat my lunch and avoid embarrassing myself?”

  “That’s usually my plan,” she said, her smile wider than normal.

  I now had two additional pieces of insight, she always finished what she started and she ate alone to avoid embarrassment. If her smile was any indication, I’d breached the outer walls of her friendship circle. Had anyone at the hospital bothered to get to know her? Did she want them too? “I brought you a cookie.”

  Lifting the extra plate with the dessert, I handed it to her.

  “Oatmeal. Thank you, it’s my favorite. Was this a lucky peace offering in case I didn’t let you sit at my table, or have you been studying my lunches?”

  Shit. What was the right answer? I didn’t generally care what anyone thought but Missy wasn’t just anyone. “It’s what they had today.”

  Her smile dropped faster than I could flog myself for playing my comment down way too far. She broke a piece off the cookie and ate it.

  “Can we go on a date?” Well, the good news was my intent was abundantly clear. The bad news was I continued to unimpress myself.

  She laughed. A nervous, questioning laugh. There was something about it that didn’t fit the reserved quiet side I’d seen of her. Maybe she surprised herself too because she covered her mouth and forced it to stop.

  “You have a great laugh. How can I get you to do it again?”

  Missy waved a hand my direction and looked away.

  “Seriously. You should laugh more often. Plus, your smile’s an amazing bonus to the laugh.” What was I going to do next, tell her she had the silkiest hair around, and the dark brown locks would look incredible draped over her shoulder, between her breasts? That would give me an eyeful of her tits, hair, and creamy skin all in one shot. Or maybe I should ask if she’d show me her pussy while I was at it because her laugh and smile were only two parts of what drew me to her.

  My breathing was accelerated and I hadn’t experienced that much desperation and nervousness since asking a girl out for the first time when I was around eight.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled and bit off a chunk of sandwich. Good girls don’t talk with their mouths full, so she was temporarily off the hook for further conversation.

  I had to revisit the date question. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

  “Tonight?”

  “If you’re free.” I’d been thinking the weekend, but I’d take her as soon as I could get her.

  Chapter 3

  Missy

  I dealt the five by five grid of cards for Monte Carlo Solitaire, fitting to play a game of pairs when I’d been asked on a date by none other than Doctor Dreamy.

  Considering I’d never seen Doctor Torres appear uncomfortable before, our lunch
encounter had apparently been abnormally difficult for both of us. But now I officially had permission to call him Ty.

  My heart had fainted when he said I could use his first name and it became obvious we were breaching the professional relationship. It took all of my effort not to say his name out loud for fear I’d say it ten different ways just to let it roll off my tongue over and over again.

  Then he would have regretted befriending the weird quiet girl, and I’d be back to not having work friends.

  His nervousness had given me the high ground, or at least higher ground than I usually claimed. Somehow between my normally inelegant attempts at conversation and his comments that didn’t seem to come out quite like he’d intended, we’d managed to set up a date.

  He even respected my hesitation about going out and quickly detoured to an option of staying home and cooking dinner together. I offered my place and a game of cards, and we had a deal. My heart almost burst that he didn’t need the flash of a fancy evening, or the excitement of whatever entertainment was all the rage.

  Was he too good to be true?

  Unable to focus on my card game, I took a break and pulled out the pan for grilled cheese. He might be the perfect guy. Who else would agree to such a simple meal on a first date?

  My heart stopped, again. A date. No matter how bizarre it might appear to other people, Ty and I were going on a date. I ran into the bathroom and confirmed my black leggings and blue top worked together. I’m not sure which universe I suddenly thought I lived in that solid black wouldn’t match another plain color. I didn’t dare buy any of the popular clothing that had crazy mismatched patters. The simplicity of solid colors soothed me, but nerves had an evil way of making me second guess myself.

  Chapstick smoothed my lips but the dryness overtaking my throat was going to require about a gallon of water. I’d been sipping all afternoon but combatting the Sahara was tough. I hadn’t gone on a real date since high school. Up until I met Ty that had been fine. My contained world was happy and easy. How had I caught the attention of the one guy who made my knees weak?