Page 11 of One Last Rodeo

Her stare is blade sharp. “Ofcourseit’s you. Who else could it be?”

“What did I do?”

Before she can answer, the bartender stops in front of us. “What can I get you two to drink?”

I don’t look away from Catalina. She doesn’t look away from me. She’s glaring and I’m staring. Memorizing the shape of her eyes and those dark lashes that frame them. How can someone be this smart, gifted, and beautiful, but also so mad?

“Water for me,” I say without looking away from her face.

Her eyes narrow further. “Glass of red. Whatever you have is fine, just not the cheapest.”

“Okay,” the bartender murmurs awkwardly before walking off.

“So, you’re having two glasses tonight? That’s not going to mess up your heart health?”

She scoffs. “I’m not the one who should be worrying about heart health.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s your problem?” I ask, growing annoyed.

“My problem,” she says coolly, “isyou.”

I reel back a little. “What the hell did I do to you besides have a congenital heart defect I didn’t even know about until I was in my thirties, laid out on your table, struggling to breathe?”

She scoffs. “You thinkthat’smy problem with you?”

“Yeah,” I snap, folding my arms across my chest. “Because I can’t think of any other damn reason for you acting like you’ve got a stick shoved up your ass from the moment you realized you’d be working with me.”

Her jaw tightens. “That’s a highly offensive and immature comment, and you’d know that if you paused and thought about your words before speaking.”

“Well, pardon my fucking French. I don’t talk all proper like you, Doc. But it’s true. I just fucking met you and you’re acting like we were enemies in a past life that I didn’t even live.”

“We didn't just meet. You met me months ago,” she fires back.

“When I was highon the painkillers thatyougave me since I was lying there with a fresh scar across my chest.”

“You’re welcome for that, by the way.”

I spread my arms wide. My frustration has reached its peak now. “Is that what you want from me? A ‘thank you for fixing my heart?’ I’ll fucking thank you for the rest of your life if it’d make you happy.Thank you, Doctor Alba for saving my life.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not what I want. I was just doing my job.”

“Well, what is it then? The scar’s the proof. My heart’s good.” I tap my chest with two fingers.

“How’d that heal up?” she asks, casually. There's an edge to her voice and something in her gaze that tells me she genuinely wants to know.

I tug the collar of my t-shirt down, exposing the scar so she can get a good look at it. I didn’t use the scar tape and cream she suggested, only because I didn’t care about the mark she left behind. It still healed up just fine.

“Like it never happened.”

Her gaze falls slowly to my chest. I watch her study the faint, raised line of skin where she cut me like she’s reading a book that she wrote herself. The breath she sucks in is tight, almost pained, and something hot shoots through me when she does it.

I wonder if she ever sees the scars that she gives patients months after they’ve healed. I wonder if any of them ever come back to show and thank her.

There’s a softening of her gaze when she looks at it like she's appreciating the way the body can heal. Something loosens in her posture, and I feel it connect to my core. Then just as quickly as it appeared, her eyes dart away, looking down at the bar table before back to me. The hardness is there, but the slip happened. I saw it. And that tells me I don’t think she’s as mad as she’s pretending to be.