Four days in this crazy, upside-down country, and who ended up in her treatment room on her very first shift? The blonde baker she hadn't been able to stop thinking about. She couldn't decide if it was fate mocking her, or throwing her a bone.
She'd spent her first half-week in Australia in a jet-lagged haze, or at least that's the excuse she'd given herself for why she hadn't gone back to the cute bakery and apologised to the cute baker for being so rude her first morning in town.
She had a chance now, it was clear her patient recognised her. But she couldn't make herself mention it, at least not with Gale Hawthorne in the room. Her new colleague was nice enough, but the way he bristled when he picked up Mr. Mellark's chart made her guess he wasn't a fan.
Mellark. She hadn't thought to glance at his first name before they'd entered the room, and Gale hadn't used it either. Oh well, maybe it was for the best. It was strange enough having Gale shadowing her, she hadn't been accompanied by another doctor since her first year of internship, and that was a long time ago. Flirting with a patient definitely wouldn't improve tall, dark and broody's opinion of her.
Even if that patient was wearing the sexiest little half-smile.
"I'm just going to grab one of the nurses, Mister Mellark," Katniss said. Gale was already moving on, he was shadowing her mostly to show her where everything was and to help out with the unfamiliar systems. But in a bustling emergency room, wasting his time watching her put in a line of sutures was just silly.
"Peeta," Blondie said, and she frowned. He laughed, it was warm and deep and Katniss thought she'd do a lot just to hear that laugh again. "My name is Peeta," he repeated, a little shyly. "Peeta Mellark. Mister Mellark is my dad."
"Peeta." She tried out his name, liking the way it felt in her mouth, and his grin widened. "It's nice to meet you. Now hang on, I'll be right back."
She was still grinning when she found a pair of nurses chatting near the triage station. "I'm sorry, I don't know your names yet," Katniss started, "but I need an extra set of hands in treatment room four."
"Wouldn't mind getting my hands on that one all right," one of the nurses said, a tall redhead a little older than Katniss herself.
"He's a total spunk," the younger nurse tittered, and Katniss rolled her eyes. She wasn't certain exactly what that meant, but from their flushed cheeks and the way they both giggled behind their hands, she had a pretty good guess.
"Right, well, could one of you glove up and bring a suture kit?"
Katniss didn't bother waiting to see which would follow.
She stopped at the entrance to the treatment room, not really a room in fact, more of an alcove, but giving the illusion of privacy for the patient. Peeta was still sitting sideways on the gurney, but now his head was tipped back against the wall, eyes closed in exhaustion. She took a minute to really look at him. He was wearing a white t-shirt, just like the first time she'd seen him. But instead of jeans and an apron, he wore a pair of heavy canvas pants with yellow reflective stripes, and red suspenders that puddled on the white paper sheet. Heavy black boots dangled just above the floor.
Firefighter clothes. Turnout gear, she thought it was called, at least back home. Seems the handsome baker led a double life.
He opened his eyes as she entered, the blue warm and welcoming. He was one of those guys who smiled with his eyes, she thought.
She slid a wheeled stool over and sat beside him, taking his arm in her hands. The bleeding had slowed to a sluggish ooze, but the gash was deep. "Going to start with a little shot of local anaesthetic," she said, "then we'll clean and stitch this up."
"I don't need a shot," he said, looking warily at the alcohol swab she unwrapped. Uncomfortable with needles, she gauged.
Katniss couldn't resist teasing him. "That's what all of the big, tough men say before they start crying like little girls."
He unleashed that broad smile at her again, genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness, and an unexpected warmth rushed through her veins.
"Did you get these fighting fires?" she asked, tracing a finger along the myriad of burn scars scattered over his forearm and hand.
"No," he said, hissing as she used his distraction to inject the anaesthetic. "Burns are part of the life of a baker."
"You've been doing it a long time." It wasn't a question, some of those marks were old, more than a decade if she had to guess.
"I opened my bakery right out of uni," Peeta said. "Everyone thought I was crazy. Tech was where the money was. My mum wanted me to be an accountant. But I was stubborn."
"And the firefighting?" Katniss prompted after several moments passed with only the muffled cacophony of the hospital between them.
Before he could answer the curtain flew open with a flutter. The younger of the two nurses appeared, beaming like the sun. "Sorry," she said a little breathlessly. "Had to get a kit."
Katniss scrutinised her. Had to fluff her hair and put on lip gloss, apparently.
But Peeta must have noticed. He smiled at the newcomer—Em, she said her name was, and proceeded to flirt shamelessly with her, to the point where Katniss had to ask Em at least twice for just about everything she needed. Apparently neither of them even remembered Katniss was there. She'd have been better off doing the damned sutures alone rather than putting up with all of the fawning and giggling and hair flipping.
Yet when she pressed the last bit of tape into place over the gauze (maybe a little too roughly) and glanced up to release her patient, it was like a different man sat on the stretcher. Same golden curls, same incredible arms. But his eyes looked dead, devoid of emotion, not the smiling eyes she'd seen before. He kept up an effortless banter with the besotted young nurse, but his smile was more of a smirk, cocky instead of warm. Katniss could see it was an act.
How incredibly odd, she thought.
She stood. Peeta's gaze flew to hers, his turmoil plain, as if he wanted to speak to her but something was holding him back.
Or maybe she just wished that was the case. It had been nice, those few minutes where his attention had been on her, but it hadn't been any more than a flirt flirting, obviously. Not that she minded, she definitely wasn't looking for anything anyway. She enjoyed the company of men from time to time, usually other doctors who understood the hours and the lifestyle and were looking for the same no-strings release she was.
But it had been a long time since she'd felt any desire. Her libido vanished when her world came crashing in on her. So while the little spark of interest was nice, this time in Australia wasn't about screwing her way through the myriad of hot blonde surfers the country boasted. It was about figuring out her life.
She snapped off her gloves, leaving Em to explain wound care to Mr. Mellark, and ignored the way his eyes followed her.