The Bad Boys of Summer Read Online Free Page A

possibly count, all of them willing to spread their legs for a brilliant doctor like myself, but once the promise of commitment reared its ugly head, I was gone faster than a bat out of hell. I knew the agony of loss. It was torture. I never wanted to feel—or make someone else feel—that kind of pain ever again.
    Keeping everything casual meant there was less of a chance of anyone getting truly hurt. Sure, there might be some bruised egos, like in Shauna’s case, but I knew she’d get over it. After all, she came into my life knowing the kind of guy I was, how I operated—I had a reputation. But all of that seems so small when a girl gets it into her head that she can change you, make you into the kind of guy she can show off to her folks.
    I’d never be that guy, not for anyone.
    The elevator door opened as the car finally came to a stop, a soft chime resounding from the speakers as I stepped out into the laminated tile hallway. I hated how clean everything looked in hospitals. All of the painstakingly cultivated order seemed so forced and contrived—which is why I loved the emergency department, the definition of controlled chaos. I loved the lights, the sound, the shouting and the occasional fist-fight that would break out between the paramedics and some of the more unruly patients. It felt like all of humanity was focused into a single spot for everyone to see, the very best and the very worst.
    I passed a couple of new nurse interns and flashed them a winning smile and a wink. Both of them smiled, biting their lips and hoping that I’d been looking at one and not the other. I loved having that effect on women, the power to make them practically shout, “Pick me! Fuck me!” It made me feel like a god—as though I didn’t get enough of that from actually being a doctor, holding a person’s very life in my hands day in and day out.
    What can I say? I guess we’re all addicts, in one way or another. Mr. Velasquez had his heroin, and I had my ego.
    Without warning, I was knocked to the side and damn near crashed into the wall. At first I didn’t realize what had happened, or what had hit me, but as I gave my head a shake to get my bearings, I realized that it wasn’t a what, but a who .
    “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” said the young woman who’d barreled into me, kneeling down as she picked up the contents of her purse that had scattered in her unwitting assault on my person. She was probably no more than twenty-five, with gorgeous, dark hair that covered any hint of her face.
    But I was less concerned with her face and more concerned with her flawless set of tits that I’d love to get a hold of. She was wearing a form-fitting, button-down blouse and skinny jeans combo that showed off her figure so perfectly, flaunting her hips and the pert little ass of hers.
    “I didn’t see you coming,” she said. “I was looking at my phone.”
    “It’s all right,” I assured her, regaining my balance and offering her a hand as she picked up the last item she’d lost in our head-on collision. “I don’t think either of us are going to need to call the insurance company, and it definitely doesn’t look like I dented that killer body of yours in the crash.”
    She chuckled as she put her purse back onto her shoulder, shaking her loose mane of dark hair as she stood once again. Something in my stomach clenched, though at the moment, I couldn’t understand why—everything about this girl seemed so horrifyingly familiar. I heard a slew of warning klaxons going off inside my head; I just couldn’t figure out what they meant.
    Until I looked into her familiar brown eyes.
    “You never change, do you, Slade?”
    A pit opened up right in the bottom of my stomach as I watched her push her dark locks aside, revealing a face I hadn’t seen outside of my dreams in over seven years. My breath caught and I felt my face drain of its color. I couldn’t believe it. How did she find me?
    My head spun as I tried to come up with