Iron Orchids Box Set 3 Read online

  Iron Orchids Box Set 3

  Books 5 & 6

  Danielle Norman

  Copyright © 2019 by Danielle Norman

  and F Squared, LLP

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission from either the author and or the above named publisher of this book with the exception for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction.

  The name Danielle Norman® is a registered Trademark

  Iron Orchids™️ is a pending trademark.

  It is your responsibility to know the law: 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 112 Stat. 2860

  Contents

  Stella, Until You

  Stella, Until You

  Until

  1. Stella

  2. Tristan

  3. Stella

  4. Tristan

  5. Stella

  6. Tristan

  7. Tristan

  8. Stella

  9. Tristan

  10. Stella

  11. Tristan

  12. Tristan

  13. Stella

  14. Tristan

  15. Stella

  16. Stella

  17. Tristan

  18. Tristan

  19. Stella

  20. Everyone thinks they can tell just one person

  21. Guys gossip as much as girls

  22. Shhh, we need to keep it just between us

  23. Did you ever play the telephone game as a child?

  24. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead

  25. Tristan

  26. Stella

  27. Tristan

  28. Stella

  29. Stella

  Epilogue

  Vivian, Midnight Call Girl

  Prologue

  1. Vivian

  2. Aaron

  3. Vivian

  4. Aaron

  5. Vivian

  6. Vivian

  7. Aaron

  8. Vivian

  9. Aaron

  10. Aaron

  11. Aaron

  12. Aaron

  13. Aaron

  14. Vivian

  15. Aaron

  16. Vivian

  17. Aaron

  18. Vivian

  19. Vivian

  20. Vivian

  21. Vivian

  22. Aaron

  23. Vivian

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon

  Give Me My Audio!

  Binge Read Me

  Box Set Madness

  Sneak Peek—Sadie, Doctor Accident

  A Word From Danielle

  Find Me

  Meet Danielle

  Also By Danielle

  Thank You

  Stella, Until You

  Iron Orchids Book 5

  Stella, Until You

  One week in Vegas.

  Two people who have tried to deny their feelings.

  * * *

  Three possible outcomes:

  Leave together

  Leave separated or

  Uncover a secret so big it shakes your world.

  * * *

  Everyone sees me as sassy, outspoken, and unafraid.

  When the truth is… I’m scared.

  Scared of being rejected.

  And scared of having my heart broken.

  * * *

  All by one man, Greek McCreamy Doctor, Tristan Christakos.

  * * *

  The problem is:

  We work together, our families are connected, and if we don’t work out

  I’d still be forced to see him.

  Can anyone say awkward?

  Look, look, look Linda, listen to me, I do not write porn. I write steamy romance. You have no clue what you’re talking about. Take a moment and read, maybe you’ll learn what your husband would like.

  To the group of drunken women, that I’m fortunate to call friends…

  Otherwise known as: Charlie Hunnam’s motherfucking dragon, the legal eagle, the Swedish chef, the Indian Princess, Thorne in my side, and Windsor Palace: I fucking love you. Now do NOT make me cry again.

  “Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.”

  — Oscar Wilde

  Until

  To my wonderful readers, thank you for riding along on this wild Iron Orchids ride, my very first romance series. A few things before you begin.

  I beg you from the bottom of my heart to please not leave any spoilers in reviews or on social media. I had such a fun time figuring out how to fuck with you, that I want everyone to have the same experience when they read it for the first time. Remember that when you are in Chapter Five and the world is exactly how you want it…bwahaha. Yeah, I’m a bitch, but hey, I created Stella after all.

  * * *

  Cheers,

  Dani

  Stella

  I scanned the charts and briefly looked up at the patients.

  “Sick. Sick. Faking. Asshole. Drama queen. Sick.”

  Sometimes, I felt like the fucking Grinch doling out jury duty summonses. I grabbed the information for my first patient and headed to room seven . . . okay, let’s be honest, I headed into the curtained off section we called room seven.

  Gotta love the ER.

  It stank of disinfectant and most of the people who walked in the door were idiots, but I loved it here . . . at the hospital, as in I loved my job as a nurse, not in the ER. I’d much rather be up in neonatal, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t stand seeing—

  “Stella?”

  Mrs. Cameron, an administrator with the hospital, was standing behind me. The woman had to be in her early fifties, but the way she dressed and styled her hair—a blue polyester pantsuit and an overly processed blonde bob that resembled a football helmet—made her look as if she were in her early seventies. She had a look on her face, one that I’d seen a hundred times, it said, I have no clue what to make of you.

  “Yes?”

  “When you’re done with this patient, can you please meet me in my office?”

  “Sure. Give me five minutes.” I retuned my attention to the patient, and he was giving me a stare, you know one of those, should I trust you with my life because you’re getting ready to get in trouble. He was totally questioning my competence. Well, listen here, motherfucker, I was as competent as they came. “What?” I snapped at him.

  Okay, that wasn’t exactly professional, but give me a break.

  “Sounds like you’re in trouble. Maybe I should have a different nurse.” He rolled his eyes as he said that, totally dismissing me.

  “Sure, why not. I’m a RN, any mommy could have helped you, and it wouldn’t have cost you a grand. You have a splinter, that’s all. Most normal people don’t come to the hospital for those kinds of things.”

  Okay, maybe adding normal was wrong, but hey, it was better than what I really wanted to say, which was something along the lines of him being an overgrown man-child, and I felt sorry for the woman who got saddled with his sorry ass.

  Recording his vitals information into his chart, I filed it for the doctor then headed to the charge nurse. “Hey, can you have someone cover my patients? I need to run to the admin offices.”

  “You’re all set, Stella, Mrs. Cameron already said that she needed you. Just hurry back.”

  “Thanks.”
br />   Lost in my own world, pondering why I was being called to the admin offices, I almost ran into one of the ER doctors.

  “You look radiant this morning,” he said as he walked by, flashing me a smile. He was trying desperately to be the hospital’s version of Doctor McDreamy. He might have accomplished it if it weren’t for one man, a gorgeous Greek neonatologist who I had deemed Dr. McCreamy. He was the reason I was no longer over at the Women and Children’s Center, and it wasn’t because he hated me or because I couldn’t stand him—quite the opposite, actually. When he was around, I tended to want to lose my clothes. One time, I actually lost my head and acted on it, and . . . well, yeah. I couldn’t work there anymore.

  As I turned down the last corridor, my heartbeat picked up speed as it hit me because there was a chance this call to admin wouldn’t be good. Had they heard about what happened?

  No. If they had, they would have had someone from human resources come scoop me up.

  Maybe I was being escorted out for doing something wrong. Sure, I was sarcastic, but I hadn’t told anyone to fuck off, at least, I didn’t think I had. I mean, come on, I was a nurse, and even in the twenty-first century the profession was dominated by women, which meant one thing—cattiness. So, I guessed that I could have pissed off a coworker, those bitches be trippin’, and no, I didn’t push any of them.

  Stopping in front of the large faux-wood door that read: Staff Administration, I took a deep breath and then knocked.

  “Come in.”

  One step into the room, I froze because sitting in one of the chairs was Dr. McCreamy, otherwise known as Tristan Christakos, the most gorgeous man to ever walk the planet, the bane of my existence, and the best one-night stand ever. Yeah, he was a mistake that I’d happily make or should I say do again.

  Fuck.

  Tristan stood when I entered, as his damn well-bred, gentlemanly self had to do, which only made me want to jump him even more. To make matters worse, he was wearing a devilishly wicked smirk on his lips that made all of my parts take notice.

  “Stella, have a seat.” Louise Cameron’s back was ramrod straight as she sat in her high-back, black pleather chair. If I were to base my visit on her posture alone, I would say I was about to be canned.

  The hospital had a no fraternization policy. Although, they had allowed married couples to work for the same hospital in the past, this all had to be reported to admin, and they ultimately decided whether or not to keep both employees. In situations like this when it was between a doctor and a nurse, they usually ended up keeping the doctor since nurses were a dime a dozen. Was that fair? Hell no.

  I could already feel the ire in me building and was ready to fight or at least not go down without a fight.

  I moved to the chair opposite Tristan and plopped down. Okay, I knew that I possessed little to no grace when I did that, but whatever, I was pissed. Turning to face him, the heat in me rose as he continued to smirk. The asshole smirked. He knew we were busted and he was safe. I’d never imagined him being so cruel.

  But fuck a duck if the man still wasn’t gorgeous. His eyes were the color of fresh coffee, untainted by cream. And his skin . . . well, that was a different story, it was cream with a dash of coffee.

  “Stella,” Mrs. Cameron began, “as you are aware, the hospital is building a genetics study center in the hopes of being able to more easily find donor matches. Every year, it seems that there is a bigger strain on our match and donor resources. Not only from the state of perpetual emergency that we seem to be in but also our advance technology in ultrasound imaging. As you know, we are able to detect some birth defects as early as the first heart beat. We feel that it is important as a level one trauma unit and a level-three neonatal ward that we have this resource available to us twenty-four seven. We’ve been sending doctors to different training sessions so they are up to date with all the current technologies and tests.”

  Tristan cleared his throat, and I turned my attention back to him. “You may not be aware of this, Stella, but my interest has always been with trying to negate the rise in genetic birth defects that we see in our high-risk unit. But after the strain on our resource bank for tissue, marrow, and blood, my research was halted. This new genetic center will help me continue my focus.”

  I listened to Tristan’s explanation, but none of this made sense. Sure, his reasoning made sense, but where I was lost was what in the hell any of this had to do with me. My face must have shown my confusion because Mrs. Cameron finally slid a file folder to me.

  “There is a pediatric genetics conference in Las Vegas next week, and we’ve been on the waiting list. Yesterday, we found out that there had been a cancellation and that Dr. Christakos has been invited. He has been asked to bring a nurse or assistant, and he tells me that the two of you worked well together when you were over in the Women and Children’s Center.”

  I nodded because we had worked well together, and she smiled.

  “He’d like you to accompany him to the conference and act as his assistant moving forward as we get the genetic center established.”

  Slow down there, Polyester, he what?

  He wanted me to work with him?

  He wanted me to go to Vegas?

  Me. Tristan. In Vegas? Fuck yeah, where did I sign? Shaking my head, I turned to look at the olive skin Adonis with chocolate eyes that made me want to get on my knees and say ten Hail Marys and praise sweet baby Jesus.

  Shit. I was staring. Smacking my lips, I cleared my throat and then tried again. “Sure, tell me whatever you need,” I said and watched as the corners of Tristan’s lips pulled into an almost challenging smile. I had no clue what he was challenging me to, but he knew better than to yank my chain because, let’s face it, I yanked harder, and of the two of us, he was the only one with something to grab ahold of and tug.

  He must have read my mind or followed my line of sight because he shifted away from me just a bit.

  Yeah, that’s right, pretty boy, I thought and then smirked back.

  “Perfect. Inside that folder is your itinerary. We follow the government posted per diem rate, so please check the website. I believe the last I looked it was roughly two hundred dollars a day that included lodging and meals. So, anything over that is on you. Are you both okay with that?”

  I nodded and then looked at Tristan. “Absolutely,” he agreed.

  “I’ll have someone book your flights and forward you the tickets. Where should we email them to?”

  “You can email them both to me,” Tristan spoke before I had gathered my sense to say something.

  Mrs. Cameron jotted down a few notes and then looked back up. “Thank you, Dr. Christakos, why don’t you and Miss Lang take this to your office and work out any final details?”

  Tristan stood, thanked Louise Cameron for her time, and gestured for me to go ahead of him. I stood, albeit on shaky legs, and followed him out of the office. He didn’t say a word to me. We just walked side by side, our steps in sync.

  Fuck that, I double-stepped, and it knocked us out of sync. He sped up and put us back into synchronization. I was five-foot-ten, so even though Tristan was tall, he was only four inches taller than I was. I lunged forward, taking a larger than normal step, and moved Tristan firmly behind me.

  Damn. He took a giant step and came forward until we were, once again, in unison and standing side by fucking side. We passed by a couple of nurses, who stopped to stare at the spectacle we were making, and I shot them a wink. There was no way I was going to allow him to get ahead of me. I’d already gone along with his idea to just pretend we hadn’t had hot sex on his desk, but that didn’t mean it didn’t burn my crawl, I wasn’t going to allow him to dictate that we walked side by side.

  Sometimes, there is just too much damn joy in the little wins.

  As we walked in silence, still battling back and forth over our pace, I thought—okay, okay . . . I plotted over how to get the upper hand.

  Juvenile as it may be, I was going to take the best
option, which was to stop and pretend to tie my shoe.

  Tristan stopped and waited just like the proper gentleman I knew he was. After a second, I grabbed the tail on one lace of his shoe and yanked. While he stood there, probably trying to decide if I’d really just done what I’d done, I laughed and bolted for the bank of elevators.

  Ignoring the other people on the elevator, I pressed the button for the third floor where his office was located and waited for the doors to close. Maybe I was doing this for more than payback over his wanting to forget that we’d had one night of the hottest sex ever or maybe it was something profound. Yeah . . . I was going with profound like it was my way to stand up to misogynistic assholes. Only problem was, Tristan supported women’s rights as much as I did. So, back to my question . . . why? Oh, I remember . . . because he was a man and, as such, I must always remind him that he was never quite as good as a woman. I mentally patted myself on the back and then stepped out of the elevator, only to slam right into someone walking by.