Page 24 of Rules of the Heart

“I’ve dated before, but never really seriously. I guess I just haven’t found someone I wanted to be serious about. I suppose if I do, I’ll run into the same problems you have, but I’ll just have to deal with that if it happens. I’m not willing to give up on love yet.”

“I hope you find it,” Valerie said softly. “You’re a good person, Ella. I’m glad you weren’t crushed back there. I would have hated it if anything happened to you.”

Once again, Valerie had taken Ella by complete surprise. Her tender words were in such opposition to the constant fighting Ella had had to endure over the last few weeks that she was momentarily shocked into silence. Eventually, she found her voice.

“I’m glad you’re okay, too, Valerie. We may disagree on many things, but I know that you fight for your patients just as fiercely as I do, and I really admire that about you.”

There was a pause as they both considered the unsaid things between them—the things that would no doubt lead to a screaming match in the middle of the cafeteria.

Ella decided it was time to steer the subject into safer waters. “So, who is your favorite romance author?”

“You’ve never heard of her.”

“Oh, really? I have read some romance, myself. Like I said, I haven’t given up on love. I may not have found it yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live vicariously through fictional characters.”

Valerie grinned. “Okay, then. Emily Hayes.”

“I haven’t read her stuff yet, but I have heard of her. I’ll have to check her out!”

They spent a good ten minutes discussing Emily Hayes, Anna Stone, Jae, Margaux Fox and Radclyffe, before moving on to other shared interests. Ella was surprised to find she had a lot incommon with Valerie, from hobbies to political views to funny patient stories.

She got so engrossed in talking to Valerie that she didn’t even realize that her lunch was long over. She had, in fact, gone twenty minutes over time.

Valerie suddenly glanced at her watch and leaped up as though she’d been electrocuted. “We’re late! We should have been back to work twenty minutes ago.”

Ella looked at her watch and hastily got up as well. “I guess we got distracted.”

“That’s not acceptable! It’s against the rules!”

Ella resisted the urge to roll her eyes with difficulty. Valerie looked like she might cry, or scream, Ella wasn’t sure which. She tentatively put a hand on Valerie’s shoulder. “Something tells me you haven’t been late from lunch in quite a while. It’s okay to make a mistake every now and then, Valerie. I know you didn’t mean to break the rules.”

Valerie took several deep breaths. “Yeah. You’re right. We should get back to work, though. This was nice, Ella. Do you… Do you want to do it again tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow sounds perfect. Maybe we could go to a real restaurant? I must admit, the cafeteria food leaves something to be desired.”

“True enough. There’s a diner down the road that does great toasted sandwiches.”

“The diner it is, then.”

They both went their separate ways. Ella couldn’t stop smiling. She had a good feeling about this. From the beginning, she had felt like she and Valerie could be good friends if they could just get past the issues they were constantly arguing about. Now, it seemed like that was a real possibility.

She couldn’t wait to see where this led.

10

Valerie

Once again, Valerie found herself leaving lunch with a silly grin on her face. It had become a pattern over the past three weeks, meeting Ella at the diner for lunch. She made every effort to make her own lunch break happen when she knew Ella would be between surgeries. She had been surprised to find that she actually really liked Ella when they weren’t fighting.

They had so far carefully steered away from topics that were bound to cause friction between them, and their working relationship was much better for it. Of course, Valerie knew it was only a matter of time before a situation came up where Ella felt it was necessary to break the rules, but she was just trying to enjoy the peace while it lasted.

It was nice. The only problem was that, as sexy as Ella was when she was angry, she was even more irresistible when the two of them weren’t banging heads. Valerie was unbearably turned on in Ella’s presence, but she still stubbornly refused to masturbate to the thought of her.

Thoughts of Ella were so prominent in her mind that this meant she didn’t get to masturbate at all. It left her frustrated, tosay the least, but that frustration was always worth it when she sat down across from Ella at the diner and started exchanging news about their day.

The two of them walked back to the hospital together once the lunch hour was over. “What do you have up next?”

Valerie groaned. “Paperwork. It never ends in this job. How about you?”

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