"Well…" She fought against the blush rising in her features, then gave into it with a gesture of surrender. "I was hoping you had a few minutes before you went off-shift."

"Oh yeah?" A lazy smile.

"Missed you," she confessed simply, not knowing what else to say. Subterfuge hadn’t ever served her well, and Abby readily admitted to practicing guerrilla tactics when it came to romance. But nothing had ever quite prepared her for dealing with someone like Kim Legaspi.

Kim ducked her head low, blonde hanks of hair obscuring her features. When she raised blue eyes to Abby’s, the nurse gasped at the slight darkening around her right eye. "What the hell happened?"

A rueful smile. "You haven’t heard yet."

"I told you, I just got here."

Kim shrugged casually. "Patient got a little unhinged. I was in the way."

"Uh-huh." She crossed her arms and regarded her lover. "And what would the group at the admit desk pretending not to notice we’re in here have to say about it?"

"Their perspective might be slightly different," Kim admitted.

"Why don’t you share theirs with me?"

"Carter didn’t take a complete history on a patient before calling me down."

"And this history would’ve revealed…"

"That the guy had a habit of doing things like this." She gestured loosely at her face.

"Goddamn him…"

"It wasn’t intentional."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah, Abby, I am. John Carter may be mad as hell at me right now, but given what happened to him– I can honestly say that he would never put another doctor in that position."

Irrational fury draining away in the face of Kim’s logic, Abby wrapped her arms around herself tightly– sublimating the urge to do the same for Kim. The psychiatrist seemed so resolutely contained right now– the raw emotion she displayed so readily when they were alone closed off to her– and she was at a loss for what to do. "You okay?"

"I could use a hug." As if reading her mind.

Crossing the distance between them in a stride that, by rights, was too long for her cover in a single step; she wrapped Kim in her arms, warm and safe, smelling of the same spice and sensuality that had set her pulse racing that first night their mouths had met. "Of course, baby. Of course."