I nod, but all I can think is, I hope we’re not making promises we can’t keep.
22
Trying to win Grace’s heart over feels like I’m climbing Everest in the middle of a blizzard without a coat on or an oxygen mask. I’m un-fucking-prepared, but I’ve already come this far, so there’s no turning back now. Even if I end up dead on the side of the mountain.
She thinks I’m a player out for a hot fling.
And if she were any other woman, that would likely be true.
But she’s not any other woman. She’s the woman I’ve been obsessed with—unrequitedly in love with—for a year. All I can think is, this is your shot, so don’t fuck it up. But now everything I do is a balancing act. A game of chess and I have to perpetually think three steps ahead or I’ll lose.
I can’t tell her how I truly feel—she’s nowhere near ready for that yet.
Still, once the woman sets her mind to something, she’s fiercely determined.
I seriously made her life hell for a week—the only move I had left—until she sought me out. She thought she could avoid me. She thinks she can avoid what’s happening between us. There is no switch to turn off wanting someone. You can’t force your feelings back into a jar once you’ve already set them free, allowed them to breathe.
Grace is scared. She wasn’t lying about that. She believes I’m going to mess her around the way Tony did. But she’s only afraid because deep down, she knows how good we are together.
I don’t need any more friends in my life. I have plenty. If she thinks this is some casual friends with benefits nonsense, she’s got another thing coming. I have no intentions of being her buddy.
I am not Oliver.
I will not be Oliver to her.
This would be easier if she weren’t my roommate and subordinate. If she weren’t so recently out of a bad relationship. I hate having to tread carefully. It’s boring and feels counterproductive.
Maybe I should be giving her space, but I can’t do it. I want her too badly.
“Dr. Fritz?” Janet Johnson is waiting outside my office, and I completely forgot all about her. Her right wrist is casted up, but she’s wearing scrubs and a determined smile. “You wanted to see me this morning?”
“Come inside,” I say, opening my office door for her and allowing her in.
The room is cleaned up, but just barely. My desk is still a ridiculous mess and I smirk at it before I can stop it as I picture Grace’s gorgeous ass turning red beneath my palm.
I take a seat behind my desk and Janet does the same on the other side. “It’s a distal radial fracture,” she launches immediately. “No surgery required.”
“You’ll be out of the OR and direct patient care for a minimum of four weeks.”
She blanches, tucking her dark hair behind her ear. “Yes, but—”
“I’ll rearrange schedules to pick up the slack your absence creates.” Though there isn’t much slack. Janet is a mediocre doctor at best. Grace told me what Dylan told her about what she did with the patient, and we’ll be lucky if the family doesn’t sue us all. She’s also been messing with the patient assignment board, erasing Grace’s name and adding hers instead. “You’ll need to write up an incident report on what happened in that room. All of it.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I slipped.”
“After unnecessarily ripping that woman’s placenta from her body and causing her to hemorrhage.”
“No. That’s not what…” Her eyes narrow. “Did Grace or Dylan tell you that?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter who told me what. The facts are the facts. Write it up.”
She puffs out a breath, but nods. “Yes, sir.”
“How do you feel you should fill the extra hours? Teaching or—”
“Actually, I was hoping that now that I have this extra time, I could help you out.”
“Pardon?” My eyebrows draw together as I lean back in my seat, appraising her. The extra makeup on her face. The low angle she has her scrub top arranged so it reveals a hint of cleavage. The attempting to be sexy upturn of her lips. I know what women look like when they’re trying to be seductive. When they’re trying to seduce me.
I know what Janet Johnson looks like when she’s playing this game as well, since she’s been doing it since she started here two months ago. I’ve just been ignoring it and her as much as possible. Now it seems she wants to up the ante.
“You don’t have a personal assistant. Just one you share with two other attendings. I could be your own personal assistant, Dr. Fritz.” Her good hand plays with the line of her scrub top. I don’t take the bait.
“I’m all set, thanks.”
She’s undeterred. “But you have so much on your plate. So much stress. I could help you relieve some of that. It would be my pleasure.”
I shake my head no.
She’s still undeterred. “If you change your mind, I’d be more than happy to accommodate you.” She licks her lips. “In any way you need.”
“I will not be changing my mind, now or ever. And you can stop with the crappy attempts at sexual innuendo. I’m not interested. You may go now.”
“But. No,” she gasps incredulously, flying out of her chair, her good hand landing on my desk with a hard smack. “I see the way you look at me. I know you want me too. This is how it’s supposed to go.” She pounds her fist.
Jesus. I don’t have time for this right now. And how in the hell could she have spun this so out of control in her head? I’ve heard the rumors about her. I know the way she treats her fellow residents, especially Grace. But this? This is next-level shit.
I stand too, hoping this finally gets through to her. “Dr. Johnson, I can assure you any thoughts or desire I have for you are strictly related to your work as a doctor in this hospital. And nothing more.”
“It’s because of her, isn’t it? Grace,” she sneers her name, venom dripping from her lips. “I know about your relationship,” she accuses, “your family connections with her. She’s trying to poison you against me, and I won’t let that happen. You’re why I chose this program. You.” She points again. “My father could have gotten me in anywhere, but it’s you who I wanted, Dr. Carter Fritz. Don’t you see how perfect it is? Johnson and Fritz.”
Ah, so that’s where this is going. Money. Power. My family name.
Her family has some of that. Her father is a multimillionaire who obviously overindulges his daughter. But their family isn’t mine.
“This conversation is over, Dr. Johnson. You may take the rest of the week off to heal after you give me the report I requested. And if I ever discover you’ve been messing around with the patient board again, removing fellow doctors’ names from it, you will never touch another patient on my service or anyone else’s again. What you did is dangerous and stupid and you’re lucky that patient didn’t suffer a worse outcome.”
I brush past her, opening the door to my office and holding it wide for her to leave. She huffs out, stomping loudly like a two-year-old down the hall. I close my eyes, rubbing at my temples to try and stave off the headache that woman just gave me.