My face heats under his stare because—dammit, he’s sexy. But I straighten my spine, pretending he hasn’t affected me by jutting my chin. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve just finished my thesis.”
“Thesis?” he barks with a disbelieving tone. “Thesis on what exactly? Munchausen syndrome?”
My brows furrow. “Munchausen syndrome? No…why would you—”
“What’s your deal really?” he interrupts, his upper lip curling with disgust. “You have some kind of Grey’s Anatomy fetish?”
“What are you talking about?” My confusion transitions into frustration.
He shrugs and audits my body in a way that exposes me as if he sees those five extra pie and cheese board pounds. His voice is crisp when he replies, “Munchausen syndrome is when you fake an illness so you have an excuse to come to the hospital.”
“I know what Munchausen syndrome is,” I snap, annoyed that he’s skirting my questions. “I’m asking why you assume that’s what my paper…” my voice trails off as it dawns on me. “You think I have Munchausen syndrome?”
He lifts his brows and replies in monotone, “I’d have to do an exam to confirm that fact, but it’s my first guess, yes.”
“Just because I hang out in the hospital cafeteria?”
He nods.
Irritation spikes hard and fast in my belly.
What a total dick.
I was in a happy place, thinking of tropical cocktails and going out tonight to celebrate when he showed up and ruined everything with his asshole hotness.
“How do you know my mother isn’t terminally ill, and I visit her every day?”
“Because I’ve asked around,” he retorts, a thick vein in his neck bulging. “No one knows why you come here every day, and it’s been months of you randomly showing up for no reason. I decided to find out the truth to save us all from an embarrassing scene with security.”
“Security?” I shriek. My fork clatters onto the table. “Why is anyone talking about security? I’m a paying customer.”
“Because nobody hangs out in a hospital cafeteria for fun,” he growls, lowering his voice to a threatening tone while leaning across the table. “I’m starting to wonder if you don’t need a psych evaluation instead.”
Anger surges through me like a sharp whip. “Screw you!”
His eyes sparkle with amusement. “Easy now, if you have an outburst, I might actually have to call the hospital psychologist.”
Panic vibrates through my limbs. “You can’t be serious.”
How humiliating would it be for me to be working on my psychology paper and then have a doctor actually order a psychological evaluation on me? My blood pressure skyrockets at the thought of that mortifying scene.
Looking away, I take a deep, cleansing breath because the last thing I need is to have a panic attack in front of this dick. When I’ve calmed down, I narrow my eyes. “I was over here minding my own business.”
“For three months, you’ve been hanging out in a hospital cafeteria. Don’t you realize how messed up that is? People come here because they are ill or someone close to them is ill. They don’t come here because they like the pie,” he says while his eyes linger on my lips where there are surely more crumbs.
Swiping at my face with the back of my hand, I rise out of my chair.
“I was working on my thesis!” I nearly scream, dropping back in my seat when I realize we’re gaining the attention of the cafeteria diners now. I splay my hands on the table and lower my voice. “I was struggling to work from home, and I came in here one day with my mother for her first colonoscopy, not that it’s any of your business, but that’s when I discovered I enjoyed the ambiance of the cafeteria.” A knot forms in my throat, clogging up my words and hurting like a bitch.
He assesses me one more time. “You enjoy the ambiance of heartbroken families dealing with life-and-death situations?”
“Not everything that happens in a hospital is life or death. Last I checked, this place does boob jobs.” With those words, his eyes instantly flash to my chest, and I wish I could take them back because now the dick is most certainly thinking about how my B-cups could do with some augmentation.
With a frustrated growl, I stand and click my laptop closed, stuffing it and my books into my satchel. I grab my jean jacket off the back of my chair and turn to face him. “And last I checked, this was a public place, so I’m not breaking any rules.”
He stares up at me with contempt as he crosses his muscled arms over his chest. I hate that my traitorous eyes zero in on them. Dragging my gaze back to where it belongs, our eyes meet.
He replies through clenched teeth. “You may not be breaking hospital rules, but you’re definitely breaking socially acceptable ones.”
“Hypocrite!” I growl as I throw my bag over my shoulder and yank my hair out from under the strap. “And for the record, I actually do really like the pie here. The French silk is delicious!”
What happens next is not something I’m proud of. In fact, when I replay this scene later in my head, I’m going to wonder if perhaps I did need that psych evaluation after all.
In one quick motion, I grab a fistful of what’s left of my pie in my bare hand like a softball. I lean so I’m face to face with the hot doc and shove the entire handful into my mouth. But of course, my mouth isn’t big enough, and it’s pie, not an apple, so most of the contents squirt from between my fingers. The majority of it plops onto the table, but a large dollop of chocolate mousse lands on the crotch of this apparently very well-endowed doctor.
Triumph surges through me. Oddly enough, there’s also a throb at the apex of my thighs.
That’s seriously messed up. My eyes lift to his positively lethal ones as I lick a big chunk of pie off the corner of my lip and mumble around a full mouth, “You are a complete…dick!”
I walk away, shaking my pie butt and leaving behind my wonderful hospital cafeteria with that less than original burn.
It’s a good thing I live on the edge of town because I need the fifteen-minute drive to clear my mind of that dick of a doctor.
I mean, seriously. He’s a doctor. Doesn’t he have better things to do than police people frequenting the hospital cafeteria?
And this whole situation is a damn shame because all that deliciousness is completely wasted on him. What’s he got to be so angry about? You’d think a guy who looks like a stallion horse bred straight from the sire of Seabiscuit would be living a charmed life.
I shake that embarrassing comparison out of my head and try to forget about what a tremendous dick he was. Richardson was his last name? More like Dr. Dick!
His expression was positively homicidal when I stuffed that pie into my mouth. It’s not a moment I’m proud of, but Kate always tells me to be confident in my blunders, and they won’t seem so bad the next day. So…enjoy your crotch pie, Dr. Dick.
The sun dips low over the horizon as I pull onto the road leading to my townhouse. As I turn into my driveway, I see my friend, Dean, jogging on the bike trail across the road. I honk and wave him over while I pull into my garage.
“What’s up, Lyns? Did you finish your paper?” Dean calls out as he crosses the street toward me.