I reach up to smooth the ratty disaster area. “Now you’re just making fun of me.” I get out of the car and slam the door, setting out for the nearest entrance, aware of the warm breeze rushing over the hole in my hose.
Jason catches up to me. “I’m not making fun of you. I like your hair curly. Why is that a felony offense?”
“Because it’s not curly. It’s frizzy. It looks horrible! I spent an hour straightening it this morning for nothing.”
“Doesn’t look frizzy to me. It looks curly. And sexy.”
“You should probably have your eyes checked before you go digging around in anyone’s brain if you think my hair looks good right now.”
He cracks up, and of course laughter is a very nice look on him. “First of all, I don’t ‘dig around’ in people’s brains, and second of all, I think it looks nice like that, better than it did when it was all straight and severe looking earlier.”
“You need to stop talking.”
“And you need to learn to take a compliment.”
If we weren’t about to enter the hospital, I might’ve screamed in frustration or compounded my troubles by assaulting the hospital’s new neurosurgeon. He drives me freaking bonkers—in more ways than one. In the lobby, we wait for the elevator. I push the number five and wait for him to choose his floor. When he doesn’t, I look over at him. “Where’re you going?”
“To meet with Mr. Augustino to find out what the board decided to do about me.”
“Do about you? What does that mean?”
He leans against the back wall of the elevator in a relaxed pose that’s in sharp contrast to the tension that has his jaw pulsing and his lips flat. “Apparently, there was some considerable debate about whether they’re going to extend privileges for me to practice here.”
“Aren’t you supposedly some sort of world-class pediatric neurosurgeon?”
“Supposedly.”
“So why would they deny you privileges?”
“Do that search. You’ll find it highly illuminating.”
In the executive suite, the woman I assume is Mona greets us with a sympathetic look for me and a lustful gaze at Jason. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“Thank you for that.” It occurs to me that I owe Jason a debt of gratitude for anticipating the need to keep a lid on what happened to me. Without his quick thinking, the news of my stint in jail would be ripping through the corridors, and I’d be a laughingstock on my first day.
“Did that happen in jail?” Mona asks, pointing to the smear on my suit jacket.
I almost forgot about that. Funny how that disaster pales in comparison to the others that followed.
“It was an industrial accident,” Jason offers in a grave tone.
“Oh.” Mona’s eyes go wide with dismay as she tries to figure out what kind of industrial accident I encountered. I figure she’s in her early fifties and single, judging from the lack of a ring on her left hand. She has a sweet round face and an unfortunately choppy haircut. To Jason, she says, “Mr. Augustino is available whenever you’re ready.”
“Well,” he replies with the charming smile that makes my insides go batty and my panties damp, “here goes nothing. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” Mona says, clearly enthralled.
“Yes.” I clear the lust from my throat. “Good luck.”
He leaves us with a deceptively jaunty wave and heads for the hospital president’s spacious office on the far side of the suite.
“He’s dreamy, isn’t he?” Mona watches him until he’s out of sight.
Since the last thing I want to talk about is Jason Northrup’s dreaminess, I turn the focus toward work. “Is Taryn around?” She’s my other boss, the director of public relations.
“You haven’t heard? She had her baby early. She’ll be out for the next six weeks.” Mona lowers her voice. “I don’t think she’s coming back, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
This day goes from bad to worse, and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. I break into a fit of nervous laughter that I struggle to contain. I’m going to be either laughing hysterically or sobbing any second. The chance to work for Taryn was one of the things I was most excited about. She seriously impressed me with her savviness during my interviews. I was looking forward to learning a lot from her.
“She left instructions in your office and a thumb drive with some other documents she thought you’d find useful. She must’ve had a premonition that she was going early. Let me know if I can help with anything.”
“Thank you.”
I step into my office and sink into the desk chair. I’m hungry, thirsty, miserably sweaty and disheveled beyond repair. But before I attend to any of those pressing concerns, I fire up my computer and open the browser to type Jason’s name into the search engine.
A quick scan of the headlines that pop instantly onto the screen shocks me to the core. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
JASON
After a grueling thirty minutes with Augustino, I return to Carmen’s office, trying to prepare myself for her disappointment and disillusionment. I sensed her attraction to me even though I could tell she didn’t want to be attracted. Interestingly, I had the same reaction to her—instant attraction at the worst possible time.
Arriving this morning to find her waiting for me outside the hospital, so prim and pretty and put together, reawakened something that’s lain dormant in the long weeks since “the disaster.” The urge to muss her up, to unbutton that sexy power suit and run my hands over her extravagant curves the suit tried—and failed—to hide, took me by surprise. I wasn’t lying when I told her I like her hair curly and loose, as if she just rolled out of bed.
The thought of her naked in a bed catches the attention of the libido I feared was lost forever—until images of her in white cotton underwear assailed me earlier.
Forcing myself to put a damper on the salacious thoughts—for now anyway—I stand in the doorway to her office, arms propped on the doorjamb over my head, watching her dark eyes dart across the screen as she reads about what a scum-sucking slimeball I am. What she won’t find anywhere in the vast coverage of what happened in New York is mention of how I was victimized by a woman with an agenda.
She’s so absorbed in her reading she doesn’t notice me there until I decide she’s probably seen enough to get the gist. “Quite a story, huh?”
Jolting in surprise, she looks up at me, and in that brief instant of eye contact I see all the things I feared as well as a healthy dose of revulsion that makes me sadder than I’ve been since it first happened.
I drop into a chair, exhausted after weeks of sleepless nights tinged with heartache and serious fear over what’s to become of my once-promising career. “Too bad most of it isn’t true.”
“What part isn’t true? The fact that she was married to the chairman of the hospital’s board, or the part where you slept with her for months before he caught the two of you together?”
I expected the indictment, but for some reason it hurts more than usual coming from her. “The part where she didn’t tell me she was married and used me to get rid of a husband she’d grown tired of.” I watch Carmen’s expressive face as she processes the information, but unlike earlier when her every thought and emotion were on full display, now she’s closed off, guarded.