His blue scrub-covered legs and red rubber clogs entered her peripheral vision. He pulled out the chair beside her and sat down, brushing his arm against hers. No doubt on purpose, the rat.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Dr. Jared Padget said.
“You’re hardly worth the effort it would take to avoid you.” Although, in truth, she was.
“I’m leaving on Monday.”
Yes! Finally! His arrival three months ago had thrown her life into a state of flux. Now, his temporary assignment over, his departure meant she could finally settle back into a normal routine free from his constant badgering at work and “coincidental” encounters on her days off. With a flippant wave of her hand she said, “Here. Gone. Alive. Dead. Makes no difference to me.”
“Come on, Ali Kitten.” He snatched her pen. “You know you’re going to miss me.”
“About as much as I’d miss a painful hemorrhoid,” she said, glaring at him from the corners of her eyes. “And you know I don’t like it when you call me that.”
“Yeah,” he said with a playful twinkle in his peridotgreen eyes and that sexy smile, complete with bilateral dimples that tormented her in her sleep. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his long fingers, and her pen, behind his head. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”
Ali grabbed at her pen, making sure to mess up his neatly styled dark hair. He raised his hand over his head and back out of reach, his expression daring her to come closer.
She didn’t.
He chucked the pen onto the table.
“I hear a bunch of you are going out tonight to celebrate my departure,” he said, making no mention of the fact he hadn’t been invited.
She shrugged, tamping down the other, less joyful, reason for the night out. “It’s as good as any other excuse for the girls to get together. And it’s easier and less fuss than burning you in effigy.”
He moved forward, rested his elbows on the table and leaned in close. “Was that supposed to hurt my feelings, Kitten?” His voice, soft and deep, vibrated through her.
Four hours into a busy twelve-hour night shift, and he had the nerve to still smell fresh from the shower. A picture of him naked, water sluicing down his tall, firm body, slick with suds, forced its way into her mind. It took immense self-control not to pound her fists against her head to get rid of it.
“What’s going on in that pretty little head, I wonder?” he teased, staring at her face as if trying to see behind what she hoped was a disinterested expression.
Heaven help her if he could. For months she’d fought this attraction. First she couldn’t act on it. Now she wouldn’t.
Distance was the only thing that worked so she gathered her charts and stood.
Jared rose to stand directly in front of her, so close she noticed a tiny freckle on the skin exposed by the V-neck of his scrub top, a minuscule droplet of chocolate she wanted to lick clean. He smelled so good, his scent an intoxicant that impaired rational thought.
She stared straight ahead at his clavicle, wouldn’t meet his eyes for fear the way he affected her would show. “Please, move.”
“I think you don’t want me to move, you like me right here.”
“Now you can read minds?” She took a step back. Distance. What she wanted was distance between them. Preferably a continent, but the opposite side of New York State, the site of his next temporary assignment, would have to do.
“Yes, I can.” He tilted his face in front of hers. “And you are thinking some very naughty thoughts, Nurse Forshay.”
“Only if you consider me beating you with the bell of my stethoscope naughty. Now get out of my way.” She pushed his arm. “I’ve got to get back to work, and so do you.”
He turned serious for a change. “Are you ever going to forgive me?”
“To forgive you I would have to care about you.” She looked up and locked eyes with him. “And I don’t. Not one bit.”
“You could if you’d try.”
It was the same old argument. “Why on earth would I want to? From day one of your assignment here, an assignment that your friend, my boyfriend, recommended you for, might I add, you’ve been hell-bent on coming between us.”
“Not at first.” Jared held up his index finger. “Not until I realized neither one of you were happy.”
More like until he’d decided she wasn’t good enough for his friend. “I was happy.” Maybe comfortable was a better word. “And so was Michael. Our relationship was just fine until you showed up.” Wasn’t it? She’d worked so hard to be the type of woman she thought Michael wanted.
“You didn’t love him,” Jared pointed out.
No, she hadn’t. But Dr. Michael Shefford had been perfect for her. Stable. Dependable. Predictable. And in his quiet, unassuming way, he’d treated her well. Maybe she could have fallen in love with him if she’d had more time. Right, Ali, she chided herself. A year wasn’t long enough?
“How I felt about Michael is irrelevant.” She slammed her files onto the table and turned from him. “You took him out, got him drunk and sent him home with Wanda from Pediatrics. You knew she had a thing for him.”
“I didn’t force him into the car, Ali. I didn’t strip off his clothes and push him into her bed, either.”
Heck, there was a visual she could have done without. “And you most certainly didn’t try to stop him. What kind of friend are you?”
Not hers, that’s for sure. She could have had a nice, stable life with Michael, who, until Jared had come to town, never stayed up past eleven unless he was working, never went out drinking with the boys and never showed an interest in any woman but her. She’d have done her best to make him happy, to have the quiet, anonymous life she’d dreamed of since childhood.
“Over the past month we have beat this to death.” With an uncharacteristic disregard for his appearance, Jared ran his fingers through his hair. “If I thought Michael was making a terrible mistake, by all means I would have stopped him. But he and Wanda are good together.”
A point Michael had made four weeks ago, during what was supposed to be his apology for cheating. The one thing Ali would not forgive. Usually sedate, Michael hadn’t been able to tamp down his new-romance exuberance as he’d extolled all the attributes that made Wanda perfect for him, inadvertently identifying all the areas he’d found Ali lacking. No breakup remorse there.
“They’re happy together,” Jared said.
Yeah. The only one not happy was her.
“Michael was a great study partner in medical school,” Jared went on. “He’s a good friend. But he’s the most boring person I have ever met. He’s plain old vanilla ice cream, and you’re chocolate fudge ripple with rainbow sprinkles. He’s high-fiber cereal and skim milk for breakfast. You’re blueberry pancakes with warm maple syrup. You lost your spark when he came around. He’s so dull, he tarnished your shine. Are you so desperate to get married you’d settle for a lackluster, routine, boring life?”
“I am not desperate to get married.” Holy cow. She’d actually stomped her foot. Well, she wasn’t desperate. Really. But after all her unstable mother had put her through, bringing a lineup of losers into their home, dozens and dozens of destined-for-failure relationships, new-romance euphoria followed by bitter breakup histrionics that enticed nosy neighbors out to gawk and brought the police around several times a year; a stable life, free from drama, with one trustworthy, committed man, held great appeal. “And my life is none of your