“She may not be coming back.” She sounded snotty, which wasn’t her usual style, as she rearranged the ears again. But she didn’t really care because this guy, who may be good-looking but seriously lacked the charm gene so who cared how good-looking he was, had just ruined her morning for no good reason.
She glanced up. He raised a brow and stared her down in response to her borderline impudent reply, and she saw the judgment there, the same look she’d seen in her father’s eyes time and time again. I’m a doctor. You dare to talk to me like that?
The imaginary conversation quickly played out in her head. What? Am I not good enough for you? A feeling, unfortunately, she’d had some experience with on the home front most of her life. After all, wasn’t she the daughter of a woman with only a high-school education? A stay-at-home mother keeping a spotless house for a husband who rarely visited? A woman so depressed she’d turned into a shadow of her former self? Half of her DNA might be genius, but the other half, often insinuated by her father, was suspect. Well, good ol’ Dad should have thought about that before knocking up her mother if it meant so damn much to him.
The invading doctor continued to stare down his nose at her. Andrea wasn’t about to back down now. The nerve. Did he think she was a shopgirl, a department receptionist minding the store while Granny frolicked in France? She’d just spent a week making this latest batch of silicone ears, measuring the patients to perfection, matching the skin color, creating the simplest and most secure way to adhere them to what was left of their own ears. And unless anyone looked really closely, no one would notice. Just ask the struggling musician Brendan, who’d had his earlobe chopped off by a mobster, what he thought about her skills!
“What do you mean, she may not be coming back?” His tone shifted to accusing as if he should have been privy to the memo and voted on the decision. Wasn’t that how demanding doctors, just like her father, behaved? I need this now. Don’t annoy me with facts. He stood, hands on hips, his suit jacket pushed aside, revealing his trim and flat stomach—wait, she didn’t care about his physique because he was rude—refusing to look away from the visual contact they’d made. Something really had this guy bothered, and she was the unfortunate party getting the brunt of it.
“It’s called retirement.”
His wild blue stare didn’t waver, and, as illogical as it seemed under the circumstances, something was going on with the electrical charge circulating around her skin because of him.
A beeper went off on his belt, breaking the standoff and the static tickling across her arms. He glanced at it. She was glad because she really didn’t know how much longer she could take him standing in the small outer office, and most especially gazing into those intense eyes.
It was her job to notice things like that. Eyes. Yeah, she’d become quite an expert during her apprenticeship. If she kept telling herself that, maybe she wouldn’t scold herself later for falling under the spell of a completely pompous stranger based solely on his baby blues.
“I’ve gotta go.” Obviously in no mood to deal with her touchy technician act, he turned and huffed off, right out the door.
Wilting over her bad behavior, she tossed her pen onto the countertop and plopped into the nearest chair. Why had she behaved that way with him? She’d knee-jerked over the intruding and demanding doctor, but wasn’t he acting exactly like her father? Arrogant and overbearing. Lording his station in life over her. Where’s the head of the department, because you’re not good enough. Step out of my way. He didn’t need to say the words; she’d felt them.
Andrea caught herself making a lemon-sucking expression and let it go. Maybe she was the one with the attitude, and she hadn’t even tried to control it. That man had just got the brunt of it, too. Truth was, she needed to be more accommodating to clients and doctors, especially if she actually ever agreed to take over as the department head. Which she sure as heck wasn’t certain she wanted to do. Especially if catering to demanding doctors like that guy would be part of the routine.
She hadn’t expected a young doctor with such interestingly pigmented irises—because that was what she’d learned to notice since beginning her apprenticeship—and penetrating eyes as that guy’s to set her off on a rant. And she’d acted nothing short of an ass with him.
Shame on her.
Guilt and longing intertwined inside her. She’d fallen short of the mark just now, and it was a symptom of the battle she fought every day when she came to work. This was her job, creating prosthetic eyes for people who needed them, silicone ears, noses and cheeks for cancer victims and veterans, too, and it was a noble profession. She actually loved it. Loved the patients and making their lives better. But she liked things the way they were—working four days a week at the hospital and painting the other three. Her heart yearned to paint, not run a windowless department in the bowels of a hospital.
Andrea put her elbows on the counter and rested her forehead in the palms of her hands. If Grandma ever retired, some lousy department head she would make.
A week later …
It had taken Sam a good day and a half to calm down after his ridiculous encounter with the young woman in the O&A department. Where did they find the employees these days anyway? But to be fair, she didn’t have a clue that he’d just come from watching his son have his eye removed in surgery. He may have been more demanding than usual, but he’d been in no shape to judge how he’d come off to her, or, at that moment, to care. All he’d wanted had been to ensure his boy could have the best person possible make a realistic-looking eye to replace the one Dani had lost.
That woman couldn’t have been more than in her early twenties. How could she possibly have the skill …? Yet, he reminded himself, he’d eventually realized that Judith Rimmer had a reputation known all over the country for excellence in her specialty. He’d read up on her online while little Dani had napped one afternoon. She wouldn’t leave her beloved department in the hands of a novice. Would she?
Now, having completely calmed down, and being back on the job with a miraculous break in his schedule that morning, thanks to a no-show patient, Sam prepared to return to the basement to discuss Dani’s need for an eye.
He reached the ocularistry and anaplastology department door, took a deep breath and entered with a plan to apologize for inadvertently insulting the still-wet-behind-the-ears ocularist—if that was even what she was. How could he know for sure? They hadn’t gotten that far. Because his foster mother hadn’t raised an ungracious son—she’d knock him upside the head from the grave if she found out, too. Nor had she raised a son to judge a book by the young cover—not with the revolving door of foster kids with whom he’d grown up. He smiled inwardly, then swung open the door, and much to his surprise found Helen Mirren’s double, not retired but standing right in front of him beside a row of unblinking eyeballs in all colors in a display case. She wore something that looked like a sun visor but with magnifying glasses attached and a headlight, examining one specific eye as if it were a huge diamond.
Sitting with an expectant gaze on her face was the girl, who, on second encounter, and with all that eye makeup, looked more like the iconic 1960s model from Great Britain. Twiggy, was it? But not nearly as skinny. This girl had curves. She obviously waited for Judith’s approval on something, a project she’d made? Maybe, but, no matter what the scene was about, Sam was ticked off. Again.
The young woman finally noticed someone had entered and glanced at him, a quick look of surprise in her double take. Yeah, he’d caught her in a childish lie, so he glared back. He could act as juvenile as the next person, thanks to his four older foster brothers and two younger foster sisters, countless other foster siblings constantly coming through the family revolving door and foster parents who hadn’t been afraid to make threats in order to tame the often out-of-control tribe.
“Reconsidering retirement, Ms. Rimmer?” His vision drifted to a perplexed Judith.
Judith’s