His Bidding (The Best Medicine #1) (5 page)

That made her smile. “Oh. I guess it would be best if you knew the official story, wouldn’t it? Since this is your grand plan and all.”

“It might help,” he replied with a grin.

“My birthday is the same weekend as the party.” She wasn’t sure why she felt so odd telling him that personal detail. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t have looked it up in her personnel file if he’d been so inclined. “It wouldn’t be all that outlandish if we said that a few people – like my parents, and friends, you know – had decided to donate to the charity in my name as a gift. My family has always done things like that.” She bit her lip. “Not on such a grand scale, obviously, but...it could work.”

He gave her a teasing look. “What makes you think I’d be that expensive?”

Damn him, she thought. Trapped. Brynn tried to think her way out of it. “I just have a feeling that Dr. Miller would be willing to spend an awful lot for the privilege of your company.”

Not the answer he wanted, judging by the expression on his face, but she was okay with that for now.

“I see.” He held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity. “Well. I think we might be able to pull this off.”

Brynn absently picked up her fork and poked at her cold dim sum, vaguely surprised at how little she cared that she hadn’t eaten more than a couple of bites of food all day. “I think we will.”

Noticing her gaze as it rested on their wasted lunch, Sam put a hand to his forehead. “I’m so sorry. I feel like I tricked you into this whole ‘let’s talk at noon’ thing. But, honestly, I had no idea that the auction was out there yet. Really.”

She smiled at him. “I believe you.” And she did. “I just hope you didn’t have an entire hour’s worth of patient notes you wanted to go over, because –“ She glanced at her watch, and was astonished to see that it was creeping up on one o’clock. Had they really been talking all that time? “Oh, God,” she blurted. “I need to get back to work.”

Sam looked at his Rolex, registering the same surprise Brynn had, but said, “I’m pretty sure your boss won’t be upset with you if you take a few extra minutes to warm up something to eat. Especially after some thoughtless jerk took up all of the time you had.” He offered her that irresistible grin again, and she was glad she was sitting as her knees weakened.

They both stood, simultaneously, exchanging a shy smile as they did so, and Brynn reached to gather some of her food to rescue it. But her extended hand was instead taken into Sam’s grasp, gentle but firm, and her breath hitched. She looked up at him, surprised by the contact.

“Thank you for this, Brynn,” he said softly. “I’d been worried about how I was going to bring this up – or if I should mention it at all – and you made it much easier on me than I expected. So...I appreciate that.”

She felt another strange wave of confusion, as their conversation had swung back and forth between professional and...well, what was it? Friendly? Informal? Flirtatious? It was the latter about which she wasn’t so sure, and that made her question everything about what she’d just agreed to do, and what this was going to mean.

“No problem,” she breathed, their hands entwined in an almost-handshake, loaded with thoughts and feelings she knew neither of them had quite sorted out here. They were still standing like that, gazing at each other, when his office door suddenly swung open.

“O
h!” A gasp followed the surprised exclamation in the doorway. “I’m...wow. I’m sorry.”

Brynn’s heart jumped into her throat, and she flushed with guilt as she turned and saw Maureen standing there, staring at the pair who was awkwardly attached across the desk. The girl’s coat was still on, and she’d clearly just returned. Her cheeks were as pink as Brynn imagined her own had turned.

“I knocked...” Maureen said weakly, averting her eyes as though she’d caught them in an act far more scandalous than an attempted handshake.

“Hey, there,” Sam said with a big smile, carefully letting go of Brynn’s hand and facing Maureen as though nothing untoward had been said or done in the past hour. “Sorry. We were just packing up these leftovers.”

He was so breezy, Brynn thought. She was somewhere between disconcerted and impressed.

“Do you need help?” Maureen’s offer was in direct conflict with her distinct look of discomfort, which made Brynn shake her head.

“No, thanks – I’ve got it. I’ll be right out to your desk in a minute, okay?”

“Brynn, take the time to eat something. You can afford five minutes.” Sam gave her a look she couldn’t decipher before turning to Maureen. “Can you fend off the afternoon patients for just a little longer, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, of course,” Maureen replied with a still-embarrassed smile, and then ducked out of the doorway as quickly as she’d appeared.

Brynn, in the meantime, was thoroughly surprised by his affectionate words toward the young woman. She’d nearly forgotten her earlier suspicions about Maureen having a crush on their boss, but now it came roaring back with a vengeance. It was impossible to think that it would be reciprocated, of course – not by someone like Sam, Brynn thought – but “sweetheart”? That was just plain weird.

Brynn finished putting the boxes of food back into their paper bags, Sam helping her while returning to his careful avoidance of any accidental contact. “I’ll, uh, leave the rest in the staff room fridge so you can take it home?” she half-asked.

“As long as you promise you’ll eat as much as you want before you get back to work.”

She nodded, feeling oddly disconnected from the entire situation. “I will. And I’ll make sure to phone for that follow-up on Mrs. Holland, because you know she’ll be asking you about it when she comes in later.”

Sam smiled, back to business. It was unnerving. “Good call. Thank you.”

With one more curt nod, Brynn left his office, gripping the two bags of Chinese food as though her life depended on them. She sat alone in the staff room and wolfed down a bit more of her microwaved dim sum, feeling as though she was sleepwalking. And that was how the rest of her day went: business as usual, dictated by Sam’s completely normal manner from the minute Maureen had returned, and that strange feeling of dissociation from everything she did.

At day’s end, Brynn debated going in to wrap things up, as she always did with whoever was on call, but it felt inappropriate somehow today. Awkward, to use Sam’s earlier word. Instead, as the last patient walked out the front door and Maureen went to lock up right behind the man, Brynn found herself lingering over files at the front desk. She was flipping through charts without absorbing anything she saw when Maureen came back. The girl gave her a quizzical look, and without meeting her gaze Brynn felt her cheeks color again.

“I’m really sorry,” Maureen said.

“For what? I thought the day went pretty well.” Brynn was still avoiding looking up, and tried to appear deeply interested in the patient notes that were in front of her.

Maureen cleared her throat, much the way Sam had earlier. “I...think I interrupted something earlier.” She paused. “I know it’s none of my business, but...”

Now Brynn looked up. She dreaded what Maureen was going to put out there, but some small part of her sort of wanted to unburden herself, even just a little bit.

“...you’ve got a thing for him, don’t you?”

Fighting the urge to say that was the understatement of the century, Brynn swallowed, her mouth feeling very dry. “That obvious?”

Maureen smiled. “Pretty obvious, yeah. But if it makes you feel any better, he’s way more obvious about it than you are.”

Brynn felt her eyes widen in surprise. “What?”

“Well...he likes you. I mean, he really likes you. Like that.” Maureen blushed for no apparent reason, one hand twirling a braid. “And he’s not nearly as good at hiding it as you are.”

Surprise moved aside to make room for a slight surge of giddiness. “Do you think?” She realized they were talking on a level that was below even her young coworker’s age category, but aside from Lisa, she’d had nobody to talk to about this, and Lisa had never been in a position to drop a bombshell about Sam’s supposed returning of her affection. This was a welcome change of pace. She liked feeling innocent and free again, though she was mindful of not letting on about the charity ball discussion.

“He’s different when you’re here,” Maureen said, taking a seat behind her desk and swiveling around, looking as happy to engage in schoolyard gossip as Brynn felt. “I mean, not that he’d act the same with Nurse Gollum, anyway, but...I mean, really different.”

Nurse Gollum. Brynn laughed. It hadn’t been lost on her that the woman who worked here during the shifts Brynn didn’t take was no threat to her, in terms of her job or as far as any possible romantic entanglements were concerned. She was a tall, bony woman approaching sixty years old, with a tight grey bun and terrible posture, with a bedside manner to match. “I always wondered what she must’ve done to get her job. I never met the old doctor who sold this place to Sa–“ She bit her tongue. “Dr. Hitchens.”

“You can call him Sam, you know,” Maureen said with a giggle. “It’s pretty much accepted. Even if he didn’t have a crush on you, I think he’d be fine with it.” The girl raised an eyebrow. “And I think you can probably call me Mo now, since we’ve started talking about this kind of thing.”

The two laughed together, and Brynn leaned back to half-sit on the desk. “Mo it is. How do you know so much? You’re just a kid!”

“I’ve been around.” Mo blushed. “Ew. That’s not how I meant it.”

Brynn dissolved into giggles. “I know it isn’t. But you’ve been here longer than I have, haven’t you? I heard about you when I first started, and they said you were just off so you could study for exams. And I’ve worked with you, what? Maybe three times since you came back? So you could’ve been here for years already. A co-op student?”

“Yeah, I was lucky,” Maureen said with a strangely familiar grin. “I had connections. I started here when I was fifteen. We thought it would look good on my college applications.”

Brynn thought about asking who she meant by “we,” but the girl continued.

“You’re lucky you weren’t here when Dr. Sandoval was running the Clinic. He wasn’t the nicest boss on earth.” Mo made a face, which made Brynn laugh again.

“So who is?”

“Think about that answer carefully, sweetheart.” Sam’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and both of his employees jumped. He chuckled.

“That’s not fair!” Maureen crossed her arms and pretended to pout. “You’re not supposed to listen in on girl talk.”

He stepped forward, moving behind the desk, brushing against Brynn’s knee as he did so. As he playfully mussed Maureen’s bangs, Brynn cocked her head to one side in bewilderment. What was up with this?

“I wasn’t eavesdropping on you ladies,” Sam chided. “I was coming out here to ask Brynn a question, if that’s okay with you, Miss Nosy.”

“I’m not the nosy one,” Maureen replied with a laugh. She shot Brynn a look. “It’s time for me to get going, anyway. Unless you need me for anything else...?”

Her tone clearly indicated she already knew his answer, and the look was meant for Brynn alone. Sure enough, Sam said, “No, your long day has come to an end. Get home. Say hi to your mother for me.”

Brynn turned the possibilities over in her head. Was he old enough to be Maureen’s father? Did he have an ex-wife she hadn’t heard about? Surely Mo wouldn’t have been as eager to dish about his possible interest in Brynn if her mother was an ex...

“I will,” Maureen said, standing up and grabbing her jacket from the coat rack. Once it was on, she stood on her tiptoes to give Sam a quick kiss on the cheek. “Are you coming for dinner on Sunday? Mom wanted to know.”

“Oh, I forgot to call her, didn’t I? Sorry about that.” He tugged at one of her braids. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

“Okay. I’ll R.S.V.P. for you.” Giving Brynn a knowing smile, Maureen slipped past both of them and started for the door. “I’ll lock up so you guys can go out the side. Bye, Brynn.” She raised a hand in a wave, and just as Brynn did the same, Mo added, “See you on Sunday, Uncle Sam.”

And with that she was gone.

Brynn felt like she’d just been hit over the head with a hammer. She’d been confiding in Sam’s niece? Oh, God. Oh, God, what had she said?

Sam noticed the color draining out of Brynn’s face, and looked concerned. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes,” Brynn murmured, lying through her teeth. She hesitated for a long moment before asking, “How much did you overhear?”

He looked surprised. “About what? How great a boss I am?”

Brynn managed to look at him long enough to determine that he was being sincere, and that he probably hadn’t heard anything that had come just before that part of the discussion.

“Yeah. That.” Brynn blinked a few times, trying to clear her mind. “Uh...so you wanted to ask me something?”

Sam seemed as though he’d lost himself in thought right then. “Hmm? Oh. Yes. I was wondering if the lab work had come back on the INRs I ran.”

Ah. Work stuff. Good. Sort of. “Let me check the fax machine. I don’t think they’ve come through on the system yet, but maybe there are hard copies.” She rose from her position against the desk and made a move to walk past him, intending to poke her head to the small room behind reception where their fax and photocopier were stored. But she was stopped in her tracks when Sam’s hand suddenly reached out and circled her wrist.

“No. Wait.”

Brynn felt a bit dizzy again, just from being so near him. And being held onto this way wasn’t helping.

He gently pulled her backwards, until she was face to face with him, his head tilted so he could look down at her from his considerable height. She thought for sure she would faint. Today had just been too much, and now...what was he doing?

“I wanted to make sure you’re really okay with our...arrangement...for the party,” he said quietly. “I know I sprung it on you, and didn’t really give you a fair chance to think it over or say no. I just wanted to be clear that if you’d rather not do it, there won’t be any repercussions whatsoever. And our relationship won’t change.”

She desperately wanted to blurt out that their relationship not changing was the last thing she was hoping for. But she thought better of it.