4. Carter
4
CARTER
I sat in the clinic break room nursing my cup of morning caffeine, letting the sunlight that snuck in through the blinds on the window warm me. I should’ve been paying closer attention to Jackson as he spoke about the rise in concerning patient behavior, but I couldn’t get my mind off of what happened at Rick’s party only two days ago.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be feeling right now. Part of me wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, to bury it all under layers of professionalism. But the other part of me—the part that had a pulse—couldn’t stop thinking about it. She had an effect on me, like a spark just waiting to light up everything around her, and set it on fire, and I had been in the blast zone when she detonated. Just thinking of it brought a grin to my lips that I hid behind the plain white ceramic mug.
“I just had another patient on Saturday ask me about joining a trial again.” Jackson shook his head and ran a hand through his floppy brown hair. We’d been working at this low-cost clinic together for the past few years after I hired him to help lead. Not only was he a great doctor but he was a good friend, and a very ethical man. I was proud to have him by my side, especially with strange things like this happening.
“It’s so strange that suddenly we have people who sometimes barely speak English walk in here and ask for that. It’s like someone somewhere is telling them it’s a good idea.” My mouth moves on autopilot as I talk; my mind is elsewhere, replaying the conversation with Sunny over in my head. When Rick caught us together, she covered like a pro, telling him I was lost and she showed me to the bathroom. I saw suspicion in his eyes, but he didn’t question her.
“I wonder if a different clinic is pulling a fast one, and these people heard about it and came to us?” Jackson shook his head again and leaned back in his chair so that only two legs were on the ground. “It’s sort of a crappy thing to do to people, if you ask me. They’re already poor and sick, and then people prey on them.”
“Yeah,” I muttered absentmindedly. I heard the chime of the front door opening and sucked in a deep breath, holding it inside my lungs to expand them and relieve some tension.
Soleil Douglas, whom I quickly found out was actually Sunny—the woman I slept with impulsively—walked through the door. I could see her on the security feed, the monitor mounted on the break room wall. She looked around our empty reception area, and then her eyes locked on the camera mounted conspicuously above the front desk in the corner of the room. Those same illustrious hazel eyes that seduced me so easily made my body warm to a balmy temperature even through closed-circuit TV.
“In here!” Jackson shouted, letting his chair slam to the ground hard. The noise was startling, forcing my tension to creep back up. Sleeping with my best friend’s daughter had been a huge blunder, but even now, with a clear mind and in a professional setting, I found her just as attractive as I had at the party. She was stunning.
We both stared up at the monitor as Soleil made her way around reception and through the door. I heard the door latch down the hall and braced myself for seeing her in person again. Jackson was ignorant of the whole thing. To him, Sunny was just another person coming to help out around the clinic—a CNP with a bit of experience even, another fact I had no knowledge of before my romp with her.
“New girl is hot,” he said under his breath and fanned himself while letting his mouth hang open like a dog panting.
“Behave,” I grumbled as I stood, already feeling a pinch of jealousy in my chest. Jackson was allowed to find her attractive; she was a free woman. I had no claim or right to stake it. So why did I feel possessive, as if he was moving in on my personal property?
She breezed into the room and set her satchel down on the table in front of us. Her long dark hair was tied up in a loose ponytail, makeup neatly applied to her face, and she smelled like raspberries in summer, lips shimmering with freshly applied gloss I instantly wanted to taste.
“Welcome, Soleil, this is Jackson,” I said, gesturing. She glanced at him, but the bubbly, happy girl I expected was more stoic, bordering on melancholy as she reached out her hand. He didn’t even have the decency to stand in the lady’s presence, and I shot him a glower as he reached for her hand in return.
“Welcome to the team, Sunshine,” Jackson said, gripping her hand hard. “Doc tells me you’re ready for action.” He wagged his eyebrows, playfully jesting at her, and I swore the color drained from her face.
“Thank you. I’m here to work, yes.” Sunny’s eyes shifted to meet my gaze, and chemistry sizzled between us before she turned away to glance around the room. There was nothing fancy about it—plain white walls, Formica-topped table, metal chairs, a small kitchenette with a fridge and a sink, microwave to the side, and a bookshelf where magazines sat haphazardly, some of them dangling off the edge of the shelves.
“We’re glad to have you.” My stiff smile was the most I could offer professionally. Meanwhile, my body felt the pull of her gravity. Her crisp green scrubs complimented her warm complexion and dark hair, hugging her thick curves like a glove. I had a hard time getting control of my physical reaction to her.
“Well, I’ll show you around,” I said when she didn’t respond, and she nodded curtly. Rick had told me she was struggling with something, but not any of the details. Her slumped posture and lack of smile communicated just that. It made me wonder what she was thinking or what it was she was struggling with, and it made me want to help. Of course, it was my natural inclination to always want to help, which was the reason I became a doctor in the first place, but this felt more personal, maybe because she was Rick’s daughter.
Jackson stayed planted in his seat, waiting for the clock to come around to the top of the hour when our first patients would begin arriving, and I ushered Sunny into the hallway. She followed me as I gave her a tour of the office and exam rooms.
“Of course you’ve seen reception. We have a retired schoolteacher who comes in to help with that four days a week.” I gestured at the door to reception and kept going. Sunny tipped her eyebrows up in acknowledgment but said nothing. “Here is my office. Kinda cramped, but I never use it anyway.” I pressed my palm to my office door and nodded at the open doorway. Sunny glanced in and sighed hard. It felt to me like she’d rather be anywhere else but here, but I tried not to let it get me discouraged.
Rick told me she needed this, and I was doing him a favor by hiring her. She was welcome as long as she did her job well and ethically, even if she was a bit sullen. Maybe all the alcohol in her system on Saturday had made her the happy, bubbly woman I met.
“These are the exam rooms, three of them, but we can open up the storage closet at the end of the hallway and clean it out to make a fourth if we need to.” I smiled and pressed the door open into an exam room. Sunny ducked into it and I flicked a glance at the camera before following her in. Inside an exam room was the only place the cameras couldn’t reach, and with as tense and awkward as things were between us right now, I felt we could use a moment of privacy.
After that quickie on what I later learned was her bed, we barely spoke. Rick introduced us properly and I was a bumbling idiot, which I blamed on the drinking. Sunny covered for me beautifully by refilling my glass a few times and allowing me to drown my nerves in sweet tangy alcohol, and when Rick brought the real woman he invited to set me up with, Sunny vanished. I spotted her a few times watching, looking a bit miffed. Maybe that was what this was about?
That woman and I had nothing in common, and even she told me Rick was meddling. We laughed it off though, and I tried as hard as I could to get his daughter out of my head.
“This is nice…Kinda simple, but it looks like it’ll do the trick. So, do I get one exam room as my own? Are there nurses to help?” Sunny spun around to face me as I stepped farther into the room away from the door, closer to her. She had the whole professional act down; meanwhile I was throbbing, unable to keep my eyes from ogling her curves.
“No nurses—Look, Sunny, we should talk.” I gulped in a breath and scratched my chin, then shoved the cuffs of my button-down shirt up. Then realizing I was going to wrinkle my shirt if I kept doing that, I tugged them back into place.
“About?” she said, and her hand rose to find her ponytail. Just like the other day, she twirled her finger in her dark strands of hair and leaned her head to the side.
“You know what about…” A grin tugged at the corner of my mouth and I let it blossom into a full smile. “God you’re beautiful.”
Sunny chuckled and batted her eyelashes at me and her hand dropped. Then she crossed her arms under her breasts and pushed them up a little as she said, “Is that what you want to talk about?”
“Uh, God, no.” I crammed a hand through my hair and huffed a breath out my nostrils. “Are we going to have a problem? I mean…Is it going to cause a problem that we…”
“You want to know if we can work together? If I can be professional after the way you drank from my core like you were a dying man in a desert and I was the oasis?” Her tone shifted to sultry and playful and made my dick throb even harder. I’d have to hide in this room until it went down.
“I mean…Well, yes.” Blinking hard, I had to look away from her. She was intoxicating, and it was dangerous for me to feel this attracted to her. Not only was she fifteen years younger than me, but she was Rick’s daughter, and from what he said, she was vulnerable right now. If throwing herself at me while being drunk didn’t prove that to my moral compass, nothing would.
Sunny walked over to me and splayed her hand on my chest, standing a little too close for comfort, but not touching me anywhere else. “I can be very professional at work, Dr. Price. But what happens after hours—well, that stays between us, right?” She winked at me and walked toward the door, letting her manicured fingers trail across my white shirt until they dropped off.
The door out front chimed again, announcing our first patient of the day, and I stood there like a buffoon willing my cock to deflate. She swore she could do this professionally, but if she had that effect on me in such a short interchange without any flirting at all, how could I do this professionally?
The last thing I wanted to do was to tell Rick it wouldn’t work. That would bring up too many questions.