8. Rose
8
ROSE
I stood in front of the mirror Monday morning brushing my teeth as Alana walked in with her makeup bag. She'd been gone all weekend, which I'd forgotten about when I went out for my run Saturday morning. I came back to an empty apartment and remembered about her trip to see her mother for the weekend. She got in after I went to bed last night, and I hadn't even gotten a chance to tell her about what happened at the park.
"Morning," she grumbled as she plopped her bag on the bathroom counter. We always hot-swapped the bathroom because I had to be at work by eight and she woke at a quarter 'til to get ready for her own job.
"Good morning," I said cheerfully as I spat the toothpaste out of my mouth into the sink and turned the water on.
Alana reached for a towel in the cupboard behind me and set it on the top of the toilet before turning on the shower water. Then she looked back at me and said, "You are too happy for this time of day."
I chuckled at her as I rinsed my toothbrush then got a drink of water to rinse my mouth. "Maybe that's because I have a date coming up…" I grinned like an idiot and tapped the water out of my toothbrush on the edge of the sink.
"Shut up, no way." Her mood changed a little, but she still looked grumpy and tired. "Who? When?"
I put my toothbrush into the ceramic holder and leaned on the counter facing her. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for me to answer.
"Remember that cute doctor I told you about who jumped my car?" I remembered her words of warning about working with someone I was dating, but I had pushed those thoughts away. If Cole wasn't worried about it, why should I?
"Wait. He asked you out? When? You didn’t say anything to me on Friday." Alana yawned, and I caught a whiff of her morning breath and cringed.
"I was out for a run at the park Saturday morning when you left, and I bumped into him." I snickered at how that seemed to be our habit. I'd run into that man more times than was humanly possible. "And let me tell you, he is really frickin' hot when he's shirtless." I wagged my eyebrows and she shook her head at me. Her hair stuck up at odd angles and there was a rat's nest in the back. It looked like she hadn't slept well.
"Well, just be careful. Like I said, dating a coworker gets messy, hon. You don't want to shoot yourself in the foot when you just got the job." She didn't look enthused by my excitement, but I wasn't going to let her get me down.
"I'll be fine. We're in different departments, anyway." I backed up a few steps and grabbed the doorknob. "Oh, and I used all the hot water," I confessed and winced as I pulled the door shut after me, and she groaned loudly.
Snickering, I made my way to the front door where I used my phone to check the temperature outside. I opted for no jacket this morning and took my keys and wallet and headed out. The sun was warm this morning, and I thought about walking to work, but I knew how tired I'd be by the time I got off, so I climbed into my car and drove there.
When I walked onto the floor, a few other nurses were huddled around the nurses’ station talking. Typically, I'd have avoided anything to do with that clusterfuck, but this morning, I was in a really good mood and hoping to bump into Dr. Hastings. I meandered over to the group of Chatty Cathys in the hopes one of them might have seen him and could tell me where to "bump" into him again.
One of the nurses Cole had introduced me to was standing with them, so I smiled at her and she waved me over. "Hey, Rose, nice to see you again."
"Hey, Kiki, good morning. Have you seen Dr. Hastings this morning?" I wanted to keep it super casual. I didn't want any of them knowing there was something potentially going on between us for a lot of reasons, but mainly, I didn't want HR finding out and I hated gossip. Especially when it was about me.
"No, I haven't, but man, I'd like to." She snickered at me, and the other nurses mumbled their agreement as I grinned.
"I see Dr. Silver Fox has caught a few eyes?" I joked, and instantly, the women all brightened up and looked at me.
"That's a catchy nickname. Dr. Foxy…" Kiki laughed and fanned herself. "He's hot though, right? Every single lady here knows it. And girl, have you seen him without a shirt?" Her hand swept up and down past her face as if she were on a beach sweating. If anyone could give me a better read on what Cole Hastings was really like, it was the people he worked with. But getting information out of them would be tricky if I didn't want to let on that something was brewing between us.
"I can't say that I have," I told them, lying. That man was chiseled more perfectly than Zeus, and just thinking of his sweat-slicked body made me feel a few degrees warmer.
"Well, don’t get your hopes up," another nurse said. Her nametag read Jenn , and I turned my attention on her. "He's a grump, won't even flirt a little. Too professional." Jenn was a bit older than me, but she had a ring on her finger. What was she even doing flirting with a single man when she was married? No wonder Dr. Hastings wouldn’t flirt with her.
"Oh, Jenn, you know that's not true." Kiki shook her head and looked back at me, leaning in as if she were going to share a dirty secret or something. I hated this. I wanted to know where he was, not all the gossip. This was why friendships with coworkers were just not a good idea. "He's just mourning."
My eyebrows rose and I said, "What?"
"Yeah, his wife died in a bad car accident a few years back and he's never been the same. We like to flirt with him and stuff, but I think he's just heartbroken. No woman has ever gotten him to open up. Not likely to happen until he's ready to move on. He hasn't dated anyone that I know of since it happened. But hey, we can enjoy the eye candy, if you know what I mean." Kiki winked at me, and I had to force a smile.
Of all the information I could have discovered this morning about Cole Hastings, this wasn't even on my radar. "I know what you mean," I told her absently, but I backed away with the new revelation in mind. Learning that Dr. Hastings' wife was dead helped answer a lot of questions I had.
It made sense now why he was that good-looking but still single. Why a wealthy, handsome doctor hadn't settled down well into his forties. Because he had. He'd been married and now he was a widower, and if what Kiki said was true, I was the one helping break that curse. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing because if he was still mourning, I might have to compete with the memory of his dead wife. It didn’t put me off the idea of going to dinner, but it did help me see what I was getting into more clearly.
I used a computer to sign into my shift and looked over my first few patients' charts and what I had to do, but the entire time, I was thinking of dinner with Dr. Silver Fox. Kiki said he hadn't opened up to anyone and I wondered what that meant. He probably had walls so high around his heart, it was impossible to get to the real him, but if anyone could help him lower those walls, I knew I could.
And the fact that he had asked me to dinner—on a date—meant he was probably feeling ready to move on. It was a good sign but one I wasn’t going to put too much stock in until we actually went to dinner. I was really glad I spoke to the nurses this morning. I felt like it prepared me more for what was to come, and that made me even more eager to find out when and where he'd want to eat dinner.
Dr. Cole Hastings, the silver fox of Twin Peaks, was a mystery I couldn’t wait to solve.