Chapter Fourteen
Like most people, Juliette had never cared for hospitals.
Though it wasn’t the sickly-sweet smell of antiseptic or the depressingly institutionalized plain white walls that irritated her.
It was all the doctors. Everywhere—parking their cars in just such a way that you couldn’t squeeze in next to them in the garage, swiping their badges and holding their confidential patient conversations right out there in the open for any random passerby to hear. Doctors were the worst.
Her parents had always insisted on wearing the same white lab coats that every doctor seemed to wear whenever they did their speaking events, even though they were psychologists and hadn’t done lab work since grad school.
They thought it made them look more authoritative and professional for TV interviews, and they made Juliette address them as “Dr. and Dr. Winters” whenever they brought her onstage for all the overeager parents in the audience.
It was cute when she was six, downright pathological by the time she was twelve.
Juliette hated doctors, which was probably why she didn’t know any surgeons besides Charlie.
But when she’d gone to his office to work her feminine wiles the next morning, they’d told her he was in surgery at the hospital and wouldn’t be back until the following day.
She had no intention of losing another day of her investigation, not with the manuscript still missing in action.
But it meant she had to go hunt him down at the hospital and face the doctors on their own territory.
She was almost relieved when she finally tracked Charlie down among the dozens of other men dressed in scrubs with their hair tucked into those bonnet things.
He finished speaking with a family in a waiting room before joining her.
“Juliette, what are you doing here? Is everything all right with Kate?”
“Kate’s fine,” she said, waving her hand. “Unlike that prison hairnet thing you’re sporting there.”
Charlie touched a self-conscious hand to his surgical cap. “It’s hospital policy. I just got finished with surgery. I saved a man’s life.”
“And I am saving yours by telling you that particular shade of green does not complement your skin tone,” Juliette said.
Though somehow on Charlie, the cap accentuated his cheekbones and highlighted the golden-brown depths of his eyes.
Not that she was noticing cheekbones or eye colors at the moment.
And not that she’d been thinking about that brief moment of sizzle between them at his office the previous day.
That had been a mistake, obviously, her body inappropriately trying to communicate its needs.
She certainly hadn’t been anticipating seeing him again; that would be ridiculous. Untenable.
“Were you here for a reason other than fashion tips for my scrubs?” Charlie asked.
Feminine wiles, here we go. Juliette had made sure to display her legs in a short skirt she’d picked out just for the occasion.
She’d also chosen one of her highest pairs of heels so that her eyes were level with his.
If Charlie noticed any of the efforts she’d put into her appearance, though, it didn’t cross his expression as he frowned at her.
For some reason, that annoyed her more than anything else.
She happened to know her legs were her best feature, long and lean and athletically curved, and he didn’t even so much as look down. What a prude.
“I need your help,” she said, shimmying her skirt into place just an inch lower to draw his attention downward. Not even a flicker, the jerk. “Getting into Pacific Pines.”
“I already told you, I don’t have time for that,” Charlie said, turning away. “I’ve got another surgery in an hour. I need to clean up and get something to eat.”
“Oh, right,” Juliette said, remembering the care package Kate had given her. “I brought you something. Beignets, from Dahlia Bakery. Kate said they were your favorite.”
Charlie looked longingly toward her, which was frankly the kind of response she’d been expecting from the beginning. At least until she realized he wasn’t looking at her, but at the box of baked goods in her hands. “With the jam?” he asked, almost begrudgingly.
“Blackberry,” Juliette said, giving it a little shake. “And vanilla mascarpone.”
Charlie sighed, turning away from her. “Follow me. If anyone asks, you’re a pharmaceutical rep.”
He took her to a lounge she assumed was specifically for doctors, judging by the number of aggressive Post-it notes warning people not to touch the food in the refrigerator.
There were a few doctors already in there, lounging in scrubs and scrolling on their phones, but they mostly ignored Juliette and Charlie as he took a seat and opened the box of donuts.
He gave a shuddering little sigh at the sight of them.
“You’re really into donuts, huh?” Juliette asked, sitting across from him as he lifted the first one like it was a baby he’d just brought into the world. The metaphor kind of went sideways as he bit into it, though, leaving a shower of confectioner’s sugar in its wake.
“My grandmother was French,” he said, closing his eyes and savoring the bite. “She’d make beignets once a year, for Christmas. These are the closest I’ve found to her recipe anywhere. She made them from memory, so when she passed no one else could replicate them. Believe me, I tried.”
“Is that how your bread making obsession started?” Juliette asked.
“Ah, no,” Charlie said, grinning and looking sheepish.
“That was a freshman biology experiment gone awry. We had a rather unconventional bio teacher for undergrad. Half our class was premed and offended that they had to take such a rudimentary course, and the other half were sports fellows looking for an easy A. It was … an eclectic mix.”
“Of assholes, you mean?”
Charlie chuckled, the sound surprisingly deep and warm.
She liked it, and she liked that she’d been the cause of it.
“I think the professor hated all of us equally. She was very granola, as you’d say here in the Pacific Northwest. Taking us on hiking trips to look at fallen trees and count their rings, collecting moss and herbs to make wild salads.
Part of our final exam was to harvest wild yeast from the air and make our own starter.
It was half our grade! Can you imagine a bunch of future surgeons and jocks nursing a sourdough starter? ”
Juliette tilted her head to the side, blinking in surprise. “I literally cannot.”
“Well, apparently neither could any of us, because ninety percent of the class failed. I’m convinced that the only reason my starter succeeded was because my roommate never washed any of his clothes.
My teacher was so pleased with my starter that she invited me over to bake bread with it, so I’m pretty sure I ate bread made out of my roommate’s yeasty old socks. ”
Juliette surprised herself again by laughing, as much at Charlie’s story as she was at the exaggerated look of disgust on Charlie’s face.
She never in a million years would have imagined him telling such a funny story, much less mugging for the end of it.
It was cute, and charming, and nothing like his usual stiff, stodgy demeanor.
All they needed were a few tea lights on the table and a glass of red wine and she might mistake this for a date.
“I’m sure you don’t have any embarrassing college stories,” Charlie said, tucking in to another donut lavished with jam.
He was a surprisingly messy eater for a surgeon, a career that relied on absolute precision, and he’d left a smear of jam on one corner of his mouth that she had the sudden, wild urge to lick clean.
She blinked away the image, once again so vivid and clear.
She really needed to stop fantasizing about Doctor Dud just because he’d told one single charming story and he looked like a toddler gone wild in a donut shop.
She’d been working too hard, putting in her regular long hours at Simon Says and pulling deep overtime working on recovering the missing manuscript.
She should find the nearest halfway decent doctor and have her way with him.
Except the most decent doctor in the room was looking at her expectantly, a tiny ring of powdered sugar framing the alluring arch of his upper lip, just daring her to taste it.
“I don’t do embarrassing, no,” she said, crossing her legs and telling the point between them to behave. But then Charlie looked slightly disappointed, and she felt bad, and so she said something stupid. “All my embarrassing stories are from high school.”
Why had she brought that up?? She never talked about high school—never—and certainly not with anyone outside of a therapeutic doctor-patient confidentiality agreement. But he looked like a dumb little puppy dog, all chocolatey eyes and interested expression, and so her ignorant mouth kept talking.
“I had a brief flirtation with making very bad pottery my sophomore year,” she said, rolling her eyes at her own naivete.
“I don’t know what I thought I would do with a bunch of misshapen coffee mugs and pinch pots, but my art teacher was one of those idealistic college grads who hadn’t had their dreams ruthlessly snuffed out by teenage indifference yet, so she was disgustingly encouraging.
There was an art studio in my hometown that my teacher sometimes displayed her work in, and she convinced them to do an exhibition with all of our projects.
And I decided I wanted to do this big, fancy vase.
I’d watched so many YouTube videos of actual professional potters pulling up walls and it gave me the unreasonable confidence that I could do it myself.
In hindsight, my teacher really should have curbed my ambitions. ”
“I can’t imagine anyone telling you to dial it back and surviving,” Charlie said.