“I’ve had enough.” He stretched his arms above his head, drawing her gaze to how his shirt pulled taut over his chest.
She quickly glanced away, looked down at her watch. Maybe she’d have time t
o shop yet.
She sighed.
Maybe not.
The nicer dress boutiques would all be closed. Great.
She’d just wear the black cocktail dress she’d bought for last year’s Christmas party. She wasn’t crazy about the idea of wearing black to a wedding, but with its skirt flared at the hem the dress would do in a pinch and was the closest thing she had to appropriate wear for media darling Sharon Wakefield’s glamorous wedding. As far as the reception, she’d make do with whatever she could find in her rather boring closet.
“Will he still be waiting?”
She blinked at Vale. “Who?”
His blue eyes darkened. “Whoever I’ve kept you from.”
He almost sounded as if he’d intentionally kept her at the office. Actually, when the others had left and she’d started to stand, he had asked her opinion on a patient report he’d just read, ensuring she’d stay on to read the profile.
Had he intentionally kept her there? What possible reason would he have for doing so?
She took a deep breath, telling herself she was tired, imagining things, but for once gave her boss a flip-pant answer. “Regardless of how late you keep me, he’s always glad to see me.”
She wasn’t lying. Not really. But, seriously, she expected Yoda not to know who she was if she didn’t start spending more time with him. Thank goodness for their nightly snuggles and early morning walks.
“Maybe you should go ahead,” he suggested, his dark eyes unreadable. “I’ll finish these.”
He was staying? Telling her to go on? Was he testing her? Seeing how dedicated she was to her career?
“When you said we should call it a night, I thought you meant both of us. I don’t like the thought of leaving you here alone.”
Leaning back in his chair, he laughed. “Do you think I can’t take care of myself?”
No matter how she tried she couldn’t keep her gaze from lowering, from tracing over the strong lines of his neck, over the tanned V of skin exposed where he’d removed his tie and unbuttoned the top couple of buttons, down his broad shoulders that his tailored shirt accented, down his forearms bared where he’d rolled up his sleeves. And his hands.
Lord, how she loved his talented hands.
Tanned, strong, long-fingered, ring-free. She particularly liked that last part, although eventually he’d marry one of the beauties he bedded. Then what? Would she be able to continue working with him, knowing how she dreamt about him, knowing he belonged to someone else?
That question was one that crept into her mind from time to time, filling her with panic, filling her with the dreaded knowledge that some day she might leave Wakefield and Fishe.
She lifted her gaze back to his, was startled to look into smoky blue eyes filled with awareness.
Awareness that she’d looked at him not as his employee, not as a fellow physician, but as a woman with real needs.
What was wrong with her?
She swallowed, trying to clear her throat, trying to buy herself time while she racked her brain for something to say that would defuse the situation.
Only, she didn’t know what to say.
Regardless of how much his awareness scared her professionally, as a woman, the flicker of interest in his eyes set light to a hope that threatened to consume her very soul.
CHAPTER TWO
VALE finished his cellphone conversation with his cousin Sharon and turned toward Faith. They’d just left the hospital following a globus pallidus DBS implantation, and were walking back to Wakefield Tower, where Wakefield and Fishe occupied the entire fifty-sixth floor.