Melt (Steel Brothers Saga 4)

“Are you still up for dinner?”

Dinner. Hell. Well, a girl had to eat. I blew my nose again and stood. “Sure, let’s go to dinner.”

Oliver stood and then reached for me and wiped away an errant tear rivering down my cheek. “I’m sorry you’re going through this,” he said. “As you can imagine, in pediatric nephrology, I’ve lost a few patients too.”

“And they were children. That’s got to be a lot worse. I’m sorry, Oliver.”

He pursed his lips. “I wish I could tell you that you get used to it.” He shook his head. “I certainly never have.”

“Any physician who gets used to it probably shouldn’t be practicing medicine,” I said. “And I’m the one who decided to practice psychotherapy. I could’ve been a more routine psychiatrist, just dispensing meds and referring patients to psychologists and counselors. I knew ahead of time there would be people I just couldn’t help.”

“You have such a caring nature. I can’t imagine you just dispensing meds.” He cupped my cheek. “You’ve always been that way. Always thinking of others. You know, Melanie, I’ve thought about contacting you many times over the past decade. I read your book on overcoming childhood trauma. It was brilliant.”

My cheeks warmed. “Why in the world would a pediatric nephrologist read a book on psychotherapy for overcoming childhood trauma?”

“Because I knew the author. And I knew she was brilliant.”

I chuckled. “You were the one who was always at the top of all of our classes.”

“And you were always right behind me.” Oliver smiled.

“You have no idea how annoying that was,” I said. “My main goal in life was to pass you up, and I never could.”

“Ha! The reason you were never able to do it is because I forced myself to work that much harder to stay ahead of you.”

I warmed again. “You’re saying I was an incentive for you?”

“Yes, totally. You don’t know how close you came to beating me. There’s a reason I didn’t socialize.”

Oliver hadn’t had a social life? He was always so jovial and good-looking, always had two or three women clinging to his every word. I was the one who’d had no social life. Of course, since I hadn’t had one, I wouldn’t have known whether he had.

“I don’t think any of us did much socializing in med school, and that was nothing compared to internship and residency.”

“You’re telling me. Those hours were brutal.” He caressed my cheek with his fingers.

I was getting uncomfortable. I cleared my throat. “What are you in the mood for? There are some great restaurants around here. There’s a nice sushi place about a block over and a couple Italian places.”

“Sushi sounds great. Let’s try that.”

“All right. Let me grab my purse out of my desk.”

Warmth came up behind me as I was bending to pick up my purse out of the locked drawer where I kept it. I grabbed the bag and turned around. Oliver was right behind me, and he quickly brushed his lips over mine. I jolted backward, falling into my desk chair, my ass plunking on the leather. I bit my lip.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just couldn’t get that out of my mind.”

I stood nervously. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the kiss. Granted, Oliver and I had been intimate long ago, but only once, and it was certainly not part of any kind of relationship.

He grabbed my elbow and pulled me toward him. “Let’s try that again,” he said.

And before I could pull away, his lips were on mine once more.

He ran his tongue over the seam of my lips, and although I wasn’t sure, I opened to him. He slipped his tongue into my mouth. I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on the kiss, trying to melt

into him the way I had melted into—

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Chapter Twenty–One