“Dr. Smyth,” Dr. Knowles had said.
I’d frozen when I heard the voice. Closed my eyes. Maybe if my eyes were closed, I wouldn’t have to confront him. I was off-balance from the thing with Mac. Fuck. I’d wanted to avoid the surgical lead before I left, but no such luck. He’d found me. Alone.
I took a fortifying breath to face the only person I disliked in Cutthroat. In the entire state of Montana.
I spun on my sneakered heel and tipped up my chin. “Yes?” I asked.
I had to forget about Mac, what had just occurred, that I was meeting him by my car.
“Good work on the surgery.”
His praise was familiar but only because it was usually followed by something else. It was the segue he always used to strike up a conversation.
“Thank you,” I replied.
“I want to talk with you about your suture tying.” He approached. “Perhaps we can discuss it over dinner.”
Suture tying? I’d been tying sutures since the first practical in medical school. That was what he was going with?
“We can talk of any issues you have out at the nurses’ station,” I replied, not even mentioning the over dinner part of his sentence. I needed a public place for our conversation… and inside the hospital. Every discussion had to be about work and nothing else. I’d given in to small talk with him when I’d first arrived, but that had been a mistake. It led to… well, this. Advances on his part that were unwanted. Cutthroat was a small town, and people talked, made assumptions.
He took a step closer, and I spun about to face away from him, grabbed my things from my locker and slammed it shut. I wanted to flee, which would have given him the upper hand. I also wanted to knee him in the balls, but that would get me fired.
He advanced farther so he was pressed against my back. I could smell the slight scent of his cologne, feel every inch of him in his scrubs… and what was beneath. My skin crawled, and I was freaked out. He’d never made contact with me before, only a handshake when we’d first met, and never like this.
Just looking at Mac had made me hot, made me flustered. Wet. But Dr. Knowles, the feel of him, made me want to vomit.
He was an attractive man—I would admit to that—but I had no interest in his forty-something ass. Or any other part of him. Nurses batted their eyelashes at him, practically tossed their panties his way as he made his rounds. I’d heard stories and the fact that he’d made his rounds through the hospital staff, too, and the fact that I was next made him even worse. Was I the only one to rebuff him? Was I the only one who wasn’t wired for a one-night stand? For a quick fuck with my mentor?
Was I supposed to be hot for him? Why was I turned on by a blatant bad boy like Mac?
Dr. Knowles’s hair was salt-and-pepper, but it made him look mature, not old. He kept himself in good shape and had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. The other nurses could have him. I knew men like him. Lots of doctors with god complexes, who expected everyone to fall into line… or their beds. Men like him saw me, the young prodigy, as one to teach more than medicine. They all wanted to not only work with me, they wanted to play with me, giving the whole playing doctor a whole new meaning.
And that was sooo not happening. I was fine with my vibrators. Mac’s dick would be fun, too. He definitely knew what to do with it, I had no doubt. Mac might have been forward, but he wasn’t seeking an advantage, abusing a position of trust. I’d told him to pull his pants down and he had. A misunderstanding, yes, but it was all outside the boundaries of interoffice relations.
He was a stranger, a stranger I knew to a certain degree intimately.
I sashayed sideways to get around Dr. Knowles and speed walked for the door, opening it so that we weren’t in private any longer. I had my coat and bag in my arms.
“You rebuffed a conversation on removing the duodenum during the Whipple procedure and your op notes for the appendectomy. Your lack of participation in the program will show on your work record.”
That had me pausing, hand on the doorknob, but the door was open enough where people walking down the hall could see into the room and know nothing was happening.
“Lack of participation in what, exactly?” I asked, my eyes narrowing. I was very familiar with my work record since all I did was work. It was exemplary, and I wouldn’t have him tarnish it. He might question my interpersonal skills but not my work. My heart was beating out of my chest, but I wouldn’t let any of my nerves show. I wouldn’t give him that pleasure.
“Furthering your medical knowledge.”
He’d spoken of the Whipple procedure in detail with the entire surgical staff, myself included.
“As I put in my op notes, the CT was worrying for possible perforation, but when I had the scope in and visualized it, it was clear it was inflamed and distended but not ruptured.”
“Yes, but we should analyze your performance further.”
I didn’t need my IQ of 176 to know he meant sex education and my performance while being fucked by him.
At the rate sleazeballs like Knowles came on to me, my sex toys were going to be the closest things to my vagina… ever. Not that I wanted to have battery-induced orgasms for the rest of my life, but I was selective. The guy who took my virginity at least couldn’t be an asshole. I wanted to burn from his touch, not freeze. And that made me think of Mac. He made me hot. Ache. Want.
And he was waiting for me outside.