The Temporary Roomie (It Happened in Nashville 2)

I grimace. “Let me rephrase that: I need a fake girlfriend to go with me to a fundraiser so I don’t have to date my colleague.”

His face clears, and he looks relieved that I’m not asking Lucy to pimp out one of her friends. Apparently, these two have really high opinions of me these days.

“Didn’t you just ditch Jessie for something similar to this?”

I throw my hands up. “I didn’t ditch her. I was sleep deprived and forgot. There is a difference. But even if I did do it on purpose, could you really blame me? Who in their right mind would help a woman so rude and abrasive?”

“Well, you’re not exactly daisies and roses yourself there, Dr. Stuck-up.” Jessie suddenly appears from around the corner like an evil genie I accidentally summoned. My skin prickles at the sight of her sharp green eyes. They are blazing. Strangling. Smothering. One dark blonde brow is cocked up, her arms crossed over the yellow t-shirt pulling tight against her chest and small baby bump. The corner of her mouth is tilted. She looks like venom wrapped up in sunshine.

“Jessica,” I say, giving her a short nod like we’re in a saloon in the wild west. If I had a cowboy hat on, I’d tip it down, so it covered just one of my eyes. I need a piece of wheat.

Jessie’s gaze falls down the length of my body, tripping like a rock skipping across a pond. Face. Shoulders. Biceps. Torso. Thighs. Feet. At first, I think she’s checking me out, until her head tilts and she smirks. “Your fly is down.”

I chuckle once. “Nice try. Did you steal that shirt from a toddler?”

“Nope. From your mom.”

Somewhere in a schoolyard, a group of teenage boys all crow with laughter.

“You two aren’t very nice,” my sister mumbles quietly from the sideline. Poor Luce. She’s still hoping Jessie and I will kiss and makeup, and no doubt that’s what she was imagining would happen if Jessie moved in with me. Over my dead body.

Jessie and I lock eyes, and both of our smiles fade. Blue rams into green, tension racing between us like a current. It’s not the good kind, though. It’s that special brand that has turned friends into foes, made business partnerships crumble, and sent countries to war. It’s not a delicate string tying us together. It’s quicksand, gripping our ankles and pulling us both down inch by inch until we’re smothered. It’s loaded and charged, and—

Lucy’s loud clap zings around us. “Okkkkaayyyyy! Who’s hungry? The pizza will be coming out of the oven any minute, so everyone grab a plate.”

Jessie walks up and stops right in front of me. I know I’m partially blocking the cabinet that holds the plates, but I’m a mean bully now and make no attempts to move out of the way. She, of course, won’t back down either. She’ll drill a hole right through my body to get to the dishes if she has to. Inching up closer, she stands directly beside me, and her shoulder presses against mine as she reaches partially around me into the cabinet.

In the second before she pulls away, she leans close to my ear. “I’d watch your back if I were you, Dr. Stuck-up. I’m not good at forgiving and definitely never forget, but I’m excellent at getting even.”

I turn my head just enough to look her right in the eyes. “Looking forward to it, Oscar.”

Oscar is the nickname I christened her with the day she started calling me that awful Dr. Stuck-up, and she still has no idea what it means. When she’s not calling me by that little gem, she calls me by my first name, Andrew…which I might hate even more. Every single thing between us is an equal back and forth, so if she calls me Dr. Stuck-up, I call her Oscar. She calls me Andrew; I call her Jessica. It’s how things are done around here.

Her full mouth blooms into a wicked smile before she pulls back with her plate and walks away, promises of future torture hanging in the air.

That’s when I look down at my jeans. “Dammit,” I mumble, and then I zip up my fly.

Dinner was a tense affair, as it usually is when Drew and I are forced to breathe the same oxygen. I feel bad that we’re both so disagreeable around Lucy, who is just an agreeable little sprite, an angel-fairy sent to the world to bestow goodness and sweet vibes on all of us. But it’s Drew’s fault. He had a chance to mend the strife between us, and instead, he threw new logs on the fire. It burns before my eyes.

Drew’s not in the room right now. He walked down the hall again to make a secretive phone call to his doctor, saying the meds still aren’t working and the butt rash is getting worse. At least that’s what I’m assuming the calls are about. So I’m on the floor with Lucy’s little boy, Levi, and we’re putting together a puzzle while Lucy and Cooper snuggle on the couch. Basically, our nightly routine.

I’m trying to focus, but this twenty-piece dinosaur puzzle just isn’t holding my attention. My eyes keep sliding down the dark hallway in the direction of where Drew disappeared. I have no idea why, but I’m curious about who he’s talking to back there. It’s definitely not because I wonder if he has a girlfriend or anything. I mean, he may be attractive from a subjective point of view—like classically speaking I suppose his broad shoulders and muscled frame might be considered paintable—but his personality is garbage. How he could get any woman to date him is beyond me. I don’t even know how he’s managed to have any patients at his practice. I would never want to see a stuck-up, know-it-all, mansplainer like him.

“Uh—I’ll be right back. I need to go to the bathroom.” I state this out loud like I have never before done in the history of my existence. I look suspicious as I stand up and walk like a nutcracker toward the hallway. Right leg, left arm. Left leg, right arm. Or should it be the opposite? How do I normally walk?

“Why are you walking like that?” Lucy asks.

So not like this apparently.

“Trying not to pee myself,” I say, because that’s an excellent excuse for every abnormality when you’re in your third trimester. Then I scurry down the hall. A couple of feet into the dark, I hear Drew’s voice coming from a cracked door at the end of the hallway. Levi’s room.

I inch forward, my back pressed against the wall like Ethan Hunt from

Mission Impossible until I can hear him.

“…no, no, I promise you’re not bothering me at all. It’s okay to be nervous—this is your first baby. It’s perfectly normal and expected.”

He’s on a call with a patient? I guess that makes sense. He is a doctor, though I have trouble actually picturing it. Also, I know I should turn and walk away to give him privacy while he’s on a medical call, but anyone who thinks I’m capable of turning and walking away right now is crazy. I’m getting a glimpse of Drew in the wild, and I fully intend to put on my safari hat and pull out my binoculars.