by Holly Rayner
I checked my watch and my mouth actually feel open. “How is it already 6:45?”
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Dr. Hunt said, standing up and offering me his hand. “But, yes, Jamie is fine, thanks to you.”
I accepted his hand, and held on to it for only a few seconds longer than I should have once I was standing.
“I suppose so,” I said softly. “Thank you for tracking me down and wanting to meet me. I’m glad I could be there for your son when he needed it.”
I extended my hand the same way I had when we’d first met. I wanted to be cured of my little crush by shaking his hand and reminding myself that I was here as a business professional, as a representative of the hospital, not on a date. However, unlike the first time I’d offered him my hand, this time, Dr. Hunt did not shake it. Instead, he took my hand in between both of his own.
“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” he asked.
The flurry of brain activity I’d been having since first hearing Dr. Hunt wanted to meet with me suddenly faded to a soft static. I became incapable of thought. Incapable of speech. All I seemed able to do was stare at him, lips slightly parted.
He continued. “It would be a way for me to repay you for your kindness, and I’d love to talk a bit more with you. Learn more about you. I understand if you’re unable to come with me. This is very last minute, and I’m springing it on you, but I do hope you’ll consider it.”
Consider it? My brain seemed to be rebooting, powering back on after a brief pause in activity. What was there to consider? An incredibly handsome, impossibly rich, kind and intelligent doctor wanted to take me to dinner. I would be the biggest fool in the world if I said no. Of course, in classic Jess fashion, I couldn’t refrain from looking a little foolish.
“Yes!” I said, practically shouting at him, unsure how long I’d been standing and staring at him without response. It could have been two seconds or two minutes. Time seemed to have stood still. “I would absolutely like to talk with you more.”
An amused smile crossed Dr. Hunt’s face. “That’s great. How do you feel about Italian?”
Chapter 6
Dr. Hunt texted me the address for the restaurant and then we separated to go to our own cars. He’d offered to drive me, but I needed the ten-minute drive to compose myself. We were going to be sitting at a table without any exhibits or museum displays to distract us. It would just be me and him talking. I needed to get myself together.
It wasn’t even that Dr. Hunt was that handsome—even though he was—or that I had idolized him my entire career, even though I had. It was that I felt like I had done nothing to deserve his attention. He was treating me like some kind of hero, when I’d spent less than three minutes talking to his son and peeling the paper off the back of a bandage. He was one of the most famous people in all of medicine, and I was a nurse who had fixed his son’s boo-boo. Rarely had ever I felt so inadequate.
On the drive, I thought about calling Greg, but I realized pretty quickly that would be a mistake. He was the one responsible for filling my head with thoughts of dates and romance in the first place. Without him, I would have acted like a professional back at the museum. I probably wouldn’t have even accepted Dr. Hunt’s offer of dinner. Because, of course, he didn’t need to buy me dinner. It was too much.
There was a complimentary valet at the restaurant—a modern-looking place with lights that shot vertical beams of blue light up the side of the wooden front—and I handed the keys to my ancient sedan to the man with a goatee and thick-framed glasses.
“Are you here with someone or alone?” he asked, a glint in his eyes.
“With someone,” I said coolly.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I heard my name from the direction of the restaurant. Dr. Hunt was standing on the curb, waving a hand for me. I smiled at him and then looked back to the valet, nodding my thanks. His eyes widened when he caught sight of Dr. Hunt, and I felt momentarily bad for him. Honestly, in that moment, I felt bad for every man who ever, for even a second, had compared themselves to Spencer Hunt. He set an impossible standard of perfection that no one, save for him, would ever reach.
“I’m glad you found it all right,” Dr. Hunt said when I stepped up onto the curb. “Are you ready to head inside?”
“Actually…” I hesitated, twisting my hands behind my back and then pressing them to the sides of my thighs. “You really don’t need to do this. I feel sufficiently thanked, and you’ve spent enough time with me as it is—”
“Don’t I get to decide that?” he interrupted.
“Decide what?”
“Whether I’ve spent enough time with you,” he answered. “You didn’t force yourself on me or make any hints towards dinner. It was entirely my idea. You have no reason to feel as though you’re imposing.”
I bit my lower lip and nodded. He was right, but I still felt bad for taking up such an important man’s time.
“Now,” he continued. “If you don’t want to spend any more time with me, then that is an entirely different matter. We can part now if you have other ideas for how you’d like to spend this evening. I won’t be offended.”
“No, that isn’t it,” I said in a rush. “I don’t have anything else going on. I was going to eat leftover Chinese food for dinner, so this is much better.”
His mouth lifted up on one side, revealing the faintest hint of a dimple. “Shall we, then?”
He held out an elbow to me as though we were in an old-school romance, and I accepted it, feeling woefully underdressed and riddled with nerves.
We were seated immediately at a quiet booth near the back corner of the restaurant. The waitress was a tall redhead with a high ponytail. She didn’t even look at me as she took our orders, but Dr. Hunt didn’t look at her either, which made me feel better. He ordered sparkling water to start and I followed suit, suddenly nervous that my usual order of “the cheapest red wine you have” would come off as classless.
As soon as the waitress left, Dr. Hunt clapped his hands together and leaned forward, looking eager. “So, you said children were your passion. Did you always want to work in pediatrics?”
“I did. I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else. When I first started as a nurse, I worked in the emergency department. It was interesting and I learned a lot, but my heart has always been with children. I want to be a pediatrician one day, too. What about you, Dr. Hunt?”
“Dr. Hunt?” He screwed up his nose and shook his head. “Please, call me Spencer.”
I chuckled. When Mr. Antione told me to call him Mike, it always felt stiff, like he didn’t actually mean it. But Dr. Hunt had seemed genuinely disturbed.
“What about you, Spencer?” I repeated, putting extra emphasis on his first name.
“It wasn’t always my plan, but I didn’t really have a plan for most of my career. I certainly didn’t plan to start medical school at fifteen.” Suddenly, he stopped and groaned. “I’m sorry, that sounded like I was trying to show off.”
“No, it didn’t,” I laughed. “I swear. I have a very sensitive pretentiousness detector, and my sensors didn’t pick anything up. You’re in the clear.”
He smiled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Good. But the point was, I never really had a plan, and it worked out okay for me. I ended up as a pediatric surgeon, and I love it. I go to work every day knowing it is absolutely where I belong.”
“What has been your favorite surgery you’ve ever done?” I asked.
His eyes sparkled at the question, filled with excitement. “I’ve actually never been asked this question before. Wow, that doesn’t happen very often. I’m going to have to think about it for a minute.”
“Take your time,” I said, waving him away and picking up my menu. Most of it was in Italian, which I knew exactly zero words of. So, I relied on the few dishes that I at least vaguely recognized. There was a penne pasta with Alfredo sauce. Also on my radar was the eggplant parmesan; a star was printed next to it on the menu, highlig
hting it as a crowd favorite.
As I was looking over the menu, Spencer ordered us some wine, which I was thankful for. If I was struggling with the normal menu, the wine menu would have been a disaster for me. The waiter brought it over in record time. I guessed he’d recognized Spencer, or maybe all service in fancy restaurants was just this fast.
“Okay,” Spencer said, holding his hands out in front of him, eyes looking upwards in thought. “I’ve got one.”
“All right, let’s hear it.”
He looked at me and wrapped his fingers around his wine glass, playing with the stem. “It was a little girl who had a traumatic eye injury. Her pupil was torn and unable to contract, leaving her essentially blind in one eye. So, her parents came to me and, I swear to you, if they had come to me even one month earlier, I would have had to send them away.”
“Why?” I asked, brows furrowed.
“Because I wouldn’t have had any way to help her. As it was, though, I had just learned of an experimental surgery that could use a false iris to repair damage similar to what the little girl experienced. The family was willing to take a risk on the surgery, and it was a success. She was restored to almost full function of the damaged eye.”
“That’s a lovely story,” I said, feeling slightly disappointed. I’d been expecting a tale of a child on the verge of death being saved because of his heroics. Don’t get me wrong, the story was sweet, but it seemed a little mundane for a world-renowned pediatric surgeon.
“Are you a little disappointed?” he asked.
I jerked to attention. Was it that obvious? Was it written all over my face?
“What? No.”
“It’s okay if you are. I understand it isn’t the most exciting story, but do you want to hear why it’s my favorite?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Because it reminded me of the power of innovation. Sometimes, I feel stuck in my career. As much as I love what I do, occasionally I feel as though I I’ve reached the end of my creative and innovative potential. And then, a case like this will come to me, and had it not been for the latest technology, the patient would be beyond my help. So, then I think, what would happen if the person who created this technique had decided that they had done all there was to do and quit? Medicine is always advancing. Technology is always advancing. And whenever I think about that little girl’s smile when she could read the eye chart with her once damaged eye, I remember why I keep striving to do more and be better.”
As he spoke, his words came out faster and faster, tumbling over one another. I could feel the life flowing off of him, the passion he had for his profession. How could anyone be disappointed with a story like that?
“That’s a beautiful explanation,” I told him.
He shrugged, smiling.
“That’s exactly why I want to go to medical school one day,” I said. “I love being a nurse, but I know I’ll ache to do more at some point. I want to be a pediatrician, but I’m also interested in the research side of medicine. I want to help develop new treatments for incurable diseases rather than just make the symptoms more bearable.” Alice’s smiling face appeared in my mind—her red hair and freckled cheeks, and also her small shoulders shaking with coughs.
“Why one day?” he asked. “Why not now?”
“Money.” I took a sip of my water and gave him a ‘what are you gonna do’ shrug and smile. I wondered whether Spencer was an out-of-touch billionaire, or whether he understood the struggles of the average person. I set down my glass and continued. “Well, that’s the short version. The longer version is that my brother needed some assistance, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to help him out and go to school and work to pay rent. One of the three had to go. It couldn’t be rent, and I chose my brother over going back to school.”
“That’s a very selfless thing for you to do. I sense a pattern,” he said, giving me a knowing look, referring to our conversation back at the museum.
“What else is family for?” I said in reply.
The conversation continued to flow effortlessly from there. I asked him about going to college so young, and he told me what it was like to go through puberty while all of his peers were in their twenties. When our entrees arrived, we barely paid attention to the five-star food while we learned more about one another. I told him about Greg—even confessing that Greg had been the one to dial his number the night I called him, which could somewhat explain how awkward I’d been on the phone—and Spencer chuckled, but not unkindly.
He told me more about Jamie and his mother in surprising honesty.
“Jamie was a total surprise,” he admitted, pushing a sun-dried tomato around the edge of his plate. “I wasn’t ready to be a parent, but now, I think I realize that no one ever is. His mother and I had only been dating for a few months when it happened, but we both decided that the only option for us was to have him. We had the financial means to support a child; it was just the emotional aspect of it that we had to prepare for. And, in the end, I emotionally prepared. Jamie’s mother didn’t.”
“She isn’t in his life?” I asked, surprised. I tried to imagine a scenario in which a woman would walk away from Spencer Hunt and came up empty. I’d read a lot about Spencer’s life, but there had been little mention of his son’s mother. I’d always wondered what the situation was.
“When we broke up, she wanted to go back home, to Australia, and she wanted to take Jamie with her. At first, I was afraid she’d fight for full custody, but deep down, I think she knew she wasn’t ready to be a single parent. She was a new doctor and a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. And, for her, that life didn’t include middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes and all of the very real responsibilities of raising a child. I wanted to blame her for walking away—I did for some time—but I can understand it now. We don’t speak much, but we left things on good terms.”
His eyes went unfocused for a moment before he blinked, looked at me, and smiled. He ran a hand through his dark hair and shook his head.
“I’m sorry. I don’t usually ramble on about things like this. I’m overwhelming you with my personal problems.”
Before I could stop myself, I reached across the table and placed my hand over his. “You have nothing to apologize for. Do I look overwhelmed?”
His eyes glanced down quickly to where our hands were touching. I felt his finger twitch beneath my hand, and I quickly pulled it back, tucking it in my lap lest it decide to make another inappropriate leap across the table.
“No, you look fine,” he said, his mouth lifting up into a smile. “Great, actually.”
I felt heat rise up in my cheeks, and hoped the lighting in the restaurant was dim enough that he wouldn’t notice the blush.
Just as I was scrambling for something to say, my phone began to ring. The older couple at the table next to us looked over immediately, their eyes narrowed. I winced and slid my phone out of my back pocket. I wanted to just dismiss the call to stop the ringing, but I saw Greg’s name on the screen.
I knew it was probably nothing, but I still couldn’t bring myself to dismiss his call. What if he had relapsed? What if he was calling me as an accountability partner, hoping I’d convince him to put down the bottle and maintain his sobriety?
“I’m sorry, do you mind if I answer this?” I asked. The phone was still ringing, and the couple at the table next to us were now full-on complaining about me to one another.
“No, of course not. Go ahead,” Spencer said.
“Hello?” I turned to the side slightly, giving myself a semblance of privacy, though it was most certainly false.
“Hey, sis. When are you gonna be home?”
Greg didn’t sound like he was seconds away from getting high. He sounded perfectly normal, and I felt ridiculous for feeling like I needed to answer the phone. He’d been sober for a year. At what point would I trust him again?
“Not sure. Definitely in the next couple hours. Do you need anything?”
�
�You sound like you’re in a rush,” he said, sounding suspicious.
“No, just busy,” I said.
He inhaled sharply. “Are you with the handsome doctor?”
“I’m going to hang up, Greg.”
“When he tries to kiss you goodnight, tell him you aren’t that kind of girl!”
I hung up on him, praying my volume hadn’t been loud enough for Spencer to have overheard any of that. When I turned back to face him, he seemed normal, which was a relief.
“Greg? Is that your brother?” he asked.
“Yes. Younger by two years.”
“He’s the one who needed your help after university?”
I nodded again, deciding it was my turn to be vulnerable. “He had a drug addiction. It got really bad and he needed a place to get clean, so I let him move in. It’s been really great in a lot of ways, but it’s also been hard. I work a lot and our schedules are often flip-flopped, so at times we rarely see one another. I worry a lot that he will slip up while I’m gone and I’ll come home to him unconscious on the floor. Or worse.”
Spencer sighed and bit the corner of his mouth, and suddenly I was worried that I’d confided something too personal. That I’d made him uncomfortable. Before the thoughts could spiral out of control, though, he took a deep breath, stretched his arms across the table, and tilted his head to the side.
“Can I confess something to you?” he asked. His eyes were bright blue, like a perfect spring sky. How could anyone deny those eyes?
“Of course.” My heart picked up a new rhythm in my chest, beating faster as my cheeks warmed and my hands began to fidget.
“Once I found out where you worked, I found out everything there was to know about you.”
The chatter of the restaurant patrons, the clang of silverware, and the Italian music pouring from the speakers faded away. I couldn’t hear anything except the beating of my own heart and my quick, nervous breathing.
“Excuse me?”
Spencer took a breath before continuing. “I found out which department you worked in, what your performance was like, and in my searching, I discovered your brother had been in the hospital. So, when you mentioned that he’d needed your assistance, I had some ideas of the possibilities.” He paused, running a hand through his hair. “You probably think I’m a creep,” he said, grinning awkwardly.
