by Evie Claire
Behind her, the door snicked closed. Startled, she jumped and turned around with a gasp, the pictures still clutched in her hands.
“Dr. Sherazi!” she exclaimed, finding the man she’d made her mission standing near the now-closed door. Had the air sucked out of the room when he closed it? Was the heat suddenly cranked up to ninety? Because her body was going through some major changes she was wholly unprepared for. She stood frozen, watching his brow furrow lower over his eyes than it normally did, fixated on the pictures clutched to her breast. That was the thing about him. He rarely made eye contact. If ever. Which gave you the distinct impression he didn’t really want to talk to you. “You scared me.”
“Ms. Braddock.” He said her name very matter-of-factly, like he was reading off an attendance sheet in gym class.
“Yes!” Lorie recovered, beaming her award-winning smile in his direction. “Forgive me, it’s been a crazy morning. How are you?” Still the man didn’t make eye contact. Weird and unsettling on a major scale. He did, however, begin walking toward her. She stood on the far side of his desk, a place she assumed he wanted her to stand. Now she wasn’t so sure. When he was near enough to reach her he extended his hand, to shake, Lorie assumed. But when she extended hers to him, their fingers collided awkwardly. He recoiled. She followed his lead.
Again, his hand extended. Slowly. This time Lorie simply watched as his hand grew closer. Her heartbeat kicked up a few notches. Weird on another level. Not moving, she stood still as a statue, watching, waiting, until his fingers curled around the picture frames tucked into her chest and pulled them away.
“Oh…right…sorry! Cute kids.” She tried the smile again. “I didn’t realize you were a dad.”
Silence.
Deafening silence.
Slowly, Dr. Sherazi walked to his side of the desk and put the frames back in the exact same spots they had been moments before. Taking a very long time to line them up just so.
“I’m not married,” he offered into the silence in a dissonant tone that basically yelled he insisted on marriage as a precursor to kids. Right. Okay, she wasn’t pulling the train any farther down the track.
“I brought you a dirty chai latte.” Lorie offered the cup across the desk, taking a chair and trying her darnedest to force cool, calm collection into her body. Because the meeting was having the exact opposite effect on her.
“I didn’t think you could provide bribes anymore.” His tone was deadpan. His scowl focused on the order scribbled down the side of the cup, one that bore her name next to a smiley face, because she was on a first-name basis with the barista. She took a deep breath and held it.
Was he calling her out? It was clearly a violation of her company’s policies, and in truth, if he really wanted to be a dick, he could contact her manager and get her in trouble. But why would he? Why would anyone? It was just coffee. What was happening? How had the moment strayed so far from the path? She needed to get it together. And fast.
Resting her arms on the desk, she leaned in to him. “I paid for it. Out of my own pocket. I’m trying to get to know you, Dr. Sherazi. I’m just being nice.” She waved a hand toward his cup. It was just coffee with the expectation of a little conversation. An international let’s-get-to-know-each-other gesture.
“Why?” He shrugged, still looking at the cup skeptically.
“I can help you. I can help your patients. My company offers a lot of resources—prescription assistance, patient education, continuing education for you. But I don’t know what you need if I don’t know you.” She hadn’t meant to emphasize the last word with such implied intimacy. It had just come out of her. But there it was nonetheless. Sounding like an eharmony promo and flopping around on the bare desk between them like a fish on a hook.
Wow. What else could she f-up today?
But her tone obviously touched something in him. Because, for the first time, possibly ever, he looked at her. And the moment their gaze met she knew exactly why the man didn’t make eye contact any more than he did.
Because…um…what?
Caught somewhere between shock and awe—and wholly incapable of looking away—she recalled a vague memory. A pageant trip to Washington, D.C….the National Museum of Natural History, maybe? A stage-lit glass case. A dove-gray display pedestal. Smack dab in the middle of it all, a diamond—a big freakin’ diamond. Blue and sparkly and perfect. So perfect, it was called the Hope Diamond. Because seeing something so brilliant stirred her deep inside. A sense of optimism that came out of nowhere and washed every other thought from your brain. Blinding in its simple beauty like some sort of transcendental meditating magic.
The eyes that stared across the desk at her stirred something similar—something that fluttered around her chest and skittered down into her belly. Without any conscious thought whatsoever, she leaned farther in. Drawn closer to him and the magic behind his lashes. Only to realize several seconds later how wanton the move might appear. Clutching her fluttery middle with crossed arms, she quickly sat back in her chair.
No wonder the man didn’t look at people. Lorie spent her teenage years surrounded by beautiful people groomed to pageant perfection and even she had trouble coaxing her jaw back to its natural state of rest. The man—with his warm exotic skin, wavy dark hair, and piercing blue eyes—was beyond what one might call beautiful. By Lorie’s estimation, the term Hot AF had just found its visual definition. So much so that it took only a simple single look—not even one with a smile—and all conversation skills she had previously possessed vanished into thin air.
She knew she should stop staring. Close her mouth, look away, slap a smile on it. Something. Anything. She was a southern girl. Things like manners were permanently instilled in the DNA. But she physically couldn’t. The man was magic. She was sure of it.
“Research,” Dr. Sherazi finally said, looking away and breaking the spell.
“Re…research?” Lorie scrambled to regain her composure. “What kind of research?”
“Specifically, in the juvenile diabetic patient,” he continued, digging in his desk for something.
“I have a great relationship with Dr. Samuel Rogers at the CDC. Are you familiar with his work?”
Nothing more than a nod from Dr. Sherazi. A nod that meant he knew Dr. Rogers? Maybe. But also maybe not. The man was impossible to read.
“I’d be happy to introduce you.”
If he heard the offer, he didn’t accept it. Instead, Dr. Sherazi continued digging through his desk, momentarily removing a phone and placing it beside a zippered pouch he’d also retrieved.
“Oh, wow. Look!” Lorie exclaimed, pulling her phone from her coat pocket. “We have the same phone cover.” Lorie sat the two phones beside each other, comparing the boring black boxes that encased their phones. Somewhere inside, she held out the tiniest hope that this might somehow ingratiate her to the doctor. A final futile attempt at camaraderie. But nope. If he even noticed—let alone cared—he showed no sign of it.
The one thing Lorie hated most in social situations was the dreaded awkward silence. Something she now found herself positively swimming in. And if she were buck naked in her high heels while she swam, it would be only slightly more uncomfortable. Because despite every attempt to make an inroad with the man, he remained a total stone wall.
“This song…” She pointed to the ceiling, where the music piped from a hidden speaker. “I cannot place it and it’s driving me crazy.” Of course, she didn’t expect him to answer. Only a music lover would be able to. A love of music implied a certain level of sociability. Something the doctor certainly didn’t aspire to possess. No, she said it simply to having something to say to fill the unrelenting silence that stretched between them.
What was he doing?
Half buried in his desk, paying her zero attention. Maybe the meeting was over, and he’d forgotten to tell her? She turned f
or her bag…and nearly climbed out of her skin when his hand landed on her arm.
She shrieked, totally caught off guard. By his touch, but also by her reaction to it. Because the hot tingles flying up her forearm were the absolute last thing she expected to feel. His fingers were soft but firm, sliding down to the curve of her palm, and for a woman who’d spent her entire professional career trying not to hold hands with a customer, it was quite possibly the most conflicted sensation ever.
Because she liked it—really liked it—the way his skin met hers. And that was not at all okay in her mind. She jerked slightly away. His grip held, mainly because his gaze was also back on her, and she already knew the superhuman power those eyes of his possessed over her.
Lost again in some sort of transcendental state of alternate reality, she was only vaguely aware of what was happening. All that digging in his desk had produced a Band-Aid. One he slowly unwrapped and placed over the jagged line of blood darkening Lorie’s index finger. Why was it so fascinating to her—the way their hands met? His unnaturally warm and soft, hers ice cold from nerves and trembling slightly. What was it about him that made her capacity for speech somehow vanish?
He released her hand, wadding the discarded wrapper in his palm. Silently, she brought the dressed wound closer for inspection, smelling the powdery sterile scent of a fresh bandage. Somewhere in her periphery she was vaguely aware of him signing her tablet for the samples she’d left on his desk. And rummaging for something again. This time in his lab coat pocket. He paused. Looked up to the ceiling and allowed the outer corners of his mouth to quirk ever so slightly.
“ ‘Rock me, Mamaʼ…” he said, eyes still on the ceiling.
“Excuse me?” Lorie’s eyes went wide, wondering if her ears were as impaired by the good doctor as the rest of her. No way had he just said what she thought she heard. Because…um…what? Rock me, Mama?
“Like a wagon wheel?” he finished, putting emphasis on the last two words. Something in her head clicked. The tune playing overhead. The words of a song she’d loved since she first heard it.
“Oh!” Lorie exclaimed, hands falling from her hips, breathing deeply and finally finding her smile. “Yeah. Old Crow Medicine Show. Right? You know them?”
He stilled, as if listening to the tune. And then there was silence.
More dead silence. Lorie shifted in her heels.
“No, Dylan originally. But at least you didn’t say Darius Rucker.” He was at the door now, but the office was small, so Lorie could still plainly see the tiny quirks flirting with his lips. What the hell? Was the man smiling? Had she done it? Had she found the dragon’s underbelly? She turned full into him, as drunk on her implied success as she was on him.
He landed his knuckles against the door, then laid his palm flat against it, averting his gaze to where it rested. The quirks stopped. His perma-frown pulled back into its disapproving glare.
“Don’t bring me coffee again,” he said, not looking back at her. The tone was hard. Resolute. One that left Lorie feeling as if any common ground they had just established through the song was merely quicksand. And for the millionth time, the balance of the interaction shifted and Lorie was left reeling. Falling off her heels. Backward. In slow motion. He glanced over his shoulder, grabbed her bandaged hand again, and pressed a five-dollar bill into her palm. Then, like freakin’ Keyser Soze—poof—he was gone.
Silence.
Again.
Deafening silence.
What the literal hell had just transpired in the last five minutes of her life? It was as if the man possessed some sort of force field that totally disrupted the normal state of one’s being. And now that he was gone, order was restored, and she was left dumbfounded by the entire encounter. Because, seriously…what? Societal norms alone should have forced him to feel some responsibility to engage in normal civilized conversation. She was trying to be helpful after all. But, nope. Not for him. He just continued along the most antisocial trajectory of life she had ever witnessed. Or was it her? Was she missing something?
She rubbed her thumb over the Band-Aid he’d so expertly fastened around her cut. How had he even known it was there? It was deep, but it was still only a paper cut. His overtly aloof demeanor certainly didn’t imply the ability to be so in tune with others. Not with the way he allowed their conversation—and her—to founder so badly. But still, the bandage was on her finger nonetheless.
And that—okay, and his Hope Diamond eyes—was the only thing she could think of as she gathered her things and exited the building, saying her goodbyes in a sort of daze that followed her to the car. She was sitting behind the wheel, clasping it tightly in her hands, breathing slowly and methodically when she finally removed herself from his spell.
She kicked her heels off and pushed them to the side, wondering if they were partly to blame for the hormones flowing through her veins. Maybe she was feeling a little too pretty today. A little too feminine. A little too receptive to the opposite sex. Normally, she tried to be as androgynous as possible. The heels certainly weren’t that. Maybe they cast a spell as well. One that kept her from focusing on the job at hand.
“Research,” she said aloud, forcing air through her lungs. Forcing calm into the rest of her that was feeling anything but. “I can do research.”
Love stories you’ll never forget
By authors you’ll always remember
eOriginal Romance from Random House
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