“Great. I’m Julia Dean, it’s nice to meet you.”
“You too.” Carter and Rossick continued to push each other, which made it a little difficult to focus, especially with workmen trying to grunt past them, but Regan shook Julia’s hand and smiled. “You’re obviously busy, so maybe I should come back another time.”
She started to back up, but Carter caught her wrist and pulled her back.
“Hang on.” His eyes opened a little wider, almost hopeful. “If you’re not busy, we could use your help here for a bit.”
“Sure,” she answered slowly. “What do you need, besides someone to un-Jenga this place?”
He tipped his head toward Julia and Rossick. “Before we can get privileges at Newport General, we need to meet with the administrator and get all the paperwork signed.”
“Yeah, okay. And?”
“And we were supposed to be there ten minutes ago, but with these guys coming and going—”
“No problem. I’ll stay, you guys go.”
“That’d be great, thanks.” He bobbed his head toward the door, but Julia and Rossick hesitated. “She’ll be fine; she can play Jenga if she gets bored.”
“Can I?” Regan was already sorting through the mess in her head. “I mean, I’m happy to start moving things if you like.”
“Really?” Julia stared wide-eyed for a second. “You don’t have to…everything’s marked…but don’t worry about it, we can do it when we get back.”
They hadn’t even cleared the door before Regan was slipping out of her jacket and toeing off her pumps. She tucked them off in the corner as the two workmen barely managed to squeeze through the door with another bookshelf bundled under yet more layers of bubble wrap.
“Wait,” Regan called. “Are you just going to leave that there?”
The older of the two—Adam, according to the embroidered name on his shirt—shrugged. “Normally we set up the furniture, but the other delivery guys left all that equipment blocking the hall, so the tall guy said to put everything here.”
“Hmm.” She eyed the blocked hallway, the overflowing waiting room, and the two workmen standing in front of her. “Make you a deal. Pizza’s on me if you help me get it all moved. And I’ll make sure the docs tip you extra.”
Neither man hesitated. “You got it.”
The younger guy, Kenny, ran down to lock the truck while Adam and Regan shuffled the equipment and exam tables down the hall farther so they had room to move. She wasn’t exactly dressed for this kind of work, but she just rolled up her sleeves, then twisted her hair tight and tucked it down the back of her blouse.
“Just give me a second.” Regan hurried down the halls, doing a quick survey of every room. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
While the computer and phone guys watched, safe behind the desk, Regan put Adam to work assembling desks in the extra office while she and Kenny lifted, pulled, and dragged all of Rossick’s equipment into the exam room closest to his office, then lugged the rest over to the north hallway and repeated the process for Julia’s and Carter’s exam rooms.
When that was done, she sent Kenny off with some cash to get the pizza while she and Adam moved the furniture and stacked the boxes in their respective rooms. Anything not labeled went into the empty office for the doctors to sort out themselves. She’d just stepped back into the almost-empty waiting room when Kenny returned.
“Perfect timing.” She bobbed her head toward the plastic-wrapped couch they’d just set against the north wall. “Take a load off.”
After offering the tech guys some, Adam and Kenny dug into their first pieces, eating over the box so as not to spill. Regan lifted the end of the other couch and began to spin it so she could set it against the opposite wall. Halfway through the turn, Carter, Julia, and Rossick stepped through the door.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Painting the barn,” Regan snorted and kept turning. “D’you like the color?”
Carter didn’t laugh. Everyone else did.
“Look out.” In one swift motion, he grabbed the couch and hip-checked Regan out of the way. “You couldn’t just push it over there?”
It wasn’t until they’d positioned it properly that she stopped and looked at Julia and Rossick, who whistled quietly.
“I thought Carter was kidding about the Jenga thing.”
“How long were we gone?”
Carter, on the other hand, honed right in on the workmen sitting on the couch, but Regan stopped him before he could say anything.
“Leave them alone,” she said. “I worked them hard, they deserve a break.”
With a slight frown, Rossick headed down the hall to his office, stared for a few seconds, then started back, glancing into the exam rooms as he did. “What the…? Jules, come look at this.”
Carter followed Julia down to Rossick’s office, where they both stopped and snorted. When Rossick crooked his finger at Regan, she looked to Kenny and Adam for a little moral support, inhaled slowly, and headed down the hall.
As she neared the doorway, Carter and Julia backed up, leaving room for her and Rossick to peer into the room. It looked fine to her, so what…?
“It took me two very stressful rounds of rock-paper-scissors to win this view and I don’t even get to look at it?” His slow grin, dimples and all, immediately eased the tension from Regan’s shoulders.
“I just put it where it made sense to me,” she chuckled, leading him inside. “But for the price of another pizza we can always change it.”
The view from his huge plate glass window was amazing, and the only spot in the entire office where you had a clear view of The Chief. Twenty-three hundred feet of solid granite, the huge dome was a mecca to rock climbers and hikers from around the world, and as awesome as it was on any given day, the brilliant January sunshine made it more so today.
“Look.” Regan held her arms wide, as though she were lifting the desk into different positions. “If you face the window, your back’s to the door. Not good. If you put your back to the window, your patients will get the view, and they’ll be so distracted, they won’t listen to what you’re saying.”
Turning like Frankenstein, she had to wait for Rossick to step out of the way before she could continue.
“If you put it here, it’ll feel like you’re tripping on it the second you come in the door, but over there, it’s out of the way, everyone can see the view if they turn their heads, and it makes the space seem more open.”
“Hmmm.” Rossick nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“The bookshelves can be moved easily enough,” she went on. “It just felt a little claustrophobic setting them up behind the patients’ chairs. Adam says they still have to bring in the plastic mats for under the chairs and a few other things, but we’ll need to vacuum before they lay the mats. Oh, and the artwork is still in the truck, too.”
Carter lounged against the door frame, and Julia squirmed in around him and perched herself on the corner of Rossick’s desk.
“How did you know where to put everything?” she asked.
“You marked everything, remember?”
“But how did you know whose office was whose?”
Regan frowned, pointed toward the window ledge. “The key ring there has that plastic model heart, Carter’s helmet was in the office on the far left down there, and there’s a jacket in the other one that could only fit you.” She stopped, stared wide-eyed at Julia. “Was I wrong? I can probably get Adam and Kenny to help me—”
“It wasn’t wrong. I was just curious.”
“There are still boxes to unpack, and anything we weren’t sure of, we put in the empty office across the hall.” She looked at each of them, but the only one looking back was Carter. The other two seemed to be carrying on a full conversation with each other using nothing more than a few different looks and a shrug or two.
“Okay, then.” She wiped her suddenly sweaty palms down her pant legs and nodded. “I’ll just go find my shoes.”
“I can’t believe you got all this done,” she gushed. “It’s great—thank you!”
“No problem.” She pushed her feet back into her pumps and folded her jacket over her arm. “Happy to help. It’s hard to believe they fit so much into this waiting room.”
Arms crossed, Julia looked around the room with a skeptical eye. “But even with all the other stuff gone, it seems so small in here.”
“Yeah,” Regan said slowly. “I was thinking that, too.”
She took a few steps toward the couch Adam and Kenny were sitting on just as Carter and Rossick walked up.
“If you get rid of this—”
Julia started to protest, but Regan stopped her.
“Hang on. If you switch it out for a couple of chairs, it’ll open up space against the wall for a toy box or a game station, which will give the kids something to do and keep them off the middle of the floor where other patients could trip on them.”
“Xbox!” Carter held up his hand, which Rossick immediately high-fived.
“For the kids,” Regan laughed. “The little kids.”
After a second, Julia nodded. “Good idea. Thanks, we’ll think about it.”
All three doctors grinned back at her. Rossick shot a glance at Julia and Carter, then threw his arm around Regan’s shoulders and tucked his head close to hers.
“Do you type?”
—
“I’m sold.” Rossick sat back in his chair and propped his feet on the corner of his desk, his Chinese takeout box and chopsticks resting on his stomach. “I mean, hell, look at everything she got done while we were gone.”
“I know.” Jules dropped her chopsticks and empty box into the trash and lifted Regan’s résumé from the desk. “But what about experience?”
“Gimme that.” He took the résumé from her and read it over slowly. “She ran her own business for eight years; that’s got to count for something.”
“I’m talking about medical office experience.”
“So she’s not an MOA,” Rossick scoffed. “Big deal. It’s not like she’s going to be assisting with procedures or anything. She can learn the terminology easily enough and she seems to know how to handle people, so the only thing that might trip her up is the billing system, but she can learn that from the online tutorial.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And you heard her—she’s only looking for something temporary, so if we hire her for a couple months, it’ll give us time to repost the job and find someone besides the ex-con and the crier, and at the same time, she gets to collect a regular paycheck. Sounds like a win-win to me.”
Jules turned to Carter. “What do you think?”
“I’m just a renter, remember? It’s up to you two.” Slouched in the chair closest to the window, he stretched out his legs and folded his hands over this stomach. “If you like her, hire her. If you don’t, then you better get used to answering your own phones.”
A moment’s hesitation before Rossick groaned.
“Shiiiiit.” He tossed the papers on the desk and tipped back farther in his chair. “You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?”
“Rossick!” Jules choked, but Carter knew she’d been wondering the same thing.
“If she’s applying for a job here, it’s a legit question.” Rossick sighed and lifted his hands palms up. “So are you?”
Carter rubbed his hands over his eyes, then leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees. “Not at the moment, but, uh, yeah, I did.”
“Jesus, Carter.” Julia shoved off the corner of Rossick’s desk and paced in front of the window. “Can we even consider her if she’s in a relationship with you?”
“It’s not a relationship.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing.” It wasn’t even a lie, though the idea of his name tattooed across Regan’s butt made him grin. “It was one night.”
“Figures,” Jules mumbled. “But are you sure it was only one night? You could barely take your eyes off her.”
“Well, yeah,” he laughed. “She’s hot.”
While part of him wished Rossick would back him up on that, a bigger part was relieved that apparently there was something down at the bottom of Rossick’s takeout box that was more interesting to him than how hot Regan was.
“Oh, come on, Jules, what do you want me to say?” Carter forced a chuckle and leaned back in his chair. “We’re not in a ‘relationship’ and even if we were, she made it damn good and clear that if it came down to a choice between me and this job, she won’t even remember my name tomorrow. Hell, you should’ve heard the list of reasons she had for kicking my ass to the curb.”
“Hire her.” Rossick barked out a harsh laugh. “I love this girl—hire her right now.”
Julia set her hands on her hips, ignored Rossick, and sighed. “I don’t know.”
It wasn’t that Carter didn’t understand her hesitation, it was just that he’d hate to be the reason Regan got the short end of the stick.
“Look,” he said. “You’ve got her résumé and you’ve seen firsthand what kind of worker she is. If the only reason you won’t hire her is because you don’t think I can keep it in my pants or you think there’s going to be some kind of implosion here, you’re wrong. I wouldn’t let that happen, Jules.”
“I’d like to believe that, Carter, but I’ve met some of the other women you’ve been with, and if she’s even half as batshit crazy as they were, it won’t matter how tightly you keep it zipped. We can’t afford to have some starry-eyed Carter-groupie running the office.”
“Does she seem batshit crazy to you?”
“Nnnooo.”
“And I can promise you she’s not the type to turn into a starry-eyed groupie for anyone, least of all some stupid schmuck like me.”
Rossick didn’t say a word, just sat there nodding slowly. After a while, Jules sighed.
“How can you be so sure?”
Carter tipped his head toward the phone on the desk. “Ask her.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Jules pulled Regan’s résumé closer, scanned for her phone number, and dialed. Regan answered on the second ring, her smooth voice instantly easing some of the tightness in Carter’s brain.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Regan, it’s Julia. You’re on speaker.”
“Uh, okay. Hi.”
Jules leaned her hip against the side of the desk and crossed her arms, her gaze fixed squarely on Carter.
“We just have a couple questions. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” Jules cleared her throat slowly. “Sorry, this is a little awkward, but I’m sure you understand we need to keep things professional here, right?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Okay. Wellll…it’s about you and Carter…”
“Carter who?”
“Told you.” Carter grinned, then laughed when Rossick choked on a piece of sweet-and-sour chicken. Jules laughed, too, and eventually so did Regan.
“We just need to know where you honestly both stand on this whole thing. I mean, if things go sideways and Carter ticks you off, as he’s prone to do…” Jules winked at him before he could protest. “What I’m trying to say is that we can’t let your relationship affect our business.”
There was a brief moment of silence before Regan cleared her throat on the other end of the line.
“Look,” she said. “Without going into too much detail, I think Carter would agree that what we had wasn’t—isn’t—a relationship, and I’ve made it pretty clear to him that my focus is on getting a job, period. I understand your concern, Julia, and while I can’t promise Carter and I won’t see each other socially outside the office, because of our connections to Jayne and Nick, I can promise you that there’ll be no problems on my end.”
When Jules quirked her brow at Carter, he snorted softly. “See? No one’s
going to go all Fatal Attraction here. We’re good.”
“Regan?” Jules kept her gaze fixed on Carter as she waited for a response.
“Oh yeah, we’re good.” Even though Carter couldn’t see her, the smirk sounded in her voice, making him grin, too. “Trust me, I’ve never cooked a rabbit over any guy.”
“Hmm.” Jules twisted her mouth to the side, then bobbed her head toward Rossick. “What about you? Got any questions?”
“Damn right I do.” He pushed his food away and leaned over the desk so he was closer to the phone speaker. “Straight up, Regan, are you going to be nicer to his patients than you’ll be to mine?”
Regan grunted over a laugh. “No, but you understand his patients are children, so they might need a little more attention, right?”
“All patients are children,” he grunted, “but that’s another story. Are you going to make him coffee and not me?”
A loud snort sounded through the phone. “I’m not making either one of you coffee. Julia, maybe, but you two are on your own.”
“Excellent answer!” Jules laughed as she pushed off the desk and paced. “Okay, seriously now, you two are sure there won’t be any problems?”
“None.” Regan’s voice and Carter’s nod seemed to finally appease her.
“Okay, then, does anyone have any objections? Questions?” She didn’t actually give anyone time to object before she nodded. “Good. Regan, we’d like you to sign a confidentiality agreement. Are you okay with that?”
“Of course.”
“Great. I’ll email you a bunch of documents, including what we think the job description is, though that might change as we go along, salary, benefits, yada yada yada, and if you have any questions, just let me know. Otherwise, we’ll see you first thing Monday morning.”
“Thank you.” There was a slight hesitation in Regan’s voice, but neither Jules nor Rossick seemed to notice. “Really, thank you.”
When the call ended, the three of them were silent for a while before Jules smiled pathetically and ruffled Carter’s hair.
“Don’t look so bummed. She’s not your type, anyway.”
“I don’t have a—” He was cut off by his phone ringing in his pocket. “Hey, Katie, what’s up?”
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