wrong way,” she admitted. “Like fingernails scratching a blackboard, actually. But I mean it, I’m not giving him the pleasure of getting to me. Maybe I’ll even drop a curtsy as I go in.”
“Oh, cripes,” Lois fretted. “Everybody buckle up, we’re going to get some turbulence.”
“You’ll see—I mean it. Cool and professional.”
However, her resolve was under assault from the first moment she stepped into the doctor’s private office.
Usually he prefaced his little lectures with attempts at polite small talk. This morning, however, he waded right in without even testing the water.
“Miss O’Reilly, last Friday I noticed you being extremely rude, in my opinion, with the sales rep from Med-Tech Supplies.”
“I doubt if it left him a broken man,” she countered, surprising herself at the sarcasm in her tone.
John Saville stared at her for a moment, not sure whether he or the salesman was the target of her scornful tone.
Both of us, he decided, and he felt his angry pulse thrum in his palms.
She’s got a hell of a mouth on her, he fumed. But when he glanced at the defiant pout of her lips, he suddenly wondered what it would be like to kiss that angry mouth, kiss it hard until the anger turned to something very different….
Fat chance he had of ever finding out. That was obvious in the way she always looked at him as if she’d love to slap him.
“Yes?” she asked, cutting impatiently into his reverie, trying to get him back on track. “You saw me being rude, as you call it, with the Med-Tech guy?”
Her bossy tone irritated him anew. “Yeah, and now this morning,” he forged on, “I learn that you’ve switched our account to Rocky Mountain Medical Supplies.”
So that’s what’s got him all bent out of shape, she thought, noticing how his features seemed etched in anger.
“I didn’t attempt to conceal the change from anyone,” she countered, her face coolly indifferent to his obvious irritation. “Is there a problem?”
“None that I was aware of. That’s precisely my point in asking. Why fix what isn’t broken?”
“Rocky Mountain Medical is a dependable supplier. I switched for a good reason.”
Those deep, intensely blue eyes cut into her like diamond drill bits. “That reason being…?”
The salesman was a married man hitting on me, that’s why, she wanted to toss in his face. But she feared he would use it as proof of more “unprofessional behavior” on her part. Her resolve to rise above any fray crumbled completely. She suddenly flushed, more angry than embarrassed. “My reasons are personal.”
“Yes,” he said, smug with triumph, “I figured as much from your behavior last Friday. I could tell there was…something between the two of you.”
“You can’t possibly conclude—”
She caught herself in the nick of time before exploding. If this was just a fishing expedition, a search for things to throw in her face, she had no intention of taking his hook.
“Look,” she told him, her hands balled into fists on her hips, “you know that it’s the nurse in any office who uses most of the disposable medical supplies. Dr. Winthrop always trusted me—”
“Yeah, right, I know the riff by now,” he said, cutting her off impatiently. “Paul Winthrop is God Almighty, and I’m the heartless outsider. The spawn of Satan.”
His rather childish outburst surprised her. His tone had sounded almost human. She might even have felt some sympathy for him if she hadn’t still felt the sting of his “your behavior last Friday” remark.
Not that it was any of his damn business, she fumed. Why not just call her the office slut and at least be a man about it instead of dropping smug hints like some little schoolyard snitch?
“I’m sorry,” she told him archly, “that you feel so persecuted in Mystery, Doctor. I suppose we hayseed types must seem a bit quaint to sophisticated outsiders.”
Her tone heaped extra emphasis on the last two words.
He wanted to laugh out loud. Staring at her, he thought, you beautiful, hotheaded little fool, you are so wrong it’s even funny. Sophisticated? He almost snorted. What would she think if she knew he grew up living in a broken-down trailer, or that pretty girls just like her used to mock him in school because of his family’s poverty? Medical school had been the only way out. The only way. And he’d grasped it like a lifebuoy.
But it hardly mattered what he thought. She didn’t give him a chance to slip a word in.
“I am the office nurse, after all,” she said, pushing right on in spite of his closed, angry glower. “It’s my job to order medical supplies. But if you have some specific complaint about Rocky Moun—”
“No, it’s fine, what the hell,” he cut in sarcastically. “I’m only the doctor around here, don’t let me interfere with your plans for the office.”
“I said if you want, I’ll order—”
“Order it from a Hong Kong clearing house for all I care,” he snapped, his tone brusquely dismissive. “You’re right, it’s your job, not mine. Thanks for your time.”
He sat down behind his desk and flipped open the current issue of Surgical Medicine Quarterly. His rude behavior was meant to be her dismissal.
But Rebecca saw how his eyes were not really reading. Anger flicked in his gaze like light reflected off midnight ice, darkening the blue and tightening his lips and facial muscles.
The feeling is mutual, her own angry eyes assured him right back as she turned away, resenting him to the point of pure hatred.
“One last thing, Miss O’Reilly.”
His voice behind her stopped her like a firm grip on her shoulders.
She turned to watch him from the doorway of the office. “Yes?”
“Concerning what I witnessed last Friday—your, uh, personal intrigues are of course your own business. But professionals don’t mix business with pleasure for this very reason we see now—it causes unnecessary problems. Try to keep your love life out of the workplace.”
His presumptions and false assumptions made anger surge up within her, anger tinged with bewilderment. Why should she care if he had a false impression of her involvement with a would-be adultering creep? She refused to let Saville get that personal with her, right or wrong in his assumptions. His nose wasn’t just out of joint—it was also way too long.
The scornful twist of her mouth was meant to insult him more than any words could. Nonetheless, she flung a few at him for good measure.
“Despite your obvious belief that you are above everyone else,” she snipped, “this is not the Middle Ages, and you do not own your employees. I am a nurse, not a serf. My private life is my business and
