The Boss Project(61)

“You seem to get a solid grasp on people’s mental state so quickly. Yet you didn’t see what was going on with your fiancé?”

I shook my head. “Didn’t you ever hear about the plumber with leaky pipes?”

Merrick laughed. “I guess.”

“The bottom line is therapists are human. We’re trained to help others and look for certain things, but sometimes we don’t examine our own relationships enough.”

“How do you learn to trust again after going through what you did?”

“Are you asking for me or for you?”

Merrick shrugged. “I’m not sure anymore, doc.”

I smiled. “I think there’s always a risk in love. But when the right person comes along, we’ll feel like it’s worth taking that risk.”

Merrick looked into my eyes. My heart raced, and my belly felt all melty at the same time. But then his cell phone rang. He looked down. “It’s my grandmother. She probably wants to make sure I asked you about the monkey bread.”

He swiped to answer and lifted the phone to his ear, still looking at me. “Hey, Grams, what’s up?” He smiled. “Yes, Evie is making it right now.”

I turned around to put the tray in the oven and set the timer. The moment had been ruined, but it was just as well. Merrick didn’t seem anxious to continue our conversation after he hung up either.

“I’m going to go get ready while that’s in the oven,” I said.

He nodded. “I need to make some calls before we head to the hospital. I’ll do that in here and listen for the timer.”

“Thanks.”

When I came back, Merrick was on the phone with Will, his nose buried in some chart on his laptop screen. “Alright, that sounds like a plan,” he said. “Start slow on Monday, so we don’t set off any alarms with people watching us who might jump on without knowing why we’re buying.” He was quiet. “I’m not sure. If she gets out today, I’ll have a better idea. I want to see how she feels once she’s home. Yesterday I mentioned having a visiting nurse come in when I left, and she told me not to let the door hit me or the nurse in the ass on my way out. So we’ll see…”

I heard Will talking again, and then Merrick’s eyes jumped to me. “Don’t be a dick. Goodbye, Will.”

I chuckled as he swiped his phone off. “That conversation seemed to take a quick turn.”

Merrick shook his head. “It’s one of the dangers of working with your friend. He doesn’t know how to stick to business when he should.”

I opened the oven and took out the monkey bread, setting it on the stovetop to cool.

“Holy shit. That smells incredible,” Merrick said.

“You want a piece?”

“Hell yeah.”

I cut off a chunk for each of us and brought it over to the table. “It’s better than an orgasm when it’s hot.”

Merrick’s eyes gave a wicked gleam before he bit in. “That sounds like a challenge, Dr. Vaughn.”

? ? ?

“Oh, doc,” Kitty said. “This is the lady I was telling you about this morning.”

I turned to smile at the physician in the room. Wow. Just wow. The doctors didn’t look like this when I was in the hospital, that’s for sure.

He smiled and flashed perfect teeth as he extended his hand. “Therapist, right?”

I shook. “Yes.”

“Ms. Harrington here tells me you went to Emory.”

“I did.”

Kitty put her hand on the doctor’s arm. “I told you to call me Kitty.”

He smiled and nodded before turning his attention back to me. “Ms.—I mean, Kitty and I figured out that you would’ve started the semester after I graduated.”

Yeah, I definitely would’ve remembered if I’d seen this guy on campus.

“Dr. Martin is single, dear,” Kitty said. “He almost went into psychiatry. And he likes to hike. I was telling him all about your land and your Airbnbs. You two should grab some coffee when he goes on his break. I bet you have a lot in common.”

“Did the doctor spend any time examining you?” a stern voice from behind me asked. “Or was he too busy using his patient as a matchmaker?”

Oh boy. The look on Merrick’s face could only be described as murderous. His eyes were narrowed, jaw set hard, and he stood with his hands folded across his chest.

I flashed him a dirty look which he promptly ignored, so I shook my head and spoke to the doctor. “I’m sorry.”

Dr. Martin looked back and forth between Merrick and me and gave a curt nod. “Why don’t we move on to Ms. Harrington’s health, shall we?”

For the next fifteen minutes, Dr. Martin went over Kitty’s post-op stats, current vitals, and what they had done so far to rule out less-common causes of her fever. “It’s not unusual to have a low-grade fever after a big surgery like Ms. Harrington had. Most likely, it’s an inflammatory stimulus reaction to tissue damage and the exposure to foreign materials that occurs during surgery. It almost always resolves on its own within a few days. But because she also broke her ankle and is in a cast, and she’s not moving around so much, she’s at a higher risk of DVTs. These type of blood clots can also cause a low-grade fever. We did a sonogram to rule that out, but we’re going to keep her monitored for another day or two and do a repeat before we discharge her to be sure.”