Nick pointed at me. "He tripped the woman at the park so he could talk to her."
Alex dropped her hands to her hips. "That's not normal, Hartshorn. Not normal at all." She shook her head. "Where are your residents? We need them to get you a psych consult."
"That's not funny because they'll do it and I didn't intentionally trip her," I argued. "It was an accident. There was an animal on the trail and she stopped suddenly. It was a raccoon but she thought it was some kind of wolf, I think. I didn't notice she'd stopped and I ran into her. And then I was on top of her and that wasn't the way I wanted to start things."
Nick shook his head at that. "Even better."
"Let me get this straight," Alex said. "You didn't just trip her, you slammed into her and took her down to the ground. Is that right?"
"Yes, but then we went out for coffee. The coffee was her idea. I was going to die of mortification or something but she insisted on coffee. With me. At a coffee shop. Where we drank the coffee and talked and, you know—" I hesitated. "Yeah. That's what we did. At the coffee shop."
Nick and Alex exchanged a dubious glance.
"Her name is Stella Allesandro and she's a sports publicist, and she's from Quincy and I'm seeing her again tonight."
Another dubious glance.
"Did you tell her you've been watching her for a short eternity?" Alex asked.
With a grim smile, I nodded. "Yeah. That part didn't go over too well."
"Imagine that," Nick said.
"And she still wants to see you again?" Alex asked. "You're sure about that?"
Of course I was sure. I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes. I knew the taste of her mouth, the way her fingers felt on my scalp, how her backside was the sweetest agony against my cock. Of course I was sure. "We're meeting downtown at nine thirty."
"I gotta get to post-op but I want the whole story over lunch," Alex said. "I'm expecting a minute-by-minute accounting of these events and I want to understand how this chick could survive you tackling her to the ground. If you did that to me—"
"Riley would kill you with his bare hands," Nick said.
I didn't doubt Alex's fiancé would do just that. He was a deceptively chill guy but he would clean my clock if I harmed her in any way.
Alex laughed, nodding. "Riley would kill you but I'd also be calling Shap to put my face back together."
"Shap?" Nick asked.
"Sara Shapiro," Alex replied. "The new reconstructive surgeon. The one we poached from Sloan Kettering."
"Oh, I didn't hear about that," Nick said, mostly to himself. "When Erin gets home, we'll have to invite Doctor Shapiro over. A little welcome-to-the-surgical-wing dinner. I'd like to hear the details of this poach."
"I love poaching," I said. "We don't do enough of it."
"And low-key attacking women because that's easier than starting a normal conversation," Alex added. "But I think you've done plenty of that."
"Wait a second," Nick said as he rubbed his knuckles down his jaw. "Did we ever invite Stremmel over? We said we were going to but then—then Erin was tied up with that report and then she was traveling again. I don't think we ever did it."
I held back a groan but just barely. Sebastian Stremmel was a problem child. More specifically, my problem child. I'd championed his candidacy as the hospital's new trauma surgeon and I was thrilled when he moved his practice here from Southern California last fall but the shine wore off quickly. What I'd interpreted as a serious, to-the-point attitude during interviews was actually a persistently bad mood. He didn't like anyone or anything and he complained about Boston's weather like it was his calling in life.
But he was a talented surgeon and an adequate teacher and I didn't want to see him shuffled out because he couldn't get along with anyone. And that was how he became my problem child. Not that anyone else knew about the arrangement. I took it upon myself to keep an eye on Stremmel, get him into Nick's old apartment in my building, and mentor him wherever possible. But he wasn't making it easy on me, not at all. His primary forms of communication were scowls and grunts.
"No," I replied. "Perhaps we should have a gathering for Stremmel. A little 'congrats on the first six months' thing. We want him to feel welcome, right?"
"Better yet," Alex started, wagging her finger at Nick, "an end of winter event. He'll love that because we all know how much he hates anything below seventy degrees and sunny."
"If you're asking whether my wife wants to throw a vernal equinox party, I think we all know her answer will be yes," Nick replied. "If she was in town often enough to host new moon and assorted planetary alignment parties, she'd do that too."
Alex stared at him for a beat. "I don't know how to respond to that."
