Elias should have known there would be hell to pay the moment he walked into the physicians’ lounge. Being bombarded by his co-workers was predictable, but he was hoping that they’d give him a little leeway, too, before piling on him. He was wrong. The grins, raised brows, and far too much interest in his personal life for a Monday morning hit home.
“Well, well,” Dr. Harris drawled from the coffee machine. “If it isn’t Charity’s Favorite Bachelor.”
Elias sighed, dropping his bag onto the chair. “Don’t start. It was for the hospital—for charity.
“You let them parade you around like a prize bull,” Harris teased
Elias poured himself coffee, black, like always. He wasn’t sure if he was even going to dignify Harris’s jabs with a comment of his own, but he just couldn’t seem to help himself. “It was for charity,” he repeated.
“Uh-huh,” Harris said. “You could have just lied like the rest of us. My excuse about being out of town seemed to do the trick. It got me out of one hell of an embarrassing evening.”
“Well, if you ask me, you did the ladies a favor by pretending not to be in town last night, Harris. Elias turned to leave, and laughter followed him down the hall as he escaped toward his office. He ignored it for the most part. The truth was, he didn’t regret being a part of the auction after spending time with Aliza. Not even a little bit.
Elias sat at his desk, skimming charts, but his mind kept drifting to his date with Aliza. Her dark hair and quiet laughter completely turned him on. And the way she looked at him like she actually saw him, and not just his title, made him feel seen for the first time in a damn long time. Most people got hung up on him being a doctor, and he usually ended up answering a ton of medical questions. Dinner had been easy, which surprised him. There was no pressure to make conversation—it flowed easily. There were no expectations on either of their parts. It was almost like the universe had been waiting for them to find each other, and that scared the hell out of him.
A knock sounded on his open door. “You alive in there, or did the auction actually take you out?” Elias looked up to find Jonnas leaning against the doorframe, his smirk firmly in place.
“Come in,” Elias said. “And wipe that look off your face before you have a seat.”
Jonnas laughed, stepping inside his office and closing the door behind him. “You know we’re never letting this go, right? Everyone in the breakroom is talking about you being auctioned off to the hot, much younger than you, woman who stood in the back of the room. I guess you dodged a bullet by not getting an older woman who’d want a full check-up.”
“I figured they’d be gossiping up a storm in there,” Elias grumbled.
Jonnas dropped into the chair across from his desk. They’d been friends since residency. He and Elias were the same age, had some of the same personality quirks, and the same dark humor forged in the trenches of long nights and impossible cases.
“So,” Jonnas said, lowering his voice. “Did you survive the date?”
Elias hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.” He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell his friend about Aliza. They had only been out once, and he didn’t want to jinx things.
“That pause tells me everything that I need to know,” Jonnas drawled.
Elias leaned back, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I like her.”
Jonnas’s brows lifted. “I figured. You going to ask her out again?”
“I already did,” Elias said.
“Wow, that was fast. You must really like her,” Jonnas said.
“I like her enough that it’s a problem,” Elias said simply.
Jonnas studied him for a beat. “Why is that a problem?”
Elias exhaled. “She’s younger than I am—a lot younger. She’s still in school while she tries to figure out her life. I’ve got gray hair, a mortgage, and a rulebook I live by. I don’t want to be a phase for her while she figures out her life.”
Jonnas snorted. “You’re forty-five, not ninety.”
“That’s not the point,” Elias insisted.
“Did she make you feel like you were too old for her?” Jonnas asked.
“No,” Elias grumbled.
“Did she make you feel like you had to impress her?”
Elias shook his head. “She made me feel normal. Hell, she was easy to talk to and everything.”
Jonnas smiled, “I’m not seeing a problem. That all sounds good to me.”
