I thought about the food I pushed around on the plate that Marla brought me. “Pretty much.”
He tilted his head. “Pretty much?”
I nodded. “I ate a bit with Marla.”
“A bit with Marla.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you a mimic?”
That got him to snicker before he reached for the doorknob of my door. “Catch a bit of a nap, Miss Elizabeth. I’ll be back in two or three hours, and we will take a small walk and have dinner while the guys… visit.”
I wrinkled my nose a bit. “Ah. So they’re arriving in two or three hours?”
He nodded. “They are.”
“And that’s what we’re calling it now? Visits?”
Doc chuckled, and for a moment, I committed myself to the sound. “We could call it ‘fucking their brains out,’ but that seems a little crass.”
I couldn’t help but giggle back. “Is it bad that I’m jealous? Bet it’s not doctor’s orders, getting your brains fucked out.”
It was out of my mouth before I could even catch it, and the silence was deafening. Blood roared through my ears as my wide eyes found Doc as he stood there in the doorway of my bedroom. He watched me through those black-framed glasses of his. Rounded off, and somehow managing to only add to the regal beauty he naturally carried around with him.
I wanted to say something.
I wanted to apologize for being a weirdo horndog.
But the intensity of the silence weighed my voice down in my throat.
“I’ll be back after a while,” he said as he swung the door closed. “It’ll be a beautiful night to eat around the pool. Get some rest, Miss Elizabeth.”
He left me with that command as the door clicking closed made me groan.
I flopped back against the pillows and pulled the cover over my face.
9
DOC
Bet it’s not doctor’s orders, getting your brains fucked out.
I damn near ran into a fucking wall taking a corner too sharply as the sentence slid around in my head. Her giggle. Goddamn it, that sound.
I wondered if she giggled with little neck kisses.
“Stop it, Doc. She’s your patient,” I hissed at myself.
There was something I was missing. A connection that my brain hadn’t made yet. What in the hell was it about that woman? I had multiple degrees. I knew multiple languages. I remembered just about every fucking thing that I read, but somehow, Miss Elizabeth mystified me.
I couldn’t figure her out.
She was hot, then cold. Not talkative at all, and then she wanted to mention sex. Sometimes she smiled, most times she didn’t, and the smiles didn’t have anything in common.
I would know. I remembered every smile she graced me with.
I did my best to run the computations in my head. I turned around every single smile I’d seen her make since she came under my care to try and find a common ground. Something that I could use to make her smile over and over again.
It was like the damned answer stared me right in the fucking face.
