“Konstantin. Eve. I didn’t realize you knew Katherine.”
“Her case was of interest,” Konstantin answered mildly.
Ah.
That made sense since Konstantin was a neurosurgeon as well.
"We'll see you around, Kitty." Eve kissed the Katherine’s cheek before taking her leave with her husband.
The room began to empty after that. One by one, in pairs, the visitors said their goodbyes and filed out, and Kazeyuki didn't understand why everyone seemed to be leaving at the same time, as though some signal had been given that he hadn't received. But he shrugged this off. The room had been crowded. People had places to be. There was nothing coordinated about it.
The door closed behind the last visitor.
And it was just the two of them.
Katherine turned to him, and the way she smiled up at him...started making Kazeyuki feel like he had missed something. The smile was all for him, unguarded and lingering in a way that carried a quality he couldn't quite diagnose, as if she'd been saving it for this moment, for this room, for when everyone else was gone.
No. Don't make a big deal out of this. Just say goodbye—
"Dr. Collington?"
"Yes, Ms. McKenna?"
"It's my last day today."
Her hopeful tone was reassuring, and he smiled slightly. "As a matter of fact, I heard everyone's well wishes all the way down the hall."
"Oh, that's not what they're congratulating me about."
Her smile widened, and the effect of it reminded Kazeyuki of a defibrillator pulse, the way it jolted through his chest and forced something to beat that he had not realized had gone still. He drew a breath, and then another, because there was no clinical term for what her smile was doing to him, and the absence of a diagnosis was, for a man like Kazeyuki, its own kind of alarm.
All natural, he told himself. She had almost died, and he had saved her life.
"They're congratulating me because they know I'm still happy—"
It was natural for a bond to emerge.
"—you're not dating, and they knew I was going to tell you that today."
Chapter Two
"YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING, Dr. Collington."
Emily burst into his office without knocking, which was not unusual, and without apology, which was also not unusual, and with an expression on her face that Kazeyuki had learned to associate with situations in which his assistant had decided that her priorities outranked his.
He reluctantly put his pen down. "What seems to be the problem?"
"Kitty might not graduate because one of the professors on her thesis panel doesn't want to agree to giving her a chance. Says her advertising thesis needs another semester of work."
"That's unfortunate," he acknowledged.
She brightened. "I knew I could count—"
"But I'm her neurosurgeon, not her lawyer."
"Dr. Collington!"
Kazeyuki frowned. Emily used to be in fear of him when she first started working as his assistant, but ever since Katherine became his patient, she had noticeably changed. It was as if her first job now was being Katherine's defender and protector, and his assistant second.
