Uncovering Her Secrets. Amalie Berlin

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IN PRESTON’S MIND, St. Vincent’s had always represented a strange contradictory utopia. The idealized dream job. The hospital where he should’ve always been, rather than the sentences he’d endured under the thumb of Davis P.

      But it was also the thing that had cost him the only woman—no, the only person—he’d ever really felt accepted by. Felt motivated by. Maybe he’d been wrong all this time. Maybe there had been nothing special between them, no chemistry or affection. Maybe she was just that way with everyone.

      If he hadn’t been all that special to her, it lessened her betrayal. Sort of.

      And that thought didn’t help at all.

      He stood in the men’s room, where he’d taken sanctuary after Mrs. Andrews’s chest had been closed, and focused on the eye currently threatening to spasm. He could feel it lurking in the tightening muscle.

      Stepping to the side, he grabbed some paper towels and wet them so he could apply them to his infuriating left eye.

      He couldn’t have been wrong about their friendship. Impossible. And he really couldn’t have been wrong about the sexual relationship. No one could fake the passion they’d shared.

      And thinking about sex and Dasha was also a bad idea.

      He wrung out the towel and wet it again.

      This morning, the offer from the head of surgery at St. Vincent’s had felt like a reprieve. A stay of execution. He wouldn’t have to call in his father for favors—which was how it had been seeming. He’d never done it before, and the idea of starting now stuck in his throat. The fact that he’d even considered it galled him, let alone the idea of volunteering to suffer one of Davis P. Monroe’s epic lectures.

      The only other option was starting over in a new town, far from the man’s shadow.

      Now it just seemed like he was swapping one evil for another. And this evil, while undoubtedly better looking, couldn’t be trusted to have his best interests at heart. He wasn’t even sure he believed her claim that she’d arranged this because she owed him.

      His eye twitched open beneath the wet towel then refused to close. He dropped the towel in the sink and focused. The eye had opened so wide it looked surprised.

      Scratch that. He didn’t look surprised in one eye. He looked like Popeye.

      He could definitely add stress to his triggers.

      As if sensing a moment of weakness, his phone in his thigh pocket started to vibrate.

      Preston fished it out and looked at the screen. Davis P. No way. He sent it to voice mail.

      He couldn’t stomach a lecture right now. And, really, he didn’t see that he’d be able to suffer one and hold his tongue for the rest of the day. Not when he was questioning his past, his future...hell, even his value as a surgeon, as a man.

      Better text something.

      Just like that, the decision was made.

      Can’t talk. At work. Took position at St. Vincent’s.

      Home. He’d go home, give the injection in his left eye—the biggest offender. He’d been hoping to treat the problem with medication, the kind he could take with water. But another attack this soon made it injection time. Maybe switching to the botulin injection would be enough to counter the stress he expected Dasha to stir up.

      Sixty days. He could handle two months to be at the hospital he’d always wanted. He just had to tread lightly around Dasha. Not get too close. Forget what had happened. Forget the feelings.

      And СКАЧАТЬ