Page 33 of Clinically Delicious
“You what?” Nathan said.
“I met her.” Fitz’s grin widened. “I stopped by Gabriel’s place this morning to grab my watch. I left it there yesterday after the barbecue. Gabriel was upstairs on a call, so I answered the door.”
Of course he did.
Of course, Fitz, with his cologne-commercial face and his practiced charm and his complete inability to read a fucking room, had answered my door when Cate arrived.
“And?” Hayden prompted, now fully invested in this conversation instead of our actual meeting agenda.
“She’s adorable.” Fitz said it as if he were describing a particularly appealing dessert. “I mean, Gabriel mentioned she was good with Megan, but he failed to mention that she looks like a fifties pin-up—”
“We’re here to discuss patients,” I interrupted, my voice flat. “Not my nanny.”
“Oh, come on,” Nathan said. “We spent all night speculating about her. Now Fitz has actually met her. You can’t blame us for being curious.”
I could absolutely blame them. I could blame them for a lot of things, actually, starting with their complete lack of professional boundaries and ending with Fitz’s apparent death wish.
“I can absolutely blame you,” I said. “We’re medical professionals. We have actual work to discuss.”
“From a purely observational standpoint,” Julien said, setting down his pen with deliberate precision, “your defensive response is statistically significant. The probability of such a reaction occurring without underlying emotional investment is approximately—”
“Don’t,” I warned.
“I’m just saying. Clinically speaking, you’re exhibiting classic signs of—”
“Jealousy!” Quinton finished gleefully. “Oh man, this is better than the time that guy came into the ER with a—”
“Quinton,” Hayden said.
“What? I’m just saying Gabriel’s got it bad for the nanny. Look at him. He’s doing that thing with his jaw.”
“She’s my employee,” I said. “That’s all there is to discuss.”
“Your employee who made you burn burgers,” Hayden pointed out. “Your employee who, according to Megan, is ‘the best nanny ever and also really funny.’”
“Your employee who apparently looks good enough to make Fitz use the word ‘adorable,’” Nathan added. “Which, for the record, I’ve never heard him say about anyone.”
Fitz shrugged, unrepentant. “What can I say? She’s cute. Got this whole flustered, wide-eyed thing going on. Kept blinking at me like I’d materialized out of thin air.”
“Not even about his pregnant patients,” Quinton continued. “And some of them have that glow thing going on.”
“That’s inappropriate,” Julien said.
“But accurate,” Quinton countered.
The image of Cate blinking up at Fitz—Fitz, with his practiced lean against the doorframe and his calculated charm—made something hot and acidic rise in my throat.
“She was probably surprised to see a stranger answering the door,” I said, my tone carefully neutral. “Since she was expecting me.”
“Oh, she was definitely surprised.” Fitz’s grin turned knowing. “Especially when I introduced myself. She got all flustered, couldn’t quite meet my eyes. It was endearing.”
Endearing?
Fitz thought Cate’s flustered confusion was endearing.
I thought about Cate standing in my kitchen, brandishing a butter knife like a weapon. Cate fleeing from my doorstep after blurting out something about a “towel situation.” Cate’s eyes going wide when she looked at me in the hallway this morning, like she was seeing something that both terrified and fascinated her.
That wasn’t endearing. That was—actually, that was exactly endearing, and the fact that Fitz had noticed made me want to throw my coffee mug at his head.
