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He gave her a little nod, stepped by her, unlocked the door, and left, his kiss still tingling on her lips.
The moment Emily sat down opposite Dominic, she knew they were making a mistake. She wasn’t going to be capable of treating this like a professional lunch.
He met her eyes across the table, and she felt as if she was dissolving into a puddle in her seat. She could feel the heat in her face, and surely anyone who looked at her would be able to see how affected she was.
She shouldn’t be here — and yet, here she was.
He looked at her plate. “You got the egg salad?”
“I like it,” she said.
“Nobody likes the hospital’s egg salad. It’s notorious.”
“Is there anything actually wrong with it?” she asked. “I mean, this is a hospital. I have to assume we’re not serving bad food here.”
“No one’s ever gotten sick from it,” Dominic said. “But I don’t think anyone trusts it either.”
She looked at his plate. “I don’t think I’d feel any safer with the ham sandwich,” she told him. “Deli meat and mayonnaise? If there’s something the matter with the food here, it would be as likely to affect that sandwich. If we’re that worried about the food, we should be getting soup. At least that gets boiled before they give it to us.”
Dominic laughed. “Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll have the soup of the day — no matter what it is. Deal?”
“You’re on.”
They dug into their lunches, eating in quiet companionship for a moment. Eventually, Emily spoke up. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about today?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought this was going to be a mentorship lunch.”
“Oh, well… technically,” he said. “I guess this is an opportunity for you to ask any questions you might have.”
So she’d been right — he was eating with her because he wanted to, not for professional reasons. That should have worried her, but instead it set off a flurry of butterflies in her stomach. She wasglad, she realized. She was glad this wasn’t just a mentorship lunch, glad that he genuinely wanted to spend time with her.
“Okay,” she said. “I have a question.”
“Sure.”
“Tell me about your college days. About your first experiences of medicine.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Does this have to do with your professional development?”
She stirred her drink with her straw and crossed her legs. “Nope.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Emily had never felt more confident that someone was thinking the exact same thing she was.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll tell you about it.”
And he launched into the story — a story in which he was barely recognizable, a story in which he was younger, happier, and hadn’t yet been scarred by the trauma of his mother’s death.
Emily felt captivated. She wished she could have known that version of him — and at the same time, she was glad and grateful to know him as he was now, scars and all.
She wouldn’t have changed him if she could have, and maybe that was the most frightening part.
CHAPTER 16
DOMINIC
Lunches with Emily quickly became a regular part of Dominic’s routine — in fact, they were the highlight of his day. He woke up each morning thinking of things he wanted to ask her, things he wanted to share with her.
