Page 16 of Indebted

“Do you want to know my opinion?” Justin rested his elbows on the reception ledge, a conspiratorial look in his eye.

Midge had gone home for the day, but that didn’t stop me from leaning in. “What?”

“I think you scared her.”

I drew back. “I’m not here to take her job.”

“It doesn’t matter, you’re young, attractive, and you reorganized nearly the entire cabinet without one complaint.”

“I don’t half-ass a job,” I said simply. The whole point of this internship was to earn my tuition, and I would.

Justin nodded. “You have admirable work ethic, Katie. You should be proud.”

Justin’s words stuck with me for the rest of the evening, a foreign feeling taking place in my gut.

No one had ever said those words to me before.

“Hold still,” Midge snapped.

“I still don’t understand why I have to do this, especially considering the reporter is writing the story, not filming it.”

I could hear my skin screaming for oxygen as Midge added another layer of powder to my face. She’d struck as soon as I’d entered the building, a whirlwind of make-up as she informed me that Justin would be interviewed today about the clinic. The reporter was someone important that I’d never heard of—but apparently his website or blog or whatever was big news for socialites.

“Won’t I just be behind the reception desk?” I screwed my eyes shut as she attacked my T zone. Powder flew into my lungs and I coughed.

“You represent this clinic now, and that means everything needs to be perfect.”

“Let her breathe, Midge,” Justin entered the patient room, reviewing a file in hand. His white lab-coat contrasted with his maroon button up. His outfit looked plucked from a fashion magazine. In all honesty, the lab-coat should’ve detracted from his appearance, but it didn’t.

“Fine,” Midge relented. “What do you think?” She stepped back as if I was some make-over contestant and this was part of the big reveal.

Justin glanced up from his work, our eyes locking.

In his eyes, every dark deed I wanted him to do to me seemed to lurk. Like a beast hiding in the shadows, prowling, sizing up its prey.

The need to cross and uncross my legs seized me, but I settled on squeezing my thighs together.

His eyes jumped to my lap, as if he knew what his eyes were doing to me.

Flicking his gaze away, his knuckles whitened where he clutched the file in his large hands. “Looks good.”

I thought the interview would take place in one of the operating rooms, or a consult room. Instead, the reporter wanted to conduct the interview right in the middle of the waiting area. He preferred the natural light in the windows and said the setting really gave him a vibe for his article.

Whatever that meant.

I stuck to my computer programming, or in this case, slowly dying inside while I tried to learn the charting program Justin used. It was ancient and ran like I imagined dial-up had run.

While the reporter droned on about his credentials, I sat waiting for the charting program to load, my mind already thinking of a different coding system that could easily be incorporated to fix the processing speed and intuitiveness. In fact, my current final project had a lot of similar components and adapting it to fit a medical software didn’t seem too hard.

I wondered if Justin would let me do that—create a medical software. One I could test in a real clinical setting.

Sitting up higher in my chair, I peered over the reception ledge to get a gauge on his mood. I could always soft pitch my idea if he was in a good mood later today.

Justin sat on the far end of the couch, facing me, while the reporter had his back to me, hands moving animatedly.

Noticing me immediately, Justin widened his eyes imperceptibly.

If I was dying with his dinosaur software, Justin was six feet under listening to the reporter.