“I want the truth. Were you wet? For me?” He dropped his voice close to a whisper. “I have these constant filthy fantasies about you in that shower. I can’t stop thinking about you. Tell me. It kills me to wonder if you feel anything for me.”
She ducked under his arm, needing to escape before she succumbed to his magnetic pull. “Nothing I can do will make you happy. We can’t go down this road.”
“Why not? I don’t care what Glazier says. You disappeared without a word. I’ve been going crazy. He wouldn’t even late me talk to you. Why?”
“Because you told me and everyone at MetroGen you were in love with me. You were planning our children... Can’t you see why that’s not possible?” She couldn’t stay. Not near him. He destroyed quarterbacks with the scowl on his face. He could sweep her away with a single kiss.
“No. I don’t. I can’t see past carrying you home, throwing you down in my bed, and making you scream my name. There are two things I’ve ever been sure about in my life—how much faster I am than the left guard standing between me and the quarterback, and how I feel about you.”
“I cannot do this. You are proving exactly why I left.” She thought past her own emotions and came to a realization. “Wait... you aren’t supposed to be here.”
“I work here. I can be here anytime I want.”
She reassessed his outfit, Browns muscle T and sweatpants—those were his weight-lifting clothes. “Liar. Glazier only let me come to the game because you weren’t going to be there. And Coach S forbid anyone from coming in today.”
“I live next door, and since you were at the game, you’d have noticed Lorenzo hurt his ankle. I was going to push my shoulder today.”
“You’re kidding, right? That’s not part of your rehab plan. Coach S and Glazier were supposed to be extremely clear on this.”
He shrugged with fake innocence. “Plans change. You don’t even work here anymore, remember?”
“Glazier would never approve a change to your rehab plan.” After everything she’d risked for him, he couldn’t even have the patience to heal?
“How do you even know what my rehab plan is?”
“Because I wrote it.” It was bad enough he put her in this position, but he couldn’t even respect her skills.
“No, you didn’t. That bastard Dr. Reynosa-Romualdo in Orthopedics wrote it.”
Her jaw dropped. This kept getting worse. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“Well, I think you’re brilliant, and, as a medical assistant, I bet you could come up with a better plan than Dr. R-R did. Glazier says I have to follow his stupid plan because he put my arm back in.”
Overcome with fury, Rory seized the closest orange football helmet and chucked it in his direction. “I don’t believe this.”
He dodged, his feet not hampered like his injured shoulder. “Wait. Why are you so upset now?”
She opened the door, intent on having the last word.
“Because I’m Dr. Reynosa-Romualdo. Duh.”
She slammed the door behind her.
CHAPTER11
In what was probably a perfect imitation of what her mother did when she got mad at her dad, Dr. Aurora ‘Rory’ Reynosa-Romualdo was wielding her snow scraper on the two feet of snow covering her 2003 Toyota Camry.
It was impossible to determine which of them was stupider. Him for it never occurring to him that she might be a doctor, or her for not noticing he didn’t believe she was a doctor.
For almost a month, she’d been agonizing over his confession of love. She’d assumed he hated but understood the issues of what was a clear violation of the doctor-patient relationship.
It wasn’t about him personally. It was merely the unbendable rules of professional conduct.
Judging by the way he’d appeared in his coat and boots near her car, he was still processing what she’d thought was obvious.
And she obviously should have found a better way to cover her tracks.
“So... you’re a doctor. And they call you Roy.”
