Page 20 of Wild

His sincerity is so genuine that Erin feels almost overwhelmed when she shakes his hand.

"Call me Erin, okay?"

"Of course." Mia's personal assistant smiles. "I'm always just Noah."

She smiles back, feeling a quiet relief knowing there'll be at least one person on the team she actually likes.

"Good to see you, Noah."

He sits back down and she continues toward the rear of the plane, nodding hello to faces she doesn't recognize, making her way to a small lounge area at the back where the singer is sitting. At first she only catches the lavender hair, but then she has a clear view of Mia Wilder, who looks up the moment she senses someone nearby. The singer is lounging sideways, back against the wall of the plane, legs stretched out across the seat beside her. She's wearing black jeans and an oversized white hoodie rolled up to her elbows. Her hair is pulled back, though it's not quite long enough for the elastic to hold all her wavy strands in place — they fall loose on either side of her face, framing a pair of deeply blue eyes that are now watching Erin with an expression that's fully, unmistakably awake.

"Dr. Erin Dooley," Mia says, savoring the name, closing the book in her lap as her smile curves sideways.

"Hey, Mia." Erin pulls off her hoodie before sitting down, and the singer's eyes follow every movement as she drags it over her head.

She's wearing gray cargo pants and a black tee — tucked in at the front, untucked at the back. Mia can't look away. The night of the concert she'd found her attractive, but her mindhad been foggy and her memories were blurry and incomplete — she hadn't held onto any detail beyond the gentle look in the doctor's gray eyes. Now she can really look, and what catches her attention most are Erin's arms, completely toned, the clean lines of muscle shifting with every movement. It's a quality Mia finds both gorgeous and deeply appealing, and she can't stop wondering what this woman's stomach must look like as she stands there folding her hoodie neatly and setting it on the empty seat.

Erin sits down across from her and sinks into the cushion like it was built around her. She crosses her left ankle over her right knee and rests her right elbow on the armrest. Mia's gaze drops to her boots — black, ankle-height, military-style but sleeker, very much her thing — and she decides that Erin Dooley checks every single box on her list of what she finds irresistible in a woman: dark hair, athletic build, attractive as hell, and — most importantly — older than her.

"How are you feeling?" the doctor asks, pulling Mia out of her daze.

"Perfectly fine," she says, drawing her legs in and sitting up properly so she can look at Erin without craning her neck.

"Any dizziness since Friday? Vision—"

"Hey, Dooley, hold on a second." Mia cuts her off. "You just got here. Can we talk about something other than this weird syndrome I have?"

"This weird syndrome you have is the only reason I'm here."

Erin says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, but Mia smiles — then bites her lower lip like she's just taken a small hit.

"So you're not interested in my life beyond my symptoms? You don't want to know—" She's trying to flirt.

"No, Wilder, I'm not," Erin cuts her off.

Mia stares at her for a moment, thrown. She has a vague memory of the ambulance ride, but she does remember trying to flirt with this woman — the way she does with anyone she's attracted to, or as a defense mechanism when she feels vulnerable — and she also remembers that Erin didn't waver, didn't play along, didn't get flustered the way other women do. Mia figured it was because she'd been too weak to come at her the right way, but now she's perfectly fine, and nothing she does — like looking at her with one of her crooked smiles — seems to get any reaction out of the doctor at all.

"Did you eat breakfast this morning?" Erin asks.

"Avocado toast and a coffee. Why?"

"Black or with milk?"

Mia runs a hand through her hair, thinking that if every conversation she gets to have with this woman is this dull, the next four months are going to be a very long, very frustrating ride.

"Black."

"Do you have any allergies I should know about?" Erin continues — she hasn't had time yet to read through the full medical file Violette forwarded to her email that morning.

"No, I'm not allergic to anything," Mia says, impatient.

"In that case, starting tomorrow, coffee always with milk or cut with a lot of water."

Mia pulls a face.

"Black coffee dehydrates you, so if you're going to drink it, it needs to come with something else. That's not negotiable."

Erin pulls a notepad and pen out of her bag, uncapping the pen with her teeth and holding the cap between them while she writes something down.