Page 32 of Yours to Keep

“You could, but just accepting the cannoli seems a lot simpler. Less red tape and bureaucracy.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why are you suddenly being like this?”

“Because you tried to come talk to me the right way the other day, and I was a total dick.”

I blinked. Hard. At least four times. “Excuse me? Are you actually apologizing?”

“It’s not something I do often.”

“Yeah, that tracks.”

“I’m here to listen now, though,” he said, undeterred. “I can’t promise I’ll agree to anything, but the least I can do is listen.”

My eyebrows shot up, but as my gaze held his, he really did seem contrite. It surprised the heck out of me, but maybe that was only because my guard had been calibrated for war with him, not diplomacy.

“Fine,” I said, glancing around and realizing that absolutely everyone was still watching us. “But not here. I don’t want people thinking we’re friends.”

He took a step back, but I swore I saw a spark of laughter in his eyes. “Oh, yeah. Definitely not. God forbid.”

I stood, ignoring all the looks we were getting, and walked in silence to his conference room office. The door closed behind us with a soft click that felt louder than it should have, and in the silence that followed, icy tentacles of panic wrapped themselves around my insides.

Sullivan was offering me the opportunity I’d wanted when I’d first come to this room, but today, I was wholly unprepared. The speech I’d had planned that day was nowhere to be found in my brain, so instead, I just started babbling, listing all the obvious problems before the guy had even reached his chair.

“The paper gowns are a nightmare,” I said. “They’re thin, they’re scratchy, they don’t breathe, and they make patients feel exposed. Elderly patients. Post-op patients. People who are already scared and uncomfortable.”

He leaned back against the table, half sitting on the edge with his arms folded, but his eyes were on mine and his expression was attentive, like he was actually listening.

Oh, God. He’s really giving me a shot here. Please let me not mess this up. Please. Please.

“They rip when you sit,” I said carefully, desperately trying to control my voice so it wouldn’t come across like I was attacking him. “They crinkle every time you move, so people feel like they’re sleeping inside a snack wrapper. They don’t absorb anything, which is a hygiene issue and they make people feel cheap. Disposable.”

He frowned. “They meet industry standards.”

“Industry standards for who?” I shot back. “Robots?”

“Point taken. I don’t actually know what those standards are or how high the bar has been set.” The ease of the concession shocked me to my core, but Sullivan just sighed and raked a hand through that sandy hair. “They can’t be that uncomfortable, though. I was assured that these are the Rolls Royce of paper gowns.”

“Assured by who, the sales rep? That person who stands to make a big fat commission if they sign a hospital like ours?” I stared into his eyes, wondering if he’d heard a word the patients had said when they’d called him, but he wasn’t being combative. He was actually trying to understand this time instead of digging in his heels. “Okay, look. I understand that you didn’t just blindly purchase these particular gowns and that you may have been led to believe that there was nothing wrong with them, but put one on.”

His eyebrows swept up. “What?”

“Put one on,” I repeated. “See if you can wear it for the rest of the day without wanting to rip it off. Sit in it. Walk with it on. Try to work, and concentrate, and hey, maybe even try to lie down and take a nap.”

He considered me for a beat, then nodded. “Fine. Challenge accepted. It really can’t be as bad as all that.”

I was still trying to process that he’d actually agreed when I realized that this was my chance. From the beginning, I’d been saying that he only thought those things were okay because he’d probably never had one on, and now, he was agreeing to try it, so I snapped out of my haze and nodded.

“I’ll go get one.” I darted out of the conference room and down the hall, coming back with a folded paper gown and holding it out to him. “There you go. Your Rolls Royce that’s going to turn out to be a junker from the nineteen-fifties.”

“There’s nothing wrong with cars from the fifties,” he said nonchalantly, even as he started stripping. “It was a great era for the automotive industry.”

Shock rendered me speechless when I realized he was in the process of getting naked—or at least mostly naked—right there in front of me.

“Whoa.” My hands flew up to cover my eyes when I finally remembered how basic motor functions… functioned. “What are you doing?”

He paused, his fancy jacket already off. “I’m putting on the gown. That was the plan, right? That I actually have to wear it?”

“Yeah, but I’m still in here. Let me just go wait⁠—”