Page 298 of The Doctors Will See You Now

Um. No. I’m pretty sure you said Smiley Walrus…

“Yep,” I lied.

“I want a piece about her budding relationship with that Holmsmore brother,” she instructed, and I had the urge to say, Hemsworth brother, but I bit my tongue. The last thing I needed was Stella’s wrath on a Tuesday morning.

Generally, if you got on her bad side for the week, she’d take pleasure in giving you a month’s worth of work with a deadline of twenty-four hours. And the sickest part of all was that most of the time, she didn’t even use the extra assignments.

“Okay.” I forced a neutral expression even though the urge to glare was strong as a motherfucker. “No problem.”

“Finish it by tomorrow so it can go on the site by Friday.”

Ugh.

“I’ll start working on it now,” I said, and she strode back out of my office without another word. When the sound of her stilettos click-clacking down the hall disappeared completely, I sagged into my desk chair on a deep and heavy sigh.

It was times like these that I wondered how I’d gotten so off track in my life. When I’d started my freshman term of college at NYU, I began the year with the intention of going pre-med. And by the time I’d reached my junior year, I’d been ahead and finished all of my prerequisites. Hell, I’d even been accepted for a summer internship with one of the country’s top specialized surgeons.

But then, I’d met Brent. And my life had taken an abrupt turn and headed in the exact opposite direction of where I’d intended.

I’d lost a lot during that relationship. I’d lost myself. I’d lost my priorities. I’d lost some of my closest friends. I’d lost everything that was important to me. And it would always be the one example—the most important reminder—of why another long-term relationship was not something I’d ever try again.

Unless I happened to have already met the right person.

Good God, not this thought process again…

No. No relationships. Not with Scott or any other man for that matter. I’d promised myself that, and I was sticking to that fucking promise. I loved myself too much to let myself get lost again like I had with my ex.

Before the painful memories of my relationship with Brent—or the ridiculous and scarily recurrent thoughts I’d been having about Scott—could find their way inside my head, I moved my focus to my laptop. I was on a deadline, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t have time for bullshit. I had to find my goddamn center and finish this feel-good column about current celebrity relationships that overcame all of the odds—for a couple years, at least—along with the added piece about Smiley Walrus and her Holmsmore fiancé.

Sigh. Just find your writing mojo, Harlow…

Twenty minutes later and my brain was void of depressing thoughts and solely focused on my work tasks. Writing gossip columns wasn’t exactly my dream job, but it paid the bills, and often, I did enjoy making Gossip readers laugh with witty one-liners and quirky anecdotes.

“Knock. Knock.” The unexpected voice stopped my fingers’ progress across the keys and pulled my gaze away from my laptop screen. A young guy, probably college age, stood in the doorway holding a brown paper sack in his hands. “I have a delivery for you.”

“A delivery? For me?” I questioned in surprise. I wasn’t expecting any deliveries.

“You’re Harlow Paige, right?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s me.”

“Yep,” he said and walked into the office. “This delivery is definitely for you, then.”

“Do you know who it’s from?”

“Uh…” He set the brown paper sack on my desk and scanned the Blackberry in his hand. “It’s from a Dr. Hickey?”

“Dr. Hickey?” I asked, horrified. Of course, I knew the sender’s real identity.

Scott Shepard. Only a self-righteous, sarcastic bastard like him would go to the trouble of calling himself something horrendous like Dr. Hickey.

I bit my lip to fight my smile, but it was a lost cause. My cheeks stung from their abrupt, puffed-out, happy state.

Jesus. Why am I smiling like a lunatic?

It was a mindfuck, to be honest. Scott Shepard should have annoyed me, not made me goddamn giddy and grinning like I was one antidepressant away from stripping off my clothes and dancing naked in a field of daisies.

“Just sign here,” the delivery guy said and held out his iPad and stylus pen.