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“Hey, I wasn’t up for sharing in front of everyone else, but I have something juicy on your doctor.”
The seconds-long pause was tortuous. She was in the electric chair and Brandi was a sadistic executioner, finding pleasure in delaying her death.
“He slept with my sister.”
“Were they dating?”
“From what she gathered, he doesn’t date. He just has ‘encounters.’” Brandi signed air quotes.
Encounters? Dr. Merino was shaping up to be a first-rate asshole. Saliva pooled in her mouth like a stoppered sink. Her knees pressed together, a subconscious guarding of her femininity. As Kenna tried and failed to shake off the disgust, a sickening realization donned in the face of Brandi’s statement.
“If your sister was his patient, or even his former patient, he should’ve been fired, bare minimum. We met with Dean Raza last week and I got the feeling he’d do anything to send Dr. Merino packing.”
“I guess she didn’t view it as being taken advantage of. She liked him. Hell, I think she loved him. I mean, she didn’t talk about him much, but when she did?” A dreamy gleam sparkled in Brandi’s deep amber irises. “Erin told me he had this way of making her feel otherworldly, like they were the only two people who existed.”
She could have gone without hearing about Dr. Merino’s exceptional talents in the bedroom but the fact that he’d slept with a patient had her rapt. The night at St. James, Kenna had recognized the darkness in his eyes and now she had proof that his malevolence was real rather than imagined. She signed the cross and mumbled a prayer of thanks and when she opened her eyes, Brandi stared at her as if she were possessed.
“You okay?”
Kenna’s lips parted to pose another question but she was dissuaded from speaking as the guys returned to the table, heady foam spilling over the rims of their drafts. Will praised Liam for his performance on the halftime bonus.
“I can’t believe you got all 10.”
“It wasn’t hard. It's not like John Hughes is an obscure director. Everyone knows him.”
Rebecca came back from the bathroom and the conversation around Kenna became background noise. Her tipsy gaze hovered to Dr. Merino, sizing up his features through her lens of inebriety. His lustrous, tousled waves were just shy of sweeping his khaki sweater. His social posture was a curiosity in itself: head angled back to accentuate his Adam's apple, broad shoulders sagging. She loathed the way her throat grew thick as she stole glances at his occasional toothy grins.
Was he always this attractive or was the seductive incandescence of the fairy lights aiding his cause?
That’d be the alcohol talking, she thought.
He caught her looking. Kenna froze, muscles stiff like a vulnerable deer in a clearing faced with the threat of a hunter. Dr. Merino surveyed his surroundings, as if to confirm that he was the object of her blatant staring, and his eyes landed on her once again. Jabbing a finger into his chest, he mouthed ‘me?’ The finger transitioned to his entire hand, at which point he raised his glass and she did the same.
She didn’t fully know what to expect from her semester with Dr. Merino but in that shared, drunken moment she knew one thing. Their time together would not be free of complications.
“This doesn’t happen often, folks, but we have a tie for first place. Can I please have one member from Rorschach’s Sheets and the Barenaked Philosophers report to the back. The category for the final question is Catholic Saints.”
“That’d be your department.” Nathan’s lips captured the mouth of the bottle and emptied his fourth beer. “Pull through for us. We can’t let them win two weeks in a row.”
Dayton made the two-step journey to the host’s table and waited to face off with the other team’s sacrificial lamb.
He didn’t expect to see Kenna stumbling along the narrow walkway that led to the back of the bar. She echoed the graceless determination of a child in their mother’s heels as she struggled to keep steady in her flat boots. She was sauced.
An opportune moment at a most inopportune time.
Kenna greeted him with a reserved ghost of a smile. Even amid her drunkenness, she had a noticeable air of reservation toward him. Shouldn’t he have appeared more approachable in light of her lowered inhibitions?
There was the issue of her teammates. Who knew what nonsense they had filled her head with.
“You two ready?” Michael asked, snuffing out the mic. When they didn’t object, he continued, “Okay, guys, for the win. Who was the first American woman to be canonized by the Catholic church?”
“Elizabeth Ann Seton,” they answered in unison.
Kenna’s eyes sobered, electrifying with wildness, either baffled by his knowledge or his quickness. He was just as baffled but he kept his expression neutral. With a few blinks, she settled, sucking in a fragmented breath.
The hair raised on Dayton’s forearms, beneath his sweater sleeves. Enamored with her breathing?
His celibacy was showing.
