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Emmaline scoffed, and he could picture her, smug with her arms folded, “looking down her nose” at Delilah despite Delilah being the taller one. Delilah had come a long way in terms of her confidence, but her medical school career was important to her. Any threat to her future was enough to break that budding confident exterior.
“I see you,” Emmaline said. “You sit on his desk, and you’re always in his office. It’s disgusting. You even visit him at the hospital, then walk out holding hands.”
“Dr. S and I don’t hold hands.”
“So, my eyes lied to me?”
“You mean when we hooked elbows? I do that with my brother and father.”
“I don’t know your family’s situation. You could have come from a troubled background, wealthy or not.”
Delilah sniffed harder. “Dr. Rockledge, Dr. S and I are close, but we’re not close in the way you’re implying.”
“Implying?” Emmaline snorted. “Maybe I’m not being clear. I’m not implying anything. You and Luke are sleeping together.”
Lucas rounded the corner.
When Emmaline spotted him, her smug expression fell, which wasn’t surprising. Berating a student, she could do, but when it came to facing him, she reverted to that faux innocence he’d seen her use far too many times to count.
Once upon a time, he’d fallen for it, but her crocodile tears would only serve as hydration for his rage if she tried to unleash them tonight.
“What’s going on here?” He tried to comfort Delilah, but she stepped away from him. “Lilah, what’s wrong?”
“Dr. Rockledge was explaining to me that the closeness of our relationship is inappropriate,” she said. “And that the optics of it are enough to get me kicked out of Hopkins.”
He frowned.
This shit still?
During the spring semester, John Nelson had called him into an impromptu meeting because an anonymous source, whom he now believed he’d identified, had complained that his relationship with Delilah was too casual.
He’d asked John to give him proof of what this person had claimed—data, photos, documentation of favoritism—to which John had chuckled and said that the meeting was a formality. He’d merely wanted to alert him that if he genuinely was sleeping with a student, he needed to have more discretion.
Delilah wasn’t the only student he offered additional opportunities in medicine, nor was she the only student he helped. Over time, especially once Raina became involved, their relationship did go from mentor-mentee to him feeling a protective, brotherly instinct over her, especially after the Oliver Samson fiasco.
“Lilah, no one is kicking you out of medical school,” he reassured her. “Least of all Emmaline Rockledge.”
Delilah turned teary eyes in his direction. “Really?”
“Yeah. You see, Emmaline and I used to be involved, and I think she’s retaliating because I married your sister. I think she believes, because we used to be involved, that I won’t use my power to bury her professionally.”
Emmaline’s and Delilah’s eyes rounded, both for different reasons. Emmaline had seen no need to verify who he’d married, which was why she currently looked like a fool. On the other hand, Delilah likely had no idea he and Emmaline used to be a thing.
At school, they’d kept things professional, never once sharing a longing gaze or holding hands unless it was behind closed doors, which was laughable. Had it been Raina’s office down the hall from his, he would have worn her out in every empty room the building possessed by the end of the first week.
“You can go back to the event,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”
Delilah enclosed him in a tight hug. “Thank you, Luc. I didn’t know what to do here. I thought virtually everyone knew Miguel and I were engaged.”
So did he.
She talked about Miguel nonstop.
While he rubbed her back, he locked eyes with Emmaline. She’d taken Delilah off to the side for this little pow-wow because she knew, had she done this in public, there would have been too many flapping gums to remind her that she didn’t have the power to expel a student. She barely had the power to accuse a student of inappropriate behavior without any semblance of proof.
“I’ll go back out front and wait for Raina,” Delilah said.
He nodded. “Text me when she arrives so I can prepare my surprised face.”
