Page 39 of Sinful in Scrubs

“Let me. The guy’s got you shaken up.”

“Maybe… Sure.” She shrugged.

“He was being a jerk,” I said. “After all, a gentleman doesn’t cut in when the lady says no.”

“Sorry he ruined our dance. He’s more than a jerk,” she admitted. “He’s my ex-boyfriend. He wanted to make sure that I knew he’s now on one of the oversight boards here. Basically, he now has a position that he’s lording over me.”

“But he doesn’t work at Manhattan Memorial, does he? I don’t recognize him.”

“He used to, but not anymore. He’s got friends in powerful places in the administration here, and they’re bringing him along for the ride.”

I raised my eyebrows. “He’s on the review board as an outside third party?”

"Exactly. Outside eyeballs, as it were.”

“Gotcha,” I said, nodding. He was the “expert opinion”. I hated guys like that and the boards and committees they sat on. They could sway popular opinion because they positioned themselves to know better than anyone else there.

Emma looked nervous and uncomfortable, and I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that it wasn’t my presence causing her unease. Maybe she was still reacting to her interaction with that asshole. She walked next to me a few steps away and she rubbed the backs of her arms like she was chilled. I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

She gave me a soft smile. “Thank you. I guess I let him get inside my head.”

“What was his business with you?” I asked. “You said he’s your ex. How recent?”

“It’s been a while. A couple of years. Sometimes, it just seems like a long time ago, and other times, not nearly enough.”

“I think he would have just ignored you, right?” I would have liked to think I would have done that. But it had been far too long since I had an ex-girlfriend. I don’t know how I would have reacted. If a woman like Emma had been my ex, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to play it cool and just watch her dance with other men.

She shrugged. “He wants to be somebody to watch out for.”

“Somebody to watch out for? What do you mean?”

“He’s on a power trip.”

“I get it, he wants to be somebody for you to have to watch out for. Someone you have to appease or he’ll make things difficult for you?”

“Sounds about right. Are you sure you haven’t met him before?” She shrugged again. “He’s nothing but ego.”

“Is he somebody I need to watch out for?” I asked.

She stopped and raised her eyebrows at me. “For us?”

“Yes, us,” I said. “We still do need to come up with that protocol plan, and I assume he’s going to sit in on that review.”

“Oh, right.” She nodded nervously. “The second he finds out my name is attached to that project, he’ll make sure to sit in on that meeting.”

“Do you really think he’d mess with our intake protocols?” I asked.

“Yeah. He’ll probably cause some problems for that.” She nodded, then started shaking her head. “I hope not. He might, simply because it’s me.”

“If he poses a conflict of interest…” I started.

“He’s not going to bring it up. He won’t be the one to point out that he’s had intimate relationships with multiple people they are overseeing. And if I do, well, most people are going to ignore those facts and just kind of brush it under the table, as it were. Instead of pointing out the obvious conflict of interest, they would spin it to make it sound like I was being unreasonable. They could even bring up the relationship I had with him as some form of professional misconduct.”

“Is it that bad?” I asked. “Manhattan Memorial does not have an anti-fraternization policy. How could your past relationship be professional misconduct?”

“Kevin is tricky,” she admitted. “He’d find a way if he really wanted to.”

“Would he cause problems for us?”

---