Page 4 of Silver Fox's Twin Surprise

"I don't know." I sighed and glanced around. No one was close enough to hear us talking if I kept my voice at a normal level, and between the ovens and fans and the number of conversations going on in here to begin with, I figured no one would try eavesdropping. "I have a meeting with the board this afternoon."

Juan paused his chewing for a second and I saw the flash of recognition. It was every doctor's worst nightmare—a mistake on the job that might cost them their career. I didn't believe the mistake was mine, but I had to walk through this process anyway. If a patient sued the hospital, they wouldn't take it lying down. They'd get to the bottom of it and find out who did what, and that person would get the hammer.

"Ah…" His grunt of solidarity was about as much comfort as a wet blanket on a cold day, but I didn’t really think there was anything anyone could even say to help take this weight off. The board was on a witch hunt and I was the first target because it was my operating table.

"Yeah, so the patient didn't die, but he might sue anyway. I still think the mistake was clerical, but there isn't any way to prove that without seeing all of his records before and after, which were of course immediately sealed and moved off the servers." I wished I'd done a better job going over his case more thoroughly, but I hadn't. Not only was it an emergency situation, but hisprevious doctors hadn't forwarded the charts over to us until an hour before my first incision.

This was the perfect sort of case to push for uniform health organization. It made so much more sense to organize patient files in a singular central database the way other countries did it. Americans deserved to have all their data at their doctor's fingertips the instant they walked through any practice's front door. It would possibly have saved this entire situation.

"Well, all you can do is take your lumps, man. The truth is like a lion…" Juan was always saying things like that… Things I didn’t quite understand that he eventually spelled out for me. He looked me in the eye as I raised my eyebrows, and I didn't even have to ask him to explain. "You don't have to tell someone when a lion walks into the room. The truth will come out, and everyone will see it. So just sit tight and ride the waves."

Now that was an idiom I understood completely. Except, this wasn't a calm ocean and I wasn't on a surfboard. I was on the edge of what I believed would be a tempest, and looking into the storm wall had me shitting my pants.

"Thanks…" I looked down at my plate and felt a little less hungry after talking about that, but I continued to eat. Silence fell over the table, but the din of silverware clinking on plates and the chatter of happy voices surrounded us. My food was almost gone when I looked up at the vending machines not ten yards away and saw the shapely form of the gorgeous woman from the parking garage last week.

A smile crept over my face as I checked her out, and I wasn't shy about staring. Her back was to me. She wore green scrubs today, form fitting. They hugged her ass and showed a faint outline of her panties underneath, and I felt the same stirring inside mygut as I watched her bend to take her soda out of the collection tray.

Juan whistled under his breath and it caught my attention. I glanced at him to see him nodding and grinning. "Yes… I agree."

My chuckle vibrated my chest, loosening me up. It was the lightest I'd felt all day, and I wasn't sure how to feel about that. If Kate were here, would I have felt this way? And was it cheating even if she'd been gone this long? My heart felt like it might be, but my dick twitched and craved something I'd been lacking for too long.

"Yeah, but she's really young. Probably just fresh out of college." I cringed at Juan's comment and looked away.

Twenty years was a huge age difference, though I doubted she was genuinely straight out of college. Besides, age was just a number after twenty-one, right?

My eyes snuck back up to where she was just standing, but she was gone. I briefly felt a tinge of disappointment, but it vanished and turned to frustration when a board member walked up to get his soda. The yo-yo was exhausting, but at least the high point was refreshing. I wasn’t sure if Juan was right, but I didn't figure it mattered. There was no way she'd look my way twice. I was old and probably out of touch to her generation. And with the idea of a scandal looming, it was probably a good idea for me to not even try.

4

ROSE

After getting my soda from the vending machine, I went to the counter and got a ham and Swiss on rye. The day was pretty average. My routine was solidifying, and I felt good about working here. I walked past a table where I recognized a few of the nurses' faces but avoided eye contact. I didn’t want them to invite me to sit with them—not because I didn’t like them, but because I had no time for socialization and hanging out with coworkers could get messy.

I wanted a seat by myself where I could enjoy my sandwich and drink and scroll my phone in peace. As an introvert, having time to myself meant recharging after dealing with forced patient interaction for hours. I soaked up every second of silence and solitude that I could.

In fact, I took out my phone and eyed a table at the back of the room, then buried my nose in my phone screen as I walked that direction. I was so engrossed in my social feed that I didn't see where I was going and clumsily bumped into someone.

I gasped and jerked my head up to see it was the handsome doctor from the parking garage. He looked as shocked as I wasat the collision, and I felt my cheeks get hot instantly. I couldn’t stop smiling as I looked up at him, and his grin matched mine. I saw the empty tray in his hand and realized he was headed for the bussing station.

"I'm sorry," I said, and I took a step backward, but I couldn’t look away. His blue eyes were so crystal clear and locked on me.

"It was my fault. I wasn't watching where I was going." He nodded at his tray. "Just finishing lunch…"

I waved my sandwich in the air as I slid my phone into my pocket. "I'm just sitting down to eat. I, uh…" I felt my throat swell as anxiety rose and the butterflies took over. The grin on Alana's face when she joked about him jumping my bones flashed through my head, only making my cheeks hotter, and I licked my lips.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked, and I felt like I couldn't speak.

I nodded and stepped aside for him to walk toward the trash cans. When he returned to my side, we walked to the only empty table in the cafeteria way in the back near the vending machines. I sat down and placed my sandwich and drink in front of me, and he sat down too, leaving one chair between us.

"How's your car? Everything running well?" Of course he would ask about my car. That was the entire reason we had met.

"Uh, yeah, it's good. Just left my charging wire plugged in that day…" My fingers shook as I folded open my sandwich, and I knew there was no way I was going to eat this in front of him.

"Good. I'm happy to help. I'm glad I passed through when you were in need." He seemed to relax a little, and I felt a bit flushed.

I wasn't sure what to say next. As such an introvert, I wasn't good at small talk or interacting with people on a social basis. It always left me feeling too self-conscious and vulnerable, so I avoided it at all costs. In my attempt to make this less awkward for myself, I reached for my soda and cracked it open and Dr. Hastings took the initiative to keep the conversation going.

"So, how long have you been working here again? I remember you said something…" His arm draped across the table, and I watched his bicep flex under his scrub top. It made my body warm as I imagined a chiseled physique under all that clothing.

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