Page 21 of Alone With You
“No kind of doctor at all.” His knuckles whitened around the mug. “I quit my job as an emergency physician six months ago and I have no intention of going back.”
Hmmm. “You quit?”
“Yup.”
“You needed a change of pace?”
“No.”
“Plan on going back to school for a new specialty?”
“No.”
“Give me something.” She took a sip of the tasteless but refreshingly ice-cold beer. “You wanted to knock the shine off the diamond, right? Then you can’t leave me burning with curiosity.”
A muscle in his cheek flexed. “I’m just done with the career.”
“Burnt out?”
He paused, and then nodded, and shut down so fast she practically heard the walls falling. She’d known assistant professors who’d crumbled under the demands of classes, lab work, and grant applications, who’d disappeared for months on leave to reconsider less stressful options. She herself thrived on the demands of her work, but she wasn’t ignorant of the toll it could take.
“I’ve got all the time in the world now,” Logan said. “So I’m couch-surfing across America.”
She tilted her head, contemplating. “That actually sounds appealing.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Maybe not couch-surfing,” she said, “but I envy the lack of a schedule, the ample time you have. Summers with my grandmother were freewheeling like that, days that unfurled without a single lesson or appointment or plan. And those were the happiest months of my life.”
“Is your grandmother the rich relative?”
Her stomach tightened. “Rich?”
“Come on, Red. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
She hated to admit that Logan pinned her good. “It’s the Saab, isn’t it? I have a weakness for foreign cars.”
“It’s not the car or jewelry.” His gaze dropped to the pearls at her throat. “It’s the boarding school and the Mozart you hum in the shower. You ooze class. It’s like a scent rising off your skin.”
“My parents are wealthy,” she said with a tilt of chin, “but I worked hard to get where I am.”
“I didn’t say otherwise.”
“Last time I looked, you couldn’t buy a Ph.D. Or an M.D.” Or love, for that matter. The only wealth that really counted.
“I’m making an effort to point out the gulf between us, Red.”
“So did you go hungry to bed as a child? Had no shoes for your feet?”
He swung his face away and scanned the crowd as the speakers hissed static between twanging country songs. “Not me or my eight siblings. There’s a lot of room on a cattle ranch.”
“Did you all sleep in one bed, head to foot?”
He raised the beer to his lips. “My wit and charm are working on you already, I see.”
“Working like magic.” She took another gulp of the tasteless beer. “So what did your parents do on this ranch?”
“He was a veterinarian.”
