Page 78 of Dr. Off Limits

Jacob

Sutton and I had a deal that we didn’t text if one of us was on shift—the focus stayed on the job. So getting a text from her when I knew she was at the hospital was out of the ordinary. The tone of her message cemented things. Something was up. Her second and final text asked me to drive halfway around the North Circular to meet her in the Ikea car park in Tottenham. There were only so many people in my life that I’d do something like that for. Sutton was one of them.

As I pulled into the multi-story, I spotted the blue VW she’d told me to look out for. I pulled in next to her like we were about to do a drug deal.

I cut the engine and went to open the door, but she opened the passenger door and slipped inside.

“Hi,” I said, leaning over to kiss her.

She didn’t exactly flinch, but it was close. Dread settled in my gut.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Gilly saw me leaving your place this morning. She tried to suggest my career would be derailed because of a conflict of interest.”

I let out a short laugh it was so ridiculous. “Of course it would be Gilly you met. She’s poisonous.”

She fixed me with a stare. I was being unprofessional.

“I know,” I said, taking the admonishment I knew was circling in her brain. I lay my hand face up on her knee. She hesitated but eventually linked her fingers through mine. “Tell me what happened.”

“Like I said, Gilly saw me coming through the front gate as I was leaving.”

“How did she know it was my house?”

“Really good question,” she replied. “Maybe she’s researched where you live because she was hoping to accidently-on-purpose bump into you?”

“Research how though? By following me home?”

She pulled in a breath. “I didn’t think about it, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She was never my favorite of my year, but I didn’t think she was quite the bitch it turns out she is.”

“So, you see her and then what?”

“First of all, I tried to skirt around the issue by not saying anything. She basically said there would be consequences if we were sleeping together and I figured gloves were off. I told her you were doing a research project on a topic I studied at uni. We’d got talking about it and you were working on it today and needed a book I had.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to take it in. “That’s quite the story.”

“I needed a reason to be at your house that early in the morning. It was the first thing that sprang to mind.”

“You think she believed you?”

“I think so.” She winced. “I might also have suggested that if she started gossiping and it got back to you, it could ruin her career.”

I pushed my hand over my head. This was getting really messy. “What’s the research project I’m supposed to be doing?”

“No idea.”

“Okay, well, we can think of something. Maybe I’ll even do some actual research and write an article about it.”

She lifted the corners of her mouth into a small smile. “It was awful. I thought it was game over for both of us.”

“Any other person you’d have run into would just assume you were leaving your own house. Or your boyfriend’s house. They wouldn’t be borderline stalking me and know where I lived. We were just unlucky.”

“Right,” she agreed. “This time we were lucky. But I think we should take it as a sign.” She glanced down at our hands and rubbed her finger over my knuckle.

“What kind of sign?”

“That we’re cutting it too close.”

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