Page 94 of Dr. Off Limits

Sutton

My pulse was thundering in my ears as if my heart were trying to climb out of my throat. I had to hold myself back from running up the jetty to meet Jacob. Instead, I stayed on the bank, transferring my weight from foot to foot while Jacob climbed out of the boat.

When he saw me, it was as if the rest of the world fell away. It didn’t matter that we were in Central London surrounded by thousands of people. Only the two of us mattered.

“Hi,” he said as he approached me.

“Hi,” I replied. I’d always found Jacob more attractive than any man I’d ever laid eyes on, but now, his sexy swagger and the coy smile twitching at the corners of his lips, those hands pulling the sunglasses off the top of his head and shoving them in his pocket—it was almost overwhelming.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he said.

I shook my head. “Same. I came to... lie in a rowing boat.”

He laughed. “Me too. But you already knew that.”

“It’s a nice day for it.” I glanced skyward then back at Jacob. What was I doing? Making small talk. What else was there to do? Lying in the boat was supposed to give me the answer to what I was going to say to him.

“I’ve missed you,” he said. My knees weakened and I stumbled. He wrapped his hands around my shoulders to steady me. The heat of him was hypnotizing.

“Shall we sit?” he asked.

I nodded and he guided me away from the path, onto a patch of grass.

We sat opposite each other—me with crossed legs, him with his legs outstretched to the side of me, his arms propping him up behind him.

He glanced up at the sky and then back to look me in the eye. “It’s been hard being apart from you.”

It was as if my heart was trying to squeeze between my ribs to get free. “It’s been really hard. I’ve missed you... so much.” I’d spent so much of my life being independent that missing someone was a new experience for me.

He glanced over to the lake. “I came here to try and find a way through for us.”

I frowned. “You did? So did I.”

“That’s why you were here today?”

“Yeah. I had a long talk with Parker and Tristan about everything. I realized a lot of things.”

He nodded but stayed silent, letting me formulate my thoughts.

“I think I’ve been too focused on proving I’m worthy of my position at the hospital—like I’m spending every day interviewing for a job I already have. Parker said I act like it was an administrative error that I got the position, rather than because I deserve to be there.”

He raised his eyebrows but didn’t say he told me so. He knew I knew.

“It won’t be an overnight thing, but I’m going to do my best to focus on the job, rather than proving to everyone I deserve the job. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have got it.”

“I think that’s amazing,” he said. “I think you’re amazing.”

I closed my eyes, trying to soak in his words, wanting to capture the feeling of warmth and comfort they gave me.

“I decided I don’t want Wanda’s job,” he said. “Too much admin.”

As he spoke, I opened my eyes. “I thought if you wanted to replace Wanda, you needed to—”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

He said it in such a relaxed way that I thought for a second I must have misunderstood him.

“But I thought that you wanted to—”

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