Page 29 of Doctor Bossy

Leila seemed to hesitate to say what she wanted to say, as though she didn’t quite know how to get it out. But before she could, the door opened up slightly wider, and Becca walked in with an even more solemn look on her face.

“I did,” she said. “I fucked up.”

Her expression was a combination of anxiety, shame, and acceptance. She had her hands folded in front of her, seeming to be steeling herself for whatever came next. She appeared to be expecting me to completely blow up on her as she readied herself for the inevitable.

I glanced at Leila. “Leave us alone for a few seconds.”

Leila nodded and left promptly, shutting the door quietly behind us. Becca seemed to tense up even more when the door closed—as if she was just locked in the lion’s den.

She might as well be,I thought savagely, feeling the anger mixed with another emotion that tormented me whenever I saw her.For more reasons than one.

My eyes ran down her form. She had taken her lab coat off and was wearing ratty jeans that seemed to hug her frame and a T-shirt that might have been a size too small for her. I didn’t think it was intentionally meant to lure, but it looked old and threadbare and somehow more seductive than some lingerie I had seen.

And the fact that I noticed it increased my irritation even more.

“What did you mean by you fucked up?”

She winced as I spoke. I knew my voice was a bit harsher than normal with the effort it took to hold back my irritation and my desire.

She took a deep breath. “I was helping Leila out with mixing up the activating reagents, and I ended up messing up. I mistook carbitol for ethanol, and I think this might have messed with the final sample that got sent up to the analytics department.”

I frowned. “How did that get past all the checks and balances?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice quiet.

“How the hell did you make a mistake like that in the first place?”

She winced again as if I had slapped her, and I felt like a heel, which irritated me more. I had every right to yell at her, and I should not feel bad for doing so. Anyone else would have gotten a worse reaction from me for doing the same thing. Or rather, they would have already been fired. There wouldn’t have even been any need for me to meet with them. Leila knew the protocol. The fact that she brought Becca here instead of following protocol attested that despite how much I tried to hide it, she suspected there was more to my relationship with Becca.

And that did not bode well for either of us.

Fire her, my mind said. It was the perfect opportunity. I had given her a probation period for a reason and fulfilled my end of the bargain. Lord knew that having her around was horrible for my sanity. I would be a fool not to take it.

But I found myself hesitating anyway.

“Tell me,” I snapped, angrier with myself than anything. “Tell me how someone who has worked in a lab for four years and has that much experience with lab work could have made such a dumb mistake.”

“I don’t have a good excuse.” Her voice was weak and watery.

What the fuck did that mean?

“Try,” I bit out angrily.

And then she did the strangest thing. A tear slipped out of the side of her eye, but she wiped it away and shook her head.

“I don’t have any excuses,” she said and then waited for the ax to fall.

“In that case,” I said harshly. “I guess I was wrong about you after all.”

Hurt reflected in her gaze as she looked up at me, and then the waterworks began in earnest.

13

BECCA

If there was ever a moment for the floor to open up and swallow me, it was right now.

Crying? Why on earth was I crying in front of Dr. Griffin again? Only this time, it was much worse because it was over a mistakeImade, one that would likely cost him a lot of time and resources. The shame made me want to hand in my resignation and high-tail it out of here as fast as my feet could carry me. But that would be taking the coward’s way out, and while I may be a lot of things, a coward wasn’t one of them.

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