Page 30 of Doctor Bossy

No matter how extremely guilty I currently felt.

God, I still couldn’t believe I had been so careless. I had never screwed up this bad before, and as much as I wanted to blame my distraction on my mother, I couldn’t do that. I knew better than to go and see her, knew that she would inevitably ruin my mood, and yet I had done it anyway. The fault lay squarely on my shoulders, and now I had disappointed the one person I never wanted to.

He wasn’t saying anything.

I didn’t quite have the nerve to look him in the face as I tried in vain to wipe the tears steadily leaking from my eyes.

Why couldn’t I stop crying? It was me being a total wuss. Perhaps it was because I was so mad at myself and so overwhelmed with everything that had happened during the past few weeks. It was a shitty month, and I was just so exhausted with everything.

“Stop that.” When Griffin finally spoke, his voice was a low growl in the same angry tone he spoke in.

I couldn’t blame him.

He’d taken a risk to give me a chance at my dream job, and this was the result. I’d messed everything up, not just for him but for everyone else in this organization whose sole purpose had been to get that drug to the market.

And then stupid old me ruined it.

“Don’t think that your crying is going to gain you any sympathy points,” he continued.

“I’m not trying to do that,” I told him in a watery tone as I sniffled to keep the mucus from trailing down my nose. “It’s just…I know I messed up, and I’m just so fucking sorry—”

“You more than messed up,” he interrupted mercilessly. “But crying isn’t going to fix it. So you’re going to stop that right now.”

I tried. I swear to God I tried, but after I wiped the tears off my face, another trail replaced it. The pressure in my chest continued to build, the overwhelming devastation overtaking me, and I just wanted to get it all out so I could maybe breathe again.

“I’m trying,” I said to him as I wiped the tears once more. “But it’s not working.”

“This is a professional environment,” he said, and I could feel his footsteps getting closer. “Not only have you ruined months of hard work from everyone on this team, but you’re also now crying in an attempt to make it difficult to fire you.”

“I’m not—”

“Do you have any idea what everyone here had to do to make sure that everything was fucking perfect?” His voice was quiet rather than loud, but it had a cold essence that chilled me to the core. “How many lives are hanging in the balance waiting for that drug? Lives that may now be doomed because we may not make it through the approval in time?”

Guilt tore through me even more. God, I didn’t even think that far…didn’t think of how my actions might deprive people of life-saving treatment. I was essentially killing them.

I thought I was in pain when I found James cheating on me or even the night I was attacked and beaten up while walking home late in Branches. It was an incident that scarred me for weeks afterward, but the misery from that was nothing compared to this. I didn’t think I could feel any lower than I did right now.

I heard Griffin take another step closer, and I flinched instinctively. Not because I thought he was going to get violent or hit me or anything like that. No matter how angry he was, I knew Griffin wouldn’t hurt me—physically anyway. But perhaps it was a naïve thought to have. After all, I didn’t know the man that well. I didn’t know if he was given to rages when naïve stupid little girls came in and ruined his life’s work.

Before I could finish the thought, his hand snapped out. I flinched, but rather than a slap on the face like I anticipated, his hand wrapped around my waist and dragged me to his hard chest.

As my face pressed into his shirt, I froze, not knowing what to do next.

“Stop crying, damn it,” he said, and his voice sounded harsh. “I can’t fucking take it anymore.”

What the hell was going on?

I think my tears halted momentarily out of sheer shock as my brain tried to figure it out and digest the fact that Griffin McCormick was now hugging me.

Griffin was hugging me.

My internal reactions were cacophony. My inner voice was squealing in excitement like a teenage girl, and it was barely tempered by common sense, which required me to calm down and figure out what was happening. At the back of my mind, despair still lurked, waiting for a chance in the limelight again.

But most of all, it was an awareness that skittered over my nerves. My head only came up halfway to his chest, and I heard his heartbeat, strong underneath my ears. I felt the imprint of his hand spanning my waist as I inhaled—surrounded by the spicy scent of his aftershave—the smell of clean skin and something deeper, more elemental.

Something that in animals might have been called pheromones.

Whatever it was, it swept through me, sending warm syrupy electricity running through my veins. I wouldn’t be surprised if my body began trembling.

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