Page 38 of Doctor Bossy

And so I did.

* * *

“Why areyou drinking here all by your lonesome?” a voice said.

I ignored the woman sitting next to me. She’d been sending me signals across the bar all night, laughing raucously with her friends and loudly declaring, “Oh, I haven’t had a good lay in a while.”

I knew it was all for my benefit, having caught her eye once or twice. She winked every time I did and licked her lips lasciviously, with obvious intent. I always looked away, though, before she could take my attention as an invitation. Not that there was anything wrong with the woman. She was beautiful enough with long blonde hair and a voluptuous body clad in the tightest, sparkliest, pinkest minidress I’d ever seen.

And it would have been nice if my body gave a damn.

Instead, her irritating voice and flirtatious moves only made me want to drown in my drink even more.

She must have noticed my lack of interest because, after a while, she moved away. I thought she had finally left, but no such luck.

Instead, she seemed to want to take the game to the next level, slipping into a seat next to me and uttering that inane question.

I ignored her when she said it, hoping she would take that as enough of a signal to walk away. But this woman was more stubborn than I expected.

“Cat got your tongue, hon?” she asked, reaching over and attempting to trail a finger over the back of my hand.

I shifted it. “Don’t touch me.”

“Ooh, you’re the testy sort, are you? The real grumpy kind, but I bet I could have you wrapped around my finger by the end of the night.”

I spared her a scathing glance. She brushed her hair out of her face and smiled, “Come on now, don’t give me that look. I was just teasing. Don’t tell me you can’t take a joke.”

I ignored her, facing my drink once more. Only two more sips to go. I wasn’t as drunk as I wanted yet, but the buzz I was building to bury the guilt inside me was being destroyed by this woman. I wondered if I should just cut my losses, gulp the entire thing, and go.

“Tell me then, handsome,” she said, leaning in until my elbow was practically in her cleavage. The sickeningly sweet scent of her perfume drifted to me. “Are you married? I don’t see a ring on your finger, but there’s no way a handsome man like you isn’t taken. Don’t worry, though. I won’t tell your wife if you won’t.”

I gave her a look of disgust, and the smile slipped off her face slightly. I knew women like this…they occasionally orbited around me at the events Heather and I attended. They would always corner me at those things and make one secret indecent proposal after another, to the point where Heather began to make a joke of the whole thing, betting on how many of them would hit on me every time we went out. The very idea of it always revolted me—the fact that these women thought they were so beautiful and glamorous that I would cheat on my wife and hurt the one person who mattered most to me.

Sickening.

Just as I was about to give her a piece of my mind, I heard a laugh—a familiar laugh.

Immediately, my head snapped around like a heat-seeking missile until I found her.

Becca, wearing a beautiful black dress, her face split in a wide smile.

And she wasn’t alone.

17

BECCA

Ihad a bad feeling about this date from the moment Marco showed up at my door, took one look at me, and whistled, “Wow. Really wasn’t expecting you to clean up this nice, comrade.”

I looked down at my outfit. I’d tried to dress up a little in the only black dress I currently had. It was a nice, inexpensive number—a silk flare dress with a lot of details but not too tight or revealing. While today was just a trial, I didn’t necessarily want to encourage Marco’s attention. He was a nice guy and everything, but I just wasn’t sure I was ready for anything too serious right now.

How will you know if you don’t at least try to come out of your shell?A voice said in my head.If you don’t at least give this thing a fighting chance, you’re wasting both your time and might miss out on a nice guy.

Although, I thought my fiancé was a nice guy too, and look how that turned out. How did I know my judgment of Marco would be different?

The two voices warred in my head for so long that I almost called and canceled the date in the end, but I didn’t out of sheer stubbornness. Besides, anytime I thought about it, I realized that it would look like a cop-out. It may not make sense, but I needed to see this through for at least one night. I owed him that, at least.

But by the end of the night, I did wish I had called to cancel the date.

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