Page 19 of The Refusal

I let out a groan. “Honestly? Yes, I am.My God. He’s totally irresistible.” I put my head in my hands. “When he smiles at me … I could spontaneously combust.” I fill her in on my idiocy in the elevator, the lunch that followed, and the conference where he asked me to mentor him. “But let’s be honest here, I can’t afford to be involved with him. First, I’ve been employed by his company, and second—hello?—I’m just beginning to build my reputation as a serious player in this industry, I can’t be sucked into anything that would destroy that.”

“Why would it destroy that?”

“Can you imagine? ‘She only got the contract because she’s sleeping with him,’yada, yada, yada. They’d have a field day. I wouldn’t look like a genuine business proposition at all. I’d be like some sleeping-her-way-to-the-top floozy. There’d forever be this question mark over me. Of course, guys can do this, no problem; they’d just be nailing a ‘hot piece of ass.’”I do air quotes with my fingers, and Kate laughs. I lower my voice and lean over the table. “And if we had a fling and split up? All bets are off. With his media profile, I could becrucified. At the conference, people were already asking questions about why I was talking to him and whether Janus Industries had a ‘security problem.’ Everyone in the industry is interested in him and his success. Thank God they didn’t probe any further. Can you imagine?” A shudder rolls through me. “I don’t know how he handles it.”

“This kind of double standard drives me nuts.”

I laugh. “Why do women even have to think about this stuff?”

“Sounds like he might be interested in you, though.”

My heart knocks on my ribs when she says this, and I don’t like the spike it causes in my chest.

“Why do you say that?”

“Come on, Jo, accosting you at the elevator and practically begging you to go to lunch?” She leans toward me, eyes wide, finger tapping the wood surface between us. “He even flat-out said he asked you out, and that he hadn’t done that in a long time.”

She’s enjoying this. She’s told me before that she thinks the guys I choose are as dull as toothpicks. I think they’re calm, steady, committed.Safe.No one in their right mind would describe Janus Phillips as safe.

I groan. “Don’t remind me. It won’t help me resist the Phillips charm. Anyway, he’s a player; they all say things like that.”

She does a little dance in her seat, and I can hardly bear the gleeful expression. “Janus Phillips is keen on a friend of mine,” she sings.

“Shhhhh,” I say, flapping my hand and looking around.

“Maybe you’re worrying unnecessarily?” she says.

“Maybe I am, but I really can’t afford to take the risk.”

Her face falls. “Oh yeah. Don’t get me started on the risks working in medicine. There was this cute guy yesterday …” She stops, blushing slightly.

Now I am all sorts of interested. Kate almost never notices guys; she’s way too involved in her studies. Although calling her “Dr. Dull” is our joke, sheiscompletely subsumed by her career, and she’d be the first to admit it.

“He was unconscious.”

“Comatose. The best kind of man. I like them when they can’t speak.”

She starts to giggle. “Oh don’t. We can’t talk like that; I could be banned from practicing medicine before I’m even qualified.”

“Anyway,”—I pat my hand on the table—“spill.”

“I don’t know, there was something about him. He’d taken some drug—”

She purses her lips as if she’s running his medical symptoms through her head. We’ve talked a lot about this kind of thing in the past. “It had knocked him for six. And then he came to halfway through the night and wanted to leave: He was still spaced out.”

I stare at her open-mouthed. “And?”

She shrugs. “He signed the piece of paper and left.”

“That’s it? You let him go?” I say, my voice rising.

She wrinkles her nose at me. “We can’t make them stay if they’re determined to go. He was dizzy, disoriented. I watched him weave down the corridor as he was leaving.” She frowns again. “I hope he was okay. I’m still wondering whether I missed something.”

“Didn’t you want to follow him home?” I can hear the appalled squeak in my voice.

“Well, I did, but purely for professional reasons.” She winks and shakes her head at me.

I put my chin in my hands and inspect the blonde hair brushing her face. When did she last talk about a guy? Even found one worthy of comment? A warmth flutters up inside me seeingthisKate return, a Kate that’s not ground down by the slog and responsibility of being a doctor, the pressure of her overperforming family, the sting of past relationships; a Kate who escapes the worry of every diagnosis she’s ever made. I settle in, happily throwing my own worries out the proverbial window.

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