After I slipped on my shirt, Adam turned around, closing one app on his tablet and opening another. It looked like a calendar.
“Your next appointment is at one.”
My head shot up as I grabbed my bag. “Next appointment?”
“The second opinion we discussed. You’re going to need to sign some papers on the way out to get your records and test results.”
I signed the papers and got copies of my tests and records transferred onto a flash drive that Adam handed to the office staff. When they gave it back, I snatched it and stuck it in my pocket. Damned if I was going to give him access to pictures of my maimed boob. Hell no.
If Jordan, Adam’s playboy best friend, had been setting Adam up on “hot dates” lately, then Adam had probably been rubbing elbows—and God only hoped no other parts—with models and actresses. To say nothing of the swarm of interns at work that I had mentally nicknamed the “Adam groupies.” They liked to catalogue what he wore to work and rate how hot he looked from one day to the next. It had been hell having to sit around and listen to that shit day in and day out while attempting to ignore it.
Not that I thought he’d ever date any of those interns. They were like eighteen and nineteen. But they had perfect bodies and I was sure not a one of them had a big divot taken out of their left breast. Nor would any of them soon be balder than Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise.
I caught Adam watching me a couple times. Well, it was more like I could feel him watching me. Adam’s dark eyes had a way of drawing your eyes to him like a magnet.
“What?” I said finally.
He shook his head, unlocked his car and opened the door for me, patiently waiting for me to get in.
I paused and folded my arms against my chest, turning to him. “You’re up to something.”
He frowned. “Why do you think that?”
“Aside from the fact that you are always up to something, you haven’t mentioned Dr. Metcalfe’s prognosis numbers yet.”
He rested an arm across the edge of the open door and looked at me—really looked in that way that usually felt intimidating. “What’s there to say, Mia?” Then he took a deep breath and looked away. “Those numbers speak for themselves. You’re an intelligent woman. And hopefully you’re going to be an oncologist. If you were in that doctor’s place, what would you recommend your patient do?”
It suddenly felt a little harder to breathe, like a band had been wrapped around my chest. Instead of replying, I dropped my arms to my sides and sank into the passenger seat. Adam gently closed the door for me and came around to the left side of the car to slide in behind the wheel. I bent my head, rubbing my temples against the beginning of a headache. His use of the word “hopefully” was not lost on me. Odds were good that if I went ahead with the pregnancy I would not be starting medical school any time in the near future.
He didn’t start the car, just sat and watched me. I pressed back harder into my seat and sighed, looking at him. I shook my head. “I can’t do this. He is one opinion, one estimate. His number might not even be right.”
We stared at each other for a while—long after it had become awkward. I wanted him to reach out and hug me. And it was strange…if I wanted him to hold me so much, why didn’t I ask, or—better yet—lean forward and take him in my arms? I swallowed and blinked, my eye stinging.
“I need to stop off at the office for a few minutes to grab some of my stuff,” he said.
“You aren’t going into work today?”
He gave me a look like I must be crazy for asking him that and turned to start the car.
Twenty minutes later, at the campus of Draco Multimedia, Adam’s company, I rolled down the windows of his car, telling him I’d wait while he got his stuff done inside. He promised me no more than ten or fifteen minutes but I knew better, because his secretary would catch him to sign some papers or someone would call or he’d get stopped a half dozen times on the way back to his office. I might have gone in with him, but I wanted to avoid that awkward return to work. The Friday before, I’d hurriedly packed up my desk with no explanation whatsoever while Mac, my superior, and the interns I worked with watched me with slackened jaws. I hadn’t cared, though. All I could think about at that point was the pregnancy test I’d just taken and the subsequent angry confrontation with Adam in his office.
I played a game on my phone to avoid having to sit and think about everything that was happening. I’d done too much thinking throughout the weekend and was starting to get exhausted and nauseated by it.