Doctor In The House

A slam like that might have sent her reeling—or spoiling for a fight. But she was beginning to read between the lines and get a handle on him. The insults were a smokescreen. No one was that nasty for no reason. “You don’t want me to like you, do you?”

His eyes narrowed, telling her how insignificant she was in the scheme of his life. “I really don’t care how you feel about anything, DelMonico.”

He believed that, she thought. But she didn’t. She’d been taught never to focus on the bad, only the good. And if an animal swiped at you, it was only because he was wounded. The challenge here was to discover what Ivan the Terrible’s wound was.

She folded her arms before her. “Well, you won’t get me to dislike you.”

Ordinarily, he would have turned and walked away without bothering to reply. But for once, curiosity got the better of him. “Not that, again, I care in the slightest, but why is that, DelMonico?”

The answer was simple. Because she wanted to be the best and in order to do that, she had to learn from the best. She had to learn from him. Everything was always better when conducted in an air of congeniality rather than hospitality.

“Because you did exactly what you said back there,” she told him. “You performed a miracle. That tumor looked like it was a miniaturized octopus with its tiny tentacles woven all in and out of gray matter, and yet you got it all.”

He’d leaned against the wall to listen to her and straightened now. “Very poetic, DelMonico. Maybe you should think about becoming a poet instead of wasting your time here.”

She wasn’t going to let him bait her. She felt too good, too psyched, to let him burst her balloons and make her plummet. “I’m not wasting my time.”

He leveled a penetrating gaze at her. “You’re sure of that?”

There wasn’t even a half second of hesitation on her part. “Yes.”

“Ballsy,” Ivan pronounced, more to himself than to her. “Maybe it won’t take you a century or two. DelMonico. Maybe it’ll just take three-quarters of one.”

She had just been given a decent compliment, Ivan the Terrible style. She viewed it as one giant step in the right direction. “I’m going to knock that figure down to something manageable,” she promised.

Ivan snorted. “You think that, DelMonico. You go right ahead and think that.”

The tone he used clearly declared that while she might want to delude herself, he knew the truth and the truth, the way he saw it, said that she would never be capable of performing the kinds of surgeries he tackled on a regular basis. He just didn’t see it being in her, no matter what she thought.

“I will,” Bailey called after him as he began to walk away. “Because I have a good teacher.” She raised her voice when he made no attempt to turn around and added, “You.”

“Ha!” was Ivan’s only response. He kept on walking until he disappeared through the opposite set of swinging doors.

Bailey turned on her heel, quickly heading around to the other side, to the locker room where her things were stored. For all the contact she’d had with the patient, she could have almost remained in the clothes she’d worn originally. The clothes she’d secretly hoped put her in a better light as far as first impressions went. She realized that she could have just as well worn a paper sack for all the difference it made to Munro, but it had been worth a try.

She grinned to herself. She’d seen her first brain surgery today. Despite the fact that Munro had relegated her to a far corner of the operating room, she had been able to witness the infinite skill with which he wielded the robotic instruments used to excise the tumor that had all but paralyzed the thirty-two-year-old patient.

She didn’t care how much the neurosurgeon ranted and raved, how much he tried to get her to throw her hands up and scream “uncle” just before she quit. There was no way she was about to do that.

“Get used to it, Ivan Munro,” she murmured under her breath as she walked into the locker room. “I’m going to stick to you like glue until I know everything that you do.”

The second she entered the lockers she began shedding surgical livery. By the time she reached the locker that had been assigned her, she was in her underwear, ready to grab her street clothes and put them on.

The trouble with that was, someone, obviously thinking they were performing a good deed, had shut her locker door and flipped the combination lock. A lock to which she didn’t know the combination.

“Damn,” she muttered when the lock resisted opening.

“Problem?”

The question came from the other side of the lockers.

CHAPTER 9

Bailey’s first inclination was to grab her discarded scrubs and cover herself up as much as possible.

The only thing wrong with that plan was that she’d tossed the scrubs into the dirty laundry receptacle and it was now approximately ten feet away from her. She sensed that a mad dash to retrieve the discarded clothing would undoubtedly amuse the chief neurosurgeon who seemed to have materialized out of thin air. She was willing to bet double her staggering medical school loan that if she did that, Munro would make some sort of humiliating, condescending comment about her pubescent reaction.

So instead of making a laughable attempt to somehow cover up the lacey pink bra and panties, and the skin that was above, between and below, Bailey raised her chin and turned around. She looked the neurosurgeon straight in the eye as if she were dressed from head to foot in a suit of impenetrable medieval armor. Only for a moment did she have the impression that he wasn’t looking at her as if she were wearing impenetrable medieval armor. But at least he wasn’t leering.

“Actually, yes,” she replied as coolly as possible under the circumstances. “There is a problem. Someone seems to have snapped my lock shut.”

She couldn’t read his expression, but in her heart she just knew he was laughing at her. “That’s why they make locks. To lock.” And then he allowed a sigh to escape, as if this was all incredibly boring to him. “Use the combination.”

“If I knew the combination, Doctor, that would be an excellent suggestion.”

This time she saw his eyes slowly pass over her body. He seemed neither impressed nor disappointed. There appeared to be no reaction at all. She couldn’t help wondering if he had spent too much time viewing people only as patients. At another time, she might have begun to speculate about his personal life, but right now, only hers, and how she was going to live this down, concerned her.

Goose bumps formed along her arms and legs in response to the lowered temperature. “Do you have any other suggestions?” she asked, her mouth growing annoyingly dry.

“Yes.” He said the single word so slowly, it seemed to drip out of his mouth.

A beat passed. Nothing followed.

“Well?” she pressed, doing her best not to sound frantic. What if someone came in and saw her like this? Then what?

“Sorry.” Ivan shook his head. “Nothing I can readily repeat out loud without offending the sisterhood.”

Then he was reacting to her near nude state. She didn’t know whether to be flattered for having gotten to the almighty Ivan or offended. Added to that, she hadn’t a clue what he was referring to.

“The what?”

“Sisterhood,” he repeated, then waved his hand as if to move the word aside. “Or whatever organization you and other females belong to that goes around bringing the male of the species up on inflated charges of harassment.”

Frustrated, Bailey turned her back on him and gave the lock another tug, a harder one this time. It had the same results as the first one did. Nothing. The lock hung there, mocking her. Just like Munro.

“Really should have committed the combination to memory,” he told her. He leaned forward just a touch, but not enough to actually come close to her. “Gnawing on it won’t help, either.”

She turned around, her anger eradicating her embarrassment. “Thank you.”

He nodded, as if the exchange was of an ordinary nature. “I assume you don’t intend to spend the rest of your days at Blair Memorial like that.” For emphasis, Ivan’s eyes slid down and then up along her torso.

She struggled hard not to shiver, even if she told herself his gaze was clinical. “No, I don’t.”

Raising her chin again, Bailey strode past him back to the laundry receptacle to retrieve the shirt and pants. She couldn’t just continue standing here, talking to him while wearing only the amount of material used to produce a minor bikini.

About to take out the two items, the sound of Munro’s voice stopped her.

“I wouldn’t recommend that.” She didn’t turn around, but she did stop and wait for him to continue. “Germs, you know. Those scrubs were in the O.R.”