She went out of her way to make sure that we were never alone together, unless we were in my office, and I honestly wanted to pull her to the side and tell her to relax. Sexy as hell or not, I doubted I would ever sleep with someone I worked with. I’d long considered that to be out of the question, and she wouldn’t be an exception.

I allowed another full week to go by while witnessing her strange behavior and vowed to ask her what was wrong the following Monday when she came in.

“Dr. Ashton!” Emily called me from the reception desk long after Natalie left for the weekend. “Dr. Ashton!”

I groaned and headed out to the main desk. “Yes? Are the office phones not working anymore?”

“They are, but three insurance representatives have me on hold via those lines right now, so I had no choice.” She pointed to her desk phone. “Anyway, Natalie just called me from a payphone, panicking. She thinks she left her cell-phone in your office. Can you call it and check for me?”

“Sure.” I started to head back toward my office, but I stopped and turned around. “I don’t have her cell phone number.”

“Ah, right.” She scribbled it down on a yellow post-it, just as an insurer returned to the call.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed the number, walking to my office. The second I stepped inside, I heard it vibrating and spotted it hiding beneath a stack of folders.

Grabbing it, I headed back toward Emily, but I glanced down at her screen and everything stopped. Everything in me was certain that this had to be some type of joke.

The words “D-DOCTOR calling ... Answer? Decline?” were front and center, and the second the call ended, I called her phone again to be sure I was seeing this shit correctly.

Sure enough, her screen lit up again with “D-DOCTOR” as the second call came through.

Needing further proof, I went to her call log and deleted my last two calls so she’d never know I was on to her. Then, against my better judgment, I sifted through her apps, just to confirm the things that were running through my mind.

I pressed the familiar, mini Brooklyn Bridge cartoon icon that led straight into the NewYorkMinute dating app, and the second it opened, the words, “Welcome back, JERSEYGIRL7!” popped up onto her screen.

What the fuck?! She’s been here? All this goddamn time ...

“Dr. Ashton!” Emily called from the reception desk again. “I’ve still got Natalie on hold at the payphone out here! Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes.” I stared at her phone and logged out of the app. “I found exactly what I was looking for ...”

THE RESIDENT

New York, New York

Natalie

“So, you’re saying that you’re never going to tell him it was you who stood him up?” Shannon sat across from me at our favorite coffee shop. “I really don’t think it would be that big of a deal, and maybe he’d laugh about it. You know?”

“No, I don’t see a point anymore.” I sipped my latte. “We have a really good working relationship right now, and I actually like working in a private practice, way more than I thought I would. It’s been great.”

“Well, good for you. Is he a good boss?”

“Yeah, actually. He’s been nothing but nice and patient with me when it comes to all the charting I have to do, and I really don’t want to mess that up. I can’t afford to mess that up.”

“I guess. So, by working alongside him are you any less attracted to him?”

Hell no ... “Yeah, a little bit.” I lied because I couldn’t bring myself to admit the truth about Dr. Ashton. The man was basically walking, breathing sex and everyone in that office knew it. Hell, even his patients knew it. In fact, I was pretty sure twenty percent of his patients were perfectly normal and only booking his three-hundred-dollar per hour therapy sessions so they could flirt and stare at him.

I thought I could handle it at first. I honestly believed that his simple gestures of buying me coffee in the morning, offering to buy me lunch, or allowing me to sit in on sessions would eventually wane on me, but every night when I lay alone in my bed, my fingers found their way beneath my panties and all I could think about was him.

I was doing my best to avoid being around him one-on-one because it didn’t take much for him to turn me on, but with every second glance he gave me and every bite of his prized Twizzlers, I was reminded that I truly, truly wanted to feel him deep inside of me.

“Whoa.” Shannon stood up from the table as her pager beeped. “This is one of my interns. I’ve got to go.”

“See you at home later,” I said. “But wait. Tell me, is the residency at Manhattan Medical everything you thought it would be? Is it as great as we used to dream about?”

“Absolutely not.” She smiled, lying like a good best friend. “It’s absolutely awful and I think you’d totally hate it.”

“Thank you.”

She gave me a hug and left the café.

I took my time drinking the rest of my latte, deciding to head into work an hour early to do some additional work for Dr. Ashton. The second I walked into “our” office, I immediately noticed the set up was different.

He’d moved my desk into a corner, and he’d placed two bookshelves next to it that were filled with files. Not only that, but he’d installed a folding screen that separated my side of the office from the area where the patients sat on the chaise. Oh, and he’d taken away the two vases of “Thank you for being a great resident” Twizzlers he’d just given me yesterday. He’d moved them to his desk, giving him six candy stashes to my zero.

What the hell is going on?

“Good morning, Dr. Madison.” He hit the lights as he walked into the office seconds later. “You’re here early this morning.”

“Yeah, I wanted to come in and do some work on the Letterman chart before we met with him today.”

“We won’t be meeting with him,” he said, his voice clipped. “It’ll only be me. You’ll need to leave my office when he comes and do your work in the break lounge until the session is over. You’ll need to leave my office whenever I’m meeting with a patient for the rest of the week.”

I blinked, utterly confused.

“Also,” he said, pointing to the bookshelves. “Do you see those files that I’ve placed over there?”