Uncovering Her Secrets. Amalie Berlin
felt Dasha’s gaze before he actually saw it, prompting him to turn back to her. “You know, I was coming back here to congratulate you on your performance in surgery and apologize for the situation with Angie, then I heard the conversation and wanted to choke you. You think you can manage me.” He folded his arms and leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb.
“You can—”
“And then I saw you defending me,” he cut in before she really got going. “Now I don’t really know what to think. You looked like you were about to sock Frist in the nose. Did you know I was there?”
“I didn’t. But would it make you feel better if I said yes?” She lifted her chin and stared him in the eye. “I’m setting an example.” Just when he thought she was gearing up to fight, she smiled at him. A real smile—alight with mischief and challenge. And if he hadn’t known what to think before...
She was still in there, beneath all the polish and tact... Before he could think of anything to say, she headed off down the labyrinthine corridors to the stairs she’d taken down from her office. Still a creature of habit. Still someone who could make his belly flip over.
Preston followed. He was on probation with her, this wasn’t about him wanting her to smile at him again, because that would be stupid. A couple of quick steps helped him catch up and he looked down at her. “Have you been getting that much?”
“Getting...” Dasha took a few seconds, but soon shook her head. “Not really. If they feel that way, they haven’t said anything. I don’t expect them to unless you pull a Preston.” She grinned again. “Jason’s just freer with his words with me.”
“You together?” Why did he ask that? It didn’t matter who she was with.
Dasha gave him a weird look, but they were only a few steps from the office and she waited until they were inside before she answered, “Why would you ask that? Jason is my friend. We started here around the same time.”
“Yes, but your friendship with him links you to my father. Did he put you up to this?”
“I don’t know your father, Preston.” The weird look turned into a guilty one.
Preston squinted, risking a cascade from those hyperactive eye muscles. “Did he put you up to this? Save his idiot son’s career? Because I don’t want this position if it’s through him.”
She paced to the desk and leaned against the front of it, folding her arms over her chest. Hiding something? Or just trying to distract him with—?
“I get that you don’t like your dad, but not everyone is his puppet.”
Trying to distract him. Definitely trying to distract him. “Direct answer, Dasha. Now.” He closed the distance to stand over her, close enough to shake some sense into her if she didn’t stop...whatever it was she was doing with her cleavage...
“Your father did not put me up to anything. I do not know him. Jason does not deliver orders or requests on your behalf from Davis Monroe.” Dasha stared him in the eye the whole time she spoke, and then for a few seconds after for good measure, daring him not to believe her.
Well, he didn’t want to believe her.
Which was really too bad, considering he did believe her.
Still not ready to stop antagonizing her, he continued to hold her eye. “You sure you’re not trying to impress Frist and win his tender affections?” It wasn’t flirting. It was teasing. Joking around...
Watching her try to decide if he was playing with her or picking a fight tickled him. In the spirit of cooperation, he decided to make it easy on her. “It’s okay to want to marry a neurosurgeon and have two point five abnormally brilliant little spawn with him.”
“I don’t want to marry him,” Dasha said slowly, and then shook her head, the smile that came with it more rueful than sparkling. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Just so you know, when you’re feeling touchy about something, you have a tendency to joke about it. It’s a bad poker face, Preston.” She whirled out from between him and the desk, grabbed her bag and headed for the door, bag slung over her shoulder. “We’re done for the day.”
“Do I? It’s because I’m so damned sensitive to the needs of others, everyone can see my concern, no matter what I say.”
Did she not get that he was playing with her? He paused, smile still in place but he had to think about it...make sure that it stayed put so she could pick up on the teasing. She always used to be able to recognize a joke. She’d had a great sense of humor. Aside from the sex and the way she had motivated him, their playfulness had been something he’d never been able to replicate with anyone else. It mattered. Well, it had. Not now...except that it bothered him she’d changed so much, or bothered him that she was pretending to be so different. He wasn’t sure which was more accurate, only that he was bothered and she seemed different.
If he could ignore the manner of their parting—and that was something he had to do to even envision this arrangement working—then he had to think about the good things. The idea that he may not have really known her at all rankled more than it should have. More than the betrayal maybe.
He grabbed the strap of the bag as she waltzed by, expecting him to follow, and stopped her in her tracks. “Did you fail to recognize that I’m trying to ease things here with us? Are you really so different now than you used to be? You changed your hair, you changed your wardrobe and you’ve changed from being direct to beating around the bush to avoid confrontation...but have you lost your sense of humor too? Or was all that an act back then?”
“You’re joking now too, right?” She jerked on her bag but he didn’t let it go, and from the timbre of her voice he could see she wasn’t intent on being tactful. “I always changed my hair—every month, if you recall. I’m wearing work clothes—you can’t wear tank tops and flip-flops in your professional life. And being tactful is the way you build relationships with people until you know them well enough to be blunt. That’s all part of being an adult.”
“And the sense of humor?” Preston held fast to the strap, the only way he knew to keep her in place without actually touching her skin.
She kept enough tension on the bag that the strap was taut, as rigid as her posture. He’d expected her to take a fighter’s stance, but again he was wrong. She leaned slightly away from him, partially from the tension she kept on the bag, but it was more than that. Flight. If he let go now, she’d be out the door, leaving him to lock up.
“There’s not a lot going on in my life right now that I find funny. And you’ll just have to excuse me if having you tease me about dating is one of those things I don’t find funny.”
“Relax, Dasha.” He started to relax his arm, but she kept up the tension on the strap. “Stop pulling.”
“You stop pulling.” She pulled harder, forcing him to keep his hold.
“You’re going to fall over the second I let go. We’ll both let go at the same time. On the count of three, okay?” Sadly, this wasn’t the most ridiculous confrontation he’d ever gotten into at work. It was just the first time he had gotten into a fight at work where he didn’t know he was right from the outset.
* * *
The countdown shamed Dasha into compliance. She let go of the bag. Preston didn’t fall, but he did bash himself in the cheek when his arm rebounded.
“Right, I’m off,” Preston muttered, and dropped the bag on a nearby chair, prowling for the door.
“Wait...” She had to tell him something. What had she...? Oh, right. “Um, Dr. Monroe, we’re on call this weekend. I’ll call you if we get pulled in for any emergencies.”
He nodded and left, leaving her to try and puzzle out what had happened. What had set her off?
Well, there was the questioning of who she was as a person, as if who she had been