Free I'll Take a Chance by Annalisa Nicole

give her one last kiss, bend over , pick up her bag and keys and hand them to her. I watch as she gets in her car and drives away. I head home to shower and get a few things done before picking up lunch and heading back to Amelia’s office.
    I knock softly on her halfway open office door and glance in to see , she has a phone to her ear, elbows on top of her desk with her hands resting on either side of her bent head. I can see that her eyes are closed. She didn’t hear me come in, so I just stand there and watch her for a few minutes. She sounds like she’s having a hard time with whoever is on the other end of the call. The take out bag in my hand makes a crinkling noise, startling her. The phone drops from the crook of her neck with a clang on her desk. She looks at me and quickly picks up the phone and ends the conversation.
    “I’m s orry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tell her.
    “No , you didn’t scare me. You just startled me a little. I didn’t hear you come in. Is my temp not at her desk? She’s been more trouble than it’s been worth. I think I’m better off just waiting for Willow to return.” She puts her head down on her desk and literally bangs it a few times softly.
    “No, no one was out there. Are you hungry?” I ask and take a seat in front of her desk. I place the bag between us, lean forward, and kiss the back of her head.
    “Yes, starved, ” she mumbles and slowly lifts her head.
    “Those are some pretty orange roses you have there, your whole office smells like roses.” I point to the arrangement sitting on the side of her desk.
    “Yes , they are gorgeous, they’re from Asher. I think he’s still worried about last night so he sent me my favorite flowers.”
    Note to self , her favorite flowers are orange roses. “I brought us sandwiches for lunch. I hope you like turkey with pesto,” I say and dig out two sandwiches and two bags of potato chips.
    “I do, thank you. After lunch are you on shift then at the hospital?”
    “Yes, I’m on for forty-eight hours then I have this weekend off. We should do something this weekend,” I say and take a bite out of my sandwich.
    “Sunday , I have dinner at my parent’s house, you should come with me. My parents would love to meet you. You already know Asher and Willow. It’s always so much fun with all my brothers and sister. Willow already opened her big mouth and mentioned that I was seeing you. I don’t have any plans for Saturday. What were you thinking about?” she asks as she opens her chips and eats those first.
    “Sunday sounds good . I would love to meet the rest of your family. Saturday morning I’m playing ball with Spence then I’m free the rest of the day. How about a drive to Mt. Rainer? We can pick one of the trails and take a leisurely hike.”
    “That sounds wonderful. I love that I get to put my hiking boots to good use.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me, and I can’t help, but laugh at her.
    Amelia in her sexy heels is one thing , but her in jeans and hiking boots takes her to a whole new level of wanting to show her how much I want to prove to her that there are good men out there.
    “You are on at the hospital for a whole forty-eight hours? That must be hard,” she says as she eats the last chip and unwraps her sandwich.
    “It’s not so bad anymore. I used to have to work crazy long hours and six , sometimes seven, days a week. Now I work five days a week. I don’t always have the same days off, but it’s manageable. I work a forty-eight hour shift once a month, and I’m on call several nights a week. There are enough of us there and we rotate everything around.” I wrap up my trash and shove it back in the bag.
    “You get breaks for meals, and you get to sleep too, right?”
    “Of course I do, it’s never a set schedule and that can be hard, but we have a doctor’s lounge and sleeping quarters,” I assure her.
    “I was going to call my sister, Ava, in a little bit to see if her and I can