Free 0373659504 (R) by Brenda Harlen

God.”
    Avery nodded.
    “So...” A smile teased at the corners of her friend’s mouth. “How was he?”
    She took her time selecting another chip. “A colossal disappointment.”
    Amy’s eyes widened. “Really?”
    “No. Not really.” She sighed. “In fact, it was the single most incredible sexual experience of my life, which probably tells you more than you ever wanted to know about my sexual experience.”
    “I always wondered if his reputation was exaggerated,” her friend confessed.
    “It’s not,” she admitted unhappily. “And now I belong to the not-so-exclusive club that includes almost every other woman who works at the hospital.”
    Her friend smiled. “Sweetie, if Dr. Romeo slept with even half the women who claim to have slept with him, he’d hardly have time to get out of bed.
    “I’ve known Justin a long time,” Amy continued. “There’s a lot more to him than most people realize—and he’s not nearly as indiscriminate as his reputation would imply.”
    “So you don’t believe he’d get naked with someone in a supply closet in the middle of his shift at the hospital?”
    “No way,” her friend said. Then her eyes went wide. “Are you telling me that’s what happened?”
    She nodded.
    “Oh. My. God,” Amy said again. “You and Justin. In a supply closet. Wow.”
    “It was wow,” she agreed.
    “So...are you guys together now?” her friend asked hopefully.
    She shook her head. “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because he’s Dr. Romeo and I don’t want to get involved with a man described in either of those terms.”
    Amy sighed. “Your parents really did a number on you, didn’t they?”
    “They taught me an important life lesson,” she countered. “Which is that two career-focused medical professionals cannot make a marriage work and definitely should not be parents.”
    “I don’t believe that.”
    “Says the woman married to a newspaper editor.”
    “I was in love with Ben long before he was a newspaper editor or I was a doctor,” Amy pointed out.
    “Since I didn’t know you in high school, I’ll have to take your word for it.”
    “Now—getting back to the exhausted and nauseated part of our conversation, I have to ask...were you careful?”
    She felt her cheeks burn. “You’d think, being a doctor, I wouldn’t be anything else.”
    Amy nodded, accurately interpreting her response as an acknowledgment that she hadn’t been. “Then is it possible that you’re pregnant?”
    Avery shook her head. “I got my period last week.”
    “Did you take a pregnancy test?” her friend pressed.
    “I was going to,” she admitted. “And then, there didn’t seem to be any point.”
    “You know as well as I do that it’s not unusual for a woman to experience some bleeding in the early months of a pregnancy.”
    “It was more than that.”
    “Maybe it was,” Amy acknowledged. “But I think you’ll feel better if you take a test.”
    Avery nodded, though she didn’t really believe it was true.
    Taking a test and confirming that she wasn’t pregnant wasn’t going to make her feel any better. It would just be one more reminder of how completely her life had gone off track.
    * * *
    Justin had enough experience with women to know when one was attracted to him, and it frustrated him beyond belief that Avery was continuing to deny the attraction. But that was “back to normal” as far as their relationship was concerned.
    He’d wanted her when he first met her and he wanted her now, but he didn’t chase women. Not even a woman who stirred his blood and haunted his dreams.
    He thought they’d made some real progress over the past couple of weeks. During dinner at her house, they’d talked and laughed and connected on a whole other level. Maybe it was his own fault—maybe he hadn’t handled the possibility of a baby very well, but he’d felt angry and betrayed and helpless.
    Yeah, there had been two of them in that supply closet, and yeah, the thought of