Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“You really have to stop stalking me in parking lots,” she quips as she walks closer.
Then closer still until the tips of her shoes touch the tips of mine and she’s offering her mouth to me for a kiss. I, of course, take it, because who wouldn’t? It’s Josie, and her lips are perfect. She tastes like mint gum and smells faintly of antiseptic, and for some reason that’s sexy to me.
When she pulls back, she tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear and asks, “But seriously, what are you doing here?”
“Taking you somewhere,” I tell her as I grab her hand and turn her toward my Tahoe that’s parked the next row over.
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about Josie is that she’s opening up to spontaneity. Finding joy in it. I love pushing her to explore and out of her little narrow world.
She looks delectable tonight in her scrubs, and it might possibly be the sexiest outfit I’ve ever seen her in. I’m sure that has to do with the fact that I respect her so much as a doctor that it just heightens my attraction to her, and I wonder if she will play dress-up games with me in the scrubs. I certainly would not mind getting a thorough exam from her.
Within minutes I have her loaded in the passenger seat and we’re heading down the inner beltline. The sky quickly goes from the orange of a mid-summer sunset to the purplish black of twilight.
I’ll give Josie continued credit. She doesn’t ask where we’re going and we lapse into the same easy conversation we’ve had every night since we began sleeping together a little over a week ago. I tell her about the charity golf game I played in today with a few of my teammates and she fills me in on all of the exciting cases she had at the emergency room, which included a toddler swallowing a rare coin from his father’s collection.
“Holy shit. How did you get the coin out of the kid?” I ask her.
Josie laughs and leans across the center console to slap me on the arm. “You don’t take it out. You just have to let the kid pass it naturally.”
“Really?”
“Well,” Josie says with a chuckle. “I did take an X ray to make sure that it was small and could pass safely. It’s not like he swallowed something the size of an Olympic medal or anything.”
“Okay, okay, okay…What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to remove from a patient?” I ask her with childish curiosity.
I glance across at her, and even in the dim interior lights I don’t miss her eye roll. Still, she gives me a straight answer. “I once removed a piece of okra from a woman’s rectum.”
My head snaps to the right to look at her as my jaw drops open. “You’re kidding me?”
Josie starts to cackle and bends over holding her stomach. When she finally is able to take a breath and look over at me, she says, “Of course I’m kidding you. Who puts okra up their ass?”
I’m not daunted. “Seriously, what’s the weirdest thing?”
Her laughter dies down and she shrugs. “I really haven’t seen much weird stuff. I guess maybe a bag of heroin from a drug dealer who swallowed it before the police caught him in a foot chase. I didn’t do the actual surgery, but I diagnosed it.”
I smile and shake my head as I see the turn I’m looking for up ahead. “You never cease to amaze me, Doc. But it’s so cool what you do for a living. Impressive as hell.”
“Thanks, Reed,” she says softly. “That means a lot.”
I don’t respond as I put my blinker on, and when we slow down Josie’s looks out the passenger window. “Where are we?”
I point out of my driver’s window across the highway. “That’s the airport over there. Hawke told me about this place and said that he and Vale come out here sometimes to watch the planes taking off and landing.”
“You brought me here to watch planes?” she asks in a teasingly droll voice. “That’s kind of sweet. I guess.”
I make a mental note to myself never to bring her here to watch planes, as that’s clearly not an interest of hers.
I turn onto a gravel road that winds back through dense bushes and foliage at least ten feet high. The farther back we drive the farther we get from the glow of the airport lights and it’s practically pitch dark when I pull into a small clearing.
I turn the car off, but before I open the door I turn to look at her. “Didn’t bring you here to look at planes.”
“Oh, you brought me out here to seduce me?” Josie asks with knowing exaggeration.
“No, I did not bring you out here to seduce you. Although that still might happen actually, but let’s forget about that. Get out of the car.”