Page 28 of Dr. Aster
“If that were the case, I’d be dating you tonight instead of him.”
“Touché, doll-face,” he said.
“Wow, you really are jealous, aren’t you? Now you’re just pulling pet names out of your ass to charm me.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he chuckled.
“All right. Congratulations on your delivery; I’m out of here.”
“Tell the idiot who’s buying your dinner tonight that he has no idea what he’s in for with me.”
I turned back and grinned. “I’ll be sure to let my dad know,” I teased, laughing at his change of expression as I turned toward the exit.
I was excited to meet my parents for dinner tonight, and having this silly interaction with John right before I left lifted my spirits even more. It was always nice to receive flattery from men.
And if they looked like John Aster? Well, that was even better.
Chapter Eleven
John
I didn’t know why I was so persistent with Mickie. Was it because she couldn’t seem to care less about me or because I really wanted to get to know her better but couldn’t seem to make it happen? It had to be because she wasn’t responding to me how most women did, and that was driving me goddamn crazy.
I didn’t think jealousy was in my emotional ballpark until it reared its ugly face at me, yet here I was, distracted as fuck, thinking about who she was having dinner with tonight.
“You ever feel like you’ve scared off a chick before?” I asked the group of men I was sitting with at Chianti’s, where most of us doctors met up after a long week at work.
Collin, the chief neurosurgeon from Saint John’s, eyed me while slowly sipping his gin, “I know you’re not asking that question for yourself.”
I shrugged. “Even the sexiest men can get taken down if we’re not careful.”
“Well, I don’t feel sorry for you,” Collin chuckled, his cocky smile hidden behind the next sip of gin he was about to take. “I think it’s about time your handsome ass got rejected.”
“I didn’t get rejected, dick,” I bantered back. “She’s just not responding to me like I expected. It’s starting to drive me up the goddamn wall.”
“That’s called rejection,” Sam said, one of the doctors who worked in the ER. “And from the looks of it, you fucking suck at it.”
“Well, it’s sure as hell not something I want to be good at,” I told Sam.
For some strange reason, I wasn’t in the mood for booze. I didn’t even want to eat the steak I ordered a few seconds ago.
“Well,” Collin said, after my eyes wandered away from the two men sitting across from me, “are you going to tell us about what’s going on in your world, Johnny Boy, or are we going to have to guess?”
“It’s nothing. I don’t want a relationship, that much I’m sure of, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Famous last words,” the hot-shot ER doc said.
“You’re in a relationship?” I said, eyeballing the man. He was who all the nurses called the true definition of tall, dark, and handsome.
“God, no,” he practically batted off the word like a mosquito was buzzing him. “I’m just saying, once you start saying things like that, the next thing you know, you’re either in one or wanting to be in one.”
“Looks like he’s wanting to be in one,” Collin added. “That’s why you’re sitting here tonight, ruining our dinner with some philosophical question about scaring off chicks.”
“True,” I acknowledged that fact. “It just irritates the fuck out of me.”
“Well, let me offer some wise words for your sorry ass. Get the fuck over yourself,” Sam teased, prompting Collin to raise his glass.
“Actually,” Collin said, “I want to know who she is.”
