Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) by Melissa Yi, Melissa Yuan-Innes Page A

closed and locked the apartment door
behind us, not just twisting the main latch but dropping the tiny bolt into the
floor as I set down my sunflower and my mail.
    He hung my backpack neatly on a peg in
the closet. "I'm staying with you tonight."
    I tried to laugh. "Don't be
ridiculous."
    He looked at me with those intelligent,
gorgeous, and oh-so-stubborn brown eyes. "Hope."
    "You came to Montreal to be with
your friends."
    "Yeah. You."
    That stopped me for a second, but I
plowed on. "I'm no more unsafe here tonight than I was last night or any
other night. The only difference is that you've sussed it out and—"
    "And I wouldn't leave a cat alone in
this apartment, let alone you."
    I knew that voice. He was not going to
change his mind. It was a complete pain when we were in-fighting, but the truth
was, I could use some company tonight. I sighed. "I won't be a barrel of
laughs."
    "That's okay. I like monkeys better
anyway."
    It took me a second to get it. I laughed.
"You're awful."
    "I know you. You want to take a
shower, right?   And eat. Why don't you
get cleaned up while I get you some dinner?"
    I eyed him suspiciously. Ryan always
enjoyed taking advantage of me after (or during) a long, hot soapy shower.
    He exhaled. "Your virtue is
safe."
    "Too bad." It just slipped out
of me. I hurried off to the shower before he could respond.

 
 
 
    Chapter
12

 
    The
girl turned out to be more complicated than I thought. No wonder she was in
therapy. Needy, screamy, "Do you love me as much as I love you,"
"I'll die if you ever leave me," et-fucking-cetera.
    I
don't need that shit. There are easier ways to get laid.
    But
I stuck around a little longer because there was another woman in that therapy
group. Long black hair, long brown legs, pretty, but stand-offish. As soon as
she met my eyes, I recognized an intelligence and a will as strong as my own.
    I
was sick of easy marks.
    Let
the games begin, Dr. Laura.
    ***
    First, I checked my five voice mail
messages. They were all hang-ups, which was strange enough to make me check my
pager. Someone had paged me twice, but left only a single number: four.
    Huh. That didn't seem like Tucker. Not
that I was thinking of him or anything.
    I paused before I deleted the nonsensical
pages. They bothered me, but like I said, our incompetent locating team is
legendary, especially at night, when the regular operators go home and leave
the switchboard to the security guard.
    Before I stripped down for my shower, I
paused a long moment. Then I pinged the lock closed.
    Ryan had raised a few more specters in my
mind.
    Part of me wanted nothing more than to
wind myself around his warm runner's body and forget the past few years had
ever happened. I was almost certain he wouldn't turn me away. Almost.
    But we weren't twenty years old anymore.
I was a doctor. Tucker was...well, I had no real idea what Tucker was. Yet.
    I turned up the hot water and glanced
around the tiny bathroom. Not exactly romantic, what with the grimy grout and
the slight gap in the blind in the window next to the tub. Well, at least the
square mosaic tile floor was charming. And with any luck, Ryan would
concentrate on me instead of the décor.
    As I drew the translucent shower curtain
closed and luxuriated under the spray, I grew fully conscious of the fact that
I was naked with just a thin wooden door between myself and Ryan. A man who
knew my body extremely well and wasn't afraid to use it.
    I ran my hand over my breasts.
    I was on a man-moratorium. A manbbatical .
    That just made me want Ryan even more.
    What about Tucker?
    Tucker wasn't here. Although, frankly,
the thought of him, too, made me arch toward the water.
    I could hear Ryan in the kitchen on the
other side of the bathroom. I had a teeny galley-style kitchen, so narrow that
you could touch the fridge with your left hand and the oven with your right
hand (and the broom closet with your right elbow). The counter top that ran in
a U between the appliances met in