Hunter had suggested that it might be because April was such a knockout, but that didn’t make sense either. We’d been working in the same hospital for years, and while she’d definitely caught my eye in that time, I’d never even thought about speaking to her or asking her out.
In fact, the first real conversation we’d had was after Adi’s accident and April hadn’t exactly been at her best. Which begged the question, was I a sucker for punishment or just plain stupid?
I hadn’t been able to answer yet, and I doubted I’d be able to anytime soon. The fact of the matter was that I just didn’t know why I couldn’t get those two out of my head.
April popped into my brain at the most inopportune times, like late at night when I finally crawled into bed or early in the morning when I was in the shower. It was always to wonder whether that smart mouth of hers extended to every part of her life or to picture her long hair wrapped around my fist.
There were rumors around the hospital that I got plenty of action. For that matter, those same rumors seemed to circulate through the entire city. It seemed one couldn’t make a bit of money without garnering the attention of the public eye. If you made more than a bit in one go, people tended to like talking about you.
And yet, for all the speculated action I was getting, it’d been months since I’d actually gotten any. Not that I was complaining. I didn’t have time for complicated, and as soon as my name or money got involved, complicated became the name of the game.
It was one possible option for why I couldn’t get April out of my head. I just needed to get laid.
Adi occupied my mind while I was at work. I couldn’t stop wondering how she was doing after her surgery and why they hadn’t made an appointment with us yet.
I shoved through the doors of the physical training room, still deep in thought until I saw Hunter lying beneath one of the machines. Frowning as I tried to figure out what he was doing, I kicked his foot when I reached him.
“Is that broken?” I asked, confused as I gave the thing a quick scan. “It seems to be fine. There’s not much that can go wrong with it.”
Hunter’s arms flexed as he pulled himself out and smirked up at me. “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it. I was just trying to reverse engineer your billion-dollar machine.”
“That’s not even mine, but if you wanted to reverse engineer it, you could just ask for the patent. I’d hand it over in a heartbeat.”
He waved a hand at me before jumping up. “It’s pointless. I’m never going to make anything like this.”
“Don’t say that.” I pointed at his chest, the burrito in my other hand now ice cold and long forgotten. “You can do anything you—”
He laughed, smacking my hand away. “It’s not because I don’t think I’m smart enough, idiot. I’m just too busy with other stuff.”
“Right.” I tossed the half-eaten burrito in the trash and folded my arms. “Like what? Lying in wait so you can set me up like this?”
“Among other things.” He shrugged. “I’ve also been putting money against myself on when you’re going to man up and admit you’ve been thinking about the receptionist and her daughter.”
“What?” I scoffed, my shoulders coming up. “That’s crazy.”
“So you haven’t been making me take a detour to the cafeteria just so you can walk past the front desk?” He gave me a pointed look. “I call bullshit.”
I raked a hand through my hair and turned my back on him, heading to the small office to change. “Fine, I just want to check on them, okay? She’s one of us. I’m worried about a patient. That’s it.”
“Why are you so concerned about this one patient?” he asked, following me and leaning against the door as I swapped shirts.
No one would be able to see me past his hulking frame, and since we hit the gym together regularly, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. “I’m not only concerned about her. I just want to make sure her daughter is okay.”
Hunter, of course, saw right through me. “You’re a doctor, bro. It’s okay to check on patients or their moms.”
He made a silly face as he said it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a good point.