Page 15 of The Wrong Husband

I swallow to stop the moan that whips up my throat.

“What are you doing in my ER?”

Surely, it’s not a coincidence that he’s here now?

“YourER?” he drawls.

That voice shouldn’t be legal. It does things to my autonomic nervous system I can’t explain—makes my breath hitch, my pulse flutter, my common sense short-circuit.

Doesn’t change the fact that he’s right.

I wish I could play it cool. Wish I was one of the doctors who could shrug off the possible ER closure like it was another administrative hiccup. But I’m not.

I care too much.

I take on too much. I say yes when I’m already drowning. Maybe, it goes back to my mother. Wanting to make her proud. Wanting to be enough.

My siblings and I were all adopted, but it always felt like my mother held me to a different standard. Stricter. More alert.The curse of being the only girl with a bunch of brothers.

She tried to mold me into her mini-me. Ladylike. Prim and proper. So not me.So, I pushed back. I rebelled. I tried to prove I didn’t care. But I did. More than I ever let on.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to earn something I never knew how to ask for—her approval, her trust. Her love. I mean, I know she loved me, but it always felt conditional, like I was a disappointment. I don’t need a therapist to tell me that’s where my overdeveloped sense of responsibility comes from.

I left home at eighteen, thinking I was claiming my freedom… But the guilt followed me. It always does.

Maybe, that’s why I pour myself into the ER. Why I jump into every crisis like it’s mine to fix.

And I wish—sometimes—that it didn’t cost me so much to feel everything this deeply. Life would be easier if I didn’t.

I wave a shaky hand.

“I didn’t literally mean it’smyER—just that I’ve been here long enough to feel a sense of…ownership.”

My voice cracks. I clamp my jaw shut. Yeah, that sounds weak. I’m not giving this walking daydream with a jawline and storm-colored gaze insight to my personality.

Although… Given the way he stares at me, cobalt eyes unblinking, makes me feel like he’s able to read past the walls I put up against the world to the secrets I harbor inside.

A tremor spirals under my skin. I shake my head, trying to cast off the sense of disorientation gripping me.

I've just broken free of one relationship. The last thing I need is to be pulled into another man's orbit.Or maybe, that's exactly what I need?A diversion?

He nods slowly. “I know what you mean.”

There’s no hint of sarcasm on his face.

“You do?” I venture.

His gaze seems to turn inward. “When my team works on a biotech discovery that could make a difference to people, even though I may not be the one researching, I feel responsible for it. I take the outcome of every experiment personally—especially the ones that fail.”

“You’re a scientist?”

He smirks.

Ugh! It makes me want to slap it off—and, kiss him. Damn it, why did I ask? Why did I give him the satisfaction of knowing I’m curious?

“I’m a biochemist,” he explains.

Huh. He looks more like he bench-presses bodies than test tubes.