She shook her head as though rejecting her own thoughts. “Sorry, but—”
Before she could finish shooting him down, a dark-haired gentleman poked his head around the door frame. “Lucie, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I seem to have already rubbed off the, uh,” the man glanced at Reid and cleared his throat, “patient number you gave me earlier. Since I was on my way out I thought I could get it from you real quick. I brought paper this time.”
What. A. Douche. It took everything in him not to pound the guy right then and there. That this guy was the one Lucie had the hots for couldn’t have been more plain if she’d introduced him as Dr. Clueless Dumbass.
Reid watched Lucie as she stared at the doctor for long moments, almost as though she was stuck in some internal monologue and forgot that time was still ticking away out here in the real world. Something about giving him the patient number had thrown her off. When the man cleared his throat and held out a small piece of paper, she blinked back into action.
“Of course, Dr. Mann.” After quickly scribbling a phone number on the paper she said, “Here you go.”
“Great, thanks. I’ll see you later.”
Reid waited. Three seconds ticked by…seven…twelve. At last Lucie squared her shoulders, spun around, and said, “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
Chapter Three
Lucie curled into the corner of her couch, knees drawn up to her chest. She held a book in her hands, but even as her eyes scanned the lines of black type, her mind didn’t register a single word.
Her stomach was all in knots. She hadn’t eaten dinner she’d been so nervous. Which was flat-out ridiculous because it was only Reid. Her brother’s best friend. A guy who’d practically lived at her house when she was a kid. A guy who she’d mooned after for the better part of her second decade of life…A guy who was quite possibly the sexiest man she’d ever seen and whose half-naked image must have burned itself onto the underside of her eyelids because every time she closed them it was right there waiting for her and now he was staying in her home—
Whoa! Breathe, girl, breathe. She inhaled deeply, held it, then let it out slowly, feeling marginally better.
Earlier she’d insisted that instead of her moving into his hotel suite, Reid move into her apartment. It didn’t make sense for them to both be living out of suitcases, and this way there was less chance of him being bombarded by crazy fans. He’d shown up a half hour ago, she’d shown him to the guest room, and then left him to get settled.
Suddenly a tinny rendition of “The Pi?a Colada Song” burst through her quiet ruminations. She snatched her cell phone off the coffee table. “Hi, Nessie, what’s up?”
“Did you seriously give Dr. Jerkface my number? Because he claims he got it from you, but I figured that can’t possibly be right. I mean, I’d like to think that if the man my best friend has been crushing on for years asked her for my phone number, she would’ve told him to go fly a kite.”
“Ness—”
“Or at the very least, given him an excuse as to why he couldn’t ask me out.”
Lucie squeezed her eyes shut and placed her head on her knees. With all the craziness of Reid moving in she’d completely forgotten. “What happened?”
“I told him that I was dating someone but you didn’t know about it yet because it’s so new.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. I’m sorry, but he caught me off guard and I didn’t know what to say.”
“When are you going to either tell him how you feel or move on?”
“Vanessa…”
“I know you don’t like it when I bring this up, but come on. You can’t wait your whole life for this guy to up and decide one day that he likes you.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s just—” Lucie heard Reid open his bedroom door down the hall. “Hey, I have to go, but I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” Before her friend could argue, she closed the phone, silenced the ringer, and set it on the table.
“Whatcha reading?”
His deep voice resonating in her usually quiet, usually very male-free home sounded out of place. She watched as he crossed in front of her wearing nothing but athletic shorts hanging low—almost indecently low—on his hips. At some point he must’ve sat in the opposite corner of the couch, but she somehow lost those moments with the distraction of his bare torso.
“You keep your mouth open like that, Lu, and you’re bound to catch flies,” he said with a wry grin.
Snapping her jaw shut in total humiliation she cut her eyes back to the book in front of her that could’ve been written in Hebrew for all she knew. She tucked her shower-damp hair behind an ear and cleared her throat. “You should put a shirt on when we’re not doing therapy.”