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Charlotte...” He sat down across from her. “How well you don’t know me. If you weren’t my favorite pathologist, I’d be offended.” Finally responding to her halfhearted “sexist” slur.

      The guy was a Southern gentleman from Georgia, and she wasn’t above stereotyping him, because he was a walking billboard for good manners, charm and—perhaps not quite as appealing considering the odds in a competitive and overstocked female world, in California anyway—knowing how to relate to women. The word smooth came to mind. But it was balanced with sincerity, a rare combination. Plus there was no escaping that slow, rolling-syllable accent, like warm honey down her spine, setting off all sorts of nerve endings she’d otherwise forgotten. He spoke as though they had all the time in the world to talk. She could listen to him all day, and if she’d owned a fan she’d be flapping it now.

      “Well, if you weren’t one of my favorite surgeons,” she lied, as he was her absolute favorite, “I would’ve eaten the rest of it.”

      One corner of his mouth hitched the tiniest bit. “I think you already have, but don’t worry, your gooey-chocolate choice would be number ten on my list of top three favorite candy bars.”

      Busted, she batted her lashes, noticing his spearmint-and-sandalwood scent as he moved closer. She inhaled a little deeper, thinking he liked to change up his aftershave, and that intrigued her.

      “And since you brought up the subject of sexism, I’ve got to say you look great today. Turquoise suits you.”

      He regularly paid her compliments, which she loved, but figured he was like that with all the women he encountered, so she never took them too seriously. Though she had to admit she longed for him to mean them. What did that say about her dating life? Something in the way his eyes watched her and waited for a response whenever he flattered her made her wonder if maybe she was a tiny bit more special than all the other ladies in the hospital. She liked the idea of that.

      “Thank you,” she said, sounding as self-effacing as ever.

      “Thank you,” he countered.

      Their gazes held perhaps a second longer than she could take, so she pretended the slide on the microscope tray required her immediate and complete attention. “So what do you need?”

      Intensely aware of his do-you-really-want-to-know? gaze—this was new and it was a challenge that shook her to the bone—she fought the urge to squirm. Yeah, sexist or sexy or whatever it was he just did with those eyes was way out of her comfort zone. So why did that look excite her, make her wish things could be the way they had been before her operation? Where was that invisible fan again? Shame. Shame. Shame. And she called herself a professional woman.

      “Do you have the slides yet for Gary Underwood? A lung biopsy from yesterday afternoon. I’ve got an impatient wife demanding her husband’s results.”

      “The weekend is coming, so I can understand her concern.” Charlotte hadn’t yet finished the slides from yesterday morning’s cases, but she was always willing to fish out a few newer ones for interested doctors. Jackson was as concerned about his patients as they came. Another thing she really liked about the guy.

      She turned on the desk lamp, sorted through the pile of cardboard slide cases, each carefully labeled by the histology technicians, and found the slides in question. They settled in to study them, their knees nearly touching as they sat on opposite sides of the small table that held her dual-headed teaching microscope. She put her hair behind her ears and moved in, but not before seeing him notice her dangly turquoise earrings that matched her top. She could tell from the spark in his eyes that he liked them, too, but this time kept the fact to himself.

      Yes, he was a real gentleman, with broad shoulders and wavy brown hair that he chose to comb straight back from his forehead. And it was just long enough to curl under his ears. Call him a sexy gentleman. Gulp. Very, very sexy.

      Being smack in the heart of the San Fernando Valley was nothing new for an original Valley girl like her, but she figured it had to be total culture shock for a man from Savannah. Talk to me, baby. I love that Southern drawl. Why did she have such confidence inside her head but could never dare to act on it? She didn’t waste a single second answering that question. Because things were different now. She wasn’t the woman she’d used to be. Enough said.

      In his early forties with a sprinkling of gray at his temples, Jackson had only been in Southern California for a year. Word was, if she could believe everything she heard from Dr. Dupree, Jackson had needed a change after his divorce. Which made him a gentleman misfit in a casual-with-a-capital-C kind of town. She liked that about him, too—the khaki slacks and button-down collared shirts with ties that he’d obviously given some time to selecting. Today the shirt was pale yellow and the tie an expensive-looking subtly sage-green herringbone pattern. Nice.

      She turned off the desk light so they could view the slide better. They sat in companionable silence as they studied it. Hearing him breathe ever so gently made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Good thing she’d worn it down today. Hmm, maybe that was what he liked? Stop it, Charlotte. This will never go anywhere. Maybe that was why she enjoyed the fantasy so much. It was her secret. And it was safe.

      She fine-focused on the biopsied lung tissue, increasing the magnification over one particular spot of red-dyed swirls with minuscule black dots until the cells came into full view. They studied the areas in question together. “Notice the angulated nuclear margins and hyperchromasia in this area?” She spoke close to a whisper, a habit she’d got into out of respect for the solemn importance of each patient’s diagnosis.

      “Hmm,” he emitted thoughtfully.

      She moved the slide on the tray a tiny bit, then refocused. “And here, and here.” She used the white teaching arrow in the high-grade microscope to point out the areas in question.

      He inhaled, his eyes never leaving the eyepiece.

      “Here are mitotic figures, and here intercellular bridges. Not a good sign.” She pulled back from her microscope. “As you can see, there are variations in size of cells and nuclei, which adds up to squamous cell malignancy. I’ll have to study the rest of the slides to check the margins and figure out the cancer staging, but, unfortunately, the anxiously awaiting wife will have more to be anxious about.”

      “Bad news for sure.” Jackson pushed back from the microscope, but not before one of his knees knocked hers, and it hurt her kneecap, feeling almost like metal. Maybe he was Superman in disguise? “I’ll get in touch with Oncology to get a jump on things.”

      The situation caused an old and familiar pang in her stomach. Charlotte knew how it felt to be a family member waiting for news from the doctor. She’d gone through the process at fifteen, the year her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. That was the day she’d first heard the term metastatic and had vowed to figure out what it meant. And after that she’d vowed to learn everything she could about her mother’s condition.

      “Is he young and otherwise healthy?”

      “Yes,” Jackson said. “Which will help the prognosis.”

      She nodded, though not enthusiastically. Her mother had been young and supposedly healthy, too. The loss of her mother soon after bilateral mastectomies had broken her family’s heart. Her father had never recovered, and within a span of three years of his downhill slide, he’d also died. From alcoholism, his self-medication of choice to deal with the emotional pain. She’d already stepped in as the responsible one when her mother had first been diagnosed, and after she’d died Charlotte had kept the family functioning. Barely. At eighteen, along with applying to colleges, she’d signed on to be the guardian of her kid sister and brother, otherwise they’d have ended up in foster homes.

      Her mother’s cancer had changed the course of her life, steering her toward medicine, and later, with her never-ending quest to understand why things happened as they did, sending her into the darker side of the profession, pathology.

      “Well, I’ve got to run,” Jackson said, bringing her out of her thoughts. “I’ve

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