Dan felt like starting a slow clap.
Dr. Ren turned and left the room, Dan and Harper rushing out after her.
“Thank you, Dr. Ren,” Harper said. Her admiration for the woman was obvious.
“Of course,” Dr. Ren said with a curt nod. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
Dan and Harper made their way back to the student break room, a giddy energy growing between them.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to practice your technique … thing,” he told her. She smiled at him and shrugged.
“There will always be more teeth to pull. I still have one more patient this afternoon. It’s just a consultation, but it’s for corrective jaw surgery and a really interesting case.”
Her passion was intoxicating, and he almost envied her for it. It was rare to see someone so in love with what they did. He doubted he could ever muster up that kind of excitement for dentistry, but the way Harper’s enthusiasm radiated off her made anything seem possible.
When their eyes met in the lounge, the energy heated.
He wanted to hug her, touch her, give her a kiss that expressed how amazing he found her.
They stared for half a second longer, but when he took a slow step toward her, she broke eye contact, gaze darting around the room like she was searching for a life vest on a sinking boat.
Fidgeting, she reached into her scrub pocket and pulled out a pen, clicking it repeatedly. She glanced at the clock.
“I better finish out his chart before my next patient,” she said, clicking the pen so rapidly, her thumb blurred.
“I better go too. I have another class starting soon.”
Harper nodded, pursing her lips and bobbing her head in rhythm with the clicking. She still didn’t look directly at him.
Dan moved to her and plucked the pen from her hand. Harper gaped at him. Before he could lose his nerve, he grabbed one of the napkins sitting on the table and scribbled down his phone number.
Harper’s hand was still poised in the air, and he pressed the pen into her palm, using his hand to close her fingers around it. He lifted her other one and put the napkin in it.
Harper’s head whipped back and forth between Dan’s face and the paper. After several seconds, she cleared her throat.
“Wow, did I just score your digits or something?” she said with an obvious effort at sarcasm.
“Yes.” He tilted his head to meet her gaze, and his heart somersaulted when her eyes locked onto his. “I hope you use them,” he said, and left the room.
CHAPTER 11
HARPER
Harper did not use his phone number.
She spent Tuesday night an absolute mess, picking up and throwing down her phone every seven seconds, typing in his number then deleting it at warp speed. At one point she tried stuffing her phone under her bed to get some space, but ended up on her belly, dusting the floor as she fished it out minutes later. Harper resigned herself to staring at the screen and willing the perfect words to type themselves.
On Wednesday, Harper left her phone at home, deciding it was best not to text him at all. What would be the point? She wasn’t looking to start anything up with Dan, and the way he made her heart riot in her chest and her blood boil in her veins could not be healthy. This new decision didn’t stop her from pulling his number out of her pocket between patients, folding and unfolding the flimsy napkin until it threatened to tear. It wouldn’t matter if it did; she had the numbers memorized already.
By Thursday afternoon, she’d drafted so many mental text messages to him that the random string of words stopped making sense. Harper found herself looking for him at every turn, and it became painfully obvious how off her A-game she was during a treatment planning seminar with her academic nemesis, Jeffery Giles.
Dr. Giles, Jeffery’s father and an associate clinical faculty member, was leading the seminar; the school had ignored his blatant knack for putting profits over patients when he’d been given the position.
Harper and Jeff had been paired to treatment plan for a medically compromised patient needing substantial prosthetic work. Harper had taken the lead on the case, outlining the gold-standard treatment to help prevent future issues for the patient down the line. Jeff had been relatively useless, knowing he was guaranteed an A because his dad led the course and telling Harper that, since all she did was study anyway, it’d make more sense for her to take the lead. He’d offered Harper something close to genuine praise when she’d sent him the proposal, though.
“Using implant-retained dentures after the alveoloplasty would cut down on the chance of future bone loss and the patient needing greater rehabilitation in a few years,” Jeff said, finishing the presentation with a smug grin on his face. Their plan was far more extensive than any other group’s, and Jeff loved any chance to flex his intellect, despite it being Harper’s idea.