Prescription for Romance / Love and the Single Dad: Prescription for Romance / Love and the Single Dad

She was on her feet immediately, closing the lid on the pastry box and abandoning her own coffee. She raised her face to his and told him, “I was born ready.”

Paul had no idea why he felt she wasn’t really referring to the tour, but was, instead, putting him on some kind of notice.

But he did.

A warmth, joining forces with anticipation, washed over him. He banked it down, but his pulse continued marking time at a heightened beat that only seemed to increase the closer he walked beside Ramona.

Chapter Seven

The tour through the institute lasted close to an hour. Because he was pressed for time, Paul moved quickly throughout the modern three-story building. Ramona kept pace with him and peppered him with questions every step of the way. Endless, probing questions.

If he didn’t know any better, Paul would have said that it felt as if he was under interrogation. He’d never encountered anyone who was so incredibly and relentlessly curious about the place in which she found herself employed.

He took her to see the various meeting rooms and then on to the boardroom. When they arrived, Ramona walked in before he could move on.

“My God, this is huge,” she breathed, looking around in awe. It felt as if her voice was echoing in the cavernous room.

It made him think of Alice when she first took stock of Wonderland. Ramona even had the long blond hair.

Where had that thought even come from? He shouldn’t be evaluating her looks—just her skills.

Ramona took it all in, moving around slowly. The room was wood paneled and had floor-to-ceiling windows. It was a sunny day and there were prisms of light bouncing off the walls and the very large, elegant oak conference table.

Paul watched, mesmerized despite himself, as Ramona spun around full circle beside the windows before turning to look at him.

“I think my apartment is smaller than this. Why do you need such a large conference room?” Before he could answer her, she made her own guess. “Is it to dwarf the egos that might be here?”

Being caught off guard by this woman was beginning to be an unfortunate habit. “What?”

“A room this large makes a person feel small,” she explained. “That might be handy in getting people to do what you want them to.”

“I have nothing to do with the size of this room,” he told her. “That was my father’s design.”

His father had been the one to choose this location to begin with and he’d been involved in every phase of its construction. Despite the fact that he had not been part of it for a while now, the institute bore Gerald’s indelible stamp and would always be his building, even long after the man was gone.

“I see,” Ramona said thoughtfully as they both exited the room.

He didn’t like the way she said that. “What is it that you see?”

Keep it low-key, Ramona. You don’t want to push the man away or put him on his guard. “Just that your father must be a very forceful man.”

“At the moment, he’s a retired man.” Paul thought about his father, about how withdrawn and, on occasion, bitter the man had become. The senior Armstrong hardly ever left the house now.

She knew that Gerald Armstrong was retired, but she was curious if he still kept a finger on the pulse of “his” clinic. For some men, retirement was just a meaningless word. “Does he ever come in and see how things are going?”

Initially, his mother had tried to get his father involved in the institute again. It seemed rather an ironic turn, seeing as how Gerald’s obsession with the institute had taken such a heavy toll on their marriage in the beginning.

Paul thought Ramona would abort her line of questioning when he told her, “My father’s in a wheelchair.” He realized that he should have known better. The woman just kept going and going.

“That doesn’t stop some people,” Ramona said tactfully.

“It does others,” he countered. They were making their way back to the elevators. He couldn’t keep his curiosity in check any longer. “Why are you asking so many questions?”

She looked at him with an innocent expression that seemed to say that the answer was self-evident. “How else am I going to find things out? By the way,” she continued, stepping into the elevator car, “where are the archives housed?”

He stared at her for a moment, then pressed for the next floor down. “In the basement. Why?”

The answer was tendered in utter innocence. The doors closed. “I thought I’d take a look at them when I got the chance.”

In less than a minute, the elevator doors were opening again on the floor below. “Again, why?”

“To get a sense of the institute’s history,” she told him as they got off.

He had no desire to have her rummaging through the files that were stored down there. For the most part, they were charts and records that belonged to some of the institute’s first patients. “If you have any questions, you can come to me.”

He was walking faster, she noted, and lengthened her own stride. Was he just trying to get this over with, or was he subconsciously running from something?

“You just wanted to know why I’m asking so many questions,” she reminded him. “I don’t want to bother you any more than I have to.”

It might have seemed like a good idea to Derek at the time, but he was back to being sorry that his brother had talked him into letting Ramona stay. That was going to have to change and soon. He didn’t particularly want Ramona Tate digging around, disrupting the rhythm of things.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he told her as they went down the corridor, “this position is a one-shot deal. And you’ve fired the shot, or you will sometime today I imagine.”

It was her turn to be confused, Ramona thought. “Come again?”

“The press release about Bonner and Demetrios joining our staff,” he reminded her. “You wrote it. You’ll deliver it if you haven’t already. That’s why my brother initially hired you.”

“Initially.” She picked up on the word he used and emphasized it. “But that was just the beginning, Dr. Armstrong.”

Paul stopped walking and looked down at her, a man whose overnight guest had just announced she was settling in for the next six months. “Oh?”

Ramona continued walking as if she was oblivious to the fact that he had stopped. “The way I see it, the institute is in a precarious state, like a forest in the middle of a really hot summer. There are bound to be fires. It’s my job to put those fires out.”

He resumed walking. “And what if there are no fires?” he challenged.

“Then I’ll have a very stress-free job.” She slanted a look at him, more than a hint of a smile on her lips. “But do you really think that will be the case?”

He didn’t want to dwell on “fires” or public relations or baseless rumors that were running amok. He just wanted to do his job. “All I want to do is help couples have the families they’ve always wanted.”

She wanted to believe him, to believe that even in this modern, fast-paced world there were still people who wanted to do decent things out of the goodness of their heart. But until she disproved those rumors that she’d come to investigate, she couldn’t allow herself to be taken in by the innocent look in his eyes.

“I understand, Dr. Armstrong, but things are never as simple as we’d like them to be. It’s my job to make sure that you can do yours without being hampered by innuendo or, more important, lawsuits,” she told him, deliberately presenting him with a cheerful demeanor. “Public opinion can either be a wonderful tool, or a weapon.”

He stopped right in front of the lab. “How old are you?”

“Old enough to be good at what I do.” It sounded like an evasive answer, but she didn’t want to give him a direct answer. She knew that Armstrong was thirty-six and to him, she undoubtedly looked as if she was just out of elementary school.

“I was only thinking that you seemed awfully young to sound so cynical.”