My Sweetest Sasha: Cole's Story (Meadows Shore Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

hospital until you walk out the door.”
    “That’s not going to happen.”
    He wasn’t going to push her around. She sat up taller in her chair. “I don’t think there’s a choice.”
    “Patient privacy?”
    “We’re in compliance. And I’ll ask patients to sign a release if it becomes necessary.”
    “Like hell you will. I have never, never, done anything that wasn’t in the best interest of my patients.”
    “It seems that's a matter of opinion,” she said gently.
    “No, it’s a matter of fact,” he barked. “Now, I need you to activate my card so I can do my job. And you can do yours. That is, of course, if you’ve finished with your yoga session.”
    By the time he left, her hands were shaking and her left eye twitched. None of it lost on Cole.
    “Oh, one more thing,” he poked his head back into the office. “Love the color of your panties, they’re almost a perfect match to your eyes.” And he disappeared down the hall.
    “Ugh!” She leaned over and buried her head in her arms, resting on the desk for a couple of minutes, trying to reclaim some semblance of peace.
     
    * * *
     
    Alexa gathered her belongings, stuffed the laptop into her bag, and headed over to the surgical wing of the hospital. She arrived at the trauma center and easily found her way to Cole Harrington’s office. If only the rest of the day could go this smoothly.
    But the first roadblock appeared mere seconds after she arrived, when she introduced herself to Sherrie, Dr. Harrington’s overprotective assistant, who offered a frosty welcome and ordered her to sit in the waiting room.
    “I have permission to access the back offices. Dr. Harrington is expecting me.”
    After several minutes of semi-polite negotiating, Sherrie slammed her foot down hard. “This is a doctor’s office. We do serious business here. It’s my job to prioritize, and your business isn’t high on the list of pressing matters. You’ll need to wait until someone’s free to escort you back.”
    “It’s very busy here. I can find my own way back,” she offered politely.
    “It’s nice of you to be so helpful, but we can’t let just anyone have run of the office.”
    Seeing no viable alternative, she sat in the waiting room while Sherrie continued to eye her suspiciously, as though if left unattended she might abscond with the pain medication.
    While biding her time, she contemplated the ways in which to convince Sherrie to let her into the back offices where she could observe Dr. Harrington. But she dismissed one idea after another: too harsh, too pushy, too milquetoast, too nice. The struggle exemplified her own internal struggle, one she’d wrestled with her entire life. Who was she? And how should she behave in order to fit in? Was she the girl her family and teachers saw as sassy and rude, poking her nose in places where it didn’t belong? Or was she the overly polite, deferential woman her peers and law professors saw?
    “Maybe you’d be happier on the east coast. Have you thought about New York? Everyone’s pushy there, and it’s almost expected that you’ll discuss topics that are off limits here. It’s ingrained in the culture,” her high school guidance counselor suggested when it was time to look for colleges.
    “You want to be a social worker, really? Maybe you should think about the law,” or “What made you want to practice law, you seem better suited to social work?”
    “Stay out of the shark tank,” her law advisor warned, “think about a career in administrative law where there’s very little conflict.”
    If she’d been merely an observer and it hadn’t been her life caught in the push and pull, she’d have been amused, because social work and law had so much in common. They both provided an avenue for seeking social justice, and it was acceptable in both fields to ask probing, almost nosy, questions.
    She wondered how someone like Cole Harrington had learned to be so comfortable in his own skin. Was it a