The Doctor's Little Girl Read Online Free Page A

what she’d heard, like it wouldn’t be too hard to appeal to Molly’s ‘little girl side.’
    Molly bounced on her toes when she saw the room. “Thanks so much. I love it,” she told him. Andrew was happy to see her smiling so much.
    “Good. I’m so glad to hear that,” he said. “I have to go to work now, though. I’m still planning on bringing you to the office and training you for your new job tomorrow, when the office is closed. You got here earlier than we had planned by sacrificing sleep, so that’s what I want you to do now. I want you to get whatever essential things you’ll need in order to get ready for bed out of the car and then get some rest. I’ll wake you up when I get home from the office this evening. Do you understand me?”
    “Okay,” Molly agreed.
    “Good,” Andrew said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
    Molly smiled and waved. “Have a good day!” she said as he walked down the stairs.
    Andrew felt a rush of happiness at her words. It took a toll on him to always come home to an empty house. He’d been living alone ever since he had graduated from medical school. He remembered how full of life the apartment that he had shared with Dave and Lisa had been, and how reassuring it was to know that one of them was going to be there when he got home. The memory was immediately followed by the image of Lisa standing in their kitchen, packing boxes as tears streamed down her face. It was only his good mood at the moment that made the memory bearable, but it still bit into him.
    Sure, he had dated girls since then, but nothing had been the real thing. He felt like he worked too much to make having a serious relationship possible. Most of the ones that had been the closest to successful had failed because he couldn’t dedicate the time and energy that his lovers had needed. He knew that Molly was really just a roommate, but the idea that he’d come home and find her there made his life feel less empty.
     
    * * *
     
    After Andrew left for work, Molly was surging with excitement. The drive had been long and incredibly boring. There wasn’t much of anything interesting to see, but a steady stream of energy shots and coffee had left her overly energetic. So she had just kept driving on, singing along to the songs on the radio until she started to feel like she was losing her voice. Once it got dark, she did start to get sleepy but the idea of stopping to spend the night stressed her out.
    The thought of staying in a hotel all alone felt creepy to her. Besides, she wasn’t sure if her debit card would be accepted at the desk; she only had forty dollars on it after her last tank of gas, and if it came down to it, she’d rather be able to buy the gas she needed to arrive than spend the night somewhere. So, when her eyelids started to get too heavy for her to focus on the freeway in front of her, she had pulled off at a rest area, pushed her seat back as far as her boxes and bags in the back allowed her to, and dozed.
    She had only slept for a few hours before giving up on it and driving the rest of the way to Illinois. The driving had gotten more interesting as she got closer to the city of Chicago, and she was growing both excited and anxious as she approached her destination.
    Molly had been happy to see the neighborhood where Andrew lived. Of course she had known that since he was a doctor, he had to live in a nice place, but Molly had grown up living in small, cramped places without much to look at. The sun was rising as she drove down his street, and she thought of it as a place where other people lived, the kind of place where her mother would have gone to clean houses before she got too unwell to work anymore. When the GPS told her that she had arrived at her destination, she pulled off in front of the house and verified the number. Andrew’s house wasn’t huge by any means, but it was cute, and certainly looked nice and comfortable.
    Now that she was inside, she decided that it was time