Kitabı oku: «Taming The Beastly MD», sayfa 2

Automatically she slammed the lid back down on the box she had just opened. For some reason, she didn’t want Dr. Grayson to know about her secret admirer—if admiring was indeed what was behind the mysterious gifts. As discreetly as she could, she slid the box back into her note slot, tossed the white wrapping paper and gold ribbon into the wastebasket beneath her desk, and then turned in her chair to face him.

Big mistake, she realized immediately. Because being seated while he was standing left Rita gazing at a part of Dr. Grayson she really shouldn’t be gazing at.

“Dr. Grayson,” she said as she abruptly stood, telling herself she was only imagining the breathless quality her voice seemed to have suddenly adopted. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

“Obviously,” he replied wryly.

“And I wasn’t enjoying a coffee break,” she assured him.

He gazed pointedly at the cup sitting before her chair.

“Okay, yes, I was having coffee,” she conceded. “But I wasn’t enjoying it. It’s from the vending machine,” she added meaningfully.

Dr. Grayson, however, evidently didn’t catch her meaning, because he only continued to scowl at her. Granted, it was kind of a handsome scowl, what with those dreamy green eyes and that full, luscious-looking mouth, but it was a scowl nonetheless. So Rita countered with the most dazzling smile she could conjure from her ample arsenal. She knew it made him uncomfortable to be smiled at. Probably, she thought, because he didn’t know how to smile back. In fact, she’d never seen him smile. And, true to her supposition—and his own personality—Dr. Grayson only deepened his scowl. So Rita smiled even more dazzlingly, this time batting her eyelashes playfully.

There, she thought triumphantly. Take that, Dr. Grayson.

But instead of being immobilized by her mischievous warfare, Dr. Grayson only looked more ferocious. So, with an imperceptible sigh, Rita surrendered.

Point to Dr. Grayson.

“Rita,” he said in a tone of voice that indicated he wanted to start all over again and pretend the last few moments hadn’t happened, which was fine with her, “we’ve just admitted a new patient who will be arriving in CCU shortly, a Mr. Harold Asgaard. He’s scheduled for surgery at seven in the morning, but I want him monitored closely throughout the evening and all through the night.”

Somehow, Rita refrained from a salute. Still, she dutifully replied, “Yes, sir. I’ll see to it.”

“Good.”

“Anything else?” she asked when he added nothing more. She found it odd that he’d sought her out just to tell her to closely monitor a patient who was scheduled for surgery in the morning. That was standard operating procedure in CCU.

Dr. Grayson dropped his gaze to the chart he held in one hand, began scanning it, then shook his head. “No, I think that’s all for now. You’re on evening shift tonight?” he asked, stating the obvious, still scanning the chart, as if he were uncomfortable meeting her gaze.

“Um, yes,” Rita replied in light of the obvious.

“Covering for Nancy?”

“Rosemary, actually,” Rita said. “Her great-grandmother’s one-hundredth birthday party is tonight, so she and I traded off today. Nancy’s left the unit. She transferred to pediatrics last week.”

Dr. Grayson nodded, as if just now remembering, and continued to scan the chart. Continued to avoid Rita’s gaze. “That’s right,” he said absently. “I’d forgotten.”

Rita eyed him suspiciously. It wasn’t like Matthew Grayson to forget things. And it wasn’t like him to avoid anyone’s gaze. What was up with him today? He seemed a little…off.

“Is everything okay, Dr. Grayson?” she asked before thinking. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

His gaze shot back up to meet hers, and only then did Rita realize how familiarly she had spoken to him. Boston General didn’t have rules against such behavior, but Dr. Grayson did. And everyone knew it, because he’d made it clear over the years that he was not the kind of person who spoke about personal things. But Rita couldn’t help it. It was in her nature. Family matters were a big deal with the Barones, and were generally discussed quite candidly.

Still, she should have known better with Dr. Grayson. She didn’t know what she was thinking to have asked him such a question and offered such a remark about his well-being.

“And who do I seem like, Rita?” he asked coolly.

“Uh, no one in particular. Just…you know…not yourself.”

“And how does myself usually seem?” he asked further.

“Uh… I, uh… What I meant was… It’s just that…” Great. Now she’d done it. How did one get oneself out of a painted corner without messing up one’s shoes? she wondered.

“Yes, Rita, everything is fine,” Dr. Grayson finally interjected before she gave herself enough rope for a self-inflicted hanging. And in doing so, he simultaneously put her out of her misery, and put her back up in the process. “Not that that’s any of your concern,” he added sharply.

Another point to the beastly Dr. Grayson, Rita thought.

She bit her lower lip to keep in a tart retort. Instead, she nodded silently and glanced momentarily away. But when she looked his way again, she noticed his eyes weren’t meeting hers, though his attention was lingering on her face. More specifically, on her mouth, she realized. He was noticing how she was anxiously biting her lip and…

…and probably thinking her the worst kind of neurotic.

Immediately, she ceased her fretting and forced herself to attention. “I’m sorry,” she said, though even she couldn’t detect a trace of apology in her voice. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Didn’t you?” he asked.

She shook her head, knowing she spoke the truth. Why would she want to pry into Matthew Grayson’s life? Just because she found his seemingly inexplicable gruffness intriguing? Just because he had such dreamy green eyes? Just because he seemed to be as dedicated to his work as Rita was to hers? Just because he had such dreamy green eyes? Just because she’d been wondering since the day she started working in CCU what his story was? Just because he had such dreamy green eyes? Just because she wished she could work up the nerve to ask him about those scars on his face and neck?

And had she mentioned his dreamy green eyes?

Get a grip, Rita, she told herself. This was Matthew Grayson, MD, whose green eyes she found so dreamy. He was a distinguished cardiac surgeon and an eminent curmudgeon, probably almost ten years her senior and too serious by half. He wasn’t the kind of man she should be wondering about in any way. He wasn’t her type at all.

Not that she had a type, she quickly reminded herself. But if she did have a type, it wouldn’t be Matthew Grayson, MD.

Even if he did have dreamy green eyes.

“No, I didn’t,” she said, recalling now that he had asked a question. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just a little concerned, that’s all.”

Dr. Grayson studied her for a moment more, long enough to make Rita think he was wondering something about her, too. Then, in a brisk, that-will-be-all kind of voice, he assured her, “You needn’t be concerned about me.” Before she had a chance to comment further, he spun on his heel and walked away.

Point three to the Beast.

Rita was a Barone, though, and Barones always got in the last word, no matter how many points behind they were. Always. So, quietly enough that he couldn’t hear, and to his retreating back, she said, “Trust me, Dr. Grayson, when I say that I won’t be concerned about you. Ever.”

Point to the Barone. Finally.

Then Rita returned to both her chair and her work. Still not feeling as if that last word was quite enough, however, she glanced back up in time to see Dr. Grayson’s imposing figure disappearing around the corner at the end of the corridor. And she fired off another last word to punctuate the others.

“Beast,” she said.

For some reason, though, it didn’t make her feel any better.

Matthew Grayson managed—barely—to make it back to his office in the medical towers adjoining Boston General before his knees finally collapsed beneath him. He staggered over to his desk and toppled into the leather chair behind it, then inhaled a deep, ragged breath in the hopes that it might quell the rapid-fire banging of his heart. Then he called himself every kind of fool.

Rita Barone had come this close to catching him this time. When he’d seen her leave the nurses’ station, he’d thought she was taking a longer break than a few short minutes, so he hadn’t been in any hurry to slip the little package from the pocket of his jacket into her mail slot. Plus, he’d had to wait for another nurse and a visitor to conclude their conversation near the nurses’ station and walk off before he could even approach. He couldn’t risk anyone seeing him anywhere near Rita’s station when he did what he had to do.

He’d only just managed to leave the gift and steal away before she’d returned. Lucky for him she’d been entirely focused on not spilling her coffee as she’d walked down the corridor. Had she glanced up, even for a second, she would have seen him standing there, then would have found the gift after he left, and then would have had no trouble deducing who had been leaving her mysterious presents for the past two months.

And damned if Matthew didn’t feel like the biggest buffoon on the planet for leaving those mysterious presents. Here he was, a thirty-three-year-old man, one of the most noted surgeons in New England, and a member of one of Boston’s most illustrious families, and he was behaving like a goofy junior-high-school kid, leaving secret gifts in the locker of the girl he liked. What in God’s name had reduced him to such behavior?

Well, of course, he knew that. And he felt like an even bigger buffoon admitting it. It was the simple presence of Rita Barone in the coronary care unit at Boston General. The “beastly” Dr. Grayson—yes, he knew quite well what his nickname was around the hospital; he had ears, after all—had a crush on one of the nurses. And not just any nurse, but a nurse who was young and pretty and vivacious. A nurse who would surely be shocked and repulsed if she ever found out the identity of her secret admirer.

Talk about your Beauty and the Beast scenarios. Without even meaning to, Matthew had reduced himself to a cliché.

Gingerly, he lifted his hand to his left cheek, tracing his index finger over the scars that even the most talented plastic surgeons and the most sophisticated cosmetic surgical techniques couldn’t erase. The deepest of the wounds had gone straight down to the bone. Well, the deepest of the physical wounds, at any rate. Over the past twenty-three years, Matthew had undergone more surgery for his face than he cared to think about. Really, he supposed he looked pretty good, considering the viciousness of the attack and the depth of the damage. Physically, any scarring that was left was relatively superficial. Emotionally, however…

Well. Those injuries had gone straight down into the bone, and in many ways, had been even more damaging than the physical ones. Nor were they as repairable. Although he knew no one was perfect, Matthew was imperfect in ways that most people were not. He couldn’t imagine someone like Rita Barone—someone who was very nearly perfect, at least in his eyes—ever wanting to get any closer to him than she had to.

He propped his elbows on his desk, closed his eyes, and buried his face in his hands, hoping that by doing so, he might be able to think about something else, visualize something other than Rita’s dark, soulful eyes and her lush mouth. But he couldn’t stop replaying the image of her nibbling her lip the way she had, and he couldn’t halt the heat that swept through him when he remembered it. He could still hear the sound of her soft sigh and her reverently whispered “Oh, my” as she opened the box with the crystal heart, and that, too, filled him with a strange sort of warmth unlike anything he had ever felt before.

She had liked her gift, he realized, relief coursing through him like a slowly thawing springtime stream. And she had been wearing the bracelet and pin, too, just as she had worn them at work every day since he’d left them for her. Something about that gladdened Matthew, as if there was a little part of him she kept with her every day, even if she didn’t realize it herself.

Surely, he thought further, there was something wrong with him, finding a guilty sort of pleasure in a secret he was sharing with no one.

No, he immediately corrected himself, dropping his hands from his face to place them resolutely on his desk. He did not have a crush on Rita Barone. It wasn’t that at all. He focused his gaze on the opposite wall of his office, the one hung with his degrees and awards and commendations. He wasn’t the kind of man to have crushes. He was far too pragmatic and accomplished.

He admired Rita Barone, he told himself, that was all. Admired her on a professional level, and nothing more. Surely there was nothing wrong with admiring a co-worker. Nor was there anything wrong with being unable to verbally articulate that admiration. There were plenty of people who were uncomfortable expressing such sentiments. Matthew had never been one for the touchy-feely sharing of emotions—none of the Graysons were—and God knew he wasn’t about to start now.

He admired Rita Barone, he told himself again, more adamantly this time. He respected her dedication to her work, and he appreciated her ability to relate to patients in a kind and caring fashion.

Take last February, with a homeless man named Joe. Rita had calmed the man’s fears, and stayed by his side throughout his open-heart surgery. Because of her, the old man had made a total recovery.

Matthew had been amazed by her kindness and nurturing during that time. He’d envied her then—and still did—the gift she had for relating to and sympathizing with others, two things he’d never been able to master himself. Of course, there was a reason for that, but it didn’t keep Matthew from feeling diminished in that regard. As he’d watched Rita interact with Joe, Matthew had been touched on a level where he’d never felt anything before.

Back in February, he’d wanted to do something to let Rita know how much he had appreciated her help with Joe. Since he was uncomfortable vocalizing such things, he’d decided to leave some small token of his gratitude in her mail slot instead. He’d seen the bandaged heart pin in the hospital gift shop, and he’d thought it would make an appropriate gift. He’d written a note of thanks to leave with it, but the day had been so hectic, he’d forgotten to include it. He’d also forgotten that the day in question was Valentine’s Day.

It was only later, when he began to hear the rumors about Rita Barone’s secret admirer that he realized what he had done. The last thing he’d wanted to do at that point was identify himself and risk being labeled Rita’s secret admirer by the hospital grapevine. That would have only led to teasing, and Matthew hated to be teased. There was a reason for that, too, but no one would have cared. All he’d known then was that he couldn’t let himself be fingered as Rita Barone’s secret admirer. So he’d tossed the note in the garbage and kept his mouth shut.

Of course, that didn’t explain why he’d felt compelled to leave her another gift last month, on her birthday, or a third gift this evening, on the anniversary of her start at Boston General. Hell, it didn’t explain why he even knew those dates. And it certainly didn’t explain why he’d deliberately made sure those gifts were given anonymously. What did explain that, Matthew thought now, was…

Ah, dammit. He didn’t have an explanation for it.

Sure, you do, he told himself sarcastically. You admire her. On a professional level. There’s nothing more to it than that. Even if she does have the kind of dark, soulful eyes a man could get lost in forever and never find his way back.

Oh, stop it, Matthew commanded himself. You’re getting maudlin in your old age.

And old was often how he felt around Rita Barone. Old and scarred and beastly.

Enough! he shouted inwardly. He had plenty to occupy his mind at the moment other than thoughts of a certain dark-eyed, dark-haired nurse that made him feel foolish. He had surgery scheduled early tomorrow morning, and he had yet to make his final rounds. Rita Barone was the last thing he should be thinking about. She was his co-worker, nothing more. And she was too young and spirited and beautiful to be interested in someone old and scarred and beastly.

And even if there was the potential for something to develop between them—which was highly unlikely—her family was the nouveau riche Barone clan, while his own was old-money Bostonian. The Graysons had come over on the Mayflower, for God’s sake, and they never let anyone forget it. The Barones, on the other hand, had come over in steerage. They came from humble beginnings and had only recently made their fortune, and in the Italian ice-cream business, of all things. Talk about your frivolous pursuits. The Graysons, by and large, were financiers. Much more respectable work—at least, as far as the elder Graysons were concerned.

No, there was no way his parents would ever approve of a Grayson–Barone merger, and they’d make things very difficult for Matthew—and for Rita, too. Especially after the sordid, scandalous stories that had been splashed across the tabloids last month about one of Rita’s sisters. He vaguely remembered something about suggestive photos better suited to men’s magazines than respectable newspapers. Not that the tabloids were in any way respectable. But they were read. Doubtless the photos had never been meant for public consumption, but consumed by the public they had been—rabidly. And although the old-money Bostonians might turn their noses up at scandal and gossip, it certainly didn’t keep them from gossiping about scandal. There was no way Matthew’s mother would let any of the Barones come near her family or her home.

Not that it mattered. There were just too many things that didn’t mesh between Matthew and Rita for there to be anything to worry about, he told himself again. Therefore, he wouldn’t worry about it.

And he wouldn’t think about her dark, soulful eyes.

Two

Rita was absolutely beat when she finally got home just after midnight. Not surprisingly, the brownstone on Paul Revere Way looked dark and quiet as she climbed the handful of steps to the front door and unlocked it. Her older sister Gina had moved out last month, after marrying Flint Kingman, and Rita and Maria were still trying to find a suitable tenant for the empty top-floor apartment. And her younger sister Maria was doubtless just out, as she so often seemed to be these days.

In fact, Maria had been going out way more often than usual lately, Rita reflected as she locked the door behind herself. Which was surprising, because Maria didn’t have a steady boyfriend, or much of a social life outside of her work managing the original Baronessa Gelateria on Hanover Street. She used to be home as often as Rita was. But for the past couple of months she’d been out quite a lot, something that suggested there might be someone special in her life. But Maria hadn’t mentioned meeting anyone, and Rita certainly hadn’t seen her with anyone out of the ordinary.

As she stepped into the foyer of the brownstone, she realized immediately that she was indeed alone. The first floor of the four-story brick building served as a kind of community living room for the sisters, and tended to be a place of congregation, regardless of the hour. With its hardwood floors and leafy plants and beige furnishings and powder-blue accents in the form of pillows and such, the first floor of the brownstone was inviting in a comfy, elegant kind of way that made people want to linger. At the moment, though, it was empty, and not so much as a discarded jacket or pair of shoes indicated that anyone had been home anytime recently.

Rita had, as she always did in the afternoons following her shift, walked home tonight, unconcerned about her safety because the streets of Boston’s North End were always well populated on a Friday night, even in a light drizzle, as there was tonight. Now she shrugged off her raincoat and ran her fingers through her damp, dark bangs, then forsook the elevator to make her way up the stairs to her third-floor apartment. Once inside, she hung her coat on the rack by the door and went straight to her kitchen to brew herself a cup of chamomile tea. She wasn’t normally a night owl, but she was still too wound up from her shift to go to bed just yet. So, dipping her teabag in and out of her mug, she moved to the bathroom for a long, hot soak in a tub full of lavender-scented water.

It was going on one-thirty, and she was about to turn off her bedside lamp, when she heard Maria coming in downstairs. Pushing back the covers, Rita climbed out of bed and padded barefoot to her front door, waiting until she knew for sure that her sister was alone before opening it. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want to interrupt anything Maria might be doing with the potential someone special in her life that she didn’t seem to want to tell anyone about, but Rita didn’t want anyone else to catch her in her neon-pink pajamas decorated with ice-cream desserts, which she’d fallen in love with at the store and thought appropriate for a Barone. But she detected no footsteps other than Maria’s on the stairs, so she stepped out of her apartment, peeked over the stair rail and called down to her sister.

“Hey, you,” she said. “Where have you been?”

At the summons, Maria looked up over the stair rail two floors below and smiled. Her dark hair fell just below her shoulders, and her dark eyes twinkled merrily, even in the scant stairwell light. “Hi,” she called softly out of habit, even though there was no one else in the building to disturb anymore. But instead of answering Rita’s question, she asked one of her own. “What are you doing up so late?”

Rita hesitated a moment before telling her sister, “I got another anonymous gift at work tonight.”

Immediately Maria’s smile fell. “That’s what? Three now?”

Rita nodded.

“And you still have no idea who’s leaving them?”

Now Rita shook her head. “And no idea why.”

“Let me drop my purse and shoes in my apartment,” Maria said, “and I’ll be right up.”

Rita murmured her thanks and returned to her own apartment, leaving her door open so that her sister could come inside. A few moments later Maria arrived, still dressed in her Friday-night outfit of black capri pants and sapphire-blue silk shirt. The combination was striking with her dark good looks, and Rita, who was hopelessly fashion-challenged, made a mental note to copy a similar outfit the next time she went out. Then she wondered why she was bothering to make such a mental note, seeing as she never went out anyway.

She sighed fitfully as Maria took her seat on the overstuffed chintz sofa opposite the overstuffed chintz chair Rita occupied herself. Her decorating sense was no better than her fashion sense, so she’d copied the room down to every detail from a photograph in a magazine. Between the chintz furniture and the lace curtains, and the hooked floral rugs on the hardwood floor, she’d managed to capture an English-country-cottage look fairly well, right down to the dried flower wreaths and watercolor landscapes on the cream-colored walls. Usually, this room soothed Rita. Tonight, though, she just felt edgy.

“You didn’t see who left it?” Maria asked without preamble.

Again Rita shook her head. “And it’s really starting to creep me out, Maria. I mean, why would he leave gifts without letting me know who he is?”

“What do your instincts tell you?” Maria asked.

Rita thought about that for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Part of me feels like whoever is doing it is doing it because he’s shy and is afraid I might rebuff him.”

“How does the other part of you feel?”

Rita met her sister’s gaze levelly now. “Like maybe he’s not shy. Like maybe he’s a—” She couldn’t even say the word aloud.

“A stalker?” Maria asked, voicing the very word Rita had hoped so much to avoid. Just like that, a cold shudder went scurrying right down her spine.

“Yeah,” she said. “Like maybe he’s…one of those.”

Maria looked doubtful. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’m being naive, but I bet you do just have some kind of secret admirer at the hospital. I mean, don’t stalkers usually strike closer to home? And don’t they inspire terror? What was the gift this time? Unless it was a decapitated pet or a dismembered Barbie doll or something, you’re probably fine.”

Rita rose from the sofa and went to retrieve the square white box from her purse, then took it to Maria and placed it in her palm.

“Too small to be a decapitated pet,” her sister quipped. “Unless you’ve been keeping goldfish you haven’t told me about. Just promise me there’s not a severed Barbie hand in there.”

“Maria,” Rita said pleadingly.

“All right, all right. Enough with the sick jokes. I was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Talk of headless animals and doll parts is not making me feel better,” Rita told her.

“I apologize. It’s late,” her sister said by way of an explanation. Then Maria opened the box and moved aside the tissue, sighing with the same sort of delight Rita had exhibited herself upon seeing what was inside.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she said as she carefully withdrew the crystal heart from inside the box.

“Yeah, but does it refer to my job, or the guy’s feelings for me?” Rita asked.

“And it’s also Waterford,” Maria added, not answering the question, as she held the heart up to the light. “Which means, A, this guy’s got good taste, and B, this guy’s got good money.”

“How can you tell it’s Waterford?” Rita asked, moving to the sofa to sit beside her sister.

“The little seahorse etched on the side,” Maria said, pointing to the logo in question. “See?”

Rita did see the logo. What she didn’t see was why the purchaser had spent so much money this time. She’d seen the bandaged heart pin in the hospital gift shop for ten dollars, and even with her unpracticed eye, she knew the charm bracelet couldn’t have cost much more than that. This, though, was clearly a costly little trinket. Why the sudden leap in price tag?

“Okay, so the first gift came on Valentine’s Day,” Maria was saying as she admired the crystal heart, “and the second—” She gasped suddenly. “Oh, wow. I just now made the connection. Valentine’s Day. The family curse. No wonder you’re concerned.”

Rita expelled an errant breath and told herself her sister was being silly. Oh, sure, there were plenty of Barones who believed in the curse Lucia Conti had put on the family two generations ago, but Rita had never been one of them. She was too sensible to believe in curses. Well, pretty much. But she’d heard the story like everyone else in the family, and she could see why some of the Barones believed in it.

When Marco Barone, Rita’s grandfather and the founder of Baronessa Gelati, had first come to the United States from Sicily in the thirties, he worked as a waiter at Conti’s, a restaurant on Prince Street that was owned by friends of his parents, another Sicilian couple. The Contis had a daughter named Lucia, who, it was said, loved Marco very much, and it was always understood between the two families that Lucia and Marco would someday marry. But Marco met and fell in love with Angelica Salvo, who also worked at Conti’s, and they married instead. On their wedding day—Valentine’s Day—Lucia, it was also said, had put a curse on them and every future generation of Barones. “You got married on Valentine’s Day,” Lucia was reported to have said, “and may your anniversary day be cursed. A miserable Valentine’s Day to both of you, from this day forward.”

Of course, not every Valentine’s Day had resulted in misfortune for the Barones. But a number of tragedies, and a lot of things that had gone wrong for the family had happened on that date. On that first Valentine’s Day after their wedding, Angelica miscarried her and Marco’s first child. Some years later on Valentine’s Day, another child of theirs, one of a pair of twin sons, was kidnapped from the hospital nursery when he was only two days old and was never seen again.

And more recently, there had been a professional debacle this past Valentine’s Day, when Baronessa Gelati had thrown a huge gala to launch a new flavor, passionfruit. Someone had spiked the gelato prior to the event with habanero peppers, and everyone who tasted it suffered from a burning mouth. One man had even suffered from an attack of anaphylaxis, a serious allergic reaction. It had been a public-relations nightmare that not even PR whiz Gina had been able to handle. The Barones had been forced to hire an outside spin doctor to help get the company’s image back on track. They were still seeing repercussions from the incident.

Not the least of which was Gina’s marriage to said spin doctor, Flint Kingman, which, now that Rita thought about it, sort of negated the Valentine’s Day curse.

But Rita could still see why Maria might bring up the Valentine’s Day curse now, even if Rita didn’t believe in it herself.

“So the first gift came on Valentine’s Day,” Maria began again. “And the second gift came on your birthday. Both special occasions,” she noted. “But today isn’t a—”

“Today is the third anniversary of my first day working at Boston General,” Rita said morosely. “Another special occasion of sorts. Whoever’s doing this even remembers the day I started working there.”

“But that narrows it down,” Maria said triumphantly. “That means whoever’s leaving these is definitely someone you work with, and he must have been there three years ago when you started.”