When I’d pointed out that he had a bit of a Southern accent, he told me that I was hearing things.
But seriously, what northerner had ever said “ain’t gonna” in their life?
It was cute.
The smile slipped off my face when a nurse came out to sit on the other side of Gentry.
She was one of the worst ones.
Her name was Tanny, and she liked to go for married men. She liked to see if she could get the married men to give her the attention when they were in the rooms with the men’s wives.
I knew this because I’d heard her talking before with her other stuck-up jerk nurse friends and Tanny said that it was a fun game that she liked to play.
When Tanny’s smile came out, Gentry fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
I gritted my teeth and took a vicious bite of my sandwich, trying to ignore the conversation that Gentry was having with Tanny about the weather.
And somehow, my car got brought up again, and it only made me angrier.
First, the woman flirted with a man who was supposedly married to me—because this town was too fucking small for her not to have heard about my morning. I’d heard it several times myself around the staff. That had to be why she was doing this.
She fucking loved the chase, but she also highly disliked me. Mostly because I made three times the amount that she did. Something that she pointed out any chance that she could.
Secondly, I didn’t like the fact that I was so naïve about snow and cars that I’d bought a vehicle that wouldn’t be able to get me around half the year. That was exactly what I’d needed. A car that couldn’t drive me where I needed to go for six months of the year.
The bad thing was, I’d specifically asked the man I’d bought the car from if the car would be good in the winter, and he’d told me yes.
Straight to my face, no hint of a lie. Just straight to my face, told me that my small car would be perfect for the winter here.
I didn’t like feeling dumb.
I probably would’ve been fine had it only been Gentry telling me that the car wouldn’t make it in the winter, but then Tanny had to add onto that conversation.
“Oh, she’ll learn.” Tanny lightly slapped Gentry’s arm with a knowing smirk on her face. “The hard way, most likely.”
I gritted my teeth and stuffed the last bit of sandwich into my mouth even though I was so full I could barely stand it.
The remaining chips followed suit, and I was gathering up my trash moments later.
Standing, I gave both Gentry and Tanny a level look before saying, “Where I’m from, we had maybe one day a year where there was snow. And people didn’t drive in the snow if they could help it. So…how was I supposed to know this car wasn’t good enough? I asked the man I was buying it from. He told me that he’d been living in Montana since he was a boy. He said it would be fine.”
Gentry narrowed his eyes at my stiffness.
He eyed my hands that were full of the trash from my lunch, then looked up at me.
I let my gaze bounce from one asshole to the other before I turned around and walked inside. Before I reached the door, I called, “Thanks for the sandwich, hubby.”
I didn’t know what it was about Tanny that rubbed me the wrong way, but I had a feeling she was behind every irritating thing that happened in the hospital that day.
Hell, most days.
She was always there, because she was stuck up the charge nurse’s ass and asking for the good patients. She loved to piss women off and couldn’t stand when men didn’t give her attention.
Hell, I’d seen plenty of firefighters come through here that thought she was the dirt on the bottom of their shoes, and it made her irrationally angry for the rest of the day when they didn’t smile at her or treat her playfully.
Most likely, their wives caught on to her actions and told them that they needed to clean their act up or else.
There was always this one female firefighter who came in that clearly hated Tanny and never missed a beat when Tanny started pulling her shit.