As time progressed, he watched her interact with Matt, and saw the hurt in her eyes when he'd show up at events with other women. She might be attractive and smart and a good student of human nature (and really funny and genuinely caring), but when it came to romance, she was still very young emotionally, and way out of her league. He mused that it was entirely possible that her husband had been her first (and only) serious boyfriend. Time to cut off that line of thought. I'm swimming in some strange waters here. Still, he'd seen nothing that indicated that she was anything but super-professional with her clients. In fact, he'd marveled at how quickly she asserted her authority when it came to her patients and their well-being. She was the best at what she did, no doubt. It just so happened that this time the best was wrapped up in a small, curvy package that came with bouncy curls, platform wedges and expensive, definitely non-mom jeans. Now that he thought about it, he could definitely see her appeal.
He was starting to really enjoy their back-and-forth. She had this way of setting him off-balance that he hadn't experienced before. Just when he thought he had the upper hand by deflecting her questions, she'd suddenly do something that would suddenly make him react in a way he hadn't expected. He always felt like she was challenging his actions. He knew that not everything he did looked good in the cold harsh light of day, and Dr. Santino didn't have a problem calling him on it. (In fact, she didn't have a problem calling anyone on anything, something he got a huge kick out of when he saw it turned on someone else.)
At the fundraising banquet, when TK got into a fight with a rival player over a girlfriend, he was surprised at how chastened he felt, albeit momentarily, when she called him "out of control" for attempting to buy off the woman who was causing the dissension among teammates. He watched as she quickly broke up the fight and took TK away to read him the riot act (or at least that's what it looked like to him). He noted that the sparkly earrings she was wearing reached her shoulders. It would be distracting to have a conversation with her with those earrings dancing around her head, he imagined. Donnally seemed to be managing earlier - he was somehow managing to flirt with Dr. Santino even while his date was nearby. He didn't normally give Donnally a lot of thought, but recently he'd been wondering why he was considered to be such a good guy.