“Julian passed away last year,” I said, neglecting to tell him that no one told me until after the fact. I grieved him silently, from afar, and ignored my mother’s passive- aggressive tactic to try to hurt me for leaving Kansas—and for leaving her.
“Sorry to hear that,” he said, though he couldn’t be bothered to put an ounce of gentility into his tone.
“Jude is living in California,” I said. That was all I knew about him. We’d lost touch over the years as well.
“How is Nancy?” I asked, referring to his second wife. I always knew her name. Every summer my mother would ship me off to my dad’s in the Hamptons for two weeks to spend time with him, but I spent most of my time with Nancy. My father was always working, and when he wasn’t, he was out on his boat. He taught me to sail, and that was about the only thing he’d ever taught me.
“Good. She’s good.” He took another sip of his water not bothering to elaborate and probably knowing that none of it mattered anymore, anyway.
Our server walked up and clasped his hands behind his back. “Hello. I’m Miguel, and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. Can I start you with any appetizers? We have parmesan encrusted—”
“No,” my father cut him off. “I’ll have a glass of Riesling. I won’t be staying for dinner.”
A slight panic stung my chest. The clock was ticking. I’d never asked my father for a single favor in my life, and already he couldn’t even be bothered to stay long enough to have dinner with me.
“I’m good.” My eyes burned into my father’s, my fists clenching beneath the table. I hated everything about that man, yet he held the power to save the one thing I gave a damn about anymore.
“So, Dad,” I said, clearing my throat. The title sounded unnatural and forced. “I have a small favor to ask you.”
With one eyebrow raised, he turned his attention toward me. “Okay.”
“I have a patient who needs surgery only I can’t operate on her.”
He ran his hand up to the scruff of his cheek, a smile twisting upon his lips. I recognized that smile. It was mine.
“You know you shouldn’t be messing around with your patients, son,” he said as if he were going to give me fatherly advice for the first time in his fifty-odd years.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“It’s not Daphne, is it?”
Of course, he remembered Daphne. He’d met her maybe twice in his life, but he’d never forget a pretty smile. Or long legs. Or the way she flirted with every man she ever came in contact with including him.
“No. Not Daphne.”
He sat back in his seat, chuckling and looking at me as if I reminded him of a younger version of himself. His glory days, he called them. Those wondrous years after he left Mom and me and spent his days working and his nights fucking everything that walked. I particularly recalled his penchant for pretty, young nurses. I wasn’t like him. Not at all. I had made sure of that.
“The surgery,” I said, getting back on track. “If you could fit her into your schedule. It’s a coiling procedure, but she needs it as soon as possible.”
“You know I’m booked out for months,” he objected.
“I’ll fly you in.” I wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. Perhaps another doctor in the city could’ve performed it, but I didn’t want Sophie to worry. She was convinced I was the best and didn’t want anyone else. My father was the best in the country. If I could get him to agree to do her procedure, she’d feel better about it. “You can perform the surgery at my hospital. I want her to recover here where I can keep an eye on her.”
“You’re playing with fire, son,” he said, shaking his head and taking a sip of the white wine the server had just delivered. “I’d hate to see all those years of school and research down the drain over a hot piece of ass.”
“Trust me, you need not worry about me.”
You never have. Why start now?
“You’re putting me in a bind here.” He swirled his wine and sniffed the rim of the glass. I wasn’t getting through to him.
“Please,” I said, trying to mask my disgust with kind words. “I’ve never asked you for a thing. I’m asking you now. Are you willing to work on my patient?”
He stopped what he was doing and looked across the table, his face softening for only a moment as if he were looking into the eyes of a little boy asking his dad for help.
“Can you do it next week?” I asked, unable to stop pushing for the one thing I wanted, and the one thing he owed me.
“Next week?” he scoffed, swiftly returning to arrogant-asshole mode. He sighed and shrugged staring down at the table. “I’ll call my assistant and see if she can move my schedule around. You’re putting me in a tough spot here, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “I appreciate this.”
He glanced down at his watch.
“Somewhere to be?” I asked.
He pushed himself out from the table tossing his unused napkin over his place setting and downing the last of his wine. “I’ll be in touch.”
I found myself standing at Sophie’s door. Sometime during my walk home, I’d crossed the street across from my apartment heading to her building and not my own. I had to see her.
I knocked on her door praying she’d be home, and my prayers were answered the second the door pulled open, and a smile spread across her pretty mouth.
“Evening, stranger,” she said, eyes sparkling as she placed a hand on her hip. Smears of paint on her cheek and chin and across the faded t-shirt that hugged her frame told me she was in the midst of crafting another masterpiece. “Come on in.”
I stepped into her warm apartment pulling off my hat and unbuttoning my coat and setting them in the first place I could find. Sophie didn’t have a coat rack or any other type of organizational system that I could see.
She slid into my space, her arms slinking around my hips as she stood on her toes to kiss me. My entire relationship with Daphne was a series of carefully scheduled dates and events. Red marks all over my calendar, placed by Daphne herself, told me exactly where I had to be and when. Sophie was the exact opposite. Nothing was scheduled. Everything was of the moment. She brought out a spontaneous part of me I never knew existed before.
I placed my hands on her hips and pulled her in closer tasting bergamot tea on her lips and smelling the warm musk that radiated from her wild hair.
“Let me show you what I’m working on,” she said, beaming proudly as her hand found mine. She led me through the apartment to her little studio. “It’s you.”
Against a backdrop of blues and grays was a portrait of me. Clear blue eyes stared back at me, and a serious expression consumed my face.
“I haven’t been able to paint people or things for years,” she said, eyes glued to her work as if she couldn’t believe her hands had created such a thing. “Until you.”
I stood behind her unable to resist her any longer. I moved her hair from her shoulder, exposing the flesh of her neck, and leaned in to taste it. Pressing my lips into her soft skin, I closed my eyes and breathed Sophie in. Pure, unadulterated intoxication filled my lungs as tiny gasps escaped her lips responding to each peppered kiss.
She spun around gripping me as she forced me backward to her bed. We fell together, she on top of me as she straddled her thighs around my lap. A force to be reckoned with and hunger in her eyes like I’d never seen before, she lunged for my mouth. But I was hungrier. I wanted her more than she could ever possibly want me. I needed her like the air I breathed, like the hot blood that coursed through my body and kept me alive.
I leaned up, Sophie still in my lap, and ripped her t-shirt off her body, my fingers on fire against her soft skin as I worked to unhook her bra. She gripped the back of my hair tugging and pulling in tandem with every movement as I nibbled her ear. Her soft lips pressed into my shoulder as she rocked back and forth, impatient for the inevitable.
She pulled back leaning away and looking into my eyes, her brown eye
s searching mine. As I cupped the underside of her delicate jaw, my thumb traced her full bottom lip. She smiled, uncharacteristically vulnerable for a moment, and covered my hand with hers.
She climbed off me slipping her leggings down and tossing them to the floor as she sprawled out naked as the day she was born and flashed me a smile and an eyebrow raise as if to say it was my turn.
The floor-to-ceiling windows of her loft were uncovered, and Sophie was on full display as always. She followed my gaze to the windows.
“Don’t be like that,” she said. “Who cares if anyone can see in here?”
Her fingers fumbled with my belt buckle brushing against my contained hardness and trying her damnedest to unleash my erection. I pulled a condom from my pocket and tore the package, sheathing myself quickly as her dark eyes pleaded for me to touch her.
She reached an arm back behind her clicking off the bedside lamp and creating a dark cocoon of night around us. The glow from her studio lamp across the room and the trickle of moonlight from the windows cast just enough light for me to make out the curves of her body.
She crawled toward me on all fours, the swell of her ass showcased by an arch in the small of her back and marked by two slight dimples. My hands reached out searching the darkness to grab onto a piece of her.
Her thighs parted as she crawled over the top of me lowering herself onto my hardness and sliding down as if we were made to fit together perfectly. A soft sigh fled her lips as her head dipped back. Her hands braced on my stomach, and she rocked her body back and forth circling her hips and bouncing on her knees as if she’d waited her whole life to feel this way.
I watched as she bit her lip, scrunched her eyes, and relaxed her face each time she’d press herself onto me. I wasn’t just inside her—I was consuming every fiber of her, igniting her soul.
She leaned forward, her wavy hair spilling across her chest and tickling my face and leaned down to taste my mouth.
“My turn.” I grabbed her by the hips flipping her onto her back as I crawled over the top of her. Grabbing the base of my cock, I inserted it into her reconnecting our souls once more. Her thighs slid up the sides of my hips squeezing with every insertion. She arched raking her hands up and down the sides of my back mumbling and moaning soft sounds of intense pleasure.
My lips searched in the dark for hers, and every place our bodies touched lit with fire. I burned for her. My soul needed her. She was the only girl who could make me forget about all the bullshit and assholes. She never asked for a damn thing from me except for me to save her life.
In the darkness of her apartment, in the tangled mess of sheets with my face buried in her soft hair, I vowed to do whatever it took to save her.
God have mercy on the poor soul who tries to stop me.
13
SOPHIE
I woke in a tiny post-op room with a gray-haired nurse recording my vitals. With tubes and IVs and wires hooked up to every part of me and a thick blanket weighing me down, I couldn’t move an inch.
“She’s awake,” the nurse said. She turned to me with kind eyes, and her quaint smile reminded me of my sweet grandmother. “Your procedure went well, sweetie. Just rest, okay?”
A quick knock on the door brought me my Jamison. A week ago, he’d told me I was scheduled for surgery with one of the top neurosurgeons in the nation, Dr. Jim Fowler. Jamison walked me to the hospital that morning dressed in his green scrubs and had stayed with me until he had to scrub in for his first surgery of the day.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked, peering over the nurse’s shoulder and reading my vitals on the computer screen.
“Good,” I said groggily. The oxygen they’d had me on during surgery had dried my lips and made my throat scratchy. “Thirsty.”
He smiled, reaching down and warming my hand with his. His concerned eyes washed over me, and his body seemed to relax ever so slightly.
“Everything went well,” he said. “They’ll bring you in for monitoring. There’s a slight risk of re-bleeding with this procedure, but we’ll keep a close eye on you.”
By ‘they,’ he meant other doctors on his team. I cleared my throat. “When do I get to go home?”
“Not for another day,” he said. “Dr. Bledsoe will monitor you for the time being after Dr. Fowler leaves.”
“Sweetie, you didn’t put down any emergency contacts,” the nurse said, interrupting us. “Do you have any family?”
I felt Jamison’s eyes on me, and I swallowed the lump in my dry throat. “No.”
The nurse hesitated, taken aback, but didn’t push it.
“Can I see Dr. Fowler again?” I asked Jamison. “I want to thank him for flying in to do this surgery. It was nice of him.”
Pain flashed across his face. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He slipped out the room leaving the door half open. The soft trail of two men talking floated into my room, and I strained to make out the words.
A moment later, a white-coated Dr. Fowler stepped in, Jamison behind him. I’d seen him earlier, just before the surgery, but my mind had been too preoccupied to process everything that was going on. The nurses had been prepping me, and Dr. Fowler had been explaining the procedure, but at the time, all I could do was look across the room at Jamison taking refuge in the comfort of his pale blue eyes.
Standing side by side, the resemblance was uncanny. Dr. Fowler was an older, darker-eyed version of Jamison with gray at his temples and an air of upper-crust arrogance that oozed from every pore of his smug face.
“Thank you, Dr. Fowler,” I said, offering an appreciative smile. “I know you didn’t have to fly here to do this. I’ve heard you’re the best in the country, so it means the world to me that you’d take time from your busy schedule to operate on me.”
His face morphed into a warm smile, the arrogance dissipating as I praised his good deed. I’d recognize a man who loved a good ego-stroking anywhere. Men like him lived for that sort of thing.
“How do you two know each other?” I asked, searching both their faces.
They exchanged looks, each waiting for the other to speak before Jamison finally offered, “He’s my father.”
“Oh,” I said as he confirmed what I already assumed. “I could see the resemblance. I just wasn’t sure.”
Neither of them seemed too thrilled. A trace of a bittersweet smile crossed Jamison’s face, and I could see the pain in his eyes.
“Jamison is the top neurosurgeon in the city,” I said to his father. “And the youngest. But you probably already knew that.”
Dr. Fowler offered a tight-lipped smile, his hands crossed at his hips. “I did.”
An awkward silence came between the three of us interrupted only by the faint beeping of one of the monitors connected to me.
“Well, I’ve got to head back to Mayo,” he said, directed at the both of us as if it were just a formality. For being Jamison’s father, he sure as hell didn’t act like it. A quick nod and a moment later, Dr. Fowler was gone from my room taking all the strained tension with him.
Jamison eyed the clock on the wall. “I have to scrub in for another surgery.” He gripped my hand as if he didn’t want to leave me. “I’ll check back on you later, okay?”
I nodded.
“We’ll be moving her to the eighth floor, Dr. Garner,” the nurse said to him. “They’re preparing her room right now.”
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, slipping out of the room, his white coat floating behind him. My heart raced and was acknowledged by the fast beeping of a machine. Even post-op, I couldn’t help but think of all the things I wanted to do to him when I got better. He was my hero. My lover. My everything.
Twenty-four hours later, I was crawling out of a cab with Jamison reaching for my hands ready to escort me up to my apartment.
“Easy now,” he said, his hands strong and steady as they held mine. A day of lying flat in the hospital bed left me feeling lightheaded and uncoordinated, but he was there to guide
me.
We climbed the two flights of stairs one at a time and landed in my apartment where Mia had everything all ready to go. Her shop was closed that week for the big renovation, so she promised to dedicate her free time to taking care of me during the day.
“There she is,” Mia said, cautiously watching me as if I were a fragile China doll about to topple off a shelf. “Your bed’s all ready.”
Jamison escorted me there helping me in and covering me up before propping and fluffing the pillows behind me.
He and Mia stood at the side of my bed, both watching me with careful gazes until Jamison pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and turned to her.
“This is my cell,” he said. “Call me immediately if anything happens. Anything at all.” He slipped a second piece of paper next to my bed. “This is my pager number. If I don’t answer my cell, have me paged. Enter the code 121, and I’ll know it’s for Sophie.”
121? My hazy brain tried to figure out why he’d pick that random number. December 1st. That’s when we met. 12/1.
“Got it,” Mia said, pressing the precious lifeline against her chest. “I’ll program your numbers into my phone.”
“I need you to watch for fever, chills, pain, headaches, numbness, tingling…” Jamison rattled off a list of symptoms as Mia listened diligently.
He cemented himself in place, not wanting to leave, but he’d only taken a break from work to run me home. Patients waited and appointments piled up, and the longer he stalled, the longer he’d be working that night.
“I need to get back,” he said, glancing outside where the Yellow Cab waited for him, the meter still running. “I’ll come by tonight.”
I nodded. He wasn’t even gone yet, and already I missed him so much my chest ached. I watched from my bed as he showed himself out, the clicking of the door echoing through the vast open space.
The Promise of Everything - Garner-Willoughby Brothers Book Three Page 7
