The Punishment: The Downing Family Book 3

by Wild, Cassie

  She’d been asking me variations of that question ever since we’d had a certain talk yesterday.

  Even after we signed the necessary documents, and while I was reaching out to a judge who was a family friend, she’d continued to ask me if I was certain.

  I dropped a kiss on her mouth. Lingering over her lips, I said, “That’s enough asking. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t want to. The only question is…are you sure you want to?”

  She nodded vigorously, staring at me with eyes that looked a little too bright. But there was a blinding smile on her face, one so beautiful, it knocked my breath away.

  Sean bumped me on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  I took Daria’s hand, and we started up the steps of the courthouse.

  Once we had cleared security inside, I approached the woman at the counter and told her we had an appointment with the judge.

  She called to clear it through, then gestured to the elevator behind us. “Congratulations,” she said with a beaming smile.

  Daria said, “Thank you,” before I could utter a word.

  We walked to the elevator hand in hand, Sean and Isabel trailing along behind us. I hit the button for our floor and focused once more on Daria’s beautiful face.

  She’d applied some makeup, but she was so pretty, in my mind it was gilding the lily. I had to admit, though, the deep red lipstick she’d chosen was giving me ideas.

  She must have seen something on my face because she lifted a brow. “What’s that look for?”

  “Just dumbstruck over how beautiful you look,” I said, pressing my lips to her brow.

  Her wide smile melted my heart. “Okay. As long as you didn’t smear my lipstick.”

  “Your lipstick is fine.” More than, but I wasn’t about to go into detail with my brother and his wife standing there.

  “You do look beautiful,” Isabel said.

  After our visit to the courthouse for the paperwork yesterday, Isabel had disappeared with Daria, returning a couple hours later laden down with shopping bags. Daria had a star-struck look on her face as she trailed in after Isabel, clutching an ivory garment bag to her chest like it was the crown jewels.

  She hadn’t told me what was inside, but I had a good idea.

  When she came out of the bedroom earlier, I’d all but swallowed my tongue.

  “Isabel helped me pick it out,” she’d told me nervously. “She insisted I have a real wedding dress even if we were getting married at the courthouse.”

  I was glad I’d let Isabel and Sean in on our plans. Now, I reached out and brushed my fingers along skin left exposed by the elegant, knee-length lace dress. The shimmering fabric clung to her delicate curves, highlighting her beauty yet giving her an elegant look.

  Isabel had been there early to help with her hair and styling the long golden waves into some complicated, low twist that had curls cascading gracefully down her back. Nestled in those waves was a gleaming twist of silver and pearls.

  Daria held a wedding bouquet, something I hadn’t even thought about. Apparently, neither had Daria, because it was one of the several things that Isabel brought with her when she descended on my condo in a swirl of pale pink, armed with the bouquet and boutonnieres. She’d also passed along a handkerchief, telling Daria it was something her mother had given her. The square had been embroidered along the edges with blue needlework. Something old, something blue, and something borrowed, Isabel had explained.

  Daria had carefully tucked the handkerchief away, and more than once on the drive in, she’d pulled it out of a small, beaded handbag to dab at her eyes.

  “I don’t look like a raccoon, do I?” she asked nervously, reaching up to brush a finger along the underside of one eye.

  “I told you, the makeup is smudge-proof, smear-proof, kiss-proof, and tear-proof,” Isabel said as the elevator doors swept open.

  I held out my hand to Daria. “Are you ready to marry me?”

  She grinned and put her hand in mine.

  * * *

  Pennsylvania law requires a three-day waiting period.

  I’d put in a call to my father’s friend. I’d known Judge Tipton for years. I explained what I needed, and he’d provided us with an exemption so we didn’t have to wait.

  Three days might seem like a short enough period of time, but I wanted to make Daria mine as soon as possible. The marriage would also protect her from INS, but that wasn’t the reason I was doing this.

  I loved her, plain and simple.

  Now, as the judge finished speaking about the bonds of marriage and love, I stared at Daria with hungry eyes.

  Mine. She was mine.

  “I now pronounce you husband and wife!” Judge Tipton nodded at me. “You may now kiss the bride.”

  I did so, lavishly, doing my best to find out if the lipstick really was kiss proof.

  Daria was smiling and laughing and crying by the time I lifted my head and pulled her up against me for a quick hug.

  Around us, the few people we’d invited were voicing their congratulations.

  One of them, a friend of mine by the name of Mark Beckman, shook my hand as he looked from me to Daria. “This had better be the real deal, Brooks. I’m sticking my neck out for you,” he said. Mark worked for immigration services. The morning Marcos broke into my place, I’d gone to him to see if he could help me out with the potential deportation Daria could be facing.

  “It’s the real deal,” I assured him, my arm still wrapped around Daria’s waist. I brushed a kiss over her temple before looking back at him. “I’ll follow her to Russia if I have to.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” He shook his head and held out his hand to Daria. “Congratulations, Mrs. Downing.”

  She beamed at him.

  As the witnesses started to trickle out, she turned to me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

  “Mrs. Downing. I like the sound of it. Daria Downing.” She giggled and pressed her face against my chest. “It almost sounds like a superhero name.”

  I chuckled. “You’re my superhero.”

  The sound of my laugh faded away as she lifted her face back to mine. “Can we go home now?” she asked softly.

  “Sean and Isabel planned a wedding lunch for us,” I reminded her.

  “Oh.” She huffed out a breath, then asked, “We can leave early, right?”

  “It’s our wedding day. We can do whatever we want.”

  She swayed in closer and tugged me down until she could whisper in my ear. “Good…because I think I want to spend it in that special room of yours. There are all sorts of things you haven’t shown me yet.” She gave me that grin again. “Sir.”

  Don’t miss Book 4 in the Downing Family, coming October 12. Turn the page to keep reading.

  Preview: Book 4 (Downing Family)

  One

  Briar

  “Honey, can you get me some coffee?”

  The honey annoyed me, but the sight of a coffee cup being thrust in front of me flat-out pissed me off. I stared at it for a beat before shifting my gaze up to the older man standing just to my side.

  Honey.

  I nudged the cup back over to him and gave him a brilliant smile as I pulled my stethoscope from the oversized pocket of my doctor’s coat. While there were others in the medical field who wore lab coats, it was generally safe to assume that if somebody stood at the nurses’ station in a knee-length lab coat, that person was likely a doctor.

  Unless, of course, that person was a female. I could wear a copy of my medical license around my neck, and I’d still have people assume I was a nurse. I refused to even get into how annoying it was that some doctors thought a nurse’s job was to play fetch for them, either.

  But I definitely wasn’t going to let this asshat use me as his gopher.

  “I’m sorry, doctor. But I have to make my rounds. There’s coffee in the doctor’s lounge, but I have to warn you…it’s pretty strong.” I showed off a smile displaying tee
th so straight my dentist had wanted to use me as the before and after models showcasing the benefits of braces. Then I turned to Sarah, the charge nurse for this shift. “Are you ready, Sarah?”

  “Absolutely, Dr. Downing.” The corners of her lips quivered like she was trying not to smile. She nodded at the other doctor and said, “I’ll be with you shortly, Dr. Wayne.” She waited until we were halfway down the hall before flashing me an amused grin. “You need to come to my floor more often, Dr. Downing. Maybe he’ll finally stop seeing women as coffee-fetchers.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not likely.” I didn’t know Dr. Wayne—this was the first time we’d ever encountered each other—but I knew too many others with an attitude like the one he’d just showcased.

  Get me some coffee, honey…

  If I was prone to grinding my teeth, all thirty-two of mine would be worn to nubs at this point in my career. I’d been called honey, sweetheart, and sugar by so many of my supposed peers, it was pathetic.

  And I was just starting out in the medical field too.

  I knew I wasn’t the only female doctor to put up with this shit. Several of my professors in medical school had been female, and I’d met quite a few during my internship as well. I had witnessed a number of them get referred to as honey or sugar while we were in the clinical setting. The assumption that any female in the medical setting was a nurse was rampant, especially among older male physicians.

  I had all the respect in the world for nurses. A good one made my job so much easier, and an incompetent one could be far more than just a pain in the ass. Many of the nurses I’d met at Green Valley Medical Center were probably more competent than some of the doctors I worked with. But it was annoying as hell for somebody to assume that I was a nurse all because I had long hair and boobs.

  “You’re probably right. He’s one of the worst. He’s tried to get me in trouble with the nursing director more times than I can count. All because I won’t fetch him coffee and have redirected him when he tries to use my floor nurses for the same thing. Sexist old prick.” She checked her chart as we came to a stop outside one of my patients’ rooms. “Quiet night here. Some pain meds were given just before four.”

  The words were delivered in a low voice as we stood just outside the door.

  Twenty-year-old Natasha Stokes had presented in the ED with severe stomach pain, rebound tenderness, and uncontrolled vomiting. It hadn’t taken long to diagnose her with severe appendicitis, and we’d had her in surgery within two hours of her arrival.

  It was a good thing she hadn’t waited much longer to come in, because the appendix had been on the verge of rupturing, a complication nobody—neither doctor nor patient—wanted.

  “How did Ms. Stokes sleep?” I asked Sarah as I opened the nurse’s notes from the previous shift.

  “Once she got up here, she seemed to do fine. She’s got something of an appetite this morning, so that’s good news.”

  I checked my watch out of habit. It was coming up on eight o’clock, which meant she was able to take another dose. As if on cue, the light over the door came on.

  Sarah knocked on the door, and we stepped inside. “Hello, Ms. Stokes,” Sarah said in a cheerful voice. As she moved to turn off the call light, she gave the patient her full attention. “What can I do for you?”

  Natasha gave her a wan smile as she shifted uneasily on the bed. “I was wondering if I could get something for the pain. I’m starting to hurt again.”

  “I’ll let your nurse know.” Sarah smiled at the other woman and jotted something down on the notepad she carried everywhere.

  As Sarah moved to check the patient’s breakfast tray, I stepped over to the foot of the bed. “How are you feeling today, Ms. Stokes?”

  “Natasha…please.” She made a face, then offered a deprecating smile. “A lot better than I did last night. I wish I would have come here in the first place instead of going to urgent care.”

  I frowned and checked my notes from the past night. As I skimmed them over, I asked, “When did you go to urgent care?”

  “The day before…what’s today? Monday?” At my nod, she continued, “It would have been Saturday then. I was trying to hold off until today when I could get in to see my regular doctor, but the later it got, the more I hurt.”

  There was nothing in the notes mentioning that she’d gone to an urgent care center. It wasn’t uncommon to miss getting details like that while getting a patient history, especially in a case like Natasha’s. I asked her the name of the urgent care and made a note so Sarah could take care of obtaining the records. “What did the doctor at urgent care say?”

  She looked away, smoothing at the blanket over her upper thighs. A dull flush settled over her cheeks, but she didn’t say anything.

  I moved closer. “Natasha?”

  “He told me it was probably another ovarian cyst,” she said, shifting her attention to the window. “I’ve had problems with them before. A lot. I told him I knew what cysts felt like and that this was something different. But he just told me to take some ibuprofen and make an appointment with my ob/gyn once the offices opened.”

  I kept my irritation hidden behind an understanding smile. “Well, it definitely wasn’t a cyst, was it? Good job on following your own instinct.”

  We spoke for a few more minutes before Sarah and I left for the next patient on her floor.

  Larry Stinson had been climbing a ladder in his front yard to hang up Halloween decorations when he lost his footing and fell. The break was an ugly one, and the swelling had the orthopedic on-call electing to delay surgery. They wanted to treat Larry with steroids in an attempt to alleviate the swelling before getting him on the table.

  I stepped into the room, a smile plastered firmly in place.

  Larry caught sight of me almost immediately, and his round, fleshy face reddened. “How much longer is it going to take these incompetents to get me into surgery? I have important meetings this week and don’t have time to wait around for this bullshit.”

  “You’ll have to speak with Dr. Kensington, Mr. Stinson. Dr. Kensington is the orthopedic surgeon in charge of your case.”

  Larry glared at me. “Then where in the hell is he?”

  “She is in the hospital attending her rounds. If she hasn’t been in here yet, I imagine she’ll be by soon.”

  His face scrunched up into an angry mask. “She? A man doctor saw me in the ER.”

  “That was one of the emergency room nurses.” I checked the notes more out of a need to rest my face from the overly plastic smile than out of any real need to refresh myself with his case.

  “Dr. Kensington.” He scrunched up his face even more. “Wait a minute. That little bit of a thing that came in after they took all that blood? That was the doctor? She doesn’t even look old enough to drink!”

  Dr. Kensington did look young, even younger than me, and I was twenty-five. In fact, she was actually thirty-three and already considered to be one of the best in her field in our area. “I assure you, Mr. Stinson. Dr. Kensington is quite competent.”

  He was still grumbling when we left.

  Fortunately, he was the only pain in the ass I had to deal with on my rounds.

  I was able to finish up a bit earlier than expected and stopped by the cafeteria to get some coffee. The stuff they had in the doctor’s lounge truly was strong. In my opinion, it was strong enough to get up and walk on its own. While I might have needed the caffeine punch during medical school and in my residency, now that I was working a somewhat reasonable schedule, I preferred to have something that didn’t eat away at the lining of my stomach.

  Of course, the keyword was somewhat.

  I was down to work an extra shift today due to a staffing shortage. As one of the newest doctors on staff at Green Valley—and the youngest—I ended up with a lot of crap shifts. I was determined to take it in stride. Everybody had to earn their stripes, and crappy shifts were part of that process.

  After getting my coffee, I decided to
head to the doctor’s lounge and sit for a few minutes. My feet were killing me after spending most of the night on them, and I wanted a break.

  I pushed open the door, and the sound of a familiar voice stopped me in my tracks.

  Dr. Ted Henderson had a distinctive voice. I’d heard it far too often, in my opinion. He was the medical director of the emergency department, and the two of us did not get along. He was sexist and racist and a general, all-around pig. He was the kind of doctor who got along great with asses like Dr. Wayne.

  I almost turned around to leave, but another voice stopped me in my tracks.

  Speak of the devil. I’d almost bet money that was Dr. Wayne talking to Henderson. Instead of leaving, I leaned against the wall of the narrow entryway, out of their sight, and listened.

  I wasn’t being nosy.

  Wayne had just said my name.

  “I’ll be honest, Ted. That new trauma surgeon of yours is one hell of a looker, but she’s got an attitude,” Wayne said, his voice dry. “All I wanted was a fucking cup of coffee, and she turned that pretty nose of hers up and walked away.”

  I clenched my jaw.

  “Calvin, Downing has been a pain in my ass since the day I came on here. She’s only been licensed for a few months, but she’s got a stick up her ass, let me tell you. I hear she comes from big money. I guess she thinks that means her shit don’t stink, and she doesn’t make any attempt to get along with her fellow doctors.”

  Anger vibrated in me, about to flood my vision with rage. My face overheated, and I realized I’d squeezed my cup so tightly, the lid had popped off. If I hadn’t splashed some of the hot coffee onto my hand, I wouldn’t have noticed, either.

  I took a slow, careful breath as Henderson continued to smear my name. “You should probably be careful around her. She’s one of those prissy broads who think if you’re not kissing her ass, you’re sexually harassing her. One of the patients—a fucking patient—complimented his nurse, and she lit into him like he’d killed a puppy!”