“You’re the one from a town called Licking Thicket,” I called after him. “I only work here.”
He waved his hand as if to dismiss me. “For now,” he replied archly before disappearing down the hall. “Focus on the job, Riggsy. Don’t let me down.”
I wanted to scream. He knew how much I sacrificed for this job. How devoted to it I was. How much sleep and sweat and blood I’d happily given up for it.
A slow clap came from the chair behind the receptionist’s desk. I turned to see our resident hacker, Jasper Huxley, sitting there.
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
“Been sitting here the whole time. I even thought about DoorDashing some popcorn at one point. The tension was A plus. You two should fuck.”
I gagged. “No, thanks. It would be like fucking one of my brothers.”
Hux stared after our boss and former commanding officer. “Agreed. He’s hot as hell, though. Shame.”
I pictured Champ’s perfect looks. I had to admit the blond-hair, blue-eyes combo really did it for me. What a waste. “Anyway, the man doesn’t date or even hook up. I don’t think he’s had sex since 1942.”
“He’s only thirty-seven years old. I think he hooks up, he probably just keeps it on the down low.”
I shook my head, repeating Champ’s own words from earlier. “Don’t care. Right now, all I care about is getting reinstated on the AIP. Got any ideas? Surely he’s not going to punish me as severely as he made it sound.”
Hux went back to clicking away on his laptop. “You fucked up pretty good. He’s mad.”
Thanks for stating the obvious.
“Any ideas for me to unfuck it?” I asked again.
Hux looked up and me and pursed his lips as if considering it.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Go to that gala. Be professional. And then go to the jungle and bodyguard the shit out of that doctor dude.”
I pressed my fingers into my forehead and took a deep, cleansing breath. Hux was right.
I needed to bodyguard the shit out of that doctor dude. And I was sure as hell not going to get close to the guy.
2
Carter
I leaned an elbow on the makeshift bar and stared across the grand ballroom of the stately old mansion my grandfather and his party-planning minions had managed to find on the outskirts of Licking Thicket. Finding a place like this was a miracle in and of itself since the town of Licking Thicket was more about milking parlors and ridiculous-but-unavoidable double entendres than ballrooms, but I wasn’t focused on the house right now. I stared at the seriously hot couple in the center of the dance floor.
The taller of the two guys wore a dark suit and a big, besotted smile—the kind of smile you’d expect to find on an earnest farmer who kept a pet pig and let her sleep in his dining room yet had somehow managed to land himself a highly intelligent, highly adorable doctor for a husband, which was another kind of miracle.
The smaller man wrapped his arms tightly around his husband’s waist and grinned a mischievous, loving little grin in return—a grin that said he knew the man he’d chosen was never going to help him solve a crossword clue, but that it didn’t matter in the slightest because his sweet hubby’s enormous heart more than made up for his lack of vocabulary.
It was fucking gross.
“Hit me again, barkeep.” I tapped my glass on the bar top.
Alana Jackson raised an eyebrow but dutifully poured me another drink. “Everything okay there, Doc Rogers?”
“Oh, dandy.” But I couldn’t help looking back at the dance floor and pursing my lips. “Just look at those two, would you? Don’t they realize this is a public place? I don’t have a problem if they choose to live their lives that way, but do they have to shove it in our faces?”
“You mean… Dunn and Tucker?” She blinked in shock. “But… I thought Tuck was your friend. Y’all went to medical school together.”
“He is my friend. Closest one I’ve got.”
“And your ex-boyfriend.”
“That too,” I agreed, slamming back my drink.
We’d actually dated for quite some time a few years back, and our relationship had gone swimmingly. We’d never fought. We’d had the same friends and interests. We’d enjoyed the same wine and worked at the same hospital. We’d been two peas in a pod, and being with him had been as instinctive and effortless as breathing… right up to the day Tucker informed me that I wasn’t really in love with him and, in fact, he didn’t think I’d ever be the settling-down type.
I’d then gone and proven him right about the settling down by leaving on a medical aid trip to Eswatini. Or had that been the trip to Burundi? The fact that I couldn’t remember exactly when we’d broken up suggested Tuck had been right about the not-really-in-love part, too.
“And I thought you and Dunn were friends now, also.”
I twirled the ice in my glass. “Eh. More or less.” Today it was less.
“So… how can you have a problem with them being gay?”
“Good grief, Alana.” I scowled. “I don’t care that they’re gay, I care that they’re all lovey-dovey while some of us are excessively single.”
“Ohhhh, gotcha!”
Not that I wanted a boyfriend or a commitment at all. Just that after months spent dating nearly every available man in the neighborhood and not finding any that suited me, it was starting to feel less like I was single by choice and more like I was single by necessity. This felt exponentially less fun.
It also felt like maybe Tucker had been right about the not-the-settling-down-type business too, damn it.
A guy two stools down from me made a noise that sounded like a choking cough, and I darted a sharp glance in his direction, but he twisted his body away from me, so all I got was a view of his shoulder.
It was a really nice shoulder. Muscular and well-proportioned. Encased in a dark gray suit jacket that fit like a second skin. Attached to a man with a tall, muscly frame and overlong dark hair and—
Jesus Christ. I really needed to make more effort at the whole dating thing if I was about to write a fucking sonnet to a stranger’s scapula. Maybe expand my search radius.
I forced myself to face forward again.
“One more time, please, Alana.” I tapped the rim of my glass expectantly.
“Three? You sure?”
Alana bartended at the Thicket Tavern, and as such, she knew what her patrons could tolerate. But this wasn’t just any night; this was a celebration.
My grandfather had just endowed a new Rogers family wing at Licking-Nuthatch Hospital, which was going to help the people of this community for generations to come. He’d also set up a fundraising gala for it, which was lovely, even if he had chosen to hold it in this over-the-top redbrick monstrosity. Having grown up in Grandfather’s Belle Meade mansion, I was no stranger to big houses, but who needed a house so big it had wings shooting off the central building like spokes on a bicycle tire, and a butler who greeted you at the door to direct you to the Northwest Wing so you didn’t get lost?
Still, I couldn’t get upset about it because this was my last night in the country for a whole month. In twenty-four short hours, I’d be far from Tennessee and the small cardiology practice I’d taken on here. I’d be in the jungles of Venezuela working for Doctors Across Continents again for the first time in a couple of years. It was exactly the change I needed to get my life back on track.