‘You’re calling early,’ I say, hitting the button on my navigation menu to answer Jason ‘Cash’ Montoya’s call. It’s not even six-thirty yet. At this hour, he’s usually still wrapped up in his girl, Hadley, unaware the rest of the world exists. Since he fell in love and got married, he tends to stay that way. He’s head over heels for his pregnant wife.
I give him grief about it at every available opportunity, but the truth is…part of me envies the hell out of him. Waking up alone is getting old. But I’ve been married to my job for so long I haven’t ever put much time or attention into looking for a woman to share my life with. I keep putting it off, figuring I’ll get to it one day. Except one day never seems to come.
The simple fact is, there isn’t anyone in Silver Spoon Falls who interests me enough to want to change my life. If she’s in Houston, I haven’t run into her there either. So I keep my life the way it is, unwilling to change it just because everyone gives me shit about being single at my age. I spend most of my time dealing with overwrought parents and critically ill children. What free time I have is spent with my MC brothers, dealing with our pain in the ass prospect, or catching up on sleep. I don’t have time to dive into dating…especially with someone I don’t see myself settling down with.
When I meet the one for me, I’ll know it. Until then, I’m perfectly content single. My dad, world-renowned photographer Sage Grimes, was older than I am now when he met my mom at a photoshoot in New York. He knew right away that she was the one. I grew up watching them fall in love time and time again. My dad kissing on her all the time drove me nuts as a kid. Now that I’m older, I appreciate it a helluva lot more. They’re blissfully in love and don’t care who knows it.
I figure if I can’t have the kind of love they have, I don’t want it at all.
After all, settling isn’t what I do. Neither are half-measures.
There’s a reason I’m one of the best pediatric heart surgeons in the country at thirty-six years old. I go after what I want, and I don’t stop until it’s mine. Cash would call me a stubborn pain in the ass. I prefer driven, motivated. I may have grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth, but my parents’ money didn’t get me where I am today. Did it help? Of course. I know I had opportunities and privilege a lot of others didn’t. But I put myself through medical school. I built my practice from the ground up. I didn’t accept my dad’s money when he offered, or anyone else’s. I wanted to make a name for myself on my own, just like my dad did.
I’m stubborn like that.
‘I’d rather be in bed,’ Cash mutters, ‘but I’ve got shit to do today.’
I smirk at his surly tone, not surprised he’s pissed about it. He owns an investment firm. He’s also the President of the Silver Spoon MC, our MC. Between running his company, running the MC, handling our pain in the ass Prospect, and worrying about his pregnant wife, he has more than his fair share to keep him busy these days. Hadley was in an accident a few weeks ago that really shook him up.
‘Me too,’ I say, rolling to a stop at the light on Broadway. ‘My schedule is packed with patients.’
‘You’re back at work?’
‘I’ve been back,’ I snort. ‘Taking care of shit while you were busy taking care of Hadley was overtime.’
‘I’m not paying you. Consider it payback for you giving us the plague,’ Cash bitches.
‘It was a virus.’ And it was almost three months ago.
‘That you whined about more than anyone.’
‘Whatever,’ I mutter, though he’s not entirely wrong. Doctors make terrible patients. It’s a statistical fact. We’re good at healing other people, not at being sick ourselves. But I’m not admitting that to my best friend. He gives me enough grief as it is. ‘Did you just call to give me more shit?’
‘No. I called to tell you that we’re giving Rulie and Gloria a bonus.’
‘We?’ My brows rise. Rulie Davis, Cash’s PA, is our MC’s equivalent of a graybeard. His old lady, Gloria, keeps the clubhouse in order for us. They’re family to everyone in the MC, but I get the distinct impression that this we Cash speaks of doesn’t include the rest of our brothers.
‘We,’ Cash confirms. ‘As in me and you, motherfucker. I paid for their vacation. You can help pay for the bonus.’
‘Fuck, fine,’ I bitch, though I’m not even mad about it. Rulie and Gloria have been managing both of our lives for long enough…ours and everyone else’s in the MC. If anyone deserves a bonus after putting up with our shit for this long, they do. Especially after that damn virus went through the club. Men make terrible patients. It’s precisely why I work with kids.
‘That was suspiciously easy,’ Cash remarks as if he expected me to put up a fight.
‘They deserve a bonus,’ I say, letting off the brake when the light turns green. I roll through the intersection and then take the next left, headed toward my office next to the hospital downtown. This early, I’m the only one on the road. ‘Especially since they have to watch your big ass trying to feel Hadley up every five minutes whenever she’s at the clubhouse.’
‘Man, fuck you,’ he says, laughing. ‘You’re just jealous the only thing warming your bed is that goddamn ego of yours.’
‘My ego and I sleep just fine. And we don’t have to share the covers.’
‘We both know you’re full of shit,’ he says. ‘But I’m going to let you run with that line while I’m living my best life with my wife, and you’re running through lotion like it’s going out of style, fucker.’
‘I don’t use lotion. I prefer the lube I found in your drawer. Speaking of which, you do know that foreplay isn’t optional for women, right?’ I ask, pulling into the parking lot of my building. A gray Fiat parked in front of the building catches my attention. I’m not sure if it’s broken down or if someone just left it overnight, but the California tags stick out. We don’t see many of those this far outside of Houston. ‘I believe the proper medical term is lick it before you stick it. Do it well enough, and you won’t need the lube.’
‘I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,’ Cash says, laughing. ‘Asshole.’
I grin, circling around to the back of the building. ‘I’ll bring you a check later.’
‘Yeah, later,’ he says and then disconnects.
My chuckle dies when I see that my nurse, Jules, is already here. I’ve told her a thousand times that she doesn’t have to be in until 7:30, but she never listens. She never listens when I tell her to park by the doors if she’s going to insist on coming in this early, either. Jules does what she wants to do, my rules be damned. She’s a spitfire with a heart as big as this state.
I’m not sure if she adopted me or if I adopted her, but somewhere along the way, she became like a sister to me. Like my older sister, Sariah, she loves trying to tell me what to do. Unlike when Sariah does it, I actually pay Jules for her input. She’s a hell of a nurse.
‘You’re late,’ she says as soon as I step through the doors.
‘No, you’re early.’ I narrow my eyes on her. ‘Again.’
‘Nope.’ She smacks me in the chest with a folder, smirking. ‘You have a surgery consult this morning, remember?’
‘What consult?’ I scowl at the folder.
‘The one you told Gage you’d take,’ she reminds me, referring to my best friend from medical school, Gage Bronx.
‘Shit,’ I curse, taking the folder from her. He called me about it a couple of days ago, said the baby has a congenital defect and is too sick to be flown home to California for the surgery. He asked me to take it as a personal favor. The aunt is his wife’s best friend. ‘That’s today?’
‘Yep.’ Jules eyes me critically, her dark gaze scrutinizing my appearance. ‘You might want to do something with your hair. And put on your coat. You look like you just left the gym.’
‘That’s because I just left the gym,’ I mutter, tucking the folder under my arm. ‘I thought I had a few minutes to deal with some notes this morning before I started seeing patients.’
‘No such luck. You need to call your twin after your consult, and then call Sheriff Armstrong.’ Her nose wrinkles. ‘He called you four times yesterday about Brady. I don’t like him, by the way.’
‘No one likes Brady.’ The Prospect has been nothing but a pain in the collective ass of the MC since we agreed to do his brother, the Mayor, a solid. Lesson learned. Next time, we’ll be burning that bridge and saving ourselves the headache.
Unlike a lot of MCs, ours isn’t involved with anything illegal. We expect all our members to be legitimate. No criminal history, no bullshit. Brady failed to disclose his criminal history, which had Dillon Armstrong knocking on our door with an arrest warrant for him a few months ago. Getting it sorted out has been a pain in the ass. Brady is lucky Cash wanted to keep the mayor on his good side or we would have helped Armstrong cuff him.
‘Xavier called?’ My twin brother is supposed to be in Japan, working some big deal for our mom’s company. At least he was two days ago. He went so our father could whisk her off to Europe for a week. Both he and Sariah work for her company. She’ll be handing it over to them soon. She keeps insisting on naming me to the board as well, but I’ll be a silent partner. I have no interest in running the company.
‘Yep. He wants you to call him later. And I wasn’t talking about Brady. I meant Sheriff Armstrong,’ Jules says, rolling her eyes at me. She tosses her head, causing her ponytail to bounce as if to emphasize her annoyance with the Sheriff. ‘He’s bossy.’
‘He’s the Sheriff.’
‘He doesn’t have to be a tyrant about it.’
I arch a brow, amused. ‘He’s the Sheriff. I’m pretty sure that’s in the job description.’
‘Overgrown, bossy, growly…’ Jules mumbles a few other descriptors under her breath before the phone rings, snagging her attention. She snaps out of her diatribe, settling her irritated gaze on me. ‘Go put your doctor clothes on. We have things to do.’
‘You do remember that I’m the one who pays you, right?’ I call after her, and then chuckle when she throws a hand up in the air in response. ‘Guess she’s not a fan of Dillon Armstrong,’ I mutter to myself.
Huh. I wonder what he said to ruffle her feathers this morning? He’s not a bad guy. In fact, he’s one of the most levelheaded men I know. If he’s in a mood bad enough to rile Jules, I’m guessing whatever Brady did isn’t something I want to deal with today.
I shrug it off, deciding someone else can handle Brady for the day, and head toward my office to change and look over the new patient’s file before her aunt arrives. Gage didn’t have a lot of details when he called. All I really know is that the baby is young and has a congenital heart defect. Her aunt is her legal guardian, which is a recent development.
I toss the file toward my desk, reaching to pull my t-shirt off over my head. Then and only then do I realize there’s a woman curled up on the sofa across from my desk, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. She’s passed out, her plump lips softly parted.
I freeze with my arms halfway over my head, staring in shock.
She’s…Jesus. I drop my arms back to my sides and blink, trying to process the chaos currently coursing through me. A landslide roars through me, toppling entire sections of my soul in its wake. My heart pounds a frenetic, dizzying rhythm, the throb of my cock beating in syncopation. There’s something about her…something so familiar and yet I’d stake my life on the fact that I’ve never met her before in my life.
She’s tiny, curled up into a little ball on the sofa as if to make herself as small as possible. Even that doesn’t hide the lush curves of her body from my gaze. The swells of her breasts rising and falling with each deep breath she takes, the generous flare of her hips…the thickness of her thighs. She can’t be any older than twenty-two or twenty-three, but she has the ripe, luscious body of a woman a decade older.
Her hair is a strange mix of deep browns and black, the kind women pay a fortune for at the salon. But I don’t think hers came from a box or a colorist. It fits her too well. Everything about her fits her too well, from her beautiful body to her sun-kissed skin to her adorable pout. Dark brows crinkle in her sleep before smoothing again. Her round cheeks are pink, as if she’s dreaming things she shouldn’t be. It makes me curious as hell to know what’s going on behind those closed eyes. Her eyes…. What color are they? Brown? Green? Blue? The fact that I don’t already know bothers me.
I watch her for a long moment, my feet rooted in place.
She’s a masterpiece. Every little part of her is utter perfection, as if it were handcrafted specifically to check every one of my boxes. And my dick has never been this hard in my life.
I feel like an asshole for staring at her, thinking filthy thoughts about her…yet the civilized part of my brain short circuited, leaving some primal, predatory part in charge. That part… Christ, that part likes every filthy thought currently running through my head. This angel on her knees with my dick between her lips. Her bent over my desk with that long hair wrapped around my fist… Those pouty lips crying out my name while I pump into her from behind.
Tate. Tate. Oh god, harder please.
Ah, hell.
I turn on my heel and flee the room like the hounds of hell are nipping at my heels.
‘There’s a woman in my office,’ I growl as soon as I find Jules at her desk.
She lifts her gaze from her computer screen, staring at me levelly.
‘Why is there a woman in my office?’
‘We already had this conversation, Tate,’ she says, looking at me like I’m crazy.
‘We most definitely did not fucking talk about the woman sleeping in my office,’ I growl, glaring at her. ‘I think I’d remember that.’
‘Aww, she’s sleeping?’
‘Jules!’
‘Tate!’
I pinch the bridge of my nose. ‘Why is there a woman sleeping in my office?’
‘Uh, because she’s tired?’ Jules gives me another look that says she’s questioning my intelligence. ‘It’s not even seven and she drove in from Houston to meet you this morning. She’s probably exhausted, poor thing. I think she’s been sleeping in the waiting room at the hospital.’
She’s been sleeping in a waiting room? Why is my blood pressure rising at the thought of her sleeping in the waiting room?
‘She drove here from Houston this morning?’
Jules nods.
Fucking hell. She is exhausted.
‘You could have warned me she was in my office,’ I mutter without heat.
‘I told you that you had a consult.’
‘I thought you meant later.’
‘Did I say you had a consult later? No. I said you were late.’
‘Shit.’
‘You’re cursing an awful lot this morning.’
I huff out a curse and then turn a sharp glare on Jules before she can comment on it. She holds up her hands in a gesture of surrender, pressing her lips together in a tight line as if to indicate she’s not going to say a word. I’m almost positive she’s only doing it to keep from laughing at me, but I let that slide.
I need to go wake Sleeping Beauty. Jules can give me shit about my language later. Preferably after I process how absolutely fucked I am. Because the woman sleeping in my office? I’m pretty sure interest doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel about her right now. Judging by the voice currently roaring mine like a demon, interest doesn’t cover it by half.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Her name is Samara Lansing,’ Jules says.
Samara Lansing. It suits her. The first name, anyway.
We’ll work on changing the last name to mine after I save her niece.
