Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) (9 page)

“We have to figure this out,” I whispered as I cupped her sweet face with my hand. “We can’t have this both ways.”

“Why not?” she said. “You’re the best neurosurgeon in the city. I don’t want anyone else. I waited a month to get into you.”

I smiled. “I’ll find someone to do the surgery, okay?”

“So I’m having surgery,” she said. “For sure.”

I nodded. “As your doctor at the present moment, I’m going to recommend it. But we’ll have to discuss it tomorrow, when you come see me.”

She pressed her face against my chest, closing her eyes and breathing me in. “Just fix me, okay?”

“I will. I promise.”

SOPHIE

“I have to leave around three today for an appointment,” I said to Mia Tuesday morning as I hung my coat on the back of her office door.

She scrunched her face in worry. “Didn’t you just go yesterday?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, biting my lip and trying to stifle a smile. “So, you know Jamison?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s kind of a doctor.”

“What do you mean, ‘kind of a doctor?’ ”

“You know that specialist I’d been waiting a month to get into? Dr. Garner? That’s… him.”

Mia stood up from her desk, throwing her pencil down as her jaw hung half-open. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

The front door chimed, interrupting our little talk.

“I’ll get it,” I offered, jetting up to the front of the store and returning ten minutes later.

“So, what now?” Mia asked as she tied a paint-stained apron around her waist. “Are you still going to see him? Doctors can’t date their own patients, right?”

“We’re still trying to figure things out,” I said. “We were both kind of in shock yesterday. He pretended like he didn’t even know me.”

“Understandable. I mean, can you imagine what would happen if someone found out? All that schooling, his life’s work. It could be destroyed in an instant if something happened between you two.”

“What would happen?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he pisses you off and you run to his boss and say he touched you inappropriately, or—”

“Mia.” I crossed my arms. “You watch way too much T.V. I’m not like that. You know that.”

She drew in a long breath. “I’m just saying I don’t want to see you get hurt. He has to protect his career. He might decide he can’t see you anymore. You just need to be prepared.”

I tucked my head down. “He did say we couldn’t have it both ways.”

“See?” Mia breezed past me to straighten up the paintbrushes on the shelf. “That was bugging me.”

I stood back, watching her sort the brushes. She’d been all about cleaning and organizing lately, and I suspected it had to do with me, providing a distraction from the reality of my situation. We’d known each other since college, and we’d always been each other’s rocks. The interdependent, symbiotic relationship we had wasn’t just a way of life, it was a way of survival.

“Let me ask you this.” Mia turned to me. “Would you rather date him and have a different doctor? Or would you rather have him as your doctor and not date him?”

I’d lain awake in bed the night before asking myself that exact same question. The easiest thing to do would be to cut our losses and go our separate ways. But I knew myself. I knew the butterflies would kick in every time I saw him, and I’d have to contain my excitement every time I’d go to the hospital for an appointment. I’d have to pretend I wasn’t still wildly attracted to him. I’d have to forget what it felt like having him between my thighs in the middle of the night. I’d have to forget what he tasted like or how soft his hair was through my fingers and the way he made me forget my name in his presence.

But if I stayed with him and found another doctor, they wouldn’t be half as good as he was. After my appointment yesterday, I ran home and Googled him. Prolific and renowned didn’t even begin to describe him. He had graduated at the top of his med school class at Johns Hopkins, studied under countless, prominent neurosurgeons in the country, and had a patented, innovative brain surgery technique with a name I could hardly begin to pronounce. In the city of Manhattan, Dr. Jamison Garner was
the
top neurosurgeon. No question.

“I don’t know, Mia,” I sighed, not wanting to think about it but knowing I had no choice. I had to decide. He had to decide, too. “I don’t want him to risk his career for me. I can’t ask him to do that.”

My life was a sea of chaos at times, and Jamison was quickly becoming the rock that stood firm as the raging waters passed around him. He was my distraction. He was my calm. I couldn’t just go out and get another Jamison.

“I’m going to take inventory,” I announced, heading to the back room.

“Oh, Sophie, I was going to ask you.” Mia placed a finger cheekily in the corner of her mouth. “Can you work late tonight? I sort of have a date.”

“You have a date?” My jaw nearly fell clean off. Mia talked to guys, but she never, ever dated. That word was hardly in her vocabulary. She’d been hurt badly by her college boyfriend, and ever since we moved to the city, she only ever did hook ups. She might see a guy a second or third time, but three was her max. She called it pseudo-dating, and non-committal was her middle name. “With whom?”

“This guy I met at New Year’s after you and Doctor Feelgood left me,” she said with a grin, blowing wisps of blonde hair from her blue eyes. “His name’s Evan. That’s all I’m going to tell you about him, because I don’t want to jinx anything.”

“Yes, I’ll work late for you,” I said with a tease in my tone.

***

I hustled to my appointment, my heart racing in my chest at the thought of seeing him again. The second I checked in, I took a seat, never taking my eyes off the door. Every time it opened, I tried to peek back for a glimpse of him, holding my breath each time.

“Sophie?” a raven-haired nurse called moments later. She clutched my file to her chest and offered me a reserved smile as she escorted me back to the exam room. “Dr. Garner will be in shortly. He just came out of surgery.”

“Oh?”

“He squeezed you in between two surgeries today,” she said. “You’re very lucky. He normally doesn’t take appointments on Tuesdays or Thursdays.”

She slipped out of the tiny exam room, leaving me perched on the table with nothing but the ticking of the clock on the wall and a myriad of pharmaceutical swag filling every square inch of that place. The chart on the back of the door. The clipboards. The pen cup. The soap. The tissue holder. Everything around me was emblazoned with brightly-colored logos and medicinal names I couldn’t pronounce if I tried.

A light rapping on the door followed by a slow-motion turn of the handle ushered in the man of the hour, causing my heart to fall ten feet in a matter of two seconds. His ice blue eyes greeted me first, followed by a knowing smile. It was just us in that room.

“Hi,” I said coyly. I wanted to throw my arms around him and smother his full lips in kisses, but I knew I couldn’t. I also knew I shouldn’t even though his hot body was covered in green surgical scrubs and a white coat and I wanted to jump his bones right then and there. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in those before.”

“Surgery day,” he said. “I wear these on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

I drank him in from head to toe, and then I did it again. He was damn sexy before I knew he was a doctor, but this just added a whole new layer of hotness.

“Sophie,” he said, studying my face and ignoring the electric charge in the air. He wanted to do the same thing. I could tell. And he fought it like hell.

He walked over to the light box on the wall and clipped in my imaging results. “I’ve gone over your file. I’m going to recommend the coiling procedure. I don’t think we need to dive into surgery right away. You’re a prime candidate, given the location of the aneurysm, and it’s less invasive.”

“So, it’s not surgery?”

He shook his head. “It’s an inpatient procedure and you’ll be anesthetized, but no, it’s not surgery.”

“Can you perform it?” I asked, knowing full well the answer would be “no.”

He lowered his eyes before drawing them up to meet mine again. He shook his head. “We already went over this. I’m sorry. I can’t. Not if we’re…”

“Can’t I sign a waiver, or something?”

He shook his head. “Even if you could, it goes against my personal code of conduct. I would never perform a procedure on someone I was involved with. You’d be hard-pressed to find a doctor who would.”

“What if we ended this?” I proposed, hating the taste of the words that came out of my mouth and hoping to God he wouldn’t let me go that easily.

“You really mean that?” he asked, eyes hooded and forehead wrinkled. “Is that what you want, Sophie?”

“No,” I said, voice low and unable to look at him.

He charged toward me, though slowly, and lifted my chin up with one steady hand. “You have to trust me. I’m working on lining up another doctor for you.”

“You are?”

He nodded, lips tight, as I got lost in his hypnotic gaze for a moment. “I’ve placed a call, and I’m willing to fly in one of the best neurosurgeons in the country.”

“You’d do that for me?”

He looked back toward the door then turned to face me again. “I gave you my word, Sophie. I’m going to fix you.”

In the quiet, small space it was just the two of us, and I took comfort in knowing he was fighting this battle just as much as I was. His free hand cupped the other side of my face as he leaned down and pressed his soft lips into mine. His scent filled my lungs and the space around us, a mix of expensive aftershave, bar soap, and determination.

He released me from his kiss and glanced down at his watch. “I have to go scrub in.”

My shoulders sank. I couldn’t hide my disappointment. I knew he had a job to do. I slid off the exam table and gathered my things.

“Can I see you tonight?” he asked, hand on the door.

“Working late.”

“How late is late?”

“Ten.”

He gave me a nod, feet locked in place for a second, and then left the room.

***

Mia was a ball of nerves the second I returned. In my absence, she’d managed to slip into a pair of black leather leggings, an ethereal pink blouse, and short leather booties. Her wild blonde hair was smoothed and flat, mirroring every light source in the room. I could practically see my reflection in it. Her flawless tan cheeks were kissed with a hint of pink and her lashes were curled and coated with several coats of mascara.

“You did all this while I was gone?” I asked, looking her up and down.

She nodded. “Yep, in the bathroom.”

“You’re really going all-out.”

She rolled her blue eyes. “Stop.”

“Must really like this guy.”

“Sophie,” she groaned. “Enough. Get to work. I’m not paying you to gawk at me.”

She pulled her coat on and threw her bag over shoulder, and I pretended not to notice when I saw her checking out her reflection in the mirror in the hallway.

“Have fun, sweet cheeks!” I called as she hightailed it out of there.

I hated being in the shop alone, especially at night. We had our five o’clock rush when people would stop in after work and grab things on their way home, but after seven, things were dead. Quiet. Time stood still.

By nine-thirty, I hadn’t had a single customer in over half an hour. The sun had long gone home for the night, and I was itching to get out of there. Grabbing a piece of scrap paper from the back and a charcoal pencil, I began to sketch the one thing that had been burning a hole in my mind all afternoon, flooding my every thought: Jamison.

I sketched and shaded every inch of him from memory: his hooded blue eyes so pale I could practically see through them; his perfectly straight, Grecian God nose; the natural highlights of his sandy brown hair; the cupid’s bow of his full upper lip; the meticulously groomed scruff on his cheeks.

When I was finished, I held it out, and it was as if he’d come to life right there on the paper. I smiled, but the second the door chimed and a wind gust blew in a tall drink of water in a long black coat, I flipped the paper over.