Doctor Daddy for Christmas (Forbidden Daddies #2)

Chapter 1

Russell

If I have to hear “Jingle Bell Rock” one more time tonight, I’m going to prison for the homicide of an entire jazz band.

Or, maybe just for the party planner who apparently could only think of three whole Christmas songs before giving up on the playlist altogether.

To anyone else, this ballroom might be bordering on magical—what’s not to love about a constant flow of bubbles, beautiful women, and too many quirky masquerade-style masks on the faces of a hundred people, all clamoring to offer you their condolences at once?

Of course, my father had to announce his diagnosis here, in front of a whole arena’s worth of our closest colleagues and vague acquaintances. He knew it would fatten the fundraiser’s success, and he’s nothing if not selfless.

Even if that meant Alena, Calvin, and I had to stand here and take it, smiling stiffly through the declaration of something very private to our family.

Something we’d only learned an hour later, when our father pulled us aside and quickly gave us the facts.

Alena and I, his children, and Calvin his nephew, discovering his cancer just shortly before everyone else in the world would.

Terminal. Not long. Should definitely use the situation for good.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I say, clearing my throat and interrupting the woman talking to me. She has her weathered hand on mine, and her face is doused in pity. My head is buzzing, and I can’t hear a single word she just said. “I need the restroom.”

I turn and walk away as the band starts on “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Again. As I leave, I can hear my sister making excuses for me, saying I need space and time to process, and she’s sure they understand.

The only thing to process is how soon my dear father and sister will be leaving Manhattan, going back to Chicago where they belong. It’s not bad having Alena here, but the novelty of my father in the city wore off fast.

When I’m here in the city on my own, I’m able to shirk the weight of Burch as my last name. It’s not that original. But with my father in town, more and more of my colleagues are making the connection to the generations-old Chicago medical dynasty.

I’m so caught up in my head, running the familiar grooves of my father, and the space he occupies in my mind, that I nearly don’t catch the woman who practically barrels straight into me.

In an instant, I’m hit with the sensations of her—the warmth of her body, the press of her chest into mine, the crushed velvet of her dress under my hands.

She smells like pepper and vanilla, something spicy and sweet at once.

Like German sugar cookies in the Christmas village, with the slightest, faintest tinge of pine beneath.

The kind of woman who wears seasonal perfume. Maybe even the kind of woman who enjoys Christmas. The idea is foreign to me.

“Apologies,” I say automatically, even though she’s the one who ran into me.

It’s easy to right her with my hands on her biceps, keeping her from toppling to the side in her heels. For a second, I wonder if she’s drunk, but then she shakes herself, pushing her hair back and raising her head to look at me with a completely sober, sparkling gaze.

Her molten brown eyes meet mine through the ruby red mask on her face, and for a moment, I don’t hear the shitty renditions of Christmas classics droning on in the background.

“No worries,” Ruby Mask says, and she has the kind of low, fuck you voice that travels straight to my cock. I’ve always been a sucker for women with deeper voices, and hers is like an Emma Stone or Kathleen Turner, but warmer, feminine, slightly raspy.

Her hand rests on my arm, and she moves to pull it away but stops herself at the last moment, instead tightening her grip, “Actually, could you do me a favor?”

“What kind of favor?” I don’t mean for it to come out suggestively, but it’s impossible for it not to. Ruby here is not just a voice—she’s also got the body to back it up, in a velvet dress that hugs her curves and practically makes my mouth water.

The antithesis to Margot. Even all these years later, I can’t help but compare every woman I meet to her. For the first time, I realize my ex is the runner-up. The woman in front of me is captivating, and every part of me notices.

I’m aware, distantly, that it’s a little fucked up, how turned on I am just ten minutes after my father’s grand speech about his cancer diagnosis, but I’m just a man. Who can blame me for finding a distraction as good as this one?

Ruby glances over her shoulder, then back at me, and I trace the delicate movement of her swallow, her throat working before her gaze finds mine.

“I’m here to network,” she begins, an admission tinted with shame. Before my father took the stage, this was just a fundraising gala, but now it’s heavier than that. Maybe Ruby feels bad for coming here to shoot her shot.

So, who is she then? Maybe another doctor? A nurse? Staffer? Who would come to a place like this to network if not someone working in health care?

“I really need a new job,” she lowers her voice, steps in closer to me, so I get another wave of that sweet, spiced perfume.

“Started talking to this older guy, and he seems to think I’m interested in…

something else. I tried to make it clear that I absolutely was not, but I think he’s really taken advantage of the free champagne.

I was coming this way to get away from him, but you know how it is.

Maybe if he sees me talking to another guy, if you can pretend to be interested in me for a moment, he might forget about me and move on. ”

A very specific request from a woman I’m starting to think is good at making a plan. I don’t bother mentioning the fact that compared to her, I’m also an older guy.

I step closer to her, so our chests are nearly touching, and dip my chin down near her ear so she can hear when I say, “That would be a problem.”

When she turns her head to look at me, our lips are close, our gazes held in a moment of tension. Palpable.

Since arriving in the city for my surgical residency, I’ve done my fair share of picking up women at bars, taking them home, having a fun time. Things never go far. I’m not exactly the long-term kind of man. Not cut out for family life.

Even with how I’ve played the field—never with someone from work—it’s never felt quite like this. Ruby looks at me in a way that’s too fucking enticing.

Like she’s not at all impressed.

“It would?” she asks, and when she speaks I swear I can feel the ghost of her lips moving against mine. I nod, and the sensation only increases, until she shivers and draws back slightly, a gentle pink flush showing where her velvet dress dips down on her chest.

“Well, I wouldn’t be pretending.”

She opens her mouth, but then an older man in a gray suit and tacky green mask rounds the corner, and she takes my arm, flashing a pointed look at me. I take the cue and steer her away from the refreshments, hovering my hand just over the small of her back, but never touching her.

I see her shiver again as we near the side of the ballroom. I lean against the wall, and she faces me, saying, “That makes one of us, then.”

A laugh barks out of me before I can stop it, and her eyes widen with pleasure, like she wasn’t expecting to make me laugh. When I glance over her shoulder, I can make out the man in the gray suit wandering in lazy circles like a drunken bee, clearly searching for her.

“I’ll watch your guy,” I say, before returning my gaze to her. “And what does that mean? You’re not interested in me?”

Because she seems plenty interested—in the flush that’s now working its way from her chest to her cheeks. In how she leans toward me, how her hand still rests, almost possessively, on my forearm, despite the fact that we’re no longer trying to move through the crowd together.

Over here, we’re pretty isolated from the rest of the room, and I take it as an opportunity to continue drinking her in. The curves are really a fucking death blow—the kind of hips and ass that, when hugged just right by an outfit, can turn heads on the street and end otherwise happy relationships.

I wonder if she understands the power she has.

“Well, hard to be interested when I already know what I need to.”

“Oh, is that so?” I ask, heart picking up cadence in my chest. I’m starting to recognize what this is—a game. And I’ve always been competitive. “What have you deduced about me, Sherlock?”

Ruby stares up at me, her eyes darting back and forth between mine like she can find me in the space between, stare directly into my frontal lobe and read what’s written there. Better than her reading the temporal lobe, I suppose.

“You’re in the medical field,” she says after a moment, and I almost laugh again.

It’s not exactly a reach to assume that—this fundraiser is hosted by an international charity, an organization that builds hospitals in rural and under-served areas.

It’s known for its connection to medical professionals, who often volunteer their time to train staff and doctors in the new emergency rooms and treatment centers.

“Seems like an easy guess.”

“Oh, I’m just warming up.”

“I see.”

Shifting, she moves in closer to me, like she needs the proximity to get a good read. After a moment, she shifts back, clears her throat, and says, “Surgeon. You’ve got the ego for it. And you grew up wealthy, if not just like, completely loaded.”

I school my features to keep her from seeing how right she is, giving her nothing but an amused, indulgent, carefully blank expression.

In all honesty, it feels good to be talking to someone who’s not treating me like my bones are made of glass. It’s clear Ruby here has no idea who I really am, and she has no idea that my father was just on the stage, using his illness as a lever to bring in more money for the charity tonight.

Ruby has no idea how much of a reprieve this is, so I let her go on.

“You expect everyone to like you automatically,” she says, tilting her head. “Because you’re handsome, and you know you are. Not just handsome, but so conventionally attractive.”

She delivers this with the confidence of someone who would claim not to be—even though I know skinny is coming back into fashion, I want to argue with her that a figure like hers will always be something beyond conventionally attractive.

We’re all just mammals in the end, and hips like hers, and ass like that—they speak to a bloodline that could survive famine.

“…but none of this is the real you,” she says, and this is when I feel her voice penetrating a little too far, getting to the meat of me that I’ve done a lot of work to keep carefully guarded.

I shift and try to give her a blank stare, but my mask—both the real one on my face, and the carefully crafted expression—clearly isn’t doing enough work, because she seems to catch onto my discomfort like a predator on the hunt, going on.

“You’re putting on an act,” she says, simply, her eyes sparkling with triumph.

“Hiding something that makes you feel like you’re not enough.

Maybe you’re secretly a nerd with some sort of Star Wars collection, or something?

Or you listen to embarrassing, slightly sexual ASMR to fall asleep at night? ”

These last suggestions are an attempt at levity after striking so close to home, I can tell. But I don’t feel light. I feel like I’m pressing on a loose tooth—aching under the pain, but wanting more of it, all the same.

I step forward, turn us around so she’s the only thing I can see. The guy in the gray suit wandered away a long time ago, and if I wasn’t so wrapped up in Ruby, I might have followed after him to make sure his drunk ass didn’t wander into traffic.

But I am wrapped up in her, and now I have her against the wall, her deep brown hair fanning out where she lets her head drop back against it. This close, I can make out the golden honey highlights glinting, slightly yellow from the candlelight around us.

“Since you know so much about me,” I say, just barely managing to keep my voice from a growl. “I think I should probably know your name.”

“Oh, really?” she laughs, tilting her head. “Tell me yours, first.”

I open my mouth to do just that—all I want is her name, her number, hell, the coordinates to her fucking hotel room—but I snap it shut when I realize revealing my name will only lead to questions about being a Burch.

It will lead to her realizing I’m the son of the poor cancer man up at the front of the ballroom, still fielding well wishes, and this competition will fall away to pity.

And there’s no way I’m letting that happen.

“You first,” I prod, and she laughs, sliding away from me smoothly and walking backward into the fray of the party. Effortless, how she doesn’t trip on her dress, how she snatches a flute of champagne from a passing waiter.

“Not a chance,” she mouths, turning back into the crowd.

I’m already moving to follow her, a bright, churning feeling in my chest. Competitive, coveting, interested and intense.

I’ve felt it at the hospital, going up against other interns for the same surgery.

Fighting for top spot. Taking what I want and proving my worth again and again.

What Ruby doesn’t understand is that most of this shit may be an act, but there is something about my facade that is true. I always get what I want, always earn the spot I occupy.

If she wants a game of cat and mouse, that’s what she’ll get.