Epilogue
THEO
I pulled the collar on my jacket up higher around my neck against the fierce wind. This cold weather fucking sucked. If Mav didn’t come to the door in the next thirty seconds, I was breaking a window.
Fortunately, he only took ten.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, eyeing me with surprise. I didn’t show up anywhere unexpected, let alone my brother’s place during a rogue snowstorm.
Scout, his trusty mutt sidekick, circled around my legs with too much exuberance for a dog who loved to sleep twenty hours a day.
I pushed past Mav into the warm house, Scout following. “Fucking weather.”
The frigid wind was thankfully cut off as he shut the door.
I rubbed my hands together. “It was barely snowing when the plane landed. There’s got to be four inches now.”
“This is Montana,” he replied as I toed off my shoes.
“It’s October,” I countered. Denver, where I lived, had snow as early as September, but none had fallen yet. Not that I would have known because I barely left the hospital. I had an apartment that I hardly slept in.
“This is Montana,” he repeated.
I wiped a hand over my hair, brushing soggy snow to the wood floor.
“Theo!” Bridget said, surprise in her voice as she came around the corner from the kitchen. “I thought you were the pizza guy.”
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she added.
Mav crossed his arms over his massive chest and raised a dark brow because he was wondering the same thing.
“Last minute decision.”
“Want a beer or a–”
“Beer,” I said.
Bridget turned on her thick, fleece socks and I followed her into the kitchen.
She already had a beer from the fridge and held out before I caught up.
“Thanks.” I twisted off the top and took a deep swig. Fuck, that was good.
“I like the beard.” She reached out and tapped my chin. “New look for you.”
I sighed. Like the snow, the day melted away as I stood here.
Mav came in, leaned a hip against the counter.
“I thought you were at some medical conference in Phoenix,” he said, after taking his usual time studying me. As if he could tell what all my problems were from my black dress pants, button up shirt and cashmere overcoat.
“I was. The weather was a hell of a lot better,” I grumbled. I set the bottle down and shrugged out of my coat.
“Then why didn’t you stay there? If you want a break, the desert must be amazing,” Bridget said, her voice laced with the wistfulness of someone who lived in the fucking Tundra.
Mav cocked his head and eyed her. “You want to go to Arizona, baby?”
I wanted to roll my eyes at him, but held back.
I was in his house and I had no interest in being shoved back out in the cold.
Over the summer, he’d handed his man card to Bridget when he fell for her in a week.
A week! Dex soon followed with Bridget’s sister, Lindy, although they took a little longer.
Thankfully, there weren’t any more Beckett women so my balls were safe.
Except whenever I thought of a slightly crazy, extremely over the top woman, it wasn’t Bridget or Lindy.
It was Mallory, Bridget’s best friend. The little spitfire who must drink pixie dust and sarcasm in her morning coffee.
Who had the prettiest skin, the perfect curves and the sweetest ass in the time zone.
“Theo?”
I blinked at Bridget, breaking my thoughts away from the sexy, petite woman who made my dick hard just thinking about her.
“Sorry. Long day.” I shifted, blocking my latest Mallory-induced erection with the counter.
“Right.” She dragged out the word, looking at me with concerned eyes.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Bridget said.
Mav only shook his head and went for the door.
She was the one with the eyeroll and the sigh. “He doesn’t like me answering the door to strangers.”
I frowned. She wasn’t six and this was Hunter Valley.
“Protective, much?” I asked.
She laughed. “Very.”
“Why don’t you tell him to fuck off?”
“Because he’s not being a dick. He’s watching out for me and… well, I love it.”
She ducked her chin and flushed. Ah, love.
Mav returned with two pizza boxes–Scout on his heels with his nose in the air–and slid them onto the center island. The top one was dusted with snowflakes that quickly melted.
Bridget turned to get plates.
“You’re not at a conference and not at the hospital. What’s up?” Mav asked, flipping the top lid up. Steam rose and I took in the veggies and melted cheese. He pushed the box to the side and opened the other. From what I could tell, this pizza had everything on it.
Perfect. My stomach growled. While the James Corp jet usually had whatever food we wanted, I hadn’t given them much notice for my flight. Hell, I hadn’t even known I was going to bail on the conference until lunchtime.
The crew had enough time to log a flight plan–Phoenix to Hunter Valley–and we were off. Without more than canned nuts.
Bridget handed me a plate and I held it out for Mav to give me a big slice.
I dropped my coat, went to a stool and parked on it, wolfing down the pizza as I watched my brother and his women move around the kitchen, getting drinks for themselves and napkins, then settle down to eat as well.
I reached for a second slice, put it away as quickly as the first, then finished off my beer.
“The one thing I like about you is that you don’t talk just to fill the air,” Mav said.
He’d made his way through one slice and was reaching for another.
He glanced at Bridget’s plate and she shook her head.
“But when your grumpy ass shows up on our doorstep in a snowstorm without warning, you need to share.”
Before I could open my mouth, he added, “Please say you aren’t marrying that crazy foot doctor.”
I winced. “Fuck no. I don’t like cheaters. Or women with the personality of a cadaver.”
“Then why the hell did you stick your dick in her in the first place?”
I glared at him and didn’t respond. I’d walked away from Maude–easily and without a backward glance–when I found her foot fucking another doctor in the break room.
Yeah, that happened.
Bridget flickered her gaze at Mav, then my way. “Are you okay?”
“I quit.”
They stared at me blankly.
“Smoking?” Mav finally asked.
I winced. “Fuck that shit. No. The hospital.”
Now they blinked in unison.
“You quit the hospital,” Bridget said. “Um…congratulations.” She gave her support but the end was more of a question than exuberance.
Mav didn’t look happy. He looked… perplexed.
“You can just quit? Don’t you have a fellowship or residency or something?”
“Finished residency and the fellowship, fucker. You’re not the only one who’s old.” I was only a year younger than Mav.
“So you’re an unemployed, overeducated trauma surgeon who no longer fucks cadaver women,” Mav said, getting his head around it.
I shut my eyes, ran a hand over my face. Bridget laughed.
“Jesus. Don’t say shit like that out loud. I’ll be arrested or lose my license or something.”
“One look at Maude and you’d be cleared,” Mav grumbled and took a pull of his beer. He’d met her at some charity function last spring and didn’t like her from the get go. Neither had Silas or Dex.
“So…unemployed. Good thing you’re a billionaire,” he added dryly.
Bridget laughed. “You can come work with me at the high school. They’re always looking for substitute teachers.”
She’d been working as a long-term sub herself as a Physics teacher at Hunter Valley high school. From what Mav had told me, she loved it.
I had no idea what the salary of a substitute teacher was, but it wasn’t billions.
It seemed Bridget didn’t care about Mav’s money, or she was too smart to sit around and do nothing.
Or both. We were alike in that way. I couldn’t sit on my ass.
I’d lose my shit if I was bored enough for my brain to start telling me things. Things I really didn’t want to hear.
Like quitting and taking a small town doctor job. I wasn’t sure if this was the dumbest or smartest thing I ever did.
Time would tell.
But high schoolers? Fuck no.
I gave her a look and pointed at my face. “Do I look like the kind of person who likes kids?”
She pursed her lips, pushed her glasses up. “No.”
I didn’t like them. Didn’t know how to talk to them. Deal with them. No way could I be trusted with making them smart citizens or whatever was required for them to graduate.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “You’re not giving up medicine, right?”
I’d gone to school for pretty much fifteen years. Worked eighty or more hours a week. I had a closet full of clothes but spent all my time in scrubs. No way in hell was I giving up medicine. Besides, in that same amount of time, I’d had zero life.
Zero. Proof–or maybe the last straw–was that I’d dated Dr. Maude Fleisher. Podiatrist. Foot fetishist. Per Mav, a woman as cold as a cadaver.
Fuck my life. That’s what I said to myself in Phoenix, having a midlife epiphany.
Bradley, Mav’s overly skilled PA, had called with a job he’d thought I might be interested in.
I wasn’t sure why he thought I would be.
Maybe he was also a fortune teller. Read tarot.
Licensed psychologist on the side. Whatever.
For some reason, he’d found me a fucking job.
And, standing in the middle of a high-end hotel’s lunch buffet without thinking twice, I accepted.
“A doctor here in Hunter Valley is retiring and looking for a replacement for her small practice. I start next week.”