Chapter 6
I wasn’t sure what was worse, the hangover wreaking havoc on my stomach and head, or waking up to an email with the hospital’s latest policy changes.
A policy change that felt a little too directed at me to be a coincidence.
Starting from immediate effect, all medical staff at Pinevale Hospital were no longer allowed to exceed a fifty-hour working week.
Fifty hours!
Zara had clearly lost her goddamn mind.
Fifty hours was nothing in the scheme of medicine; it was barely enough time to get paperwork done, never mind seeing patients.
The last time I worked such short hours was at my last hospital, Summer Springs Clinic, back when I was living with my eldest brother, Frederic.
Much like Zara, the head of my last hospital brought in a limit on working hours due to the increasing number of dangerous errors and patient deaths.
My previous boss believed it was down to overworked medical staff and nothing to do with the fact that the hospital was severely underfunded and in desperate need of up-to-date technology.
I understood why Zara was implementing the changes, but it didn’t mean I liked it.
Especially considering the last time my hours were restricted resulted in me spending all my free time in casinos and pushing me down a path of debt and self-ruin.
Only for a panicked call to Adam in the middle of the night, which resulted in me upending and moving my entire life to New York within twenty-four hours, against Frederic’s demands that I stay, I doubted I’d have found a way out of the grave I’d dug for myself.
It was impossible for me to lay the entire blame for what happened back in Ontario on Summer Springs Clinic.
After all, it wasn’t the hospital that forced me to empty the trust fund Frederic set up for me into the hands of the casino owners; not being able to distract myself with work definitely didn’t help.
My Grand-mère used to say ‘the devil finds work for idle hands’. Turned out she was right. If I wasn’t busy, if I wasn’t distracted, my vices found a way of dictating me.
Scrolling through the rest of the email, I resisted chucking my phone at the closest wall. The fact that I’d already exceeded fifty hours over the last five days meant I was now benched from work for the rest of the week.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
What in the goddamn hell was I supposed to do with myself now?
Closing the email, I ignored the notifications that Frederic had left me another voicemail.
Cheap vodka infused bile stung my nostrils as a wave of nausea rolled through me.
Seven months since I moved out of my brother’s house without warning and left the country. Trust me, if five years ago someone had told me I would be living in the same house as my eldest brother, I’d have laughed in their face.
We Dade brothers didn’t exactly have the best relationship.
Our childhoods were warped by the sudden passing of our mother, and the fact our father was unable to hold it together long enough to act like a parent without the crutch of vodka meant we had anything but a normal upbringing.
I learned quickly that the best way to survive my childhood was to become independent, to rely on no one except for myself.
I taught myself to tie my own shoelaces and ride a bike. I learned that it was easier to stay silent during my brothers’ fights than get involved. I decided not to follow Jaxon and Frederic into the family diamond business and instead read countless books on becoming a doctor.
In my own isolating independence, I discovered my own addictive personality, and without anyone paying too much attention, I learned how to feed into the compulsions in whatever way I could.
However, as time ticked by and we grew up, our relationships were starting to heal. Most surprisingly was my relationship with my emotionally stunted and colder than the arctic brother, Frederic.
He had found love and happiness with his fiancée, Orla, and daughter, Penelope, and had become a completely different person over the last two years.
By fuck, as much as I missed my brother, I missed my niece even more.
Moving away from Frederic meant leaving her, too. Penelope had gone through so much over the last two years, with her own mother practically abandoning her after losing the custody battle with Frederic.
I hated myself for disappearing on her the way I did. She had gone to school that morning and when she came home, I was gone. I left without saying goodbye or hugging her one last time.
But I couldn’t stay in that house any longer.
I couldn’t continue to look my brother in the eye knowing that I had pissed away every cent, every dime, that he had put into my trust fund.
Frederic, though not emotionally, had done more for my brothers and me growing up than our actual father.
The second his and Jaxon’s company, Dade Diamonds? started turning a profit, he not only paid for mine and Olivier’s education but also opened sizable trust funds for us both.
Money to build a life with.
Money to never see us grow up the way we did after our mother died.
Money to keep us safe and secure.
Money that I burned into a pile of nothing with each loss at the casino.
Not only had I failed myself, but I had let down my big brother.
I couldn’t tell him the truth, not when I still had a chance to make it right and fix my mistake before anyone noticed.
A couple months of work, including the sizable end-of-year and sign-on bonus that Pinevale Hospital rewarded its Attendings with, I’d be a quarter of the way to replacing every single dime I wasted away.
But none of that was possible if Zara continued to treat me like a liability.
One way or another, I needed to make her see that I was the right person for the job, because honestly, without the money, I wasn’t just running out of options.
I was pretty certain I was running out of time, too.
Running while hungover was not my smartest move.
However, sitting alone in my bare-walled apartment with only my inner voices to keep me company was a worse idea.
With no work to distract me, and my anti-anxiety medication in desperate need of a refill, I thought it was in my best interest to go for a run.
Better than doing what I actually wanted to do, I submitted myself to running around Central Park until my lungs hurt.
After the first hour and once vodka was no longer seeping out of my pores, I started to feel slightly better.
The sun basked its mid-spring heat down on the back of my neck. Sweat soaked through my T-shirt and down my forehead, my playlist playing at full volume, and for those couple hours that I pushed myself to run in endless circles, I tried to formulate a plan to get Zara to trust me.
Except every plan I made was a pile of steaming shit.
Getting down on my hands and goddamn knees to beg her was starting to become a serious option.
I was so fucked.
Too lost in my own head, I nearly missed the familiar brunette sitting on the grass, waving at me.
In the hospital, I thought she was beautiful. Outside the hospital? This woman was beyond any words in the human vocabulary.
Dressed in a figure-hugging black pencil skirt and white blouse that showcased her heart-stopping full curves, her long curls were bundled up in a bun with a couple strands escaping, and her lips were painted the most divine shade of red.
The type of shade that spiked my pulse and sent my mind wandering down a path that it had no right to be on.
I tried not to stand gawking at her.
Pulling my earphones out, I stepped toward her. “Hi there.”
Livi greeted me with a grin. “Dr. D, I was hoping that was you and I wasn’t waving like a creep at some stranger.”
“Are you really sticking with that nickname?”
“Until I can think of a better one, I am afraid you are stuck with it for now.”
I didn’t fight back my chuckle. “If you could think of something that doesn’t make me sound like a character from a 90’s VHS porno, I’d appreciate it.”
“No promises,” she smirked playfully. “It’s weird seeing you not wearing scrubs. It’s like seeing a teacher outside school, or I don’t know, a monkey pole dancing.”
“A pole dancing monkey?” I cocked a brow. “Of all the analogies in the world, you go with a monkey who can pole dance?”
She tipped her head back and laughed. From this angle, it gave me the perfect view of her bare neck and the thin golden chain bouncing against her vibrating throat.
Her laughter captivated me, rooting me to the spot and rendering me unable to do anything but bask in her.
No woman had ever had such an instant, unnerving, yet not unwelcoming, effect on me.
Grabbing the hem of my T-shirt, I pulled it up to wipe the sweat from dripping from my brow and the flecks sticking to the inside of my glasses. As I let go of my T-shirt, I noticed Livi watching my every move.
Her deep hues tracked my skin beneath my shirt before it fell back into place. Her teeth skimmed her painted bottom lip, awakening a sensation within me that was too close to lust to be considered anything else.
Pink stained her cheeks as I caught her gaze. I bit back my smirk as she pretended to be busy picking pieces of grass from her skirt.
She cleared her throat. “Well, it was nice seeing you again. At least this time I’m not clawing at your hand and making a complete fool of myself.”
“Trust me, you didn’t make a fool of yourself.”
“That’s sweet of you to say but ending up in the emergency room and clawing at your hand like a feral barn cat because I got overwhelmed is pretty high up there on my ‘making an ass of myself’ list.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” I said firmly. “Anxiety attacks are nothing to be ashamed about.”
She hummed unconvinced, playing with a blade of grass between her fingers.
“Coming to the hospital was the right thing to do,” I continued. “Plus, just think if you hadn’t shown up, you would have never been able to inflict such an awful nickname on me.”
Her lips tweaked upward a little. “Always a silver lining to everything.”
“How are you feeling now, by the way?”
“That doctor, the terrifying one that came in after you, gave me a number for a therapist she reckons could help. Oh, and don’t forget about the prescription for some medication that will supposedly cure me.”
“Anti-anxiety pills can help, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed.”
“My entire life is currently overwhelming,” she muttered quietly.
“Look, the pills aren’t going to fix everything, but they can certainly help take the edge off and make things a little less heavy.”
“Well, unless they can make my sister not marry my cheater of an ex-boyfriend, get my mother off my back and leave the company I built alone, somehow cure my father’s incurable disease, oh, and magic me up a boyfriend so I don’t have to face the embarrassment of my own stupid lies, I doubt they are going to help much. ”
I let out a low whistle. “And I thought my family had issues.”
She covered her face with her hands and groaned dramatically. “I fucked up. Like proper, end of the freaking world, fucked up.”
“You could always tell your mother the truth about the whole boyfriend thing.”
“And let her humiliate me? I’d rather pluck my eyeballs out with a rusty pair of tweezers than admit that to her.”
“Dramatic. I like it.”
“You’re not the one facing my mother,” she muttered. “Dios, I can picture her now. She’ll psychoanalyze that my lie is somehow connected to me not being over Daniel and use it to further blackmail me into doing whatever the hell she wants.”
“Daniel’s the ex-boyfriend marrying your sister?”
“The one and fucking only. Let’s not forget that they were hooking up before he dumped me, but we aren’t allowed to talk about that.
” Livi sighed unevenly. “Not to mention, she will end up using it as a way to gaslight me into taking that creepy older man to the wedding as a date. You know the type, way too handsy, calls you darling, and has to take at least three little blue pills to get somewhat of a hard-on.”
I blinked twice. “Can’t say I’ve dated many of those types before, but they sound exactly like every woman’s dream. How could you possibly resist?”
“Funny,” she rolled her eyes with a small smile. “And honestly? All that is just the tip of the iceberg.”
An iceberg that could take down a fleet of ships by the sounds of it.
Watching her smooth out her skirt, her lips falling in somewhat defeat, a spark, a somewhat of an idea burst into life that may help us both.
“I could do it.”
A line creased into place between her sculpted brows. “Do what?”
“I’ll be your fake boyfriend.”
“Ha. Ha, very funny.”
“What’s so funny?” I shrugged. “We could pretend until the wedding is over. That way, you won’t have to deal with your mother, who sounds like a delight, by the way. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“You’re joking. It’s not a funny joke by any means, but it’s a joke, right?”
Was I joking?
The more I thought about it, the more I started to put it together; it felt like the furthest thing from a joke.
Livi needed a fake boyfriend, someone to stand at her side and get her through all her family drama until her sister’s wedding.
I needed to prove to Zara that I wasn’t a workaholic, who, in her words, was too much of a risk to take a chance on.
This could work.
We could make this work to benefit the two of us.
Yes, it would be a lie. But what was one more lie to add to my ever-growing list?