Chapter Twenty-Three Jeremy
My mother usually drops off holiday treats on her own, but this year I made her wait till I was free to come along. Because I’m here to spread holiday cheer.
Bullshit.
If I didn’t drop by today, I wouldn’t see Vanya until my next appointment after Christmas.
My gorgeous doctor and I are wordlessly staring at each other when my observant mother makes her presence known.
“Jeremy, I thought you’d be here. Hello, Dr. Kapur! I’m Christina Lopez, the mother of your biggest fan.”
A slide show of emotions passes over Vanya’s pretty face: surprise, pleasure, embarrassment. She blinks rapidly before resetting her facade of indifference.
Maybe I ought to worry about how much I stare at my doctor to know these slight distinctions in her reactions—the way her cheeks warm or her eyes soften—but I’m too captivated to worry. Her every expression is a beautiful clue to what she’s thinking. There’s not much I wouldn’t do to learn what’s in that brilliant brain of hers.
“Hello, Mrs. Lopez. Please call me Vanya.” She walks around her desk to take my mother’s hand.
“No Mrs. for me! Call me Christina,” my mom says, leaning forward to give the taller woman a loose hug. “So glad we could finally meet. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Oh, um, I hope that’s not a bad thing.”
“It’s always Vanya this, Vanya that —”
“Ok, that’s enough,” I butt in.
My mother’s slight snicker tells me she’s not quite done with her mischief. “Well, it’s true! So, Vanya, how are you settling in?”
“Very well, thank you.” Her polite smile is adorable. How can someone so self-assured at her profession be this terrible at small talk?
“Living across from Jeremy is great, right? I hope he’s shown you around the neighborhood.”
“Yes. I mean no, not exactly.” She presses her lips together before deciding on a bland answer. “It is a lovely neighborhood.”
Numerous instances have proven that small talk is like pulling teeth for Vanya. She has no interest in talking for the sake of talking. Some people probably think she’s aloof; that’s not true at all. Vanya can show intense care when she’s looking out for people and passion when she’s talking about her research. She’s also not shy about her heightened emotional attachment to musicals. Especially with me. That’s the part I like the most.
“If you’re around on Christmas Day, we always volunteer at the—”
“Mom, she works constantly. Christmas is probably the only day she’s taking off.”
“ She would very much like to hear what you were going to say, Christina,” Vanya states tritely with a fleeting glance my way.
“After Christmas Day mass at St. Joseph, our yearly tradition is to volunteer to cook and serve food at the community center across the street from the church. Do you want to join us?”
“That sounds like a great tradition,” Vanya pipes up before worrying her lower lip. “I’d love to volunteer at the community center. However, I’ll just wash dishes or something. I’m not much of a cook.”
“There are tons of other things to do. You can help with the books.”
Vanya tilts her head in confusion.
“Each kid gets a couple of books to bring home,” I explain. “Boxes of donated books need to be laid out and organized by age.”
“Or, maybe you can sing?” My mother’s question is shrill with excitement.
Vanya and I have identical reactions. We both shake our heads frantically, though for different reasons. Vanya is downright appalled at the thought of singing in public. I, however, anticipate a more embarrassing reason for the question.
“You can help Jeremy host the Christmas singalong!” My mother’s announcement is the volume of someone talking to the hard of hearing. The staff at the cafeteria could hear her.
“Once. I ran it once because Mario—he’s the piano player for the church—got sick, so we had to resort to karaoke YouTube videos.”
“He’s so humble. Jeremy has a gorgeous voice.”
“I’ll be there!” Vanya’s unrestrained amusement reaches her eyes.
“Perfect. Jeremy will pick you up after mass,” she says while casually petting my upper arm.
“I can find my way,” Vanya asserts.
“Oh, he doesn’t mind,” my mother mumbles absentmindedly, halfway out the door and turned away. The second she’s in the hallway, she’s hugged by well-fed and grateful employees. Their voices taper off.
“She’s awesome,” Vanya declares with a chuckle.
“I think the word you’re looking for is bossy.”
She shakes her head in disagreement. “In three sentences she found a way to welcome me to the neighborhood while doing important work for the community. Using her influence to do things for other people isn’t bossy. It’s admirable.”
“You sound like the newest member of her fan club,” I say, amused that she easily captured the essence of my mother, who is efficient about getting her way. “I guess she’s only bossy to me because I’m her kid.”
“You have no idea what a bossy mother is, Jeremy. You don’t have a mother who’s tried to mold you physically and mentally into a second version of her beauty-queen self,” Vanya says with a sardonic tone.
“What do you mean?” My curiosity is piqued because she sounds both defeated and ashamed, as if the words were somehow a sign of weakness.
“Nothing,” she replies quickly.
“Were you in pageants as a kid, Vanya?” I tease. Thinking about a small version of Dr. Vanya Kapur in shiny clothes and a large tiara is endearingly amusing.
“Nope. I was never pretty enough,” she declares with a self-deprecating chortle. When she continues, there’s not a hint of self-pity. It’s all business, as usual. “I should get back to work. Thank you so much for the gifts.”
It’s an obvious dismissal that I’m trying to square with her strange words. Whatever happened in the span of thirty seconds has shut her down. Treading carefully, I change the subject because I don’t want to push any more wrong buttons.
“It’s no trouble for me to pick you up on Christmas.”
“No, thank you. I’ll see you at the community center. Send me the address when you can.”
I remain standing at the threshold of her office, wordlessly waiting for more. Just a little more. A glance or a word. I’m rewarded by a smile that does something to me. Maybe it’s because it’s a little sad or perhaps because, sad or happy, her smile is stunning.
“One last thing,” I state so I can stay a little longer. “If I heard you correctly, your mom must be a fool because you’re not a second version of anyone, Vanya. I know nothing about being pretty enough to be a beauty queen, but I am positive that you’re beautiful every day, without even trying.”
Her eyes widen before she blinks incredulously. She’s about to say something but my name is suddenly called from the hall, breaking the spell. Vanya presses her lips together, holding back. After a split second of hesitation, I shut the door so we’re alone.
“You were going to say something. Say it,” I insist.
“Someone was calling you,” she urges.
“I heard. They can wait. What were you going to say?”
She’s barely audible when she mutters, “Before you arrived, I was telling Pete that I could uphold professional boundaries for myself. And here you are, proving me wrong. How am I supposed to stay on track when you say the most… the most astounding things to me?”
My own professionalism was thrown out the window weeks ago. It’s been impossible to separate the doctor from the woman. Her admission—that I’m not the only one affected—delivers prideful satisfaction.
Something floats to the surface to irritate me.
“Why would you have to talk about boundaries with Pete ? Was he bothering you?”
“On the contrary, he alerted me to some inappropriate comments from a patient. Comments I didn’t even notice.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Who was making moves on you, Vanya?”
“You.” The way the word leaves her lips—a little trite and a little sweet—urges me forward. None of the exasperation I expect is in her tone. “ You, ” she repeats more quietly.
“With my cookies and holiday cheer?” I say lightly. “Trust me, Vanya, those aren’t my moves.”
“Don’t I know it,” she stands and walks around her desk, probably to see me out. “We can’t be alone together. I don’t need a coworker to tell me that we’re blurring all kinds of boundaries. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a hypocrite. Which means we either stop working together or we stop saying and doing things that make it harder to stay away.”
“I only said the truth. That you’re beautiful without trying. That you’re the most amazing woman I know.”
Without warning, Vanya closes the distance till we’re toe to toe. She tilts her head upward to find my gaze.
“I am your doctor. You are my patient.”
She sounds breathless as if every word leaks strength from her bones. Her body slumps. Without thinking, I pull her pliant body closer. Full breasts press against my torso.
“I am your doctor and you are my patient,” she repeats with a whisper that warms my neck and tugs at my cock.
Her palms find their way around my back. The evidence of our mutual arousal is impossible to hide. Hard nipples and steel erection. Eager lips and hungry eyes.
My hand moves up the cradle of her nape, fingers tangling in her low ponytail. She sighs as I relieve the strands of their constraints and massage the knots on her neck. There’s time and opportunity for her to pull away.
Instead, her arms tighten. Vanya looks as drunk as I feel when she mutters, in a trance, “I am your doctor and you are—”
“I’m going to kiss my doctor now,” I announce.
Our lips join, achingly tender at first. A frantic desperation builds in me. More . I want to take all that sweetness for myself, make her softness yield to me. I sweep my tongue inside her warmth, and she meets it with equal urgency.
My arms wrap tighter around her back just as her fingers clasp my neck. The heat between us is so intense I imagine red, fiery embers behind my closed eyes.
Urgency moves me forward. I lift Vanya to sit on the desk and angle my cock against her hot cradle. She yields beautifully, tilting her hips for more pressure and kissing me harder. Deeper.
The kiss releases turmoil inside me. It is exactly what I want but not enough. All my senses are heightened, clamoring for more of Vanya. I taste her herbal aroma, I feel her moans, I hear the friction of our clothes. It’s reckless chaos mired in unbelievable pleasure.
There is none of the shock of our first kiss in that dark basement.
None of the hesitation.
None of the restraint.
We kiss for minutes or hours, it’s impossible to say exactly. But something inside me shifts.
My surroundings, the moment I open my eyes, look different. It’s a backdrop to Vanya. My world only makes sense when she’s in it.
Dr. Vanya Kapur is like no one I’ve ever met or will ever meet. She stirs a hunger that only she can satisfy. She makes me yearn to belong to her as much as I want to have her for myself. I want to give and take, over and over and over again.
I pull away at the jarring realization. Her fingers tighten in my hair, begging me to come back. The temptation of those lips is too much to deny myself, so I brush against them lightly, back and forth as I try to find an equilibrium that will allow me to walk out of her office without declaring something foolish.
I want to kiss you every day. What do I need to do so you’ll let me kiss you every day?
Watching the haze of lust darken her hooded eyes and feeling her chest lift as she takes her first full, steady breath makes my aching cock push harder against the painful zipper. We stare at each other as if we only now came up from underwater. I’m not sure if she’ll push me away or if she’ll kiss me again. I wait.
“Why is it like this between us?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt this before.”
A knock on her office door makes us both jump. Vanya finds her feet and pulls her hair back. “I’ll be out in a second,” she calls to the person outside.
I straighten my sweater and adjust my pants. When we’re both fit for the public, she strides to the door. Hand on the doorknob, Vanya pauses. She looks back at me, two lines between her brows indicating worry.
“I’ve never felt this before, either.”
Before I can respond, she’s out the door.
The sexiest woman I’ve ever kissed, who also happens to be my doctor, leaves me reeling in emotions. Emotions that only she has ever inspired, longing that I didn’t know existed till we met. The physical attraction is nothing compared to my desire to be with her, care for her, love her. Love her?
The word bulldozes past my defenses and settles inside me like an immovable rock. L-o-v-e won’t stop taking up space. With that word comes the heavy hit of harsh reality.
I’m falling in love with my doctor.
Kissing her is only the beginning. I want to see her every day. I think about her all the time. My admiration of her skill and knowledge has no bounds. And my longing to hold her tight is as strong as my need to breathe. Being with her is as thrilling and natural as the first time I stepped on ice. Like I’m home. Like I’m doing what I’m born to do. But unlike hockey, there’s no “working harder” to overcome struggles. She’s a woman with her own mind and heart.
Vanya kissed me today, but what about tomorrow?
What if she decides her work obligations are more important than our mutual attraction?
What if being my doctor destroys the possibility of being anything else?
Dr. Vanya Kapur has the ability to cure my body and the power to shatter my heart.