Chapter 5
CASH
Big brother?
Looking over my shoulder without turning, so I could keep my weight off my jacked-up leg, I spotted Aaron Vale on the other side of the table, a drink in his hand and a smile on his face. A smile that… Wait.
Brother.
Vale.
Officer. Vale.
Officer. Aaron. Vale.
I looked between the two of them, puzzle pieces slotting together as I closely scrutinized Aaron’s features, then the features of…
Silver fox Daddy.
Holy…mother…fucking shit balls!
Oh.
Oh fuck.
It couldn’t be…right?
It really couldn’t…be.
I…
I didn’t…shit.
I did.
I just called the fucking doctor I’d spent months trying to get a referral to a silver fox.
After blatantly flirting with the man.
And accusing him of drooling over me.
Even though he had been.
And…oh God. I called him Daddy.
I called Dr. Thaddeus Vale, world-renowned surgeon, a silver fox Daddy. If the man staring at me from across the bar hadn’t made me blush enough, the utterly epic mortification had definitely ratcheted the red up enough to melt the fucking ice off a hockey rink in January. In fucking Foxwarren.
“Dr. Thaddeus Vale?” I asked. “You’re him?”
The good doctor’s brows lifted. He looked between me and…fuck…his brother before looking back at me. “Uh…yes, I’m Dr. Vale.”
“Thad, this is Cash Benjamin. He’s the new guy I mentioned when I texted you earlier.”
“Cash Benjamin, the goalie?” Dr. Vale asked, glancing between us again.
Wait. He knows who I am? How does he know who I am? The man’s a world-renowned surgeon who operates on the best of the best. How the hell would he know who I am? Compared to who he normally treats, I’m a nobody.
Dr. Vale shook his head. If he intended to rid himself of his shell-shocked expression, he failed. Before I could gather myself enough to answer him that yes, I am Cash Benjamin, the goalie, he looked back at Aaron and said, “Wait? What text?”
“I messaged you that there was a new guy at Halo House.” Aaron took out his phone, tapped the screen, then said, “Oh, you never responded, so I guess you never read the message.”
I cleared my throat and held out my hand. “Dr. Vale. Cash Benjamin. And yes, I’m a goalie. Most recently, with the Headland Cove Breakers.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
His eyes dropped.
Not to my dick—which, rude, considering the way he’d been staring at me ten minutes ago. The not-so-little guy deserved attention too, since he’d been twitching in my pants. Something he’d not done much of since before I took the ice in that last game.
No. His gaze bypassed my crotch and dropped lower.
To my fucking leg.
“Eyes up here, Doc.” I hated when people stared at my leg. At least I didn’t still wear the full leg brace. That thing really drew people’s gazes.
He cocked his head, his eyes fluttering as he looked my leg up and down, then met my gaze. “You’ve been keeping your weight off your right side since you walked over here.”
Well.
Fuck.
“You noticed that?” I asked, baffled that he—
His face interrupted that thought as one dark brow lifted, wrinkling his forehead.
Right.
World-renowned orthopedic surgeon.
Stupid question, Money. Stupid fucking question.
“So you really are that Dr. Vale,” I asked. Guess I was full of stupid fucking questions.
The man’s face did something I couldn’t read. It didn’t look bad, but it wasn’t great either. “Apparently there are multiple versions of me tonight.”
Heat climbed my neck all over again.
Fucker.
He knew exactly what he was doing if the smirk he wore meant what I thought it did.
And as much as I wanted to keep flirting with the sexy silver fox standing before me that had made me feel more like myself…
more like a man… than I had since my injury, there was no way I could pass up this opportunity.
“I’ve been trying to get an appointment with you.”
That wiped the amusement from his face.
“For months. I’ve seen so many doctors trying to get a referral.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “For your knee?”
“Yeah.” If he noticed the knee and the way I favored it, shouldn’t that have been obvious? But maybe not.
“Cash—”
I couldn’t let him finish that sentence. Whatever it may be. I interrupted. “Can you fix it?”
There. I asked. I got my chance. I put the request out there.
Three fucking words.
The same three words I’d wanted to ask this man for months. I just hadn’t imagined I’d ever be asking them after flirting with him and calling him Daddy. Or silver fox. Or both.
He stared at me. Just stared. I’d spoken in a rush. Maybe he hadn’t understood what I said.
“I have everything,” I blurted out. “My records are at Halo House. I even have all the imaging.”
“Cash—”
“Please…everyone keeps telling me—” I cut myself off because the emotions flooding my system, the ones I’d buried since Aaron showed up at my house with Mrs. P to do a welfare check, were too close to the surface.
I gulped and swallowed and breathed deep to wrestle control back from the onslaught before I broke down in a fucking nightclub.
Dr. Vale held up his hand. “This isn’t the time or the place—”
“But will you look?”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, all the while staring at me, and with a sigh, he said, “Yes.”
Like air from a balloon, I deflated.
Yes.
He said yes.
That one fucking word…holy shit. All the stress and anxiety of trying to just get on this man’s radar drained from me.
Months of doctor’s visits, tests, exams, imaging, rehab…
of doubt, stress, fucking tears, and gut-wrenching agony that burned like hot knives slicing through flesh, combined with electricity pulsing through my nervous system…
all the hell I’d gone through. Just over. With a single word.
“Really? You’ll actually look? You’re not just saying that?” I asked. I had to. Had to be sure he wasn’t just saying yes to shut me up.
“Yes. I will look. I won’t promise anything else. Just a look. That’s it.”
Even though he hadn’t said he’d do anything, that yes was still more than anyone else had given me in months.
Staring at him, I didn’t know what, or rather how, to respond.
I needed to respond. Right? Like that…fuck!
What do you say to the man who ogled you, made your dick stand up and take notice, and then agreed to grant your greatest wish?
The one you’d carried for months and months.
“Cool,” I said, finally. I sagged further with a relief that made my knees freaking weak. “Cool, cool, cool. Best night ever. Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Dr. Vale asked with a laugh.
My eyes widened. Shit. I’m fucking this up.
The thought filtered through my head, woven around the thought of how gorgeous he was when he laughed. I made this beautiful, intelligent man laugh.
“Yes,” I said. “Maybe. I mean, yeah.”
He laughed again, his gorgeous face shining with a soft smile. “Are you sure?”
My head nodded yes and shook no at the same time. It kind of made me dizzy. “I mean, yeah, of course I’m sure. I got an appointment with the elusive, world-famous surgeon I’ve been chasing down a referral to since the spring.”
“That seems like it would’ve put the night firmly in the best-night-ever column,” Aaron said.
My head jerked toward him. I’d forgotten he was standing there.
I stared at Aaron for several minutes, then back at the doctor standing before me, looking like sex on a stick, and words fell out of my mouth.
“Well, I also absolutely murdered whatever chance I had of getting railed by the sexy silver fox Daddy who couldn’t take his eyes off me tonight. ”
My eyes widened, probably making me look comical or crazy, or a combination of the two. Too late to stuff the words back in my mouth, so I added, “So, yeah, that kind of knocked the night down a peg or two.”
The good doctor’s face above his beard pinked, and I patted myself on the back mentally. Aaron, whom I’d forgotten again, sputtered and coughed.
“Oh fuck no. I’m outta here. I don’t need to know what kinky-ass shit my brother likes getting up to,” Aaron said, spinning on his heel with an I’m-about-to-puke look on his face.
“You are most definitely a brat,” Dr. Vale said, and I grinned, only for it to falter when his tone of voice registered. Resignation, or perhaps disappointment.
I understood the tone as much as I identified with the brat he labeled me.
Twenty minutes ago, this man had stared at me as if he wanted to eat me alive.
Twenty minutes ago, I would’ve let him. Happily.
Enthusiastically. Finding out he was Dr. Thaddeus Vale changed nothing that happened since we laid eyes on each other, but it changed things going forward.
I needed to rein myself in and treat the man seriously.
If I wanted him to take me seriously, that is.
“So, um…did Aaron invite you, Dr. Vale?”
“Kid, if you can call my brother Aaron, I think you can call me Thad.”
I smirked. “Thad, not Thaddeus?” So much for not flirting with the man.
“Definitely not Thaddeus.”
“Don’t most parents name their kids similarly? Aaron and Thaddeus seem like—”
He laughed but didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked, “So, Cash Benjamin, huh?”
“Technically, Thad, it’s Caspian Benjamin, but I’ve always just been Cash. Unless I’m on the ice.”
“Oh yeah? What do your boys call you?”
“Money or Benji.”
He nodded. “I did not get that lucky.”
Wait, did he… “You played?” I asked, momentarily shifting my weight onto my right leg to give the good leg a break.
Pain shot through the bad leg, setting my teeth on edge.
I shifted immediately back to the left. A tired good leg was better than the pain in the right.
I’d definitely been on my feet too long today.
He nodded, then glanced around. He walked off, coming back a few moments later with a couple of barstools. He motioned for me to sit.
I dreaded it. My leg hanging would only make the—
“Give me your leg.”
My gaze snapped to his. “Buy me dinner first,” I smirked.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Cash.” A small laugh made his voice hitch as he said my name.