Page 53 of Dr. Brandt

“Hey, I never claimed to be the smartest man,” I answered with a grin. “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t have left you.”

“Let’s not go down that road, shall we?”

I grinned in response, but there was no way I would put the brakes on something I wanted so badly, which was her. If fate was busting its ass to bring us together, who was I to stand in the way?

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jessa

After we pulled up to the phenomenal home, built on the cliffs of Carmel with nothing but coastline in front of it, we were greeted by all of Cameron’s friends as if we’d come home for a family reunion.

The wives of Cam’s friends were so kind that, at first, I wondered if it was an act. After suffering the bullshit of Manhattan’s high society for so long, I didn’t expect much from the behavior of billionaires’ wives. Part of me had been dreading this, meeting women who would probably sit around and talk about their kids’ private schools or interior decorators’ designs for their third and fourth vacation homes.

To my pleasure, I was very much mistaken. These women couldn’t have possibly been more delightful. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d met a group of women who enjoyed each other’s company so much. They were down-to-earth, charming, and funny, and they made me feel very welcome.

“Good God,” Avery said, her brilliant blue eyes sparkling against her pitch-black hair. “I swear if we don’t find something for these men to do, they will start making rope swings to fling themselves into the ocean from up here. Seriously,” she laughed, taking a sip of freshly brewed coffee.

“What the hell are they talking about?” Ash asked, craning her neck to see where they were.

Avery and Ash were married to the Mitchell brothers, Jim and Jacob. Jim, Avery’s husband, was the CEO of the global empire Mitchell and Associates. Jacob was the chief cardiothoracic surgeon at St. John’s, where Cam worked. Both men were undeniably drop-dead handsome, and their wives were equally as beautiful.

“All I know is that they seem to have pulled some shit on Collin, and that’s always a good time. We should get in there,” Collin’s wife, Elena, said with a mischievous laugh.

Collin was just as gorgeous as the Mitchell brothers, but with blond hair instead of black. Collin introduced his wife as his Cuban goddess, and from where I sat, she looked like one. I don’t think I’d ever been so envious of someone’s skin tone and natural beauty. They were all just as lovely on the inside as they were on the outside, which was the most important part, in my opinion.

“I have to know,” Elena said, walking into the room and sitting on the arm of the couch next to her husband, “what has Dr. Brooks so blown away?”

“No joke, Jacks here says that some kid flew a Cessna after the pilot blacked out. He landed that son of a bitch and everything,” Collin answered her.

I smiled, knowing what game my son was playing. That kid would do anything to prove video games were good for you. My eyes drifted to where he and Cam sat next to each other on the sofa, their backs to the windows that overlooked the ocean rolling into the cliffs below.

It was a beautiful sight; the heavy fog drifting along the shoreline that went on for miles, rocky bluffs lining the entire view this home was built to enjoy, and Cameron and Jackson. My heart suddenly skipped a beat, and my breath caught while I enjoyed the identical smiles of father and son.

Cam’s arm was relaxed behind Jacks while he sat casually in a humored conversation, resting an ankle on his knee. He was so devastatingly handsome, and I had to stop myself from drooling here and now.

Goddamn hormones.

“So, the kid landed the Cessna safely because he knew how to fly a plane in a mother fu—” Jake stopped himself as soon as his brain caught up with his mouth, and the daggers from each of the mothers’ eyes fell on him.

“Go on,” Cameron said with a laugh, enjoying that Jake was in the cussing hot seat. “Mother fuh? Hmm?”

I smiled while Jim rolled his eyes, his two-year-old daughter Izzy, looking at her uncle Jake from where she sat on Jim’s lap, apparently waiting for him to screw up and get busted too. Izzy’s older sister, Addy, was very well-mannered compared to everyone else in the room, a bit reserved and shy for a ten-year-old, but I sensed that she was feeling things out. Izzy seemed a bit more mischievous of the two; that was apparent.

“Don’t say the f-word, Dad,” Jake’s son, John, said as he walked into the room.

This boy was a little stud, and, like Jacks was Cameron’s mini, John was most certainly Jake’s little doppelgänger. They both sported short, stylish black hair and bright blue eyes that leveled you with a glance. However, the difference between Jake and his son John was in their personalities. John was only five years old, but the kid acted like he could be the chief heart surgeon at St. John’s, not his fun-natured dad.

“I won’t, son.” Jake took it as a challenge, and suddenly it felt like the room was in a silent standoff over whether Jake would recover himself or not.

“No, you won’t,” John said, then his piercing blue eyes met with Ash’s humored ones. “He’s not in trouble, Mommy. He didn’t say it this time.”

“This time?” Ash said, her auburn hair dancing on her shoulders. It was obvious she was trying not to laugh. “Good grief, can we all just pack it up and head to the aquarium for Addy’s birthday party before I drop the f-bomb? How in the world does this happen every single time?”

“What?” I questioned, confused.

“One of these guys lets a curse word slip, and the next thing you know, we’re doing this. Kids are defending their father’s mouths, and the moms are looking like the bad-word police,” Avery said to me with an arched eyebrow. “Let me be the first to say that I don’t give a fuck who hears me drop the f-bomb because I’m a grown-ass woman, and I am who I am. My kids don’t need me pretending to be someone I’m not, and I’m sure as hell not going to sit back and act like any words are off limits when we all know I’d be the first one to bankrupt myself if there were a swear jar sitting around.”

Jim laughed and blew Avery a kiss.

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