Page 6 of Stone Vows

But the excitement, the adrenaline rush of being the first to deal with the carnage that comes our way, the multitude of procedures we get to perform ‘on the fly,’ far outweighs the lack of patient relationships that goes along with working in emergency medicine.

I think.

Damn it. Sometimes I hate my job for the very same reasons that I love it.

An hour later, when I’m paged back to the ER for a gunshot wound, my hands wrist-deep in a gangbanger’s abdomen until a trauma surgeon can be paged, I remember why I chose this specialty. And I completely forget that I haven’t slept in almost two days.

Chapter Three

“Gina was looking for you this morning before you left the hospital,” Cameron says, as we make our way from my building to Ethan’s.

“I know.” I sigh, guilt washing over me because I didn’t find her and make good on my promise. “I was beat. It was a long weekend.”

“Are you ever going to inviteherto one of your brother’s dinner parties?”

I furrow my brows at him. “It’s not like that between us and you know it, Cam. And the last thing I want to do is ask her to go to dinner with me and have her think it’s a date. I like things just as they are. No complications. No strings. No added stress in my life.”

“There could be worse things than having Gina as your girlfriend,” he says.

I study him for a minute, wondering if there is deeper meaning there.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I tell him. “She’s great. A good doctor, a loyal friend. And the sex, it’s as good as it gets. I just don’t want to send her mixed signals. We have a good thing going.”

I wave at my brother’s doorman on the way by. Between Chad and Ethan both living in this building, I’m here often. The entire building staff knows me by now.

We’re met at the penthouse door by waves of incredible smells. Garlic.Hell yeah!I know this smell.

I pull my sister-in-law, Charlie, in for a hug. “You made lasagna?”

“Mallory made it,” she says, referring to my other sister-in-law. “She brought it up from her place and used my oven to cook it in.”

“Well, thanks to both of you. It’s my favorite.”

Mallory and Chad live in the same building, just a few floors down. It’s a joke among all of us that Ethan owns the penthouse yet Chad is the movie star. Chad, orThadStone, as he’s known in Hollywood, has seven movies and a TV series under his belt. While Ethan, our oldest brother, is a private investigator who owns his own agency. We all inherited enough money from our grandparents that we’d never have to work a day in our lives. But that’s not how our parents raised us.

Cameron and I greet Mallory and my brothers before digging into the case of craft beer I brought over. I hand one to everyone but Mallory, who is seven months pregnant with their first baby.

Ethan looks at the bottle of beer I handed him. “Don’t you want the good stuff? I’ve got some bottles of champagne on ice.”

I give him an annoyed look. “Thisisthe good stuff, Ethan. A case cost me fifty bucks. That’s some damn fine beer.”

He laughs. “Fifty whole dollars? Are you sure you can afford that, Dr. Stone?”

“Bite me,” I say. “And don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. It’s good shit.”

He holds up his bottle and we all take turns tapping ours against his before we drink. I watch his face as he swallows and then works his tongue around in his mouth like he’s some kind of beer connoisseur.

“Hmmm…” he ponders.

Charlie swats him on the back of his head. “It’s great, Kyle. Thanks for bringing it over.”

Chad coughs while saying, “Cheap son-of-a-bitch.”

Cameron joins Chad and Ethan as they laugh at my expense. I’m used to it. As the youngest of three brothers, all the teasing fell on me.

“Well, what do you expect,” Cameron says. “He spends his real money on his patients.”

Mallory smiles at me. She and I got close when she lived at my place for a few weeks while Chad was wrapping up a film in L.A. I think she understands my compassion for others more than the rest of them.

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