Page 34 of The Doctor's No-Strings Deal

“The fellowship.” His father sat back at his desk, striking quite the figure with his cigar and his glass of brandy. “I happen to be good friends with a senior doctor at Our Lady of Mercy. The man can’t golf to save his life.” He chuckled. “Well, he owes me a favor, and I’m going to cash in. The spot is yours.”

It took Charlie a moment too long to realize exactly what was happening. His father was going to pull some strings on his behalf. In other words… “That’s cheating,” he muttered.

Jon Sullivan took a puff of his cigar. “Using the resources at your disposal is hardly cheating. It would be wasteful not to.”

“Your golfing buddies are not ‘resources.’ This is nepotism.”

“Charles,” his father said in that tone that told Charlie he was already on thin ice. “Our family has been in medicine for generations. Because of the work we’ve done, countless lives have been saved. You can’t compare that to a bit of nepotism. There are shades of gray?—”

“Shades of gray,” Charlie echoed derisively. “I just want the best resident to get the job. It will most likely go to me, but it should be a fair fight. If someone else is better suited, they should get the fellowship. What about all the good they might have done if someone like me hadn’t gotten in the way?” He was thinking of Megan, but he didn’t dare say so.

“No matter who they are, they won’t have the same training, the same years of experience from previous generations backing them up. No one will be able to contribute to the field the way you will. Trust me, Son. You’re better suited.”

Now his father’s face was turning a shade that meant Charlie should give it a rest, but Charlie couldn’t. “It’s just not fair.”

“Fair should not be your primary concern, boy. Your primary concern should be for patients, your patients specifically. Get used to advocating for them, often at the expense of your own principles. Let this be a lesson to you.”

Charlie bowed his head. He couldn’t help imagining Megan and others like her, the chances they might have had if people like Charlie didn’t snatch them out from under them. “My competition is also capable of great things. She’s good, Dad — really good. She’s diagnosed a number of conditions I missed, and she’s great with patients. You should see her with kids. I’ve never seen someone who had such a way with children.”

Jon dropped his cigar in his heirloom ashtray, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms. “I see,” he said. “This explains your recent interest in pediatrics. It isn’t about some new passion for the field, is it? This is about a girl. Bad form, Son. Never let a woman get in the way of your ambitions. It’s better that you learn this early on. Find a good woman after you’re set. If you get distracted now?—”

“I’m not getting distracted.”

“Bullshit.” His father leaned in, resting his forearms on the desk in a familiar way that made Charlie shiver. The harsh language only made matters worse. The man didn’t use harsh language unless he really meant it. “It’s written all over your face. You forget sometimes that I’ve known you your whole life. You’re falling for this girl, which has probably given you an inflated sense of her competency.”

“It hasn’t.”

“Not that it matters. You don’t want to get the fellowship because you’re worried it will upset her and ruin your chances with her. You’re going to sabotage your own career for some?—”

“Watch it!” Charlie stood, and his father actually looked startled for once. “Careful how you talk about her. She and I have already agreed not to let this fellowship come between us, so you’rewrong about my motivation. And Idowant this fellowship, more than anything. I’ll work my ass off to get it. I just want to know I earned it, that it wasn’t handed to me. Anyway, wanting to play fair is not the same as sabotage. It’s important for me to know, unequivocally, that my position in life was earned honestly — with my own qualifications and not just my family name.”

“You say you want this fellowship?”

“Yes,” Charlie answered. “Obviously, I want it.”

His father rose from his desk. “Then it’s yours. Prove yourself in your fellowship, not beforehand. This isn’t a game, Son. I’d appreciated it if you stopped treating it like one. I’m going to make the call.”

He left the room, and Charlie didn’t stop him. He hadn’t lied about wanting the fellowship. He also wanted to make his family proud, whatever the cost. He rationalized that maybe his father was right. Charlie was standing on the shoulders of giants, and maybe it was selfish to pretend otherwise, to pretend he’d earned all of this himself. Maybe he really was selfishly putting his principles over patients.

His father’s voice drifted in from the room next door. There was the usual laughter and jovial bantering, and Charlie knew the thing was as good as done. He slowly gathered his things and walked out of his father’s office. The conversation was over, and Charlie didn’t want to pretend he had any kind of relationship with his father right now. He felt absolutely useless, angry, and frustrated.

He made his way outside and into the garden. The family estate was enormous. How strange it was to only realize that as an adult. When he was a child, Charlie had never thought of himselfas one of those rich kids who lived in a mansion. He’d rejected the stereotypes that portrayed people like him as selfish, greedy, and spoiled. And now he was being handed a fellowship that he hadn’t fought for, possibly stealing it out from under someone who had fought her whole life for everything she had. If anything epitomized being selfish, greedy, and spoiled, wasn’t it this?

The vast lawn spread out before him as he made his way across the grounds. He wasn’t even sure where he was headed, just that he had to get out of that house. He sat at the edge of the stone steps on the hill and dropped his head into his hands.

He heard footsteps approach from behind him. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face his father, but then he didn’t seem to have a choice. “Dad?”

“Nope. Not Dad.” The voice belonged to Justin, Charlie’s older brother.

Charlie glanced up at him and saw another giant reputation he was expected to live up to. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“You think you’re the only one who gets called in to meet with Dad?” Justin sat down beside him and nudged him with a shoulder. He looked so similar to Charlie that people often incorrectly assumed they were twins. But they weren’t. Justin was several years older with a wife and a baby, and an excellent surgical career under his belt.

“I assumed you were already in his good graces,” Charlie said, looking back over the lawn toward the forest on their property.

Justin chuckled under his breath. “Oh, no one’s ever really in Dad’s good graces. He’s…”

Charlie found a word for him. “Autocratic?”

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