Page 1 of Dr. Stone
ONE
Jace
The music was loud,the wind sharp, and the San Diego skyline lit up like it knew it was being watched. Somehow, even the air felt expensive aboard Jake Mitchell’s yacht.
This break from work was exactly what I needed. Three months straight of back-to-back shifts, and now I was finally off-duty—on a yacht, of all places.
Okay, technically it was a medical conference. But when you’re drinking cocktails on a billionaire’s boat, it hardly counts.
Jake, my Chief of Cardiology, had a talent for turning conferences into luxury vacations. It helped that his brother owned Saint John’s Hospital. It helped even more that Jake didn’t give a shit about rules.
Most had already left, the party winding down into something quieter, smoother. I should’ve felt relaxed. But something about the laughter, the drinks, the curated perfection of it all—it didn’t reach me.
Even now, surrounded by old colleagues and beautiful strangers, I felt a step outside of everything. Like I was watching from the edge of the glass.
I’d been running on fumes for months. Picking up shifts. Trading sleep for the OR. Somewhere along the line, life became a cycle of surgery, whiskey, and sleep. In that order.
For a second, I wondered when the last time was I enjoyed something that wasn’t work or whiskey.
Well, tonight was one of those welcomed breaks, and here I sat. I didn’t even know if I had it in me to flirt with any of the attractive women on this yacht.
“Stone,” I heard Dr. Aster say, walking up to where I sat, facing the side rail of the yacht. “Are you intentionally keeping away from everyone tonight?”
I smiled over at John, seeing his eyes glisten with humor. The man should be in a good mood. He was lucky that his smoke show of a wife, Mickie, was an OBGYN like him, and she was aboard for the medical conference as well. Both Dr. Asters were getting busy while I was reading medical texts until my eyes crossed.
“I’m intentionally keeping away,” I chuckled and took another sip of the smooth scotch I’d never been more delighted to drink. I glanced over my shoulder, seeing a blur of strapless dresses, perfectly toned legs, stilettos, and shiny hair blowing in the ocean breeze. “I wouldn’t even know where to start with all that beauty over there,” I smiled and brought my attention back to where John sat next to me.
He took the cognac a waiter had brought him, sipped it, sighed, then glanced my way, “Already giving up dating, eh?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have any fucking time to date these days, man,” I said honestly. “Everyone keeps bailing out on their damn shifts for one reason or another, and I’m the man to fill in.I don’t even know what dating is anymore,” I laughed at my new fucked-up reality.
“Is he over here bitching about being overworked?” I heard Jake say.
“Never,” John lied for me.
“Hell yeah, I am,” I said, looking directly at my chief’s playful blue eyes. “I know you insisted this conference be aboard the yacht for my personal?—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Jake stopped me by waving his index finger. “This glorious event was most definitely not hosted on my yacht to make up foryourbitching and whining,orfor you in any way, for that matter.”
I smirked, “Ah, so I shouldn’t expect you to complain when I don’t take the call to come in for one of the other doctor’s shifts?”
“They have names, you know,” Jake added with a hint of dickishness.
“Oh, yeah? Well, I wouldn’t know them since they’re never working,” I shrugged as Jake chuckled. “You know, I was quietly enjoying my evening, sipping on your expensive scotch, and now you two dumbasses show up to interrupt that.”
“That is not his expensive scotch,” John laughed.
“No?” My eyebrows shot up, staring at Jake’s humored eyes.
“No way, dude,” he smirked like the cocky bastard we all knew he was. “Thisis myscotch,” he placed a brand-new bottle on the bar that was fashioned into the railing next to where I sat on the yacht’s upper deck.
I pulled the bottle closer, eyeing the label. “Macallan, thirty-year single malt.” I acted unfazed.
My dad was a Macallan man—rich, grumpy, and the kind of bastard who once dropped $2.7 million on a Macallan 1926 at Sotheby’s just to look important. I loved him, but his spending habits were beyond me. Aster could vouch; in old-money circles, even friendship was theater.
I grew up around the Aster brothers, and met Jim and Jake through my dad’s business dealings with their father. I knew every trust fund baby and upstart worth knowing. My dad was a master operator in those upper circles—friends close, enemies closer—so there was no one I didn’t know.
Jim Mitchell, though, was no fool. After taking over his father’s company, he played a harder game of chess than any billionaire I’d ever met, my dad included. Which was why I had to bust my ass to land a spot at Saint John’s as a cardiologist. Family money didn’t open that door—my parents respected Jim more for making me earn it, and even more after what he and Jake put me through as an intern.
