Page 13 of Doc Showmance
He chuckled low. “I get it. You’ve always been scared of me…of this.”
“I. Am. Not. Scared. Let’s get one thing straight. There’s nothis.” I marched away without looking back.
Oh, it was on now. No one, and I mean no one, got to accuse me of being chicken.
5
Amber
By the time I got home my hands shook so much I almost dropped my keys on the way to the front door. I wasn’t capable of faking interest in Ian. I’d always had a real, simmering awareness of him that I did not want to become the viewing audience’s business. In fact, I didn’t want to admit I felt this way to myself. The man also irritated the hell out of me.
How could I not tell my family about this development that would inevitably ruin my life for the next few months if I agreed to the ludicrous plan of faking it with Ian? I didn’t think I could survive a few months without their help and support.
The ranch house that screamed suburbia but cost as much as a mansion anywhere not in San Diego needed a solid makeover. The red clay tiles were cracked in spots. The white stucco had faded to a kind of buff color that no amount of power washing would resolve. My attempts at gardening lacked diligence. It wasn’t as if anyone else in the household had any interest in landscaping. Home repairs took a back seat to other life issues.
When I entered, my little sheltie, Pinot, stared up at me from his post at the door. Even though a stoic beast, he glared as if me abandoning him to the heathens, my siblings, for so long reflected a brutal betrayal.
“Sorry, bud.” I reached down to pet him. He didn’t even look at me. “Oh, come on.”
Finally, the dog lifted his brown eyes to mine and gave me a small tail wag.
“You’re a complicated beast, aren’t you?” I laughed as he stood and moved into me for a hug.
“You’re the only one he likes,” Bruno said. “He’s been sitting there staring at the door for hours. I tried to distract him, but he’s a stubborn one.”
Unlike the rest of the menagerie of four legged rescues running around the house, Pinot was the only one loyal to me alone. I gave him one last squeeze before standing.
At thirty-one, Bruno, the abandoned son of a Mexican immigrant, had a boyish face and a moustache-goatee combination. Like a five-year-old, he still loved parading around in silly, stripy, multicolored socks and shorts. He never met his parents, but none of us remembered much about our birth parents. All of us had been tossed into foster care when young and earned reputations as unadoptable problem kids that bounced from home to home until high school, when we’d been thrown together in the home of a miserable chain-smoking single woman where all the worst kids ended up. There, we bonded in our dysfunctional way to survive high school. And we’ve been together ever since.
Well, we all went our separate ways during my three years at Caltech—yeah, I was a math nerd who got overwhelmed by undergrad to the point I didn’t have time to worry about my siblings. Although, I should’ve.
I was also a superstar who skipped out on the last year of undergrad to go directly to veterinary school. But my first year in vet school when I discovered Joley was homeless, Bruno wasn’t making ends meet as a fast-food delivery person, and Marino was on the run from loan sharks for gambling, I brought us back together. It wasn’t easy for me to attend vet school while working a part-time night job to keep the electricity running at the apartment for all of us. Eventually, everyone found some form of employment until Joley and Bruno went back to school. We used whatever extra income we had to pay Marino’s debt. Things were easier for me now without school, even if this job didn’t pay as well as it would when I finished the residency and passed my board exam to become an emergency medicine specialist.
Bruno pulled me into a dramatic hug. “Heard you had a rough day.”
“From who?”
“Susan texted.” He grinned all goofy and mischievous. “Before you go tanning Marino’s ass like he deserves for his stupidity, there’s something we gotta do. Like, happening right now.”
I shook my head. So not in the mood.
He tugged me into the TV room, snagged the remote, and after one click an upbeat salsa song filled the air. Like a smooth operator, Bruno pulled off my oversized purse and tossed it onto the sofa.
“Oh, no.” I pushed at him to get free, although my effort lacked enthusiasm. I liked music and dancing.
“Come on, sis.” He swung me into the sway of the salsa, expertly twirling me around the floor before he pulled me close and sang the lyrics off-key at the top of his lungs. It hurt my musical sensibilities, but I loved him. “I need more hips, Amber. Hips. Hips.”
The beat had me. With a giggle, I remembered the social dance class he’d dragged me to back in high school at the community center out of desperation to learn Latin dance to impress some love interest of his. The instructor had screamed so many times it was burned into my head: “Hips. Hips. Hips.”
I put my hands on my hips and did a rotation for him.
“Perfect.” He winked. With a fake evil laugh he moved me across the floor. We’d never win any medals for our performance, but I thought we had soul.
When the song ended, he kissed the top of my hand. So melodramatic. “Thank you. Now dinner. We prepared a gourmet meal for you.”
“Really?” I snorted sarcastically. None of them knew much about cooking beyond things that came prepackaged and went into the microwave. “Buttering me up to take it easy on him, are you?”
“Hell, no. I want a front row seat to you ripping into him. It’s just more fun to watch with decent food. Marino was at the top of his game this afternoon with his mouth in gear but his brain in neutral around the loan shark.”
