Page 27 of Dr. Off Limits

Jacob

Thankfully I was due at Nathan’s tonight. If I hadn’t been, I would have probably driven up to Norfolk. I desperately yearned for something to ground me, something to take away this ache inside me every time I laid eyes on Sutton. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through the next four months without descending into madness.

“You look terrible,” Nathan said as he opened the door.

“Thanks, mate,” I said, pushing past him. At least I had the day off tomorrow so I could have a couple of glasses of his ridiculously overpriced red wine. “I need a drink.”

He followed me into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle from his wine fridge. “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion, but seeing as it’s you...”

Nathan stayed quiet as he opened the bottle of wine, like he was a priest preparing for the sacrament.

He pulled the cork from the bottle. “So, how’s it going positioning yourself for the head of foundation program?” he asked.

It was exactly the wrong question. I groaned. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can we stick to business?” For some reason, Nathan liked to bounce ideas off me. I didn’t know anything about business. Yes, I’d had a lucky break at university that made me a lot of money but it was just that—luck. I wasn’t a businessman. I was a doctor.

“We can, but it’s not like you to avoid—”

“I know. I just need a break from everything tonight. Let’s not...”

“Hey,” Madison said, as she swept into the kitchen. “How are you?” Nathan’s fiancée greeted me with a kiss on both my cheeks and put her hands on her hips. “Where’s my glass?”

Nathan moved to pour her one and she hopped up onto the stool next to me. “How’s your love life?” she asked. I groaned for a second time.

“Yeah, Beau told me he set you up on a date.”

If Beau was here now I’d strangle him. “Beau didn’t set me up. Beau got me to stand in for him on a blind date. Worst decision of the last twelve months.”

“Wow, it can’t have been that bad,” Nathan said. “Wasn’t she your type? Oh that’s right, your type is a mash-up between Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale, and Kate Beckinsdale.”

“Is it?” I asked, genuinely weirded out by what he’d said, particularly as Sutton definitely had a Kate Beckinsdale look about her.

“Yeah,” Nathan said. “They’ve got to be kind and selfless and off the charts clever—”

“I’ve never said any of that,” I said, a little affronted.

“I don’t think you’ve said those actual words,” Madison said. “But the reasons you haven’t liked women in the past are because they’re not those things. Look at Audrey. What excuse did you use for not making a go of it with her?”

“There wasn’t an excuse. She was married, her husband turned out to be a lying thief, and had just been sent to prison. She said she wasn’t ready for a relationship.”

“Bad example,” Madison mumbled.

“We have to make compromises,” Nathan said. “That’s Madison’s point. Look how I put up with a woman deluded enough to think I believe her when she says she never farts.”

“I don’t fart,” Madison said. “And anyway, not farting isn’t a compromise, it’s a benefit. A compromise would be the way I put up with your obsession with obscenely expensive wine.”

Nathan rolled his eyes and turned his attentions back to me. “I’m kidding. You don’t have to compromise. Madison is perfect for me. But that’s just it—I don’t even think you’d be happy if Marie Curie came back from the dead. You’d find something wrong with her. No one’s perfect.”

“I don’t need a therapy session from my younger brother who, frankly, I can’t believe tricked a nice woman like you, Madison, into marrying him.”

“Just so I know,” Madison continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “What was wrong with the woman Beau set you up with?”

“I told you, he didn’t set me up.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Tell me what was wrong with her and I’ll diagnose you. Then I’ll leave you to change the world or whatever it is you two are doing tonight.”

“Just tell her, mate, or we’ll never hear the end of it,” Nathan said.

“Nothing was wrong with her,” I said. That was the whole bloody problem.

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