Page 12 of Doctor Daddy

Mrs. Riley and her husband were headed to the hospital. I had time to head upstairs to my office and check in with my appointments. The maternity ward alerted me when she arrived, and they had her in a room. I finished with my first appointment of the morning and passed my second appointment over to a colleague while I checked in on Mrs. Riley.

She was mid contraction when I stepped into her room. Her husband held her hand and guided her through the breathing process. They had this routine down. I waited for her contractions to end before examining her.

“Everything looks great. I will keep in contact with your nurse. She will let me know if anything changes. I’ll be back in a few hours to check in on you. And if that baby decides to speed up, I’m right over in the medical tower, and can be over in a matter of minutes.”

As predicted, Mrs. Riley’s labor took several hours longer than she wanted. I stayed around the office catching up on paperwork while I waited for the Riley baby to be ready. After fourteen hours of active labor, Mrs. Riley gave birth to a healthy baby boy number three.

I was exhausted after I left for the night. Picking up my meal at a drive-thru on the way home I thought about having a wife and kids. Did I really want to put the woman I loved through all of that? I guess the final decision wouldn’t be up to me. It was called labor for a reason.

When I got home, I felt exactly how empty it was. No home-cooked meals, no bedtime stories. The Riley’s were filling their house with kids and noise and chaos. That noise and life were missing from my home. Maybe Karen DeBoise was right, I needed to find a wife and start having kids.

I hated dating. It was so much work and too many games.

I poured myself a drink and sat in the dark. I couldn’t stop thinking about Brooke. Now there was a woman who played the right kind of games. She knew what she wanted, hadn’t expected me to be some kind of psychic to figure it out.

But Brooke was Peyton’s daughter. That seemed like a bad idea. Then again, I had already fucked her brains out in the middle of the gala. The line of bad ideas had already been crossed. Hell, I had completely waltzed right over it without a care in the world. I had wanted to get inside her and nothing was going to get in my way.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted to get back inside of her. I longed to hear those little needy whimpers of hers. I had to accept the fact that my body was currently obsessed with her. I should take her out a few times, fuck her until I got her out of my system, and then get on with my life.

I finished my drink and went to bed.

In the morning, whatever I had decided the night before, I tossed it out as a bad idea. I hadn’t been thinking the night before. I had been moody and feeling my age. What I needed to do was ignore my obsession with Brooke. Just because I crossed the line, it didn’t mean I couldn’t back step and course correct. She was Peyton’s kid, I should never have even looked at her.

I then proceeded to make myself miserable. In a failed attempt at ignoring Brooke every morning, I either got into my office too early, or I was late for my first appointment. Unless I came in the back way, which was a pain in the ass involving parking on the opposite side of the hospital and having to cross the entire campus. It seemed like an excessive amount of work just to avoid a beautiful smile.

6

BROOKE

“Have you seen your doctor lately? You haven’t been talking about him.”

I nodded my head around, unable to answer with my mouth full of burrito. I finished chewing before I answered Angela.

“I have and I haven’t.”

“And what does that mean exactly?”

I let out a heavy sigh, took a drink of my Coke, and considered exactly how I was going to answer this.

“I mean, I see him practically every day. But that doesn’t mean he sees me. You know what I’m saying?”

“Oh, sweetie, that sucks. Looks like Doctor Hottie is freezing you out!”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t even call it that. It’s like he’s simply forgotten me.”

I swiveled out of the high stool I was on. I lifted my cup to Angela. “More?”

She handed me her cup, and I crossed the small dining room of the popular burrito shop to refill our drinks. The blond wood and stainless-steel décor was hip and a little too cool. In that, it was actually cold, and the place felt as if it was pumping in cold air. On a hot summer day, this place would be heaven. Today, the only thing keeping me was the food and Angela. I hated eating lunch in my coat.

“So, what are you going to do about it?” she asked when I returned with our refilled drinks.

“Nothing.” I shrugged. “Maybe he regrets decisions he made in the heat of the moment. Maybe he’s embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? How? You don’t think he’s married and nailed you as a little side action, and now you have shown up at his place of work to haunt him, do you?”

I loved Angela’s far-fetched idea, but I knew that wasn’t the case. Mark wasn’t married. Mark wasn’t even dating. If he was, I would know about it because my mom would talk about it. And the only time she talked about Mark was when she was already talking about one of her single friends.

Mom would prattle on about Nancy, or Michelle and how horrible their ex-husbands were treating them, and then she would get this glint in her eyes. As soon as that happened, she would start plotting a dinner party so that she could introduce them to Mark. It was as if Mom was on a mission to get him married off.

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