Page 6 of Irresistibly Risky

I spent six months in London working with an ortho team there, and then I came back to Miami to, well, deliver my son and finish up my residency. Then I hung around the ortho floor at my hospital in Miami until I was offered the position here in Boston.

I wasn’t about to give up on my dream of becoming a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon, certainly not when I was that close to the finish line. Nine years—including medical school—of struggling and toiling were not going to be overthrown simply because I had an epically horrendous drunken one-night stand and got pregnant.

But now Mason is almost one, and when the sports medicine orthopedic surgeons at Mass General Hospital offered me a position as a new surgeon on their team, I didn’t hesitate. For one, it’s the premiere sports orthopedic surgery practice in the country—I mean, hello, Boston sports. And for another, my mother and stepfather moved up here about five years ago after my stepfather retired from the NHL to become the head coach of Boston College’s hockey program.

I now have help with Mason and a place to stay until I figure out a better alternative for us.

Stretching my arms over my head, I head back toward the locker room to grab my stuff so I can get out of here. If I rush, I can make it home before my little man goes to sleep. Maybe he’ll stay up so I can read him a story or at least snuggle him a little.

“There you are. I’ve been looking for you,” Dr. Limpdick—er, I mean Limbick—says to me. “I was hoping to catch you before you left for the night. Do you have a minute?”

No. The word snags on my tongue. The very tip of it. But it’s my first week and he’s my new boss, so I can’t say no. I plaster on a saccharine-sweet smile and force out, “Sure.”

“Great. My office?” He checks but doesn’t wait for my response as he heads in that direction.

Two minutes later, I’m shutting the door behind us and taking a seat as I covertly text my mom to let her know I might not make it home for bedtime. My heart plummets when she tells me he’s had his bath and seems sleepy. Fuck. I’m the worst mother in the world.

“Wynter?”

My gaze snaps up, clearly having missed whatever he said before that. “Yes. Sorry. I was just letting my mother know I might be a bit late to say goodnight to my son.” Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.

“Right. Sure. I remember those days. My boys are all out of the house, living their own lives now, and no longer have any need for their old man other than my wallet.”

Ha, ha, ha, yes, how funny and awesome for you that you’re not a single parent with an infant and can stay at work as late as you’d like.

“Did you want to speak to me about something?” I ask, trying to temper my tone.

He sits up, clearly remembering his focus. “Yes, I did. I know you had mentioned how you wanted hockey and basketball to be your sports focus, but it’s been requested that you take on the Boston Rebels.”

I do my best not to glare or find a random sharp implement to stab his carotid with. “Football?” The word hisses past my lips with more venom than any curse word ever could, and I clear my throat, hoping it wasn’t as obvious as I’m sure it was.

“Not your favorite sport then?” He surmises with a conspiratorial grin.

Understatement of the century there, Limpdick. “Uh. No. It’s not. Who made this request?”

A gleeful light hits his eyes. “Joe Cardone.”

Just like that, my world stops along with my breathing. The now necrotic part of my heart that he used to own burns, giving me chest pain. “I’m s-sorry,” I stutter through. “Joe Cardone?” His name on my tongue causes a wave of nausea.

“Yes! Can you believe it? I didn’t know you knew him.”

“I, um. I don’t. Not really. I thought he was still coaching in LA.” It’s why I stayed on the freaking East Coast all these years.

“He was just named as the new coach for the Boston Rebels last month after they fired their last coach in the offseason.”

My insides freeze over. “Oh.” That’s all I can manage because I had no clue my biological father was living in Boston, let alone the new coach for the Boston Rebels. That’s a massive oversight on my part.

More shocking than that, how on earth did he know I was here? Hell, I had no clue he was aware I was an orthopedic surgeon. The last time I saw him was on my fifth birthday when I fell out of the tree in our front yard and gave myself a lovely compound fracture of my radius. I screamed for him, but he never came, and when I finally managed to get myself inside the house, I found him in my parents' bed naked with my mother’s best friend.

She wasn’t his first mistress—just the one he was caught with.

After that, he divorced my mother and got himself transferred to another team across the country since he was still playing professionally then.

I didn’t see him or speak to him again. Not once.

Not even when I would call him and call him as a child desperate to talk to her father.

He never bothered with any of my skating events and wasn’t there when I won a fucking Olympic gold medal or when I subsequently blew out my knee less than two years later and my career ended. He didn’t care to learn that I got early acceptance to Yale for college or that I went on to Princeton for medical school. He had no knowledge that I was placed in a top-tier residency program. He definitely has no clue that I got pregnant and had a kid—he likely doesn’t know Mason even exists.

---