Surprise Delivery(66)

“He’ll eventually get bored and wander away, I hope,” I say. “Maybe, he’ll find somebody else to fixate on.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t count on it,” she says, her laugh wry. “He wants to play house with you and nobody but you.”

“Yeah, still trying to figure out how I got so lucky,” I grumble.

“The boy is totally and completely under your spell,” she replies.

I snort. “Yeah, or something like that,” I say. “Don’t you now regret forcing me to go out with him in the first place?”

“Don’t remind me,” she says. “Not one of my better decisions.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.”

She laughs, but it tapers off quickly. “Seriously, we need to do something about him.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say softly. “I’m going to have to talk to him. Tell him that he needs to stay away and to stop bothering us.”

“That could be dangerous, Lex. He could hurt you.”

I shrug. “At least it might give me grounds to file a restraining order.”

“Yeah, if he doesn’t kill you.”

“He’s not going to kill me,” I tell her. “Like you said, he wants to play house and raise a family together.”

“Just – be careful.”

I nod. “I will.”

The truth is, I have zero ideas about what to expect when I confront him. It could go smoothly, or it could wind up in a very bad way. It’s more than obvious that Brad has some issues. He’s not exactly the most stable guy around, which makes him unpredictable. Which scares me to death.

But I have no choice. I have to confront him and make him understand that he and I will never be a thing, we’ll never raise a family together, and he’ll be better off moving on with his life. I have to make him understand he needs to find somebody else to fulfill him the way he thinks I do.

It’s something else I’ve been putting off doing because, frankly, it scares the hell out of me. But there is no other option. Brad needs to go. Permanently.





It’s been a crazy day at the hospital. I just got out of an emergency surgery on a car crash victim, but the internal damage was so extensive, I still don’t know if she’s going to make it. I did everything I could to save her life, but only time will tell if it was enough.

It’s not a great way to end a shift and I hate walking away from a patient with so much uncertainty, but there’s really nothing more I can do. It’s out of my hands. I step into the lounge and grab myself a cup of coffee. I just want to sit and decompress for a minute before doing my rounds to check on my other patients. It’s the last thing I have to do before heading home, so I’d at least like to gather my wits and be present in the moment when I do it.

The lounge is deserted when I walk in, so I grab a cup of coffee and sit down on the couch, letting myself relax. The television is on, tuned to SportsCenter, so I take in the highlights of last night’s games. Or at least zone out to them, anyway. I’m watching the TV without actually watching it – it’s background noise as I take a minute to mellow.

“Doctor Clyburne.”

Snapped out of my near-trance, I look up and see Sabrina standing near the sofa.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” I say.

“Yeah, you looked a little tuned out.”

I laugh softly. “Needed a minute of downtime.”

She nods. “Yeah, we all do sometimes.”

“How are you doing?” I ask. “How are things with you and Dominic?”

Her smile stretches across her face and lights up the entire lounge. It’s the look of a woman totally and completely in love. In some respects, I’m envious. There’s a part of me that wants to be the reason for that look on a woman’s face. But, that part of me also acknowledges that it couldn’t be just any woman – I want it to be Alexis with that look on her face. Which isn’t happening.

“He’s amazing,” she beams. “Utterly amazing.”

I smile. “Yeah, he’s a good man,” I say, “Hell of a surgeon too.”

“I never thought I’d meet somebody so perfect for me,” she confides. “But we match up in so many ways. He really gets me.”

“It’s nice to have somebody in your life that you really connect with like that.”

“It really is,” she agrees.

“How are Alexis and the baby doing?” I ask.

“They’re both doing great, thanks to you,” she smiles. “She named the baby Aurora.”

“Aurora,” I say. “That’s a beautiful name.”

“She’s a beautiful baby,” Sabrina says. “And if not for you –”

I hold up my hand to stop her before she gets rolling. “I was just doing my job.”

“I think you went above and beyond,” she says. “I heard the whole story.”

I shrug. “It’s what I was trained to do,” I reply. “I just handled the situation in front of me.”

“And saved two lives doing it,” she persists. “I seriously can’t tell you how impressed I am with your skill or thank you enough for saving my best friend’s life.”