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“Pop the question?” He finished for her as his gaze slowly slid to me. It made my heart hammer in my chest the way he looked at me, as if he were some kind of professional actor, doing his best to show love as he looked at his ‘fiancée.’ “Couple weeks ago. I took her to the Gardner Museum. She was so busy staring at the statues in the garden that she didn’t even realize I’d dropped to one knee.” He laughed. How did he know I liked that museum? Lucky guess?
He wrapped an arm around me and I stiffened, the display of affection catching me off guard. No matter how much I wanted this to work, no matter how well I tried to play my part, all I could think about was what I’d seen out my window the day before, and what hid beneath the shorts he was wearing.
He placed a kiss on the side of my head, right above my ear. Although I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I knew I was because I could smell him all around me—sweet and thick like rum, with a hint of citrus and wood. The small bit of sweat he’d built up did nothing to mask it.
“Right, well, I guess congratulations are in order,” Mom said slowly, glancing between me, my father, and the man to my left who I now knew was named Hudson. I wasn’t sure if it was worse now that I knew his name. “We should come over for dinner soon. Get to know one another.”
“Absolutely,” Hudson grinned. “I’d love that.”
My parents hopped into their truck. As they pulled out of the driveway, they stared me down, confusion and surprise the only words capable of describing the vibes they put off. Hudson held me to him in silence until they were no longer within sight, until we couldn’t even hear the hint of the engine anymore.
I slithered out from under his arm the moment it felt safe to do so.
I didn’t know what to say to him. How to thank him, to tell him how much it meant to me, how much he’d saved my ass by playing along. I wanted to form the words, I could feel them on the tip of my tongue, but each time I tried to open my mouth, it felt like it’d be sewn shut.
“You don’t need to thank me,” he said calmly, as if reading my mind, the words coming so easily to him. I was jealous.
“Okay,” I whispered. It was the only word that I could manage.
If only I could have said more before turning and bolting back inside my house, sick from the stress and embarrassment of the entire afternoon.
Chapter 5
Hudson
Monday
The chair below me squeaked as I rolled across the small clinical room. According to my planner, in approximately five minutes, I’d have a new patient walking through the door. That in itself wasn’t entirely unusual, but I’d be lying if I said the name on the patient file didn’t make my cock twitch to life.
Sophia Mitchell.
The possibility that it was her was small. There were thousands of women named Sophia across Boston, and I doubted all of them went by Sophie. But just the mention of her name—the name I’d come to know from eavesdropping on her yesterday—was enough to excite me.
Why was I so intrigued by her to begin with?
My foot tapped incessantly against the vinyl floor. At any moment, a nurse would bring this patient through my door, and I had to chill the fuck out. The likelihood that it was her was so small, so absurd, that it would be a horrible twist of fate for her to end up in my room. And if it wasn’t her, I needed to stop thinking about how many ways I wanted to take her, because a half-erect dick poking out of my scrubs was not a good first impression for an IVF doctor.
The door handle wiggled and pulled free. I sucked in a sharp breath.
God fucking dammit.
My throat was suddenly filled with a lump, chased by my quickening pulse. Sophie, dressed in a little yellow sundress and sandals, stared directly at me, eyes widened in what I could only assume was horror. She turned to the nurse, her face paling and making her freckles stand out more than they already did. If I wasn’t so stunned myself I would have taken the time to appreciate how beautiful she looked.
“Is this a joke?” She asked quietly, her pretty mouth barely forming the words.
Janice, the nurse, stared back in confusion. “Uh…”
“It’s alright, Jan. I’ll handle it,” I said, the words feeling hollow. She glanced between me and Sophie, the concern dripping from her features. She nodded to herself, seeming to accept the situation, then turned and headed out of the room, leaving me alone with a horrified Sophie in my doorway.
“It’s a prank. This has to be a prank,” she whispered, her fingers shaking as they touched her lips. I remembered she did the same thing when she saw me notice her watching me from her window, and… fuck, now I was back to thinking about that.
“I can assure you, little voyeur, that I had no idea that the ‘Sophia Mitchell’ on my appointment calendar was you,” I said, and like a freight train full of boulders, the regret of calling her out hit me. The moment it processed for her, her cheeks heated, red as a sunburn, and she honestly looked like she wanted to murder me.
I’d probably let her.
“Come on in.”
Her shoulders rose and fell with each exasperated breath. Her nostrils flared with every exhale, and if we were in one of Jamey’s cartoons, she’d be physically steaming. “You want me to come in there? With you? And talk about my in vitro fertilization treatment? Absolutely not.”
