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I take her by the shoulders. “It won’t get out. That’s what I’m telling you. Your career is safe, Nick is safe. That’s the end of it.”
“Even if that were true, what’s next? Are you going to start asking me to smuggle drugs out of the hospital pharmacy? Bring home equipment? What’s next, Bash?”
“Now, don’t go off on a tangent, just know that we’re all safe and our lives will go on as planned. You’re getting the cardiothoracic residency precisely as planned and you’re going to be the most brilliant surgeon that hospital has ever produced. Count on that!”
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. I give her shoulders a comforting squeeze trying to knead some of the tension away.
“You did an incredible thing here. My God, you were magnificent,” I say, stoking her ego while speaking truth. “I think I fell in love with you all over again just watching you perform. I’m so honored to be with such an amazingly talented and beautiful woman.” I stroke her face. “I’m looking forward to watching you become one of the most respected surgeons in your field. I want …” The words spring into my head unbidden but feel so right. “I always want to be by your side, loyally loving and supporting you for the rest of our lives. Mads, I want to be your husband.”
Her hazel eyes fly wide at my words, but at least the tension has broken. “Bash, stop. I can’t think straight right now,” she objects, but I notice her struggling to stifle a smile.
“Fine, I’ll save my marriage proposal for a more appropriate time.” I cup her chin in my hand. “But know, that’s what I want for us. You and I are forever, Mads.”
She returns my gaze in silence but doesn’t object or counter my vision of our future together.
“Just promise me, no more nasty surprises like this. If you truly love me, you won’t keep putting my career at risk like this.”
I kiss her brow. “I know, and I’m sorry for putting you in this position. Your career is everything to me too. Please trust that.”
As she stares at me, an odd expression falls across her face. Slowly, her lips curve into a smile. “I must say, it was quite the adrenaline rush, being the lead surgeon with no one guiding or supervising me. To hold Nick’s life in my hands and to save it.” She blows out a breath. “Wow.”
I smirk. “Ah, and queue the God complex.”
She playfully smacks my chest. “It’s not like that,” she says, and then scrunches her nose. “Well, maybe a tiny bit.”
“I already worship you, so why not?”
Her head drops back. “As exhilarating as it was, I’m still not ready to work without a net. We were very fortunate tonight.”
“My girl doesn’t need any goddamn net. Tonight, you just proved you’re a freaking rock star in the O.R.”
Madison’s beaming from ear to ear, high on her success and my adulation. I’ve never felt closer to her, never felt more confident that I can bring her in. I turn to the nursing assistant who’s busy cleaning the place up.
“He’ll need to remain here on the monitors for the next twenty-four hours. It’ll be a couple of days before you can bring him home.”
I nod, hating the idea of leaving him here. “Tessa will stay with him the whole time and alert us if his condition changes.”
She checks the time on her phone. “Regardless, I’ll come back in five hours to check on him, and make sure no infection is setting in. He’s out of the woods and I’d like to keep it that way.” She glances around as if seeing the space for the first time. “This place is fairly impressive, a lot of money’s been invested here.” She casts an appraising look at me. “Where’s your usual surgeon?”
“He was unavailable, out of town,” I say without missing a beat.
She frowns. “What would you’ve done if you didn’t know me?”
I shrug. “We’d have been forced to take him to the hospital.”
“Well, he’d better get back soon. I only did this because Nick’s your brother.” Her eyes narrow at me. “You understand that, right?”
“You love me and wanted to help me out in a pinch, I got it.” The shock of what she’s done will wear off in a few days. After a few weeks, she’ll come to see that no harm whatsoever has come to her career, and all is well. Only then will she be ready to handle the difficult truth.
Two days later, we make the call to bring Nick home to let him recover under our care. I couldn’t have planned the whole thing better myself. Though I still want to wring Nick’s neck for pulling such an asinine stunt going out on his own like that. But this setback will give him pause, not to mention a healthy dose of reality. If anything will send his naïve ass back to Cornell University, it’s this. I’ve already contacted Nick’s professors to notify them that he’d been in an accident and wouldn’t be able to return for the rest of the semester. Forging the doctor’s excuse was easy enough.
Sergei and I nearly came to blows over his tacit approval of Nick’s plans to prove himself. I needed one of us to remain unblemished by this world. It’s too late for me despite their efforts to keep me clean. Now I’m in too deep to even think about leaving.
I’d reconciled myself to this life. I was going to marry Natasha, have her pop out a kid or two, and keep any number of girls from the club pool on the side. And then someday, when Sergei meets his end, I would become the new boss. That was the plan.
And then Madison Graham came along and wonderfully wrecked all of that.
How do I reconcile her to my world? I know I should just let her go. Isn’t that what love dictates? Maybe I’m just too selfish a bastard to let the best thing that ever happened to me walk away. She makes me feel things that I thought weren’t part of my DNA. Lord knows I’ve had more than my share of women from the club pool, drop-dead gorgeous ones that most men would give their left nut to be with. I’ve enjoyed them immensely, but I’d be lying if I said a single one of them made me want to claim them exclusively for my own or stamp the Petrosky name behind theirs. None of them inspired me to dream of a future with them, much less, contemplate monogamy.
