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“I’ll leave the superior parenting to you.” I smack his shoulder. “Get back to work. I’ll see you around.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for you, Dr. Morgan.” He points at me. “I don’t know how the hell I missed saying hello to that handsome face, but I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I haven’t seenyou in scrubs in years.” Berk goes in for a hug as I approach him.
I reciprocate because my cousin is the closest thing to a brother I have. “It’s a good look, no?”
He huffs out a laugh as he directs me to sit across from him in this bustling coffee shop on the Upper East Side. “You look good, Gaines, although you could use a shave.”
I could use that, a decent meal and a fuck, but cardiologists can’t be picky. I take what I get, and today that is fifteen minutes with my cousin, and what looks like a day old croissant and a lukewarm coffee.
“I’ve been here for awhile.” He slides off his suit jacket, placing it over the back of his chair. “Sorry if the pastry is dry, and the coffee cold.”
I take a bite of the croissant and wash it down with a mouthful of the bitter coffee.
He watches me chew, his gaze falling to the front of my scrubs where my name is stamped across the left side of my chest.
“It’s good,” I tell him before I go in for another bite. “How are you? Astrid? Stevie?”
“We’re all fine.” He sips from the cup in front of him. “I’d ask how you are, but you’re living a doctor’s life so underpaid and overworked?”
I’m both. Our grandfather left me enough money when he died that I could drop the career and adopt a new, much less stressful one, but medicine is it for me.
It’s always been.
A slice of the inheritance funded my education. Dutch, our grandfather, would be proud.
I knew I wanted to be a doctor decades ago. That desire intensified as I got older until I made the announcement that I was heading to medical school.
My mother cried. My dad did the same.
Making them proud has been the icing on the cake for me.
“I’ve been swamped,” I admit before I finish the croissant. “How’s work for you?”
Berk owns a publishing company. He’s made the dreams of a host of people come true. In his way, he’s changing lives, too.
“It’s been great,” he admits. “I’ve got a few projects on the go. They’re big, but nothing I can talk about yet.”
“Not even to me?”
He laughs. “If I tell you, you’ll have to tell me what was wrong with Eloise’s friend. What was the guy’s name? Daxton?”
Hearing her name sits me up straighter. “You know about Daxton?”
I ask that question to keep from blurting out the one I really want to ask. I haven’t seen Eloise in ten days but that hasn’t stopped my mind from focusing on her.
“Eloise mentioned him when she stopped by for dinner last weekend.”
I want to ask where the fuck my invitation was, but I stop myself. I’ve kept my encounter in the club with Eloise to myself for two goddamn years. Now, that I know she was the beauty I brought to orgasm, I need to keep that secret forever, especially since she has no idea I’m the masked man who took her into that room.
“Daxton was the guy who collapsed in Atlas 22,” I explain because I have no idea what Eloise told him. “He’s doing well now.”
“Good.” He nods.
The door is open for me to ask how Eloise is, but I slam it shut because it’s none of my damn business.
“I wanted to meet up to ask a favor.” He shakes his head. “If you don’t have time for this, tell me, Gaines. We’ll go in another direction.”
