trust Ryan—yes. But were they ever going to be in a relationship—no. This was a brief and fleeting opportunity and one she didn’t feel she could turn away. Because she liked Ryan and the way he made her feel and because she was not going to let Kevin take one more thing from her.
Kevin had been a mistake from the beginning. She had just been too young and naive to see it. She had been a medical student on her first clinical rotation in Orthopedics when she’d met him. She had been nervous and excited, wearing her white clinical jacket for the first time and being called student intern. Everyone had seemed more important than her—the nurses, the residents, the staff physicians—and all she had wanted to do was to impress.
Then she’d met Kevin, or Dr. Dufour, her supervising resident, and he had seemed godlike in comparison to her lowly medical student ranking. He would single her out from her colleagues, giving her more opportunities and one-on-one time than any of the other students on the rotation. At first she had been flattered and had done her best to impress him, going that extra mile to stay late and check bloodwork or making food runs to bring to him in the operating room in between cases. Looking back on it, she had been more his slave than his student, but she had been so in awe of everything he’d represented.
Then his attention had become more personal than professional. Subtle touches, comments on her appearance, and she’d continued to be flattered. She had never been involved with anyone older than her and the attention of an older accomplished man had been absorbing. And he’d been a charmer, a snake charmer, really. It hadn’t been long before she’d fallen for him and he’d been making late-night appearances at her apartment. She had been in love with the man she’d thought he was and he had been willing to take advantage.
Until—until she’d become pregnant. And until he’d realized that while her last name was the same as her birth father’s, Madden, her stepfather was Dr. Williamson, the hospital’s chief of staff. That had been when she’d started getting glimpses of the man he really was, but she had been so overwhelmed with concern over her own life and how the pregnancy was going to affect her career that she’d pushed them to the back of her mind.
The same was done with her hesitancy over getting married. Her parents had made it clear that she had already disappointed them and it had been crushing knowledge, so she’d gone along with their demands, thinking that once Kevin got used to the idea of their upcoming family he would settle into their life together.
She had been so wrong. Once they’d married he’d become resentful and disinterested and she’d become trapped and alone. He hadn’t even been there when she’d almost died from complications from her miscarriage. To him it had been the final nail in the coffin that was his marriage. He’d felt unable to leave her now, not if he wanted his career. So he’d stayed. She had tried to make him happy. Tried to regain what they had lost, spending months—years—trying to conceive again, but she couldn’t.
Then had come the women. She’d met his first girlfriend shortly after they’d married, learning that he had been involved with the other woman at the same time as her up until their wedding. When she’d confronted him he’d told her what she’d wanted to hear and had promised his fidelity. Soon she had been too caught up in her own pain from her pregnancy loss to care whether he was telling the truth.
But as she had risen from her grief and begun to face her reality, she couldn’t hide the signs. By then she had graduated medical school and was now the resident at Boston General and Kevin was a staff orthopedic surgeon. When she walked the halls she would notice people taking more notice of her than was normal. When she entered the emergency department she would see nurses turn and speak quietly to one another. Then finally after three years of marriage she received a written note in her locker from “a friend” who wanted her to know that her husband was sleeping with one of the hospital pharmacists.
He didn’t even deny it. Instead he blamed his infidelity on her inadequacies as a wife. In some ways Kevin still won in their divorce. She filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences, too embarrassed to have her husband’s cheating and her deficiencies aired publically. His professional reputation remained intact and he was able to carry on at Boston General as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, she was struggling to gain her own reputation outside her infamous failed marriage and position as the chief of staff’s stepdaughter.
Kevin wanted her gone, completely, and communicated more with her postdivorce with his badgering than he had in the year prior to their ultimate divorce. And it would be easier for her just to leave and start over somewhere new with all her baggage left behind, but there was something about Boston General that felt like home and she wasn’t ready to give up anything else in her life.
The wind picked up again and she felt the corners of the blanket lift. It was time to try to sleep, to force herself onto Scottish time. She rose from her chair and peered into the night, instinctively turning to her right, looking away from the ocean and at one of the neighboring balconies. She recognized Ryan. The backlighting of his suite and the darkness of the balcony created the same effect as when she had first seen him and the image of masculine perfection was unchanged. They were too far apart for words, so instead she pressed her hand to her lips and extended it toward him before walking back into her suite and closing the balcony door.
NERVOUS ANTICIPATION FILLED her as Erin dressed for the unknown in the day ahead. Somehow in the heat of her moment with Ryan they had not made true plans for today, she had just asked him to meet her. When? Where? She had no idea, but she had complete faith that she would see him.
She ran her fingers through her hair, deciding to leave it down, and took a look at her appearance in the mirror. It had felt great that morning, getting ready and knowing that there was someone waiting for her who would be appreciative of her effort. Her cream tunic top had a crocheted design that while it covered her it also revealed her shape beneath. The same went for her gray slim-fit summer pants that ended a few inches above her ankles. She had small slip-on shoes that matched and would be perfect for exploring Edinburgh. She hoped she would see Ryan sooner rather than later.
He was waiting in the hotel lobby when the elevator doors opened. He looked up and smiled, sipping from a takeaway cup of coffee. He looked as good as when she had twice previously seen him. He was freshly washed and shaved and the V-neck of his red polo shirt revealed the hint of another tattoo on his chest. She walked toward him and he rose to greet her, and before she could wish him good morning his lips were against hers. The kiss was brief but no less exciting. “I’ve been waiting to do that.”
“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.”
“You’re worth waiting for. I brought you a coffee. I hope you drink coffee.”
“I live on it, thanks.”
“So what is your plan for the day?” he asked.
“My plan?” Her only plan had been to be with Ryan.
“Well, my plan was to be with you, which I have now accomplished, so now we move on to your plan.”
She knew she was smiling like a fool, but still couldn’t change the way she felt. “Ah. Okay, then. Today is my only free day and my plan was to explore Edinburgh. I would be very pleased if you joined me.”
“Lead on.”
With a genuine smile she led them back outside the hotel, where Ryan took her hand. “Let me guess, we’re going to the princess castle.”
“Of course,”
