Fifteen
Derek Caruthers was a badass. He knew it and so did everyone else he passed in the halls of Cole’s Hill Regional Medical Center. He was one of the youngest surgeons in the country to have his stellar record and, aside from a few bumps along the way, he deserved his reputation as the best. Today he felt especially pleased with himself as he had been invited to meet with the overall hospital board. He was pretty sure he was going to be named the chief of cardiology as the hospital prepared to open its new cardiac surgery wing.
Mentally high-fiving himself, he entered the boardroom. Most of the members were already there but the new board member wasn’t. The first item of business in today’s meeting was to reveal who had been chosen to oversee the new cardiac wing. Derek had no idea who it would be, but given that Cole’s Hill was a small town, and he’d heard that the new board member had a local connection to Cole’s Hill, Derek was confident it would be someone he knew.
“Derek, good to see you,” Dr. Adam Brickell said, coming over to shake his hand. Dr. Brickell had been Derek’s mentor when he first started and the two men still enjoyed a close bond. The older doctor had retired two years ago and now sat on the board at the medical center. He had been the one to put Derek’s name forward for chief.
“Dr. Brickell, always a pleasure,” Derek said. “I’m really looking forward to this meeting. Something I usually don’t say.”
“Keep that enthusiasm, but there might be a wrinkle. What if the new board member has her own ideas about the cardiology department?” Dr. Brickell said.
“Her? I’ve yet to meet a woman I couldn’t bring around to my way of thinking,” Derek said. He didn’t want Dr. Brickell to see any signs of nerves or doubt in Derek. Whoever this new board member was, Derek would win them over.
Dr. Brickell laughed and clapped him on the back. “Glad to hear it.”
Derek’s phone rang and Dr. Brickell stepped away to allow him to check his call. Given that he was a surgeon he never ignored his calls.
He noticed that it was from his friend Bianca. She and he had been besties for most of their lives. It had gotten a bit awkward on his side when he’d developed the hots for her in high school but all of that had ended when she’d moved to Paris to model, fallen in love with a champion racecar driver and married him.
But for Bianca, the fairy-tale romance and marriage had been short-lived; after only three years together, her husband had been killed in a plane crash, leaving her to raise a two-year-old son alone.
Well, because of that, Derek had once again made being Bianca’s friend a top priority.
She’d been sort of fragile since she’d moved back to Cole’s Hill. He knew it was the pressure her mom was putting on her to find a husband so that Bianca and her son wouldn’t be “on their own.”
He glanced around the room and caught Dr. Brickell’s eye, gesturing that he needed to take the call. Dr. Brickell nodded and Derek stepped out into the hallway for privacy.
“Bi, what’s up?”
“I’m so glad you’re here. Did I catch you before the hospital meeting?” she asked.
“Yes. What’s up?” he asked again.
“Mom has another man lined up for me to go out with tonight. Is there the slightest possibility you’re free?” she asked.
No, and even if he were, he wasn’t going to go there. They were friends by her design and probably for his sanity, he wasn’t about to rock the boat by dating her. He would cancel for her but this was Wednesday and everyone in the Five Families area where they both lived knew that the Caruthers brothers had dinner at the club and then played pool on Wednesday nights. “It’s pool night with my brothers and your mom will know that.”
“Damn. Okay, it was worth a shot.”
“It definitely was. I’m sorry. Who is it tonight?”
“A coworker from the network. He’s a producer or something,” Bianca said.
Bianca’s mom was a morning news anchor for their local TV station. She’d been busily setting Bianca up on dates since she’d moved back to Cole’s Hill.
“Sounds...interesting,” Derek said.
“As if. Mom has no idea what I want in a man,” Bianca said.
And that was a can of worms Derek had no intention of opening right now. “I’ve got to go. The board is almost all here.”
“No problem. Good luck today. They’d be foolish not to pick you.”
“They would be,” Derek agreed. “Later, Bi.”
“Later.”
He disconnected the call and put his phone back in his pocket. He adjusted his tie as he looked down the hall for a mirror to check it and heard the staccato sound of high heels. He glanced over his shoulder, a smile ready, and his jaw dropped.
The woman walking toward him was Marnie Masters. Damn. She gave him a very calculated look from under her perfect eyebrows. Her blond hair was artfully styled around her somewhat angular face and teased to just the right height. She moved the way he imagined a lioness would when she sighted her prey and he didn’t kid himself that he was anything other than the prey.
“Marnie, always a pleasure to see you,” he said, though he’d been dodging her calls, texts and party invitations for the last eighteen months. So calling it a pleasure was a bit of a stretch.
“I would believe that if I didn’t have to resort to taking this role on the board and leaving my practice in Houston in order to ‘run into’ you,” she retorted.
“You’re back in Cole’s Hill?” he said, shaken. He knew he needed to get his groove back and put on the charm.
“Well, it’s the new me. Daddy donated the money for this new cardiac surgery wing—at my suggestion—and the board agreed to his suggestion that I be hired to oversee the new wing. I just finished doing something similar in Houston and Daddy really wanted me to come home... So it seems as if you and I will be working together for the foreseeable future,” Marnie said.
“I’m glad to hear the board has hired someone with your qualifications,” he said.
“I imagine we will get to know each other much better now that I’m working here. It will give us a chance to spend more time together and get caught up.”
Derek knew he couldn’t just say hell no. But there was no way he was getting involved with her again. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”
“Why? There are no rules against it,”
