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,” she said, with a wink. “I checked.”
“Of course there aren’t any rules. It’s just that I’m engaged,” Derek said. “I wouldn’t want my fiancée to get the wrong idea.”
* * *
“Engaged?” Ethan Caruthers asked as he and Derek ordered another round of drinks at the Five Families Country Club later that night. “Why would you say something like that?”
“You know Marnie. She wasn’t going to accept a no. So I panicked and...”
“Said something over-the-top. Derek, that’s crazy. I think when it becomes clear you don’t have a fiancée, this could backfire,” his brother said.
Ethan had a point. Already, his lie had added a wrinkle to his prospects for becoming chief of cardiology. Marnie hadn’t been happy to hear about the engagement and had told the board that she was considering a few other applicants. Dr. Brickell had firmly been in Derek’s corner, saying that the decision needed to be made sooner rather than later, but Marnie had stood firm. She’d insisted it would be two months before the final decision would be made and had enough support from other members to win the argument and temporarily table the decision.
The board had adjourned and Derek had gone back to work, doing two surgeries that had wiped the fiancée problem from his mind until he’d shown up here. Ethan was the only one of his brothers waiting when Derek had arrived.
“Tell me about it,” Derek said. “If I could just find a woman...someone who needed a guy for a few months.”
“Would Marnie believe one of your casual friends was your fiancée?” Ethan asked.
“No. I told her it was someone special and that’s why it was under wraps.”
Ethan took another swallow of his scotch and shook his head. “Damn, boy, you always did have a gift for telling whoppers.”
“I know. What am I going to do?”
“About what?” Hunter asked, joining their group. Hunter had recently moved back to Cole’s Hill after spending the better part of ten years playing in the NFL and traveling the country promoting fitness while dodging the scandal of being accused of killing his college girlfriend. Recently the real murderer had been arrested and charged with the crime, which had enabled Hunter to finally break free of the dark cloud of suspicion. He was now engaged and planning the wedding of the century according to their mother and Ferrin, Hunter’s fiancée. Everyone was in wedding fever in Cole’s Hill.
“He needs a fiancée,” Ethan said with a bit of a smirk.
Derek reached over and punched his brother. Of course Ethan would think it was funny. With only eleven months separating the two of them they were “almost twins,” and as Ethan was the older of the two, he had always been a little smug.
“Do I want to know why?” Hunter asked, signaling