All's Fair in Love and Blood: A Romantic Comedy Novel

by Jennifer Peel

  Just because I was behind the curve didn’t mean I couldn’t come out on top. I’d graduated from one of the top medical schools in the country and earned a coveted residency at one of the most prestigious labs. And I knew more about plasma, pharmaceutical treatments using plasma, and innovative lab techniques than Auggie or Kane. I would use that to my advantage.

  I spread out my books, laptop, notepads, and snacks all over my bedroom floor. Yep, I still did my best work on the floor. In the lab, it was never an option, but when I could be in my office, I was on the floor as much as possible. My medical colleagues had always teased me about it.

  I opened the first book and read over the basics of what a business plan should include: statistics, vision, strategy, goals, analysis, research, teamwork. I made a list. Lists. Why did I always think of Kane when it came to lists? I needed to not think about him, except for how I was going to snatch victory from his grasp.

  That was kind of hard when two hours into my research, he came waltzing into my room using the bathroom door after knocking but not waiting for my response.

  I looked up at him and scowled. “Excuse me, I could have been undressed.”

  “Darlin’, don’t excite me like that.”

  “What do you want?” I ignored his salacious comment.

  “Isn’t that obvious by now?” He wagged his brows.

  I sighed and held up my book, The Personal MBA, in front of my face, trying to ignore him.

  It didn’t work. He sat down next to me, grabbed the book, and flipped through it. “Great book, except he discounts the value of getting a real MBA.”

  I snatched it right back. “I honestly think he doesn’t undervalue it enough.”

  Kane chuckled. “If you say so.”

  Believe me, I did. I didn’t need an MBA to do this job. I had an MD. Two little letters that were worth a lot more than the three behind his name.

  “You can go now,” I threw out there.

  “Not yet.” He tugged on a strand of my hair. “I miss watching you in your natural habitat.”

  I whipped my head toward him and let out a frustrated sigh. “Can you please stop with all the . . .” I threw my hands into the air, not knowing how to put it into words.

  “All the what?”

  “You. Just stop being you.” That was a good way to put it.

  “You know, you used to like me.” He nudged my arm.

  I still did. A. Lot. I missed how he could make anything fun. And how I felt when I was around him. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, it was,” he whispered. “Scarlett, can you at least let me have my say?”

  I set my book down in resignation. He was going to keep at it until I heard him out. Might as well get it over with. Except, I had a question for him first. “Has Auggie said anything to you about why he’s retiring?”

  “I was as shocked as you were this morning.”

  “Has he been acting sick or abnormal?”

  Kane thought for a moment. “He’s seemed fine. Except—” He paused, making my pulse race. “Last month he didn’t show up to a budget meeting. When I called him, he said he forgot and he needed to take a few days off.”

  “He never forgets a meeting, and he doesn’t take time off, even when he takes time off.” I started breathing hard. I knew something was wrong. I prayed Naomi would be able to get Auggie to talk.

  Kane took my hand. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  I didn’t hear what he said over the comfort I felt from his touch. I couldn’t have that. I pulled my hand away. “What did you want to s . . . say?” I stuttered. I needed him to leave. We felt too right together, sitting on the floor like old times.

  Kane exhaled loudly. “Scarlett, I’ve practiced this speech a thousand times over the last eight years, but now I find myself tongue-tied.”

  That was a first. “Perhaps it’s not that important then.”

  “No. It’s just the opposite.”

  “If that were true, you would have said it a long time ago.” I kept the rising emotion out of my voice while I scooted farther away from him. Everything about him called to me, and I needed distance.

  “I should have. I meant to, but you were always dating someone new, and I had no right to interfere.”

  “And now you do?” I snapped.

  “Are you dating someone? Engaged?”

  “No, thanks to you.”

  “Me?” He pointed at his chest. “I would like to take credit for your breakup with Ethan, but you and I both know you weren’t happy with him.”

  I squinted at him. “And how would you know that?”

  He grabbed my shirt and pulled me to him. “Because I know you.” We were so close his minty breath blew across my lips.

  “No. You left me.” I blinked back my tears.

  “You think I wanted to?”

  “Of course you did. You got the promotion you’d always wanted.”

  “Yes,” he scoffed. “The job. It was a great trade—” he oozed sarcasm. “It only meant losing the woman I love.” His eyes penetrated my own while his words slammed into me like a tsunami.

  I scrambled out of his grasp and stood. Pacing back and forth. “Don’t say that to me.” It had to be a lie.

  He stood and took my hand gently, but firmly. Holding on like he might drown if I let go.

  As for me, I felt as if I would lose myself in him if I didn’t pull away. I would want his lie to be the truth. I yanked my hand away and leaned against my dresser for support, my eyes begging him not to come closer.

  He seemed to teeter about what to do but kept his distance. “Scarlett,” he whispered. “You were so young and inexperienced. I should have known better.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means, you deserved to have a choice.”

  “And you benevolently gave me one. Do you want me to thank you?”

  “No. I want you to understand. Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I did it because I love you.”

  My mouth fell open, dumbfounded. “That makes zero sense.” And please, for all that is good and holy, stop saying you love me.

  He took a step closer. “Scarlett, it makes perfect sense. The way our relationship was headed, where did you think it was going?”

  I bit my lip and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

  “You do know. You’ve been in enough relationships now to understand right where we were headed.”

  I lowered my head and glared at him. “And that was too awful for you to bear?”

  He didn’t hesitate this time and pulled me to him. We were body-to-body and face-to-face, sharing the same breaths. His eyes bored into mine. “Scarlett, for eight years I’ve longed to have you in my arms. I’ve dreamed of coming home to you every night and making a life with you. Making love to you.”

  My body burned with a heat so fervent, I melted where I stood and was rendered immovable and speechless. For so long, I had dreamed of those same things. Still, that was all they would ever be—dreams. Tears streamed down my cheeks, yet I couldn’t say anything.

  He gently wiped some of the tears away with his thumb. “That’s where we were headed. And you deserved the choice of whether that was your final destination or not.”

  His words loosened my tongue and my ire. “You didn’t give me the option. You walked away with no regard to my feelings. For eight years, I questioned if what we had was real.” I raised my voice, which I never did. “I wondered what I had done to make you leave. Why you had told me to follow my dreams and then snatched the one I wanted most away from me,” I cried, always too honest with him.

  He rested his forehead against mine. His tears dripped onto my nose. “What we had was so real it hurt.” His lips came dangerously close to mine, and, for a brief second, I almost let him close the distance. Almost.

  I pushed away from him and began to pace again, running my hands through my long hair, which had gotten curlier as the day had gone on. No straig
htener was a match for the Georgia humidity. “We’re not doing this, Kane. You made your choice.”

  “I was trying to do the right thing,” he replied earnestly, begging me to believe him.

  “The right thing would have been to tell me the truth back then. Did you think I couldn’t handle it?”

  “No, damn it. I knew if I told you the truth, you would have convinced me to stay.”

  I stopped pacing and whipped my head his way. “You’re wrong. I would have told you to go and then booked a ticket to see you over the holidays. I would have called you every day just to say I loved you and I missed you. I would have even looked into going to medical school there. The one thing I wouldn’t have done is give up on us.”

  He sighed deeply. “I never gave up. I gave you time to live your life. And whether you agree with me or not, you deserved that. Do you think I wanted you to wake up fifteen years down the road and regret that you never knew life outside of me?”

  “I wouldn’t have regretted it.”

  “You can say that now because you’ve received your education, traveled, and have known life with other men. And as much as I’ve hated to watch other men touch you and love you, I always hoped they were only stepping-stones back to me. Or . . .,” he swallowed, “that you would find someone who made you ridiculously happy.”

  So maybe he made some valid points, but still. “Right. I should thank you for being so noble and self-sacrificing, all for my benefit. And I could see how hard it was for you, pining away for me all these years, with your supermodel girlfriends who you loved to shove in my face every Christmas. Thank you for all the awkward dinners, by the way.”

  “How in the hell else was I going to see you?” he zinged back at me.

  “Kind of hard to see me when you had your little sex kittens on your lap.”

  He busted out laughing. “Sex kittens?”

  “You heard me right.” I wished he hadn’t. Yikes. My mouth was ridiculous.

  “Scarlett, what did you want me to do? Show up alone? How much more awkward would that have been knowing you were bringing someone with you?”

  “You didn’t have to come at all.”

  “I did,” he breathed out. “Because it didn’t matter how much it hurt to see you with someone else—at least I got to see you, in the flesh, where I could admire you from across the table.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “For years, you could have seen me anytime you wanted to. All you had to do was pick up the phone. But you didn’t. Instead, you treated me like a child who couldn’t make up her own mind.”

  “I never thought of you as a child.”

  “Regardless, you hurt me and stole my heart. And I would really like it back. Could you at least do that for me?” I pleaded, with tears streaming down my face. Maybe then I could get over him. Truly fall in love with someone else.

  “Darlin’, if I could, I would, just to make you happy. But I don’t think there is a ‘your heart’ and ‘my heart’ anymore.” He stepped closer and placed his hand across his chest before resting it on my wildly beating heart. “Whatever happened between us, it wasn’t meant to be severed. Don’t you feel it every time we touch?”

  Yes, I felt it. I felt it so much I almost shouted it. His words rang truer than any words ever spoken. But, to know he loved me this entire time and let me live without him was too much. How could I forgive him for that? “There has to be a way.”

  “I hope we never find it.”

  “I do. We’re over,” I whispered because my heart, our hearts, wanted to strangle my response. Kane was right; we were bound together in an inexplicable way. It made so much sense now. It wasn’t that he had stolen my heart. It was that my heart had found its missing piece, what made it truly come alive.

  He hung his head. “You don’t know how sorry I am to hear that,” he choked out.

  I think I did, because no one was sorrier than me.

  How to Save the World

  The phone ringing on my desk startled me. I had forgotten there was even a phone in here. I set aside my books and notes and stood to answer it, assuming someone had mistakenly called the wrong extension.

  “Hello.”

  “Dr. Young Lady,” Sir Randall’s booming voice came through loud and clear. “Your father would like to see you.”

  “Now?” I was in the middle of working on my vision statement. It was going to be brilliant, as soon as I finished reading the book on how to write an inspiring vision statement; and, of course, after I perfected my mission statement, because that had to come first, according to the book. I’d started my mission statement. As in, I’d written out, Armstrong Labs: To discover and develop. Yep, that’s all I had written out. All I needed was one amazing sentence, possibly two, and that’s all I could come up with. There were so many things we did. It was hard to condense it into one little statement.

  Maybe Kane was right: I didn’t know business. Or was he more correct when he’d said I didn’t want to? I mean, I could diagnose every disease imaginable in the lab. Give me any specimen, from blood to urine, and I could tell you more about yourself than you ever wanted to know. But I couldn’t write out one lousy mission statement.

  “That would be best for him.”

  It would probably be best for me too. I’d been locked up in this office all week reading, studying, writing, scribbling out, and crumpling up paper. I still loved to write out my thoughts before typing them. If only that were helping. “I’ll be right there.” I hung up and straightened out my blouse, just in case I saw the main reason I was locked in this office—Kane.

  I was also blaming him for my inability to focus the way I wanted to. I kept running our last conversation over and over in my mind. Why did he have to tell me he loves me? Those words haunted me day and night. I wished I didn’t believe him. I wished for a lot of things. Mostly for the ache to go away. The ache for him, the ache for what could have been—should have been.

  I did some breathing exercises, trying to prepare myself for the possibility of seeing my competition. It was always awkward when we saw each other now. It made me wish for the good old days when he’d caught me with my hand down my bra.

  I peeked out the door, and all I saw was his secretary, Jaycie, typing at her desk across the way. I had no idea he had a secretary until a few days ago. Apparently, she had been on vacation. Now she was back, perfectly tanned, and with no tan lines, I might add. She was the living definition of a sex kitten. Meow. She even purred at Kane while she stroked her silky brunette hair. I imagined her sitting on Kane’s desk in her short skirts, rubbing her shapely, smooth legs together while they went over his schedule for the day.

  Without Kane in sight, I decided to make a break for it. Unfortunately, Jaycie noticed.

  “Hey, Scarlett,” she drawled in the cutest accent ever. “How are you?” She was sweet too. It was unfortunate, as I wanted to dislike her.

  “Doing well. Thank you.” I kept on walking.

  “We should do lunch one day,” she called out.

  That was the last thing I wanted to do—have lunch with Kane’s future girlfriend. Oh, she was angling for it, and she was totally his type. She would look perfect on his lap during Christmas dinner.

  I stopped, turned, and smiled. “That would be great.” I kept myself from cringing.

  She flashed me her brilliant white smile. “Yay! What day works for you?”

  Never. “Um. Can we discuss this later? I’m late for a meeting with my father.”

  “Sure. Sure.” She waved. “We’ll talk later.”

  Great. Something else to give me heartburn. I hustled toward my dad’s office. Sir Randall stood up and saluted me when I made it to Auggie’s door.

  “At ease,” I teased him.

  He gave me a wink and sat down. “Go on in; he’s expecting you.”

  I turned the knob and walked in.

  Auggie hastily shoved something into his desk drawer. If I wasn’t mistaken, it looked like a prescription bottle. I
wasn’t aware he was taking any medication. I wasn’t aware of anything because he wouldn’t tell Naomi what was going on either. Though, he had asked her to have dinner with him tomorrow night. She was still thinking about it. I’d begged her to say yes, hoping he would open up to her in person. He was acting like a man tying up loose ends, and I didn’t like it at all. We had way too many ends to tie up and we needed time.

  “Scarlett.” Auggie popped up.

  “Hi.” I tilted my head. “How are you?”

  “I’m well.” His lips twitched.

  Was this funny to him?

  “In fact, I was wondering if you would like to join me on the golf course.”

  “Now?” It was the middle of the day.

  “No time like the present.”

  Yep, he was dying. I knew it. “Um . . . I don’t golf.”

  “I figured as much. It’s an important skill for you to have. I’ve made more deals on the green than in this office. And I’m not a bad teacher.”

  I started blinking rapidly, waiting for Rod Serling to announce I had entered the Twilight Zone.

  “Are you busy?” Auggie asked when I said nothing.

  I was busy, but I had been waiting for a moment like this my entire life. “Can we go home and change first?”

  “I’ve handled that. They have a shop at the club that will have everything you need.”

  He was taking me shopping and teaching me how to golf? I was waiting for the catch. When it didn’t come, I said, “Okay. I’d love to.” Though I was sure to injure myself or someone else. I could easily see myself knocking Auggie in the head with a club. That could be therapeutic.

  Auggie clapped his hands. “Excellent.” He was way too chipper.

  It scared me.

  He walked toward me smiling. Like, a real smile. “Shall we go?”