“What was Evelyn doing there?” I asked.
“Visiting,” he answered, exaggerating each syllable. “She had a container in her hand, so she was probably just dropping something off for her granddaughter.”
“And did she leave with the container?”
I could tell he subtly wanted to roll his eyes. “No, she didn’t.”
And there was my answer. The old troublemaking bat was the missing link. Whatever she’d dropped off for Alexandra, along with whatever she’d possibly said to her, had set this entire thing in motion. Though I wasn’t inclined to think that whatever she’d dropped off at the office was a hoodoo concoction of sorts, I wasn’t completely convinced that it wasn’t.
“Thank you,” I replied. “I’ll need copies of these photos.”
“Do you plan to confront her?”
Now, he was simply being nosy. “And if I am?”
“Mr. Hamilton, have you ever considered the possibility that this guy isn’t out to hurt Alexandra? Maybe, just maybe, if she’d been happy with you, she wouldn’t be doing what she’s doing? I mean, when my ex-wife left me, I was pissed and angry at the world. But then I realized that I’d been a shameless alcoholic who worked too many hours and didn’t appreciate the little gestures she did for me. She’d make picnic lunches that I never attended, and the lengths she’d go to in order to get me the perfect birthday present was glossed over when I never even acknowledged the gift.”
I pressed a finger over my brow at the audacity of this layman to think that he could offer me life advice. “Well, if you’d looked like me and had my money, I guarantee that your ex-wife wouldn’t have ever left you,” I replied. “Send me copies of the pictures and continue to keep this under wraps from her father.”
He stared at me as though he was considering ignoring my request.
“And I will wire you extra as promised for the secondary surveillance,” I added, reminding him that I had him by the balls. Then, I stretched out my hand. “Do we have an understanding?”
He shook his head and grasped my hand with what appeared to be a degree of difficulty. Then, he walked off and I hopped into my car, feeling slightly unsettled about believing that the old Miller woman had done something to interfere with my relationship with Alexandra. I felt even more insane as I considered confronting her and propositioning her into reversing “it.”
Unfortunately, I had no proof and no leverage.
-----
Ethan
The letter that I’d gotten from my grandfather had brought my mother back to the forefront. Earlier that morning, I’d tried leaving it on the side table in my bedroom, but it had called me back upstairs. Now, it was on my desk at work and whenever I sat down, my eyes wafted over to it.
The envelope was old. It was colored as though the paper had been dipped in coffee years ago, but the liquid hadn’t been enough to damage the paper. I would have recognized my mother’s handwriting anywhere although I wasn’t sure why. I was also sure that it hadn’t been a coincidence that the letter had been stuffed into that particular book as one of the main characters in the novel had also served time for murder. However, that character had been framed for his murder and I was pretty certain that it wasn’t the case in my mother’s situation.
Alexandra was currently not in the office as she was out preparing for the diabetes fundraiser that was finally occurring this weekend. I hadn’t given her an ultimatum on the Roderick situation, but I’d imposed a tacit one for myself. Continuing on in the shadows was only going to drive me even crazier and relief was only going to come in the form of being with Alexandra, or not having her as a part of my life. I could only hope that, if her ultimate decision was to remain with Roderick, it would also mean leaving her position. Love was a jealous parasite and the feeling was so domineering that it made me uneasy of what that parasite would leave behind if it was suddenly ripped from my soul. It was said that time healed all wounds, but I’d had plenty of patients whose scars, whenever touched, were still tender. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I’d made fun of Kellen countless times but it now made complete sense why he’d ended up passed out drunk on the floor after the Trisha incident. It either took an incredible amount of strength to throw himself, whole-heartedly, back into relationships over and over again, or a heap of stupidity.
Through my open office door, I could see about fifty-percent of the front waiting area. It had been designed to look like a jungle: plastic vines hanging from the ceiling, a giant “tree” in the middle whose leaves were made up of thank-you notes we’d received from patients and parents, dark, soothing colors that were specially chosen for our patients with sensory disorders, and stuffed jungle animals. The best feature was the jungle mural on one of the walls that Gia had volunteered to paint about a year ago. It seamlessly integrated with the decorations, right down to the three-dimensional monkey hanging from a branch, smiling elephant, and bright-eyed tiger peeking over blade of grass. I would have never expected to have already been operating my own private practice at such a young age, but when opportunity had presented itself, I hadn’t hesitated to shake its hand. It also didn’t hurt to have a wealthy best friend as an investor.
A gust of air from the air-conditioning unit caused one corner of the envelope to flutter as though waving at me. My eyes went back to it on the desk and my thoughts back to my mother. I had no idea what she could have possibly wanted to say to me. Her actions were no clearer now than they’d been at six years old simply because they could not get any clearer. In the amount of time that she’d had to change her mind from doing what she’d done, at no point had her choice been me. She’d gone from drug addiction to male addiction, and I’d wondered, constantly, why she just couldn’t have been addicted to spending time with her only kid.
A piece of peeling paint on my far corner office wall caught my attention, and I sent a short email to my assistant, Anita, for her to arrange for someone to come out to repaint as soon as possible. I knew that my preoccupation with clean paint lines was directly related to John Ezra, and I hated the shackles, but I didn’t have the fortitude to deal with them.
Anita appeared in my doorway and I quickly replayed the email over in my head, prepared to apologize if it had somehow come out as convoluted as my current thoughts. She was petite, barely touching five-feet, with a shape that reminded me of an adolescent boy. As though someone had mentioned that same thing to her, a few months ago she began to wear belts cinched around her waist, makeup that accentuated her blue eyes, and had cut her dark hair up to her neck so that it had looked less stringy than before.
“Dr. Stewart, you have a visitor,” she announced. “I told him that you only had a few minutes down time and that I could schedule something, but he…insisted.”
The sunken, fearful look in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. “Roderick Hamilton?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her eyes widened. “How did you know? Did he have an appointment that I missed? I’m so sorry, Dr. Stewart.”
“No, he didn’t.” I attempted to reassure her with a laugh. “It’s okay, Anita. I could just tell. He has that kind of…presence. You can send him in.”
She turned to the side, nodded, and walked back to her desk. Roderick replaced her spot in my doorway dressed for an interview on Wall Street in a dark three-pieced suit, shiny loafers, and slicked back hair. I welcomed him inside and showed him to a chair in the seating area.
“Water?” I offered, moving around to lean against the edge of my desk.
He smirked. “No. No, thank you.”
“Well, what can I do for you then, Mr. Hamilton?”
“Rick is fine,” he corrected. Then, as though he’d suddenly grown uncomfortable with my standing over him, he got to his feet. “But, I just wanted to stop by and see if there was anything else that you needed help with for the race tomorrow.”
Somehow, that explanation seemed false, but I didn’t push it. “No, Alexandra’s actually got every
thing covered.”
“Oh, does she?” Another smirk skittered across his face. “I would hope so. With all this extra overtime that she’s been putting in, you’d think that she was working on a political campaign.”
“In a way, she is,” I reminded. “This is for you, isn’t it?”
He grinned.
“I didn’t really come down here to talk politics,” he confessed, kicking an imaginary pebble with the toe of his shoe. The gesture seemed awkward and out of place for him. “I came down here to get your opinion on something.”
Anita breezed by the office door and I sent her a slight nod to let her know that everything was still okay.
“Well, you have my attention,” I said.
He took a deep breath and then pulled a small box from his pocket. I commanded every muscle in my body to remain in place instead of violently contracting like they wanted to.
“I’m planning to ask Alexandra to marry me,” he replied. “I just wanted to know when you think would be the best time to do that. I mean, we’ve always planned to get married right away, but I didn’t want to take her away from the practice during any time that might be considered busier than others. I’m shooting for an extended honeymoon so that it gives us more time for family planning.”
I wanted to punch this smug fucker in the face. Part of me knew that it was irrational because he was just going through the normal motions of a man that had given his time to a long relationship — albeit with the wrong woman — but there was something about the look in his eyes. It was almost as though he’d known about me and Alexandra and was using this precise moment to gloat. My gut was practically yelling that at me, but I knew that if I gave into that line of thinking, my anger would be unleashed. The primal instinct was thriving in my blood and my tacit ultimatum for Alexandra dropped to under forty-eight hours. If she wouldn’t tell him after that, then I simply would.
“I didn’t know you guys were discussing marriage,” I replied, sidestepping his question. “She never mentioned it.”
“Alexandra’s not very open,” he replied in a taunting “I know Alexandra better than you do,” tone. “She probably hasn’t even mentioned it to the people she’s close to like her sister and parents. Have you met them? Her parents, I mean.”
“Not formally,” I answered. As far as I knew, they thought of me as the physician Alexandra worked with.
“I was just having lunch with them,” he went on. “Had to get the old man’s permission, you know. I’ve never seen the man so happy. You know he almost never smiles, right?”
“So I’ve heard.”
The smirk damn near did a tap dance on his face. “Well, he was all smiles when I told him. He even said that I was always his only pick for the man who would be his daughter’s husband, and that I’d done him proud.”
His tone was now covered in slime, his face a full blown sneer. He knew. Either Alexandra had told him — finally — and she’d yet to relay that information to me, or he’d found out on his own. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it was by way of private investigator.
“And what about Alexandra’s choice?” I challenged. “Did you two discuss that when you were planning her future?”
He bit into his lip violently enough to draw blood. “Why wouldn’t she choose me?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I was just asking a question.”
“There are no more eligible men on her roster. I was her first and I will always be her only.”
A derisive scoff snuck its way out, but it wasn’t as though I’d tried very hard to contain it.
“What was that?” he asked.
At that point, I was done. “Nothing.”
“Fine.” He tugged on the lapels of his jacket. “Well, you still haven’t given me an answer on my proposal.”
“I don’t see you as the type of man needing my input.”
He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Do you believe in coincidences?”
I didn’t respond.
“I see that we’re finished here, but I wanted to leave you with this. Some of us mistakenly think that the circumstances that happen in our life, especially the sudden ones, are predestined or ordained. And while some things do happen by chance or fate, if you will, most of the time, it’s just a failure on our part to see exactly where something as simple as human error had an input.” He gave his jacket another tug. “I’ll bid you a good day on that note.”
He made his way through the door, taking his overpriced cologne with him. I knew that his comment had to do with Alexandra, confirming what I already knew, and that he was implying that our relationship was not a coincidence. But, there was virtually no way that anything outside of Alexandra and I had a hand in the way things had blossomed between us.
I pushed his crazy rant, as well as my mother’s envelope, to the back of my desk drawer and went out to greet my next patient.
Chapter Eleven
* * *
Alexandra
I couldn’t believe the amazing turnout. The juvenile diabetes fundraiser was actually being carried off without a hitch and in the next half an hour, the race would begin. My entire family was in attendance, my parents no doubt for a photo op, and Eli was already near the starting line warming up while Gia dubiously looked down the length of the street.
Our venue was the community center where Ethan taught as it had more than enough space, inside and out, for the different participating companies to set up. Runners could choose to do either the short run which was a little over three miles, or the long run which was twice as long. Walkers had the option of doing three miles or less. Bottled water and resting stations lined the entire path to the finish line, but something told me that Eli would not need them. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he finished in first place.
“Hello beautiful,” Roderick’s voice sang from behind me. I turned around and he pulled me into his body, planting a kiss on my cheek at the same time. I secretly glanced around to see if Ethan had been watching us, but I couldn’t pick him out of the throng of participants.
“You’re in a good mood today,” I greeted.
He pointed to his name on the headlining banner, a grin frozen to his face. Last minute, he’d wanted to add a “minor” detail to the banner: his political headshot. It hadn’t been enough that every single thing that we’d bought to associate with the walk — towels, buttons, plastic water bottles, wristbands, you name it — all had his name on them. He wanted to add his face so that no one forgot who was behind the project.
“Because I love you so much,” he answered. “Look at what you did for me, Alexandra.”
I eyed him carefully. Ever since the calculated and well-placed “I love you” during a banquet when he announced that he would be eyeing a senate position, Roderick had never again uttered the words.
“I just can’t believe that you did this for me,” he added. “I don’t really know how to repay you, but just know that I will try.”
He glanced behind my head, grinned, and then leaned down to press his lips against mine. I figured that he was putting on for some wayward cameraman behind us, so I got as “into it” as I possibly could, wrapping my arms around his neck and even popping my back leg.
“Congratulations…Alle.”
I immediately broke the kiss when I heard Ethan’s voice and turned around expecting to find an angry wave over his brow. Instead, his eyes were smiling and he was looking at me in a way that only he could. It was a way that left me feeling as though I could seep through a storm drain.
“Thank you, Ethan,” I replied. “I mean, uh, Dr. Stewart.”
My grandmother’s elbow was hooked with his.
“Ethan’s fine,” he teased. “Some people even call me E.”
A thousand flames lit up my face.
“Hi Grandma,” I said.
“Yes, hi Evelyn,” Roderick cut in. “You’re looking awfully beautiful today. Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t know th
ey made such excellent exercise tights for women your age.”
She tilted her head to the side, studied him, and then straightened it. “They’re not elderly exercise tights, sweetheart. They’re simply tights. There’s no tag on them that says ‘must be seventy or older’ to wear.”
To my and everyone else’s surprise, Roderick laughed. Heartily. The only other times I’d heard him laughing this loud were the fake riffs he would give to donors and sponsors.
“I love how colorful you are,” he went on. “It gives me peace to know that Alexandra will most likely have this much lilt when we’ve been married for forty years or so.”
Somehow, I felt Ethan flinch even though not a muscle on his body visibly tweaked.
Then, Roderick snapped his fingers. “By the way, Evelyn,” he began, “that thing that you dropped off at Alexandra’s office back during Christmas time, it might make a nice wedding present for us.”
Another subtle shift in the air alerted me to Ethan’s uneasiness although nothing on his body suggested his discomfort.
“What thing?” Grandma Evelyn asked.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Roderick insisted. “One of your famous concoctions. You’re always brewing something up over at the house like a little witch. A good witch though. Like the white witch from the Wizard of Oz.”
My parents waved and made their way over to us while Gia trailed behind them like a forgotten stepchild. I wanted to go over, wrap my arms around her, and then kick them as far away as I possibly could. She looked as though even if she’d searched the corners of the globe, she’d still be unable to find a reason to care.
Fated: An Alpha Male Romance Page 15