Better Than Me (A Remington Medical Contemporary Romance)

by Kimberly Kincaid

  As crazy as it seemed, especially since she’d seen him a mere nine hours ago when they’d grabbed a quick lunch between surgeries, Natalie missed him.

  Badly.

  Her cell phone buzzed out a familiar ringtone, and her heart squeezed uneasily at the sight of the smiling face on the screen. Normally, Natalie didn’t mind chatting with her mother, but the woman had a freakish sixth sense for picking up on her moods when they were less than one hundred-percent healthy and happy. Since she knew from experience that not answering would only make her mother worry, she paused the movie and swapped her soup for her cell phone, tapping the icon to answer the call.

  “Hey, Mom. How’s it going?”

  “Oh, I caught you! I wasn’t sure if you’d be home.”

  Natalie bit her lip, artfully dodging the home thing as she settled back in against the couch cushions. “I had a long week, so I decided to stay in tonight.”

  “That sounds nice and relaxing. I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself. How have you been feeling? You sound a little tired.”

  While the comment might come off as backhanded from anyone else, her mother laced it with enough genuine concern that Natalie took no offense.

  “A little. I’ve just had a crazy couple of days,” Natalie admitted, turning up the wattage on her tone to make sure the next part stuck. “But I’m completely fine, plus, I have all weekend to relax, so it’s all good.”

  Her mother’s murmur wasn’t quite a concession, but it was close. “Well, don’t forget, your annual remission check is coming up. Just because it’s been eighteen years doesn’t mean you should put it—”

  “Already scheduled, Mom. I’m a doctor, remember? I know how important the checkups are.” The peace of mind was just as crucial to her parents as it was to Natalie herself. No way would she skip the re-check, plus, it was only a blood draw. Easy like Sunday morning.

  “Hmm. Just because you’re a surgeon doesn’t automatically mean you’ll take care of yourself,” her mother said, but Natalie laughed.

  “Yes, it does. At least, in my case it does. Anyway, I’ve knocked the last seventeen of these checkups out of the park. I have a very good track record. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I know, but you just said you’re tired.”

  Natalie’s heart gave up a hard twist at the concern in her mother’s voice. “I work twelve-hour days at a pretty demanding job,” she said softly, because to deny her fatigue would have meant straight-up lying to her mother. “I promise you, being tired is normal.” Clearing her throat, she swerved the subject. “How’s Daddy? And Mark and Trish?”

  Her younger brother and sister were close, both in age and to each other. The gap was bigger with Natalie in regard to both, too. Logically, how tight they were made sense. They’d been stuck together with various babysitters and family friends while Natalie had undergone nearly four years’ worth of tests and chemo and radiation. Not that she could blame them—she doubted the rift had even happened consciously—but still. Emotionally, it stung that they were close with each other and only spoke with her a handful of times a year. She got nearly all of her updates on their lives either from their mother or Facebook.

  “Oh, they’re all fine,” her mother said, falling for the redirect hook, line, and update. She filled the next ten minutes with happy chatter about Natalie’s father and siblings, which Natalie punctuated with some well-timed mmm-hmms and a few easy questions. She ended the call by promising (again) that she’d get some extra sleep this weekend and make sure she took her vitamins.

  She hated lying by omission about the bathtub thing, but it was still far better than the alternative. After her cancer had gone into remission, her mother had insisted on not returning to her job at a lucrative marketing firm, choosing to home school her all the way through the twelfth grade, instead. Her parents had been equally adamant that she live at home for all four years of college, plus most of medical school, and even though Natalie hadn’t wanted to do either, she hadn’t been able to refuse after all they’d been through on her behalf. The mental stress. The mountains of insurance claims. The financial black hole caused by what hadn’t been covered. She had finally stood firm on getting her own place when she’d begun her residency, but her parents still worried. True, she’d told Jonah she couldn’t fess up about being temporarily homeless because they’d get even more overprotective and drive her bat-shit crazy. But putting them through more stress over something as little as a housing mishap wasn’t on her agenda.

  She’d already been the cause of a lifetime’s worth of worry. Bending the truth and staying with Jonah was by far the smartest choice.

  Even if she was still fantasizing about his abs.

  The thought had her shoving up from the couch, grabbing the soup mug that she’d drained in between comments while she and her mother had talked. She’d text Mallory’s brother first thing tomorrow. For now, she needed to find something to get her mind good and busy and far, far away from her best friend’s anatomy.

  Making her way into Jonah’s kitchen, Natalie rinsed her mug and put it in the dishwasher, then reached into a nearby drawer in search of a dishtowel to dry her hands. The drawer was stuffed with paper napkins (good enough), a haphazard stack of takeout menus, and an overly large collection of condiment packets, many of them of questionable quality. Cleaning out the drawer seemed as good a thing as any to distract her before she went back to her movie, she decided as she pushed the sleeves of her thermal pajama top all the way up to her elbows. Plus, she had promised to split all the chores with Jonah right down the middle.

  Natalie was five minutes and fifty ketchup packets into the job when the front door opened, sending her heart halfway to her throat.

  “Hey,” she said, her surprise turning into something much more forbidden at the sight of Jonah in his perfectly broken-in jeans and black button-down shirt that seemed tailor-made for his lean, muscular frame.

  His blond brows lowered in confusion. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning out your drawers.” Natalie’s face flushed at how unintentionally dirty her reply sounded. She needed to recover, and fast. “Did you know that you had ketchup packets in here that expired three years ago?”

  “Those expire?” he asked, waving his question away before she could answer it. “You know what, never mind. You seriously don’t have to clean anything out.”

  She couldn’t exactly tell him why she’d decided to get wrist-deep in his condiment drawer, so she settled on, “Oh, it’s no big deal. Really.”

  “Fine. Then move over.”

  “What? Why?”

  Jonah stepped in to nudge her hip with his, and good Lord, how could he smell even better than he looked? “Because if cleaning out the kitchen drawers is good enough for your Friday night, then it’s good enough for mine.”

  “I thought you were going out with Mallory and Connor,” Natalie said.

  Jonah shrugged. “I was. I mean, I did. But I decided to come home early.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” She was mostly teasing, but it was pretty unusual for him to cut a night out short at—she glanced at the clock on the microwave—nine thirty.

  “Yep.” His lips upturned into the charming smile Natalie had seen no less than a million times, but somehow, this time, she felt it slide beneath her breastbone as he looked at her. “What can I say? I missed you.”

  At that, she had to snort. “Right. Because the whole pajamas on a Friday night thing I have going on is so glamorous.”

  “Hey, you never know. Plaid flannel might just be the new black.”

  The easy back-and-forth soothed the unease that had been building in Natalie’s chest all evening, and she tidied the stack of takeout menus before placing them on the counter. Jonah opted to toss all of the ketchup packets, and they worked side by side for a minute to clear the rest of the drawer.

  “So, how’s Annabelle?” he asked after a minute of amiable quiet, and Natalie gave up a smile designed for optimism.<
br />
  Always lead with the good news. “Her recovery went as well as we could’ve expected. The tumor was kind of a bear.” The surgery had taken longer than Natalie had planned, partly because she’d wanted to be as careful as possible, and partly because the tumor had been larger than the scan had indicated. “But it’s out now, and I was able to release her this morning, which are both good things. Have you heard anything from that oncologist in Tampa?”

  Jonah nodded, closing the drawer and leaning back against the counter to look at her. “He was caught up in a pretty big case this week, but he finally got back to me this afternoon. He was pretty sympathetic—he’s treated a couple of kids who have the exact same type of cancer and agreed that it’s pretty brutal. He didn’t know of anything offhand, but he promised to dig around a little to see if he could find a trial she could apply for.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Natalie pressed both hands over her heart, unable to cage her grin. She knew it was a massive long shot—clinical trials for cancer patients had notoriously strict guidelines and mile-long wait lists. Annabelle’s history would very likely preclude her from being eligible for most, if not all, of them. But Jonah’s contact clearly had knowledge and influence that Natalie and Dr. Hoover didn’t, and the right clinical trial might make all the difference in Annabelle’s treatment if she was a good fit. “Really, Jonah. You’re the best.”

  An odd look flickered over his face, something Natalie couldn’t categorize and was fairly certain she’d never even seen before, and she stepped toward him with concern.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Sure. Of course,” he replied, his voice as smooth as melted butterscotch. The look that had triggered her worry was gone, replaced by a smile dazzling enough to suggest it had never existed. His shoulders were loose, blue eyes crinkling just enough at the edges to match the rest of the easygoing ensemble, just like always.

  God, she must be losing it. “Okay. Well, I was about to continue the trend of my wild and crazy Friday night and watch a movie, if you wanted to…”

  She hooked a thumb toward the couch in invitation, and Jonah shook his head after a pause. “Nah, that’s okay. You’ve probably got some love story for the ages queued up. I don’t want to crash your party.”

  Well, hell. He had her dead to rights on the love story thing. Still… “For the love of God, Sheridan. You can run a trauma from stem to stern without breaking a sweat. Are you seriously trying to tell me that two teensy hours of romantic comedy are going to break you?”

  “No,” he said automatically, and ha! She had him.

  “Great. Then go change into your sweatpants while I make the popcorn, and watch a damned movie with me.”

  Jonah rolled his eyes, but his accompanying laughter took all the heat from the gesture. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?”

  “Yep. Now hurry up. Harry and Sally aren’t going to wait forever.”

  “You do realize I don’t even know who that is, right?”

  Natalie tried his eye roll/laughter combo on for size. “Go, or I’ll eat all the popcorn myself and leave you with nothing but crumbs.”

  A few minutes later, they were shoulder to shoulder on the couch, with Jonah hogging the popcorn, as usual. He eyeballed the movie description on the TV menu that had popped up when Natalie had paused it to talk to her mother, then eyeballed her with doubt.

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Nat, but these movies are complete fiction.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, her lips twitching into a wry smile she couldn’t help. “Because all of those action movies you love are so realistic.”

  “They’re more believable than this.” Jonah pointed to the TV just in time for Natalie to laugh out loud.

  “Jonah, please. The last action movie you dragged me to go see had the main character literally taking on a star fleet of aliens all by himself.” It had been entertaining, she guessed, although she’d totally have added a better love story—which was to say, there hadn’t been one in the movie at all. “How is that more believable than When Harry Met Sally?”

  “It’s a love story, right? They meet, overcome some obstacle, then ride off into the sunset together, all happy and perfect as long as they’ve got each other?”

  “That’s one hell of an abridged version, but yes,” Natalie agreed. “That’s the idea.”

  Jonah scooped up a huge handful of popcorn. “Which is exactly why it’s not believable. That’s not how real relationships work.”

  They were veering toward touchy territory for Jonah, she knew. He never talked about Vanessa, or what had made him walk away from his wedding the night before the ceremony, even though, of course, Natalie had asked him about it more than once. She’d sensed that there was far more to the story than the “it just didn’t work out” he’d given up, but Jonah had always refused to elaborate, so eventually, she’d stopped asking.

  Still… “It’s not believable because they actually end up in love at the end of the movie?”

  “It’s not the love part I’m disputing. People fall in love all the time. Well, people other than me, I guess,” he caveated with a shake of his head. “It’s when you start talking about it lasting forever that I call bullshit. Love ends in heartache, not happily ever after.”

  Natalie blinked. Tried to process his theory. Annnnd nope. “So, you’re saying that love can exist, it just can’t last?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Yep.” God, he hadn’t even hesitated. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Okay, but what about those couples who have been married for fifty years?” Natalie asked by way of argument, because no way was she going to concede this crazysauce without a fight.

  But Jonah simply shrugged. “Just because they’re married doesn’t mean they’re in love. My parents are a prime example.”

  Natalie’s gut panged behind her pajama top even though she’d known Jonah’s basic family history for years. “They might have loved each other once,” she tried, but his sardonic smile told her she’d never make the argument stick.

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but not even you can bright-side the fact that my parents were married seven months before I was born and my mother only stuck around for six years after that before taking off for parts unknown,” Jonah said, as pragmatically as he’d relay a patient’s vitals in the ED. “My father never got over it. He’s sitting in a retirement community in Charleston, pining over a woman who left him twenty-seven years ago and never loved him for a single day.”

  “Okay, but what about my parents?” Natalie asked gently. She hated that Jonah’s mother had left both him and his father, and that his father had ended up alone, but surely, there was a flip side to this coin. “They’ve been together for thirty-five years and they’re still happy. And Parker and Charlie found their way back to each other. Now they’re more in love than ever.”

  “They are, and that’s great.” Jonah’s expression softened enough to make the words genuine, but not so much to slow his argument. “But they’re rare exceptions. Love works for them, I guess, but as far as I’m concerned, the whole thing is overrated, at best. With the odds that it’ll end up in a dumpster fire or a messy divorce rather than happily ever after? I’ll pass.”

  “That’s cheerful,” she said, although her tone was all sarcasm. “Come on. Can you honestly tell me that you can’t come up with one single scenario in which you fall head over heels in love with someone?”

  “Sorry. I know happily ever after is your jam. But yeah, I can honestly tell you it’s never going to happen for me. Flying solo is safer and smarter.”

  His matter-of-fact delivery twisted sharply beneath Natalie’s breastbone, prompting her to put the popcorn bowl aside. “But you should end up happy. You’re a great guy, Jonah. I know things between you and Vanessa didn’t work out, but—”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  The way his eyes had briefly widened told Natalie he hadn’t meant to let the words escape,
and a not-small part of her knew she shouldn’t push. But for Chrissake, this was Jonah. They’d traded manners for brutal honesty ages ago.

  “Okay, then enlighten me. What is it that I don’t know that’s making you so jaded when it comes to the idea of a relationship that actually works?”

  Jonah laughed, although the sound held no joy. “Because I never left Vanessa at the altar. She left me.”

  8

  Jonah had spent three fucking years keeping his mouth nailed shut on the topic of his ruined wedding. He’d crafted dozens of non-responses and slanted truths, not to mention an entire lifestyle to match the story that he’d been the one to leave Vanessa the night before they were supposed to pledge their undying love to each other in front of God and five hundred of Remington’s most elite socialites. The fact that neither he nor Vanessa had ever flat-out said who had left whom didn’t matter. People believed what they wanted to believe, especially when she’d left the country on a one-way ticket less than a week later, and Jonah had sworn to himself that he’d never correct them. After all, staying mum was far less painful than having to admit the truth he should’ve known. Yet all it had taken to undo his vow of silence was one single no-bullshit question from his very beautiful best friend.

  Make that his very beautiful, very shocked best friend, and damn it, Jonah was screwed.

  “Wait,” Natalie said, blinking as if she were getting her head around the information in degrees. “Vanessa left you the night before your wedding, and she let everyone think it was the other way around?”

  The very un-Natalie-like sting that sharpened the words were a testament to how deep her allegiance ran—actual anger, with its harsh edges and barbed words, wasn’t usually in her wheelhouse. But since Jonah had long since gotten over any hard feelings (or, okay, any feelings, period) he might’ve had for Vanessa and the way their relationship had ended, he went with the straight-up truth.