Doctor’s Duties by K.C. Crowne

Chapter 16

LOGAN

“Wait – what?” I was convinced I must’ve heard her wrong. Or that she had to be messing with me.

But as I stood in the entry hall, my eyes on hers, Abby’s face didn’t change in the slightest to suggest she was only pulling my leg.

“What…what the hell are you talking about?”

Abby glanced down at her bag, as if all the answers I needed were in there.

“You know what?” I asked. “Let’s do a drink first. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”

“Good call.”

I led her into the living room. The evening had been cool enough that I’d lit a fire in the fireplace, the flames crackling and filling the space with toasty warmth. I stepped over to the bar, grabbing my drink off the end table on the way over, and flicked my eyes up to Abby.

“What’s your poison?”

“Vodka and soda with some lime, please.”

I nodded, then did my best to not look like I was eager as hell to drop the bullshit and get right to what I wanted to know. When the drinks were ready, I made my way over to the couch and sat down next to her.

“Alright,” I said. “So, you promise you’re not pulling some kind of very unfunny prank here, right?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to tell you sooner, but I decided doing it in person was for the best.”

“Why’d your parents decide on coming here?”

“Probably because they want to make sure you’re not some dude living in a crummy studio apartment or something. They’re big on making sure that any guy who comes near me fits their standards.”

“Well, I hope my humble abode will do the job.”

“No doubt about that.”

I nodded toward the bag. “What’s in there?”

She set the bag on the couch and opened it. Inside were articles of clothing, along with toiletries.

“I figured I could leave some stuff here that belonged to me. That way when you give them the tour it looks like I’ve been staying here, you know?”

“Crafty,” I said. “Something tells me this isn’t the first tall tale you’ve ever told your parents.”

She smiled. “I mean, I’m not a total liar. But when you’re someone like me who has parents that keep her on a tight leash, you get used to fibbing here and there, so they don’t end up sending you off to boarding school.

Before we could continue, her phone buzzed.

“Excuse me, it’s my roommate.”

I gestured for her to check, then took a sip of my drink. As she read and typed, I glanced around the room, it being abundantly clear to me that this place wasn’t exactly setup for hosting. There was nice décor and such, many items brought back from my travels, but not much in the way of kitchenware or other things that a practiced host should have on hand.

“This is going to be tough,” I said. “I barely cook, which means there’s barely anything in the kitchen to use to actually make stuff. Let alone anything to make. I guess I could order catering, but —”

She smiled, putting down her phone. “That was my cousin Lexi. She said that, if you wanted, she could come here and do all the cooking.”

“You serious?”

“I’m serious. She’s pretty good, actually. Before she went to school for graphic design, she wanted to be a chef. She’s…well, she comes from money, like me. Her parents sent her off to Cordon Bleu in France to learn how to cook. The chef ambitions didn’t stick, but she learned a thing or two.”

I ran my hand through my hair, trying to process everything.

“OK, we can do this. We’ll have your cousin come over to make the food, and I’ll call a cleaning service who can get here and tidy the place up before your parents arrive.”

“That should work. They’ll be here at five, and Dad’s going to want to do cocktails. Mom’s going to be looking for any sign that you’re not the perfect man for their perfect daughter.” She took a sip of her drink, shaking her head. “I’m sorry – this is all such a mess. And you don’t need to do any of it.”

“It’s fine. And I do need to do it.”

She glanced over at me.

“Why is that?”

“I don’t want to run the risk of you not being able to finish med school and thereby depriving the world of the amazing doctor you’re no doubt going to become.”

She looked at me with a curious expression, as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard me right.

“You really mean that?”

“Of course, I do. I don’t normally say this to students, especially this soon into the semester. But you’ve really got what it takes.”

She blushed, her cheeks reddening in a sweet, charming way.

“Like, for example, I’d be willing to bet that you’ve already started on that research project that’s in the syllabus that I haven’t assigned yet.”

Abby laughed. “Yep. It’s on exercise oncology.”

I grinned. “If a white lie here and there is what it takes to get you through med school, then I’m more than happy to do it.”

“But what about you getting in trouble? What if someone finds out that you and I are dating? Well, fake dating.”

“I’m not too worried about it. I mean, it wouldn’t be good. That’s for damn sure. But I’ve been giving plenty of thought to getting out of teaching. My writing makes me more than enough money, and I’d love to be able to focus on it full time.”

Her eyes lit up. “Are you serious? You’re thinking of retiring from teaching?”

“I might go back to it down the road. But right now, focusing on my writing sounds just what, well, just what the doctor ordered. Academia has its perks, but believe me, between the politics and the grading and everything else, I’m more than ready for a break. Maybe even a little traveling to get some new ideas for my next book.”

“So…we wouldn’t need to keep this deception up forever?”

“Right. If we can hide it from the school for the time being, maybe switch you over to another class, then we’d only need to keep it a secret until the end of the school year.”

Her eyes lit up. “And if you travel, that’d be perfect! I could just tell my parents that we’re in a long-distance relationship with you spending all your time on the road.”

“There you go,” I said. “But that’s down the line. For the time being, I think we’ve got bigger matters to worry about.”

“Like my parents tomorrow?”

“Well, that. But I’m thinking more about dinner tonight.”

She smiled. “Oh, yeah. Food sounds good. What’d you have in mind?”

“Great Chinese food near here,” I said.

“Chinese works perfectly. Get whatever you want – I’m not picky.”

Not a picky eater, a desirable trait in a woman. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and opened one of the food apps, bringing up the menu for Perfect Taste Chinese, my favorite in the city. A few moments later I had an order in for General’s chicken, some beef lo mein, shrimp stir fry, along with eggrolls and sweet and sour soup.

My stomach grumbled at the thought of food. But when I glanced over at Abby in front of the window looking out onto my property, the light coming in outlining her body perfectly, I knew there was more than Chinese that I hungered for.

She was stunning. Didn’t matter that she was dressed in lounging clothes, her hair tied up in a quick bun. Hell, if anything it made her sexier, showing just how effortlessly beautiful she was.

I couldn’t resist stepping over to her side.

“Nice view,” she said, her eyes fixed forward.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said, my eyes on her.

She scrunched her face up, as if not sure she’d heard me right.

Then she laughed. I groaned internally, a wave of embarrassment running through me as I realized I’d just laid down some corny-as-hell game.

“Are you sure you were a lady killer back in the day?” she asked, turning to me with a smile on her face. “I mean, you’re good-looking and all, but some of these lines…”

Yet another wave of embarrassment hit me as I remembered the line I’d said back at the restaurant.

“Believe it or not,” I said. “This isn’t par for the course for me.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Is that right? What is par for the course? Total suave behavior where you have the lucky girl into bed before she even knows what hit her?”

I laughed. “Hey, it worked on you. I seem to remember us spending the night in bed together in spite of the corny lines I dished out. Actually, I’m wrong about that – what we did was on the couch, not the bed.”

She smirked. “And you’ve still got that cockiness there. Like you know this is a done deal no matter what.”

“What’s a done deal?” I asked. “I thought we were talking about our plans for dinner.”

Abby chuckled. “Come on. I see what you want. It’s all over your face, Logan.”

She bit her lip. There was no doubt what it was I wanted – it was the same thing she wanted, too.

But it was a bad, bad idea.

“What I want is for our food to get here. I’m hungry as hell and we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, cocking her hip to the side and drawing attention to her curves. My cock twitched in response, and it took every ounce of restraint I had to not take her right then and there.

“Yeah,” she said. “We don’t want to start anything that might get interrupted by the delivery guy.”

“Actually,” I said, stepping a bit closer to her, close enough that I could feel the heat from her body. “I told them to leave it on the porch.”

She smirked.

I couldn’t do anything but kiss her.

I leaned in and put my lips on hers, and the moment I did, I knew I was making a big mistake. Part of me hoped she’d put her hands on my chest and push me off, tell me to get my head out of the gutter.

But she didn’t. Abby fell right into the kiss, pressing her body against mine as I placed my hands on her hips.

It was wrong. Unlike the first time it had happened where I didn’t know any better, at that moment there was no excuse. I knew she was my student, and I knew I was hatching some insane scheme to trick her parents into thinking I was her boyfriend.

But it being wrong only made me want it more. We kissed with wild abandon, our mouths opening and our tongues finding one another’s as my hands went up her shirt and over the flat, warm plane of her middle, all the way to the bottom border of her bra. She put her hands on my ass, squeezing it through my jeans.

My cock was stiff as steel, throbbing and straining against my clothing and pressing against her thigh. I wanted her like mad and judging by the way her hands moved from my ass to my chest underneath my shirt, there was no doubt she felt the same way.

“This time,” she said, taking her lips from mine just long enough to speak, my mouth moving along her neck as I covered her in kisses, “we need to do it somewhere other than the couch.”

I wanted to make some smartass comment about how she seemed to be so sure that we were going to have sex. I wanted her, and there was no sense in pretending otherwise.

I placed my hands on her ass, giving the plump curves a firm squeeze before lifting her off the ground. She let out a cry of excited surprise as she wrapped her legs around me. I carried her up the stairs to the second floor, taking her to the nearest bedroom and gently tossing her onto the bed.

She grinned up at me. “That’s one way to change locales.”

I wasn’t in the mood for speaking. I moved over top of her, my cock grazing her exposed stomach.

“Bad idea,” I said.

“Bad idea.”

But we didn’t stop. Instead, we sealed the deal with a deep kiss.