One Hot Doctor by Sarah J. Brooks
Chapter 13
Cora
I’m smiling like a fool as I drive to my mom’s place. Unfortunately, my brother Caleb has bailed out at the last minute. He called Adeline and told her that after discussing it with his wife, they decided that it’s not our place to intervene in Mom’s private life.
Adeline was fuming when she called me an hour ago. I’m upset too, or rather I would be if my week had not been so awesome. Thomas and I have spent practically all week together, and my body is sore from so much sex. That has never happened to me. I love it!
Something is happening between us, and even he can’t deny it. It’s not just the crazy physical attraction that we’ve always had for each other. There’s more, and it’s new. It wasn’t there when Thomas and I first had an affair three years ago.
I muse over it until I find a name for it. Friendship. Somehow Thomas and I have built the beginnings of a friendship. After sex, we don’t drift off to sleep. Not immediately anyway. We stay up and chat.
Then just yesterday, his sister Fran called me and asked if I wanted to go baby clothes shopping with her and I said yes. I invited Riley, but she and Leo drove out of town yesterday to visit his family.
Just a few weeks ago, my weekend would have stretched out before me with nothing to do but work. Now, it’s as if I’m a completely different person. My life has taken an about-turn, and my weekends are always packed with things to do.
I spot Adeline pacing my mother’s house as soon as I round the corner into her street. I worry that I’m late, but I can’t be as I left early and there was no traffic. It’s more likely that my sister is early. She’s a bit particular about time.
She comes to my car as I pull onto street parking in front of the house. “Do you know the owner of that car?” She points to a blue SUV parked behind my mother’s fiat.
It looks familiar. “I know that car,” I murmur as I search my memory bank. Then it comes to me. The answer is not going to please Adeline. “I’ve seen it at the gym.”
“What is he doing here? I told my mother that we were coming. Why would she invite him over?”
“Let’s go in.” I have a bad feeling about this intervention. I follow Adeline as she marches to the front door, noticing that she rings the bell instead of the way we usually just barge in.
Soft footsteps sound from inside before the door opens and Mom stands there grinning at us. “Both my daughters visiting at the same time! What a special Saturday morning. Come on in. We’re in the kitchen.”
Before we can comment about the ‘we’ part, she turns and enters the house. We follow her, and sure enough, Ian is perched on the stool, looking right at home and wearing a pair of shorts.
He turns to us with a huge smile on his face. “Hello, girls. Isn’t it a beautiful morning?”
We both murmur responses, thrown off at finding him in Mom’s kitchen, behaving as if it’s normal to find him there.
“You should see the work that Ian has done for me this morning in the garden,” Mom says, bringing coffee for us.
Relief surges through me. So, Ian didn’t spend the night, and he’s here to do the garden. Maybe he moonlights as a landscaper. I know very little about him because he’s fairly new. He attends the senior aerobics class, and he leaves immediately after.
“Is that what he’s doing here then? He’s your gardener?” my sister with her unfiltered tongue asks. I cringe at the obvious relief in her tone.
“Goodness no!” my mother says sliding onto an island stool next to him. “Ian’s just doing me a favor. A gardener indeed!” They exchange a look and burst out laughing.
The implication is that they are lovers, and I have no doubt that he spent the night. Mom is an adult, and she’s a widow. She is free to do as she pleases. Telling myself that doesn’t help. I’m fuming, my good mood forgotten.
I sip my coffee. It tastes bitter, and I push it away.
“We were hoping to speak to our mother privately,” Adeline says tightly.
“That’s okay. Ian is practically family now,” my mom gushes and bats her eyelashes at him in a way that makes me feel like covering my face in embarrassment.
Family? Is she crazy? She doesn’t even know him. I feel as if I’m caught in a bad soap opera.
“It’s okay, Caroline. I’ll go take that shower now,” Ian says and kisses her cheek before leaving the kitchen.
We wait until we hear his footsteps disappear up the stairs. Adrenaline dives in before I do. “Mother! You’re letting the gardener use your shower?”
In an instant, my mother’s face is pinched in anger. “What is wrong with you, Adeline? Ian is very special to me, and I will not have you disrespect him in my house.”
Silence descends in the room after that outburst. I look at my mother and then my sister. Both of them are wearing hard, angry expressions. I seem to be the only one with a clear head. I clear my throat.
“Mom, we don’t mean any harm, and we’re here because we love you.”
She narrows her eyes. So much for loving words. “What do you mean you’re here because you love me. I thought you were popping in for a visit.”
“We came to have a chat with you, Mom,” Adeline says. “And this just proves that we were right. How can you let another man sleep here? What would Daddy say?”
Adeline was a daddy’s girl through and through. Actually, she was the ideal daughter, close to both parents. Her anger doesn’t surprise me. My anger is not for loyalty to my dad. It’s simply embarrassing when your sixty-something mother is becoming someone you don’t know.
“Your dad left us almost a decade ago,” my mother says with barely controlled anger.
“That doesn’t mean that you can bring a man here!” my sister shouts.
“Yes, I can, and you had better get used to it because he’s moving in!” She looks like a rebelling teenager with her chin thrust out as if daring us to contradict her.
My sister is shocked into silence. As for me, my jaw drops to the floor. My pregnancy hormones must be tricking me. There’s no way that she said Ian is moving in.
“Mom, you don’t mean that.” Ian could be a serial killer for all she knows.
“I know that he makes me feel things that I haven’t felt since your father,” she says.
Adeline points her index finger at her. “Don’t you dare talk about him and Father in the same sentence.”
“Is everything okay in here?” Ian says, walking into the kitchen.
I didn’t hear him coming in, and I wonder if he walked with light steps deliberately so that he could eavesdrop.
Adeline jumps to her feet and pulls me up. “Let’s go!”
Mom stands up too and goes to hug Ian. She clings to him, and I have to look back once more, unable to believe that she’s the mother I know.
Outside, Adeline follows me to my car and sits in the passenger seat. We sit quietly and digest what just happened.
“She’s lost her mind,” Adeline says. “She won’t listen to anything we say.” Adeline turns to me. “You have to speak to Ian. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”
“You realize that he’s a client and not someone I know well at all.”
“He’s our only chance. Can you imagine Mom’s lover moving in with her?”
I shudder. In addition to the risk she will be taking, we’ll never live down the shame. Everyone knows everyone in our neighborhood. Mom will be the laughingstock of the whole town.
“Okay, I will,” I tell Adeline.
She takes my hand and squeezes it. It dawns on me that this is the closest we’ve ever been. It’s unfortunate because the situation that is bringing us closer is horrible.
“How are you holding up?” she says, glancing at my belly.
I shrug. “I’m okay. Just getting tired a lot, but the doctor says it’s normal, and it will pass.”
Adeline makes a face. “I hated that part about my pregnancy.” She goes on to tell me her experiences, and soon we are laughing together. I can’t remember the last time that she and I laughed together. I like it.
We part half an hour later. I have a bit of time before Thomas’s sister, Fran, comes to pick me up, and I decide to go to the office.
As I’m walking through the gym, I meet Kelly, an instructor in one of the senior classes that Ian and my mom attend. After we exchange greetings, I pull her to the side.
“Hey, can I ask you something weird?”
“Sure,” she says.
“It’s about Ian. He attends one of your senior classes. What do you know about him?”
She looks a little taken aback by my question, but she recovers fast. “He’s charming to everyone, especially the ladies. He’s somewhat of a ladies’ man from what I’ve observed. Is this about your mom? I’ve seen them together a lot.”
Everything she tells me makes me feel even more apprehensive. “We’re worried about her,” I say.
She nods. “He’s probably harmless and is just drawn to older women. I wouldn’t worry too much.”
If she knew that Mom and Ian were planning on moving in together, she would not say that. I flash her a smile of gratitude. “Thanks.”
I hope that he gets tired of her before he breaks her heart. It’s a nasty thing to think about your mom, but I have a really bad feeling about this.
***
At exactly two in the afternoon, my phone buzzes with a message. It’s from Fran saying that she’s at the reception desk. I text her back, grab my purse from my desk, and leave my office.
I find her chatting to Samantha, our receptionist. She turns when she hears footsteps and smiles. Her resemblance to Thomas is stark with the same dark, penetrating eyes, but where hers are warm, his are mysterious. Her baby bump is nicely rounded and though not obvious yet to a stranger. Pregnancy suits her. I hope that pregnancy suits me too. Not that it matters. What matters is that several months from now, I’ll have my very own baby. A family.
My mind goes to Thomas. There are so many unknowns between us. Will he hang around after the baby is born? I experience a moment of fleeting envy when I look at Fran. How nice it must be to be pregnant and secure in your relationship or marriage.
We hug and exchange pleasantries.
“Do you want a tour before we go?” I ask her.
“Yes, please,” Fran says enthusiastically.
I laugh at her energy. As I give her a tour, I tell her a bit about what led me to think of owning a gym. A lot of people are fascinated by that story, and Fran is no exception.
Afterward, she and I head to her car.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” she says as she eases out of the parking. “We are all so excited that Thomas has found someone to love.”
I cringe as I imagine what Thomas’s reaction would be to the use of that word. He would probably run off.
“And a baby! Mom is beside herself with joy. We all are.”
“It must have been very tough for all of you when Tessa passed on,” I say tentatively.
“It was horrible. She was a wonderful woman, and she and Thomas were so in love. We used to make fun of them that when they grew old—” she stops talking and shoots me a nervous look. “There I go again, running off my mouth. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say cheerfully. “I know he loved Tessa as he should have. She was his wife after all.”
My heart constricts and burns with an emotion that I’m too ashamed to own. I’ve been kidding myself in the last few days that something special was happening between us. Thomas simply has no room to love another woman. When his wife passed on, she took his heart with her.
“Thomas is so lucky to have found you,” Fran says, her voice shaky with emotion.
“I’m lucky too.” I don’t feel lucky. I feel cursed when it comes to love. The only man I’ve ever fallen hard for turns out to be in love with his departed wife.
“I’m glad that he gets to be a dad. That’s the one thing he and Tessa wanted so badly and never got. They had fertility issues.”
And suddenly, everything makes sense. Thomas’s almost violent reaction three years ago when I’d suggested that we have a baby. The way he had cruelly cut me off from his life without an explanation. Then more recently, when I told him that I was pregnant. It must have been a nightmare for him to have impregnated another woman when he’d wanted a baby with his wife.
Bile rises up my throat. I feel sick, but for the next couple of hours, I have to act cheerful. Luckily, that is not difficult as Fran is chatty and super friendly. My enthusiasm for baby clothes shopping has faded, and I only pick a few items. Fran, on the other hand, gets almost a whole newborn wardrobe.
“I can’t help it!” she says. “Everything is so cute.”
I laugh and feel sad that I’m not into it. It’s tough to know that your lover and father of your unborn child wishes you were another woman. Thomas brings out my foolish side when it comes to love, but no more. I have to protect myself. If I don’t, he’s going to break my heart again. It’s not his fault that his heart belongs to someone else. It takes every ounce of my self-control not to burst into tears.
Fran and I pop into a café for coffee and sandwiches. She tells me about her job as a midwife and confides in me how difficult it was for her to tend to pregnant women when she wasn’t getting pregnant herself.
“That’s tough,” I tell her. It’s odd how we think that other people’s lives are perfect, not knowing that they, too, are going through their own painful struggles.
An hour later, we return to her car.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I tell her when I settle. “That was loads of fun.”
“For me too,” Fran says. “I feel like I have a sister now. I’ve always wanted one of those.”
I laugh. “Trust me; it’s not all fun and shopping unless you are friends.”
I find myself talking about Adeline and how different we are. Fran is fascinated by sister relationships. She stops for a red light, and then suddenly, there is a deafening noise—metal against metal sounds and the car lurches forward.
