Page 120 of Boyfriend of the Hour

“Nathaniel,” Lillian said as she set a hand on his shoulder. “You just struggled so much as a boy, as a young man. We saw you needed the push, is all. We have only ever done this for your own good.”

“You did it for yourselves,” Nathan snapped back. “And I did it for her. For Isla. Becauseyousaid you would take care of her when the court ruled I could not.”

“And whose fault was that?” His father spoke through his teeth, his gray eyes somehow darker than the steel on the table.

“Mine.” Nathan’s response was immediate. “I was twenty-one and barely able to speak after what happened. As you never cease reminding me. But this…” He shook his head. “So, now you’ll sacrifice a young girl’s future just to get what you want. And you’d have me throw away an entire life I’ve built for myself just to control me. Why can’t you shape Carrick or Spencer into what you need? They’re already in Virginia with you.”

“Because Carrick and Spencer are parasites without a lick of sense between them, and you know it,” his father finally burst out, his silverware landing on his plate with a clatter. A few tables next to them went quiet. “You might be a social idiot, but you’re smarter than everyone else in this family. You’re the only one of my sons who can take over my life’s work.”

“And what about my life’s work?” Nathan asked.

“You’re only thirty-four. You don’t have a life’s work.”

“It took me a decade to become a surgeon. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“No, what you aresupposedto do is be a goddamn Hunt,” his father barked. “It’s a fact, not a choice. And the sooner you get it through your thick head, the better.”

They stared at each other for a long time. Minutes passed while the clamor of the restaurant merged with the roar in Nathan’s head.

Eventually, though, the roar quieted into a low growl of resignation. One that, unfortunately, Nathan knew well.

“I need time,” he said as he sat back in his chair and stared at his full plate of food. “A few months, at least. To sell the practice.Finish the surgeries I’ve already committed to doing. Transition patients. I can’t just leave.”

Lillian glanced at Radford, who had already gone back to reading his paper. “I should think that would be just fine, don’t you, Raddy?”

Her voice sounded like a children’s song. Far too happy in the face of unbearable tension.

Nathan’s father only grunted.

Lillian turned to Nathan with a brilliant smile. “There you have it. Let’s see, two months would put us right at the Gold Cup, as luck would have it.”

“That’s not luck,” Nathan said to the table. “It’s a calendar.”

“We’ll have you home right at the start of the season.” Lillian beamed. “We’ll celebrate your homecoming then. A family reunited.”

Nathan didn’t respond. His mind was too busy working.

Because he had two months, starting now, to figure out how to take his life back from the people who had owned it from the day he was born.

And he wasn’t sure if Joni would like what he had in mind.

TWENTY-ONE

TOP TEN BILLY JOEL SONGS

#1New York Stat of MindJust The Way You Are

“What about this one?” I asked as I strode into the living room for what was probably the sixth time on Monday evening.

“Hold on.”

I waited while Nathan finished typing something into his computer. Probably something called “charting,” whatever that was. I knew he had to do it every night after he got home, and that it was something to do with his job.

He looked absurdly handsome in his preferred at-home clothes: glasses, of course, a soft heather-gray tee that did nothing to hide his muscled arms and the chest I’d blissfully slept on in a Brooklyn warehouse, black joggers that made me sneak glances at his butt more than I wanted to admit, and socks with pictures of Einstein sticking out his tongue on them. He had surprised me tonight by wearing a baseball hat too, completely unaware of how the sight of it pulled backward turned me feral.

I smiled and made a mental note to write a new list.

Things that Surprise Me about Nathan Hunt