Page 29 of Careless Whisper (Modern Vintage Romances #11)

Elias

M y father sat on a sleek leather couch across from me, looking uncomfortable as hell in my modern, glass-walled Seattle apartment.

Everything in here was cool and clean—minimalist furniture, a curated absence of clutter, a space with nowhere for feelings to land. It was the opposite of home. And maybe that was the point.

Dad held a glass of my single malt scotch—one of the few things in the apartment I actually chose myself—and looked out over the view like it didn’t impress him.

Rain misted the windows. Downtown glittered below us, with the Space Needle shining through the haze. He hadn’t said a word since he sat down.

I relented and became the first to speak. “You didn’t come here just to check on my furniture.”

He glanced over. “No. I came because your mother said you were acting emotional.”

He made it sound like a cardinal sin. But then emotions in my family were exactly that—a sin and a crime all wrapped into one.

“She and I are both upset that you walked away from a very promising trial partnership with Maren.”

“Maren isn’t getting the funding for the trial, so my working with her on it is moot,” I informed him as I settled back into the armchair I was seated in. “In any case, Maren is soon going to be out of a job and she’ll be lucky to hold on to her license.”

“That’s the other thing I want to talk to you about.” He raised his glass.

“Okay.”

I was barefoot, wearing jeans and a T-shirt since it was my day off.

But I was catching up on work from before I left for Boston and New York.

Since I’d come back home, I’d been in a funk—no surprise there.

I’d finally, for the first time in my life, told a woman I loved her, and she’d looked at me like I was speaking Klingon.

I had spent a lifetime not wanting to get attached and have a marriage as screwed up as my parents—but then I met Reggie.

She was so different from everyone in my life.

I’d thought it was because she didn’t come from the same social circles—and how wrong I was about that—and how much of a breath of fresh air it was .

But I’d been scared. As Dr. Cabrera had evinced about me, every time there was conflict, I found a way to extricate myself and not deal with it.

All that running away had brought me to this point in my life where I was alone, which I’d never minded before—but I was also lonely, and that was an entirely new feeling.

Reggie had told me to go fuck myself.

My heart was broken and I missed her like a heart in v-fib—erratic, desperate, and seconds from flatlining.

“Maren mentioned that she broke up with you, and you’re trying to get her fired because of it.”

I chuckled. “And what do you think?”

“That’s not who you are.”

Well, give the man the Father of the Year award already; he actually knew a little something about me.

“What the hell is going on between you and Maren?” he finally asked.

“Nothing,” I replied flatly.

“Elias, you know we’re friends with the Lorings, and what’s happening between you is causing issues between us.”

There it was, one of the rules in the trusty How to Not Lose Influential Friends handbook. Don’t make things messy. Don’t ask questions. And above all—don’t pick sides.

The Grahams and Lorings had gone on holidays together, sat on boards together, hell, our families had half their money tied up in the same endowments .

I eased forward, elbows braced on my knees. I didn’t owe my old man a thing—but I decided to give him the truth.

“Five years ago in Boston, Maren fudged data in a clinical trial, and a nurse flagged it.”

I told him the whole story—keeping my relationship with Reggie out of it.

I wasn’t ready for him to know about it because he’d descend on the news like a hungry hyena on a carcass.

After all, now Regina Sanchez wasn’t just some nurse; she was a Lancaster.

For her, I could dump Maren, absolutely —as the new alliance with the Lancasters would be more profitable.

After I was done, his head moved in a slow, solemn nod. “I see.”

There was a long silence between us—decades packed into it.

“Maren also mentioned that you have a thing going on with Faye Lancaster’s granddaughter.” He sipped his drink, watching me carefully.

Fucking hell!

I slid back in the armchair slowly, considering my words. “I know Nurse Reggie Sanchez.”

“She’s a Lancaster.”

I gave a small shake of my head. “She’s a surgical nurse at Harper Memorial. A damn good one, maybe the best I’ve ever had in my OR.”

If only I’d had the sense to admit this months ago—maybe I wouldn’t have made this colossal mess of my life and hers .

“Are you in a relationship with her?”

I let out a short, humorless laugh. “No, Dad. She hates my fucking guts.”

“Look, Elias, if Reggie is the woman you want, then?—”

“Fuck no!”

My father gaped at me.

“Reggie is not part of my duty to the family.”

My father leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other. “Your duty?” he repeated, like it tasted off.

“You always said we owed everything to the Graham name, that we had a legacy to uphold. But what about what I owe myself?” What about what I owe Gigi?

He didn’t answer. Just swirled the scotch in his glass like it might give him a better response than his mouth could manage.

“I lost my woman, Dad, because I trusted Maren, and I did that because that was duty. I had known her for years and knew her family, and I couldn’t imagine she’d lie to me.

But she did. She lied to everyone, and the person who got hurt was Reggie.

” I got up, suddenly feeling suffocated, and paced the living room. “I lost her.”

My father looked out the window again toward the lights beyond the glass. I almost thought he wasn’t going to say anything, but then he murmured, “Love is hell on the nerves, son. ”

I looked at my father, incredulous. Nathaniel Graham did not say sappy shit.

“Look, we wanted you and Maren together, and before you say I want you with your nurse because she’s a Lancaster…

well, there may be some truth to that.” He gave me a bland look.

At least the old son of a bitch was honest. “But I also want you happy. You are not happy, son. Haven’t been for a long time.

Your mother is worried about you. I am worried about you.

Maren says she’s worried about you, but now that I know what she’s been doing, I’m sure she’s saying the right things to elicit feelings of sympathy toward her and antipathy toward you. ”

He finished his scotch and set the glass on the coffee table between us. “Love isn’t about the right family or the right country club…it’s about the right person.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. My father didn’t talk to me this way. He usually ordered me to do shit and then told me he was disappointed when I didn’t.

He got up and tucked his hands in his suit pants pockets. “I’m assuming this means you’re done with Maren?”

“She was never mine to be done with,” I reminded him. “But yes. I’m done.”

He gave a slow nod. “Good. I’ll ah…I’ll smooth things over with her parents.”

“Dad, you won’t be able to smooth things over when she gets fired and disciplined. I say cut your losses.”

He chuckled darkly. “That’s not how the world works, Elias.”

“I guess you’ll do what you must.”

“As will you.”

“As will I,” I agreed.

I didn’t sleep well that night—like I hadn’t every night since Reggie left.

The next morning as I trudged to work, getting pretty desperate to reach out to Reggie, though I knew that I didn’t have any right to do that, a black limousine stopped alongside me.

The window rolled down like out of scene from a mob film.

“Elias, imagine running into you here,” Faye Lancaster exclaimed. She was in a Chanel suit with oversized sunglasses on her head, and a look that could reduce granite to dust.

“Mrs. Lancaster,” I greeted politely.

“Get in.”

I didn’t hesitate. She was a line to Reggie. She’d been kind enough—after ripping me a new one—to let me talk to her granddaughter in New York; and now I was hoping she’d be kinder still to tell me where the heck she was.

None of us could track her down. Luther gave me dirty looks all day long, blaming me for losing his friend. Cindy asked me at least once a day if I’d heard from Reggie and if she’d accepted Harper Memorial's offer for her to return.

Mrs. D was still investigating Maren but had cleared Reggie of any wrongdoing—and had insisted that we ask her to come back because everyone had sung her praises as a surgical nurse.

The door clicked shut as I sat down across from Reggie’s indomitable G’Mum, as she called her. The car pulled away, and I braced for impact.

“You’re very good-looking for someone so bloody dense,” she stated dryly in her British accent.

“I get that a lot.”

“Do you?”

“No,” I admitted.

She folded one leg over the other and looked me dead in the eye.

“You let my granddaughter take the fall for your mess not once but twice . I don’t care that you’re sorry.

I don’t care that you finally grew a spine and told Dr. Loring to stuff it.

What I care about is the fact that Reggie is in Podunk, Mexico, running a clinic she has no interest in managing. ”

Reggie was in Mexico? Well, that was more than I had a minute ago—because a minute ago, I didn’t know where the hell she was. But Mexico was a big damn country, so here’s hoping Faye was planning to be a little more specific.

“She’s running a clinic?” That was what had struck me after the fact that she was in another country.

“Yes. Her parents are doing what they call ‘good works’ since retiring—one of which is running a clinic with several mobile satellites. She’s managing the whole operation.”

“Wow. That’s pretty cool.”

Faye groaned. “Well then, why the fuck don’t you join her there too?”

“I will if you tell me where it is,” I blurted out.

Faye arched an eyebrow. “The plan is to bring her back so she can do what she loves to do, which is being a surgical nurse. She belongs in ORs and critical units, bossing around surgeons who think they’re gods. She does not belong in some dusty outpost inventorying gauze and solar panels.”

I swallowed hard. “Faye, for the love of everything holy, please tell me where she is.”

“I want you to man the hell up.” She glowered at me.

“I want you to show up with authenticity. Not a sob story. Not an apology. Not flowers. No measly I love you, Reggie bollocks. I want military-style emotional maneuvers. I want an attack plan. I want a damn ring on her finger if that’s what it takes. ”

I grabbed Faye’s hands. “Faye, I’m on my fucking knees, I’ll go to where she is, and I’ll bring her home. She’s probably going to knee me in the nuts…repeatedly, but I’m not going to give up.”

“What if she doesn’t want you?” Faye mused haughtily.

“She loves me.” I knew it in my bones just like I knew how I felt about her .

She rolled her eyes. “Someone has already sent you a travel itinerary with tickets. Be on the flight. A driver will meet you at the airport and take you to her.”

“Where the hell am I going, Faye?”

“San Miguel de Allende, where that bastard son-in-law of mine took my daughter away,” she complained. “Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Ignacio, I just don’t like that he and Anna want to stay so far away.”

The car pulled up to the curb.

“Now, get out and break a leg or whatever you’re supposed to do to fix a heart.”

I opened the door and paused. “Why are you helping me?”

She smiled. Sharp and dangerous. “I’m not helping you. I am helping my granddaughter because I love her. And because—God help her—I think she might still love you. But you’ve got one chance, Doctor. Don’t fucking waste it.”

“Oh, I don’t intend to,” I promised.