Page 34 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

TWENTY-THREE

ETHAN

Mac: You should have seen Ethan’s wife at the town meeting last week. She’s going to be mayor one of these days.

Ethan: Her name is Harmony.

Mac: Well, we’re all going to be calling her boss. She ran a tight ship.

Seth: Ethan, what the fuck are you still doing in town? Don’t you have a job in Seattle?

Mac: He got fired.

Seth: WHAT?

Ethan: Not fired. Suspended. And who told you that? It’s a long story. I’m going back in three months.

Mac: I can’t reveal my sources. Instead of cutting people open, he’s giving the staff physicals and working at the clinic with Dr. Blackfeather.

Seth: You sure you’re going back?

Seth: Ethan?

Seth: Hellllooooooo?

Ethan: Of course I’m going back.

The phone beside my bed rang, waking me from one of those intense dreams I always had where I was doing surgery…naked.

I think my problem was that I’d been sleeping naked every night in anticipation of another visit from Harmony. Only, eight days and counting and she still hadn’t knocked on my door.

We hadn’t talked about what had happened the next morning. It was almost as if both of us could read the room and had decided it was all a little too hot to touch.

She didn’t necessarily go back to avoiding me like she had after our wedding night, but we’d fallen into a casual politeness with one another that had me pulling myself apart at the seams.

Because beyond wanting her back in my bed, I also really wanted to be around her.

My phone rang again and I grabbed it.

“Hello?”

“Ethan, it’s Dr. Xio.”

Well, that fully shook off the dream. I pushed myself up to sitting and tried to sound like I wasn’t naked.

“Dr. Xio, it’s good to hear from you, what’s going on?”

“Well, I have some interesting news for you. Remember Dr. Fleming, who toured Sinai a few months ago?”

“Yes,” I said. She’d been working on an artificial tricuspid valve and we’d had lunch together so I could keep asking her questions about the fascinating work she was doing with 3D printing and stem cells.

“Indeed. Well, I got a call from her today.”

I waited for him to continue. “About what?” I finally asked, when he was silent.

“You. She was wondering if you’d ever consider leaving Sinai. She’s been appointed to Chief Medical Officer in Phoenix and she’s looking for a thoracic surgeon with ambitions to head the department.”

I blinked. Blinked again. Head of thoracic surgery? Not Dr. Matthews’ punching bag anymore? The thought was extremely appealing.

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“That I would have to speak with you, and if you were okay with it, I would give you her number. Are you okay with it?”

“Yeah. I am. I mean…I wouldn’t leave Sinai or you if I didn’t feel like…”

“You’ve gone as far as you can here with Matthews in charge of the department,” Dr. Xio said, basically giving me permission to pursue this opportunity.

“That’s how I feel, too,” I said.

“Then I will forward you her information once we hang up.”

“Thank you, Dr. Xio. You’ve been a tremendous mentor.”

“And you are a tremendous talent. Perhaps in a different environment you will be able to reach your true potential.”

I hung up and felt the boulder of this suspension roll right off my back. It was like being granted a new life.

It was funny too, because the first person I wanted to tell was Harmony. She’d been there when I’d learned about my suspension. My anger that day hadn’t really been directed at her for answering my phone, but rather that I’d been humiliated.

In front of her.

I remembered seeing her on that road with the alpacas and how unimpressed she’d been by me. This might impress her.

My dirty fantasy was that this would impress her so much she’d show up at my door again. Hungry and wet.

My dick twitched at the thought of getting inside of her. Harmony Calloway was so fucking exciting. The way she’d looked at me, like everything was brand fucking new.

Distracted, I got dressed and opened my bedroom door just as she was opening hers. Our eyes met across the long hallway and a blush built up in her cheeks.

This had happened every single morning now.

A few times, I could admit it had been on purpose. But not this morning. This was a happy accident.

“Morning,” I said, smiling at her.

I shut my door and crossed the hardwood floor to where she stood, her animals milling about her feet. Jenny barked in my general direction and Bruce came up and nipped at the knee of my pants and then stroked her face across my thigh.

Having never really known a domesticated goose before, I wasn’t sure if this was normal animal behavior. I carefully stroked her face and she did it again.

“Wow,” Harmony said, and cleared her throat. “That’s a sign she’s starting to really like you.”

“Well,” I said. “That makes two of us.” I looked at Jenny, growling in her throat in the wrong direction. “How do I win her over?”

“Liver treats,” she said, looking down at the dog.

I was jealous. I wanted her eyes on me. Wide and unfocused, just as she was about to come again.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Everything good with you?”

She nodded. “We’ve officially formed the Feud Day Festival committee.

Our first meeting is tomorrow night to talk about how we implement all those ideas the town had.

Also, we have to make sure we can get someone from the state capital to actually witness it all if we’re going to be awarded a blue ribbon. ”

“Exciting,” I said.

Which was a perfect segue to follow up that I also had exciting news. Except, I didn’t say anything. Because if I told her my news, it would make it real. I was leaving.

And that’s when it hit me. I’m not ready to leave yet.

“Do you need a ride into town?” she asked me, like she did every morning. Another thing we’d started doing together. Carpooling.

I shook my head. “I’ve got a few straggler cowboys I haven’t seen yet. Going to head down to the bunkhouse. Mac will give me a ride into town.”

“Okay,” she said, then started toward the stairs and stopped. She turned to look at me and smiled. “Have a good day, Ethan.”

“You too.”

Sweetness.

I’d almost said it. Remembering the pet names she’d made up for us. Fortunately, I’d managed to swallow it. Just before it left my mouth.

Oh God. I was in serious trouble.

An hour later, my brother dropped me off next to Harmony’s truck in front Goods and Provisions.

I had a travel mug of coffee. A refill for her. A bottle of water because it had been on her resolution list to drink more of it. And liver treats.

“You okay?” Mac asked, when I didn’t jump out of the truck.

“Yeah,” I said. “Good.” But I still didn’t get out of the truck.

“You seem good,” he said. And there was something sincere about how he said it.

“How do you mean?”

“Just saying, growing up I could always tell you had one foot out of this town. Out of our house. You were so restless. But this time around, you being back here, there’s a sort of peace about you I don’t ever remember.”

“You getting philosophical on me, brother?”

Mac shook his head. “Just saying it’s been nice having you around. I know you didn’t get along with Dad and I know why. He wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy with me and Carter, who stayed in the Gulch. But…well, dad is dead. You being here makes me think I got something even while I lost something.”

“I’m sorry, Mac,” I said. I’d been so focused on all of my shit. Because Dad and I hadn’t had a relationship in years, I didn’t really feel the grief like I should.

But my brothers did.

He shrugged. “Everyone thought that Carter and I weren’t paying close enough attention.

Like we’d watched him get sick and hadn’t done enough to force him to get treatment.

He just wouldn’t hear of it. It was like part of me thinks he was ready to be done.

All that shit with the will – that had to take time for him to figure out everything he wanted.

He knew he was dying and he didn’t do anything to stop it. But neither did Carter and I.”

“No,” I said, refusing to let them bear the guilt.

“I didn’t check in. Seth didn’t take a break from the rodeo tour to visit.

Eli never fucking connects with us at all.

We’re all in this together. And if Dad did decide he was done, then he was done.

That’s how he lived. No emotion, no feelings, just action. ”

Mac grunted.

“You good?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, his gaze drifting in the direction of the Goods and Provision where I could see Harmony helping a customer through the window.

“What is the deal with the Calloway girls?” I asked.

Was it just this town that allowed Harmony to get so deep under my skin, so fast? Our fake marriage? The sex? What?

Why had I looked at her this morning and thought I wasn’t ready to leave? I’d been ready to leave this town since I was born. Staying here meant giving up everything I’d worked so hard to accomplish. It meant changing who I was.

Mac tilted his cowboy hat back on his head. “Like why are they such pains in the ass?”

“Why do they always seem to…matter so much to us?” I asked.

Mac whistled and clapped me on the shoulder. “Sounds like this fake marriage of yours is going great.”

“You and Amity, you’ve been at each other’s throats for years. Why do they have so much power?”

Mac took a deep breath. I used to think he was the most straightforward of all of us. He loved the land. Loved his horses. For a lot of years, he loved Amity Calloway.

“You ever hear of generational trauma?” Mac asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I am a doctor. How do you know about generational trauma?”

“Well, I think that the Calloways are our generational trauma and some of us are cursed to love them and some of us are cursed to hate them. And if you stay in this town long enough, you’ll probably get around to doing both.”

He looked down the road at The Last Meal Café where Amity was putting out a sandwich board with the specials on it. She spotted us sitting in Mac’s truck and gave us a double bird.

“You know the worst part?” Mac said. “She used to be my best friend. And yeah, now, I hate her. I do. The shit we did to each other is unforgivable. But damn…I miss my friend.”

I pushed open the door to the shop and the bell rang, but there was no barking or honking. At the front desk where I expected to see Harmony, stood Monica. As soon as she spotted me, her smile turned into a tight line of lips.

“Good morning,” I said, and she only nodded at me. She wore a crocheted shawl over a turtleneck, her beigey red curls in a big cloud around her head. “I thought I saw Harmony-”

“She’s upstairs.” Monica said, and looked back down at the book she was reading.

“Oh, she’s cleaning things out?”

“That’s what she says,” Monica turned the page on her book and never looked back at me.

It was about as clear a message as one person could give another.

Monica would not be giving me the time of day.

And suddenly, I was tired of being the bad guy in all the stories.

I stepped forward and cleared my throat until she looked at me.

“Mrs. Calloway, I get how you must not be thrilled with how all this went down, but I’m not the villain.”

She snapped her book closed and looked at me.

“Not thrilled? That my daughter was pressured into a marriage by a man I loathed? That she’s somehow meant to assume the responsibility of the success of this entire town?

That the man she’s married to is someone I know broke her heart once already?

Because I could see it in her face, back when she was in high school, every time she mentioned your name, and said what a jerk you were, that really she was sweet on you. ”

“Well,” I said, shoving my hands into my jean pockets. “When you put it like that…”

“I think all you McGraws know how to do is go after the thing you want, no matter who gets hurt. Because that’s exactly how Leroy was.”

I didn’t like that. Being thrown in with my dad.

“I’m doing the best I can,” I said. “Just like Harmony.”

“It’s funny,” Monica said, with a sad twist to her mouth. “That’s exactly what your father said to me as he was breaking my heart.”