Page 41 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

I was straightening my knife and fork on the paper napkin in front of me.

“Miss what?”

“Being the best at something. Operating on people.” I took a deep breath and asked the question I didn’t want to ask. That I managed to make it sound casual should get me nominated for an academy award. “Are you excited about that interview?”

Ethan was taken aback for a second. Almost like he’d forgotten there was an interview in Arizona.

“Excuse me, Dr. McGraw?” A woman came up to the table, looking embarrassed, but also like she wasn’t going to stop herself from approaching him.

“Mrs. Dunaway, how are you? How is Mark?” Ethan said, turning to her with a professional smile.

Getting to know him these past few months, it was obvious how different his smiles were.

The polite smile that he used for folks around town or patients.

The affectionate one he gave me any time he walked into Goods and Provisions at the end of the day.

The slightly evil one he gave me when I spread my legs wider, or I touched him the way he liked or sucked his…

I shook my head, getting rid of the thoughts. This wasn’t the time or place.

“I just wanted to thank you for the referral to Dr. Maneesh in Big Horn. We were able to get in last week and the medication has already helped Mark so much,” she laughed, but her eyes were filled with tears. She waved her hand around. “Anyway. I just wanted to thank you. Again.”

“My pleasure, Mrs. Dunaway,” he said, and he squeezed her hand. She left the table and Amity arrived with our food.

Crispy chicken salad for me and the artery clogger for Ethan. He looked at it suspiciously, but after his first bite, his eyes lit up.

“Mac’s going to be so mad he didn’t score this,” he said, around a mouthful.

“Are you enjoying the clinic?” I asked, paying incredible attention to stabbing my lettuce with my fork. The question about the interview was forgotten and I wasn’t brave enough to bring it up again.

Like he couldn’t help himself, he took another bite. He chewed and swallowed before nodding. “I am. The people are great and the work is good. I’m helping patients and improving their quality of life, which is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“But it must be boring compared to what you’re used to,” I said.

Yes. Say it’s boring. Say you can’t wait to get back to surgery.

He shrugged. “The stakes are different, that’s for sure. I never would have said my life was stressful before, or stressful in a way I couldn’t manage. But being on the other side of it, I can see how little life I had in my life, you know? Outside of the OR.”

We finished our meal with only one more interruption. Ida Strunk coming by to ask Ethan why her knee hurt all the time. He told her to make an appointment at the clinic when it was convenient.

“But you could look at it now,” she said, lifting the edge of her old blue skirt.

“No,” he said firmly, then held out his hand for mine. I reached across the table and took it. “I’m eating dinner with my wife, now.”

See how he did that? The wife thing. It sounded so absolutely fucking real.

He paid the bill. He always paid the bill, which I thought of as minor restitution for all the Calloway pain and suffering at the hands of the McGraws over the decades.

As we walked out of the café, the Darryls were coming in, and we did that thing you always do at a door, where you try to decide who goes through first. Finally, Ethan grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door and Darryl J.

grabbed Darryl H.’s hand and pulled him in the door as we stood there laughing.

“Hey,” Darryl Jones said. “You guys should come over for brunch on Sunday. Darryl wants to try out a new mimosa recipe.”

“You going to make me look at your heel again?” Ethan asked Darryl H.

He held up his hands. “I promise. No shop talk.”

Ethan slipped his arm around my shoulders and said, “Then we’d love to.”

“I can’t,” I blurted out.

I don’t know why I said it, but suddenly it felt like it was too much. Amity calling us regulars, everyone in town looking to Ethan for his advice, and now a couples’ brunch?

How was I supposed to maintain any distance? How was I ever going to put my life back together once all this was behind us?

It suddenly occurred to me I was going to have to get divorced. From Ethan. And that sucked.

“You can’t?” he asked, turning towards me. “What do you have going on?”

“Jenny and Bruce,” I said, and somehow ran out of steam. “It’s bath day for them.”

Ethan looked at me and did that universal thing husbands do when they’re trying to bail their wives out of a jam. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. It is bath day. We’ll have to take a rain check, guys.”

We said our goodbyes and turned away to walk down the street. I did this small but noticeable shoulder dip, and Ethan dropped his arm.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said.

I would have liked to have said I didn’t go to his room that night. That I had some sense of self-preservation or willpower.

But just after midnight, I knocked on his door and he opened it wide for me.

No questions asked.