Page 4 of Rescuing Dr. Marian (Made Marian Legacy #1)

TOMMY

My heart thudded painfully as I watched Foster Blake walk away from my hotel room.

The dim lights in the outdoor passageway threw shadows across his shoulders, stretched wide across the soft cotton of the T-shirt I’d given him. His ruined flannel hung from one hand as he strode away.

I wanted to call him back. My entire body vibrated with the need to shout his name, to beg him to stay for just a little longer.

To talk to me just a bit more about his life in Wyoming. About search and rescue. About his snarky little sister and his meddling mom.

To keep the big, handsome man in my orbit a few more minutes because when he was with me, it was hard to think of anything we’d done together as the life-altering calamity I knew it was .

I’d never kissed a man before tonight. Not like that. Hell, I’d never kissed a woman like that before. Not in the kind of way that took charge, that dominated…

That owned me completely.

Breath sawed in and out of my lungs as I returned into the room and closed the door behind me. “Fuck,” I whimpered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I was in so much trouble. So. Fucking. Much. Trouble.

It hadn’t just been the kiss that had taken me by surprise or the fact that Foster was a guy when I’d honestly figured I was a hundred percent straight.

It was that I’d wanted to say yes when he’d asked me back to his room. Wanted to go anywhere with him, just to stay close to him and find out what else he had to say.

And then when he’d unbuttoned his stained shirt to slip on the tee I’d given him… well, I’d found my gaze lingering on him longer than it should have.

Medical school had prepared me to understand the human body as a collection of systems working in harmony, and years of examining bodies had made it commonplace.

But there was nothing clinical about the way I’d noticed his shoulders—broad and strong and gorgeous—as he’d pulled my T-shirt over his head.

And nothing in my studies had prepared me to have my own pulse quicken and my mouth go dry as I’d watched the play of muscles in his arms, mentally tracing the path of veins visible beneath his skin.

I’d recognized these symptoms all too well. The rush of chemicals that turned rational thought sideways, the slight elevation in body temperature, the focus that narrowed to one person in a crowded room.

I wanted Foster Blake. And knowing the biological basis for attraction didn’t make it any less powerful.

I squeezed my eyes closed. “This is normal. Cold feet. Jitters.”

But it was not normal. Not for me. And not with another man.

So, I did the only thing I could think of when faced with something this potentially life-changing. I grabbed my key and ran down the hall in the opposite direction from the one Foster had taken.

My cousin Ella answered her door on the third knock, barefoot and wearing pajamas festooned with tiny rubber ducks. Dark strands had escaped her messy topknot to wave around her face, probably because she’d been tugging at them while working on her project.

“Bro, you suck at relaxing—” she began. But when she saw my face, her eyes widened. “Tommy? Are you alright?”

“Not really, no.” I walked into her room without waiting for an invitation, not that she’d expect me to. “I did something, Ella.” My voice sounded thready and panicked to my own ears.

“Take a deep breath,” she instructed, closing the door behind me and wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Whatever it is, we’ll fix it, okay? Aunt Tilly once gave me a whole rundown on hiding a body… though I think she figured Uncle Teddy was the Marian most likely to commit a felony, not you.”

I shot her a look. “Not helping.”

Ella squeezed my shoulder. “You are okay physically, though, right? Because you kinda look like you were mauled.” She waved a hand at my wrinkled-as-fuck button-down and raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

Thinking of the answer to that question turned my blood to liquid fire— Foster’s big hands yanking up the fabric, the warmth of his palm at the small of my back, the flex of his fingers like he was as greedy for the contact as I was ?—

“I’d guess you and Kari were pre-gaming the wedding night,” Ella went on. “Except your bride isn’t due in until tomorrow, along with the rest of the fam. And, frankly, I can’t imagine Kari ever getting hot and heavy.” She snorted lightly.

My bride .

Hearing her say those words was a cold dose of reality, reminding me why I’d had no business kissing anyone earlier and no business fantasizing about it now.

I was supposed to be getting married in three days. The perfect Hawaiian wedding of Kari’s dreams.

“Fuck.” I stumbled over to the bed and threw myself onto it, face-first. “Christ, how am I going to tell her?”

“Tom.” Ella sat beside me and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Whatever you’ve done, I’m sure she’ll forgive you. I mean, if you took a job at a hospital that wasn’t prestigious enough, or accepted a speaking opportunity in a country not on her list of pre-approved travel destinations?—”

“Worse,” I breathed. “So much worse. We’re in the cone of silence, Ella. Swear to me.”

“Babe,” she said, dropping the joking tone. “What is it?”

I turned my head and met her eyes. “I kissed someone.” Just saying the words set my cheeks on fire again .

She gasped dramatically. “Holy shit! Tell me every single thing. Start with what kind of special magic this woman had to make you cheat on your fucking fiancée literally three days before your wedding!”

My hands were shaking, and, honestly, it felt like the rest of me was, too. “Not a woman. And it wasn’t actually cheating. At least… I don’t think.”

I ran a hand over my face. If cheating included emotions, I was at least slightly guilty.

“Not a woman?” Ella jumped slightly, making the bed bounce. “Omigod, I owe Alex so much money right now. I said you never flinch when I show you hot guy pics, but he said given the number of queer people in our family, there’s no way you wouldn’t have considered?—”

“Ella!” I squawked. “Can you be serious? My life is imploding right now. Everyone is arriving tomorrow for my wedding .”

“I am being serious. He must have been something special for you to cheat on Kari. For real.”

“I didn’t cheat,” I insisted, feeling like I doth protested all over the fucking place. “I… look, I was at the bar by the pool, talking to Foster, the guy who was sitting in front of us on the plane?—”

Ella sucked in a breath. “ That guy? Oh, Tom. He was so hot, and so nice, and so… so…”

“Yeah.” The word came out like a sigh, one that encompassed all the wonder of Foster Blake.

“We just talked. For, like, hours, El. It was so easy. He’s into a lot of the same stuff I am.

He goes rock climbing and hiking. He’s a search and rescue guy and trains tracking dogs.

I could have listened to him talk all night. ”

“And then?”

“His ex-boyfriend showed up—remember the asshole he was talking about on the plane?—and I pretended Foster and I were together, just to get his ex to go away. Then to sorta seal the deal, Foster… kissed me.” My entire lower abdomen clenched, and I whispered, “I didn’t know it could be like that.”

She let out a startled laugh, then paused, then laughed again. “Hold up. You kissed a stranger to make Foster’s ex jealous. On a family wedding week. At a hotel bar.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what I—” I suddenly realized why she was laughing. “It’s not the same,” I argued.

Ella hooted and smacked my shoulder lightly.

“It is! My dad showed up to a family wedding, saw his shitty ex-boyfriend, and whined about it to a random guy at a bar, so the random guy pretended they were together. Now, decades later, he sometimes jokes that maybe it’s time they stop pretending.

” She rolled her eyes, but her voice rang with love and pride. “Their first meeting is family legend.”

“Yeah, well… this isn’t like that, okay? There’s no happy ending here.” My stomach burned, and I found myself close to tears… for all the wrong reasons. “After the second kiss?—”

“Second kiss?” she squeaked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “After his ex stalked off, Foster and I went down to the beach. I was still feeling some kind of way after the first kiss… and then he kissed me again.” I sank back into the pillow, covering my eyes with my forearm.

“Oh, honey. Was it just as good as the first? ”

“Better,” I groaned. “El… it’s a disaster.

I don’t think it was cheating, since I wasn’t the one who initiated the kiss…

well, kisses. And I stopped him before it went further.

But god, I didn’t want to stop.” I pulled my arm away from my face.

“What does that say about me? About my relationship with Kari?”

“It says you’re not ready to marry her,” Ella replied simply.

I knew she was right, but the part of me that had planned out my whole life in careful stages and hated letting people down wasn’t quite ready to hear it.

“ Or it says I’m just panicking about the wedding,” I countered, but the argument sounded weak even to my own ears.

“When he touched you,” Ella asked carefully, “how did it feel?”

I swallowed hard, remembering the sensation of Foster’s hands on my bare skin, of his lips on mine. While he’d been touching me, it hadn’t occurred to me that it should feel strange because Foster was a man. I’d been too consumed with how right it all felt.

“Like waking up,” I admitted quietly. “Like breathing mountain air after years in city smog.”

She was silent for a long moment. “You need to call it off, Tommy.”

“The entire Marian clan is flying in tomorrow. Kari’s family, too. The venue is booked, the flowers ordered, the?—”

“All of that matters less than marrying someone you’re not in love with. Or, at least, not in love with the way you deserve to be.”

I closed my eyes, feeling tears threaten again. “Mom and Dad spent so much?— ”

“They’d spend twice that to keep you from making a mistake you’ll regret for the rest of your life. You know that.”