Doctor Boss Is My Baby Daddy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Stranger at the Bar
The night Valeria is told she will wash out, a stranger buys her a drink; five weeks later the new chief of surgery is him.
My stepmother told the whole table I would wash out of my internship by October.
She said it over the cheese course, smiling, with her glass raised.
"We love Valeria," she said. "That's why we're being honest."
Across from me, my stepsister Bridget laughed into her napkin.
Bridget was a floor nurse who had failed her medical boards twice.
She hadn't forgiven me for passing mine.
The dinner was supposed to be my send-off, the night before I started as a surgical intern.
I put down my fork and said I needed air.
Nobody tried to stop me.
The restaurant was in the airport hotel, and the hotel had a bar.
I walked into it with my hands still shaking and took the last stool.
"Whatever's strongest," I told the bartender.
"She'll have a ginger ale and a whiskey, in that order," said the man beside me.
I turned to tell him off.
He was tall, maybe thirty-five, with grey coming in at his temples.
A pale scar cut through his left eyebrow, and he was looking at me.
"I'm not drinking whiskey on an empty stomach," I said.
"Good," he said. "Neither am I. Eat the bar nuts."
I ate the bar nuts.
He asked what had happened to my face, and I told him about the toast.
I told him about the house on Cass Street that my father left to his second wife.
I told him I owed two hundred thousand dollars to people who thought I'd be a surgeon.
He listened with his whole attention and never once looked at his phone.
"Come on," he said finally. "Say it. What do you want to do about her?"
"Prove her wrong," I said. "And never see her again."
"Only one of those is up to you."
"Then I'll start with the first one."
He laughed, low and surprised, like it hurt a little.
I decided right there, with the bar nuts in my hand, that I wanted to know what that laugh felt like against my skin.
No names, I told him.
He said that suited him fine.
I put my hand flat on his chest and said, "Take me upstairs."
He covered my hand with his and said, "Yes."
The door clicked shut behind us.
I didn't give him time to find the light.
I pushed him back against it and kissed him, my hands in his hair, my hips already pressing into his.
He made a sound low in his chest, surprised and pleased, and his hand came up to the back of my neck.
Not to pull me closer.
To hold me there while he took over the kiss.
"You don't waste time," he said against my mouth.
"I had a bad dinner."
"Then let's make the rest of the night better."
He walked me backward toward the bed without letting go, his mouth on mine, his hands finding the tie of my wrap dress.
The city lights through the half-open curtain cut the room into planes of blue and gold.
One bedside lamp was on, low.
He untied the dress slowly, like he was unwrapping something he intended to keep.
"You're beautiful," he said, and I could hear that he meant it specifically, not like a line.
"Show me," I said.
He slid the dress off my shoulders and let it fall.
Then he stepped back and looked at me in the black lace bra and underwear, my dark hair slipping out of its knot.
His jaw tightened.
"Lie down," he said.
I did.
He took off his shoes and socks, then knelt on the bed over me, still in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled and his grey trousers.
He kissed me once, soft, then moved down my body.
When his mouth reached the lace at my hip, he looked up.
"Please," I said.
He pulled my underwear down slowly, watching my face the whole time.
Then he pushed my thighs apart and settled between them.
The first stroke of his tongue was slow, broad, deliberate.
I gasped and my hips came off the bed.
He laughed, low, and did it again.
"Tell me what you want," he said, his breath hot on my wet skin.
"Your mouth."
"I know that. Specifically."
I propped myself up on my elbows to look down at him.
Between my legs, his grey eyes were fixed on me, patient and hungry.
"Lick my clit," I said. "Don't stop until I come."
"Good girl."
He lowered his mouth and did exactly what I'd told him.
His tongue circled my clit, then flattened, then sucked, and I stopped being able to form thoughts.
All I could do was feel.
The stubble on his jaw against the inside of my thigh.
The way he groaned when I got wetter.
The way he held my hips down when I tried to move.
I came with a broken sound, my back arching, my hands fisted in the sheets.
He didn't stop.
He kept licking me through it, softer now, drawing it out until I was shaking.
"Stop," I breathed. "I need you inside me."
"Say it again."
"I need you to fuck me."
He crawled up my body, shedding his shirt somewhere in the dark, then his trousers.
I pulled him down onto the bed and climbed on top of him.
His cock was hard against my stomach, and I reached between us to guide it.
I sank down onto him in one long, slow motion.
We both made a sound like we'd been holding our breath.
"Fuck," I whispered.
He watched me with his hands on my hips, letting me set the pace.
I rode him the way I'd wanted to since the bar, slow and then not slow, taking everything I wanted.
"This is what you needed, isn't it?" he said, his voice rough.
"Yes."
"You like being on top."
"I like being in control."
He flipped us so fast I lost my breath.
The next thing I knew I was on my back and he was over me, one hand braced by my head, the other hooked under my knee.
"Me too," he said.
Then he fucked me hard.
Every thrust drove the air out of my lungs.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and dug my nails into his back.
"Don't stop," I said. "Please don't stop."
"I won't."
He reached between us and put his thumb on my clit.
The pressure built fast and sharp, too much and not enough.
"Come for me," he said. "I want to feel it."
I came around his cock with a cry that was half his name and half nothing at all.
He followed a few thrusts later with a low curse, buried deep inside me, and I felt him come.
For a moment neither of us moved.
Then he eased out and fell onto his back beside me, breathing hard.
I turned my head on the pillow.
"The ginger ale was a power move," I said.
"It was a medical decision."
"Sure."
He turned his head to look at me, and the scar through his eyebrow caught the lamplight.
For one night, nobody had an opinion about me except the man in the bed.
I let myself be wanted.
I moved closer and put my head on his chest.
His arm came around me, heavy and warm.
"Stay till morning," he said.
"Ask me again at four."
At five in the morning he was asleep with one arm over my side of the bed.
I had a six o'clock pre-orientation shift and a car in a garage that charged by the hour.
I looked at him for a long minute.
Then I picked up my shoes, closed the door softly, and did not leave a note.
Five weeks later I stood in a supply closet at St. Brendan's with a pregnancy test in my pocket.
Two pink lines.
I had read them four times on the bathroom floor, and they had not changed.
My phone buzzed.
It was Jody, my best friend and fellow intern, texting in capital letters.
"GET TO THE AUDITORIUM. NEW CHIEF OF SURGERY IS HERE. EVERYONE IS PANICKING."
I wiped my face, straightened my white coat, and walked into the back of the room.
The hospital's board chair was at the podium.
"Please welcome the man who will run this department," she said.
"Dr. Rhys Gallagher."
He walked out from the wings in a dark suit, one hand adjusting his cuff.
A pale scar cut through his left eyebrow.
He looked up, scanned the room, and stopped on me.
Every muscle in his face went still.
I put my hand over the pocket with the test in it.
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