Page 1 of Dr. Brandt

Chapter One

Cameron (Cam)

This week in Jamaica was supposed to be a reprieve from the demand of my job as a pediatric neurosurgeon. What wasn’t there to love about the white sandy beaches of the all-inclusive resort where we were staying? I was here for the sun and fun, but the latter had backfired on my ass.

I suppose I should’ve stopped the groom and questioned his bright idea of coming here after his fiancé dumped him a day before their wedding. Typically, however, guys didn’t sit around and talk out their feelings. It was more common for us men to jump at the opportunity to turn a bad situation into a good one. You know, we’ve got each other’s backs without questioning who was right or wrong in a relationship breakup—failed wedding or not. So, that’s what I did.

I agreed to join the broken-hearted groom on vacation. Maybe Dennis would get laid and get over it; maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, he requested that his groomsmen join him for a week, and I was happy to get away from work and Los Angeles for that time.

I felt pretty bad for Dennis after he said that his ex-fiancé was taking her bridesmaids to Dubai on what should’ve been their honeymoon, so how could any of us say no to him? Little did I know this fuck-knuckle had played all of us, and we were the ones going on his honeymoon trip. I didn’t know much about what happened before the wedding day fiasco, and since I was just a last-minute stand-in and not a close friend, I didn’t plan on going too deep with him about it.

Dennis was a resident at Saint John’s Hospital, and if it weren’t for him bumping into me when I’d had a little too much to drink one night after two days on-call, I would’ve never agreed to be in his wedding. I don’t even know why I agreed when I was drunk. I barely knew the guy, and I was quickly finding out how different we were.

He did things that, even in my younger playboy, reckless years, I would’ve never considered doing. A prime example of that being that he’d also invited his fiancé’s married bridesmaids to join us in Jamaica—in our shared villa—for what was turning out to be some weird-ass sex fest. That was not my style. No fucking way. None of this was what I’d signed up for, yet here I was, fending off drunk married women all night every time they tried to sneak into my room.

This was a nightmare. I called down to the front desk of the resort and requested a private room outside of this villa, and all I could do now was wait for them to call with the good news that I had a spot away from this insanity. I still had four days left on the island, and I sure as hell didn’t want to spend them like this.

I was pissed, and God help anyone who tried to downplay Dennis’s role in roping us into his honeymoon, turning this room into some weird fuck parade between the dumped groom, his groomsmen, and the bridesmaids. Perhaps if I got caught up on my sleep, I’d laugh at myself for being stupid enough to jump on a plane with these strangers. Maybe I’d even laugh about it one day with my actual friends. However, at the moment, I wasn’t laughing.

I took a sip of my rum and coke, trying to wake up since this cursed vacation had consisted of me getting cat naps in between women sneaking into my room all night.

“Look who’s finally awake and joining the party,” Dennis said as he gripped my shoulder and took the barstool to my left. “We thought you were sick or something.”

His squeaky voice didn’t match his graying hair, but that wasn’t even the most annoying thing about him at the moment. I’d left the villa an hour ago and gone to the tiki bar, hoping to get away from the fools I’d come with, but here he was.

This would be my first conversation with the fucker since I learned the truth about what’d happened to ruin his wedding—he was the one who’d cheated on his fiancé, and not the other way around like he’d led me to believe.

“You said that your fiancé was the one…” I paused and eyed his smirk, and then I twisted and leaned into the bar to face him. “Why did you make it seem like your girl had cheated on you when it was your stupid ass who cheated on her? At the hospital, you said that those days were over for you. I don’t get it. Why bother getting married at all if you still want to fuck around?”

“Oh, please,” he rolled his eyes. “I’m not here to get lectured by a surgeon who was screwing a nurse in—”

I narrowed my eyes and held up my hand after I gulped down the last of my cocktail. “First of all, Gabby was my girlfriend. Second of all, just because she was an ER nurse doesn’t mean that I was supposed to take a vow not to have sex with her.”

“That’s not what flew around the hospital.”

“Thirdly,” I continued, “I never cheated on her. When we ended things, she decided to make it appear as though I used her as my personal fuck-nurse. It nearly cost me my job, but fortunately, social media saved my ass when I had to deal with the board about her complaints.”

“How so?” He frowned.

“Because she posted everything but nudes of us on Instagram. She’d blasted that shit all over her accounts, and it saved me in the end. So, lesson learned. I don’t date co-workers at that hospital anymore, much less fuck them for the hell of it.” The story sounded so stupid when I said it out loud.

“Why did you break it off? Were you bored with her? You see, I think that’s what my problem is. I got bored with Kelly,” he took a sip of a martini that was as dirty as he was, “and I cheated on her. I don’t know, I guess I got cold feet, but after my bachelor party, I realized that I wasn’t made to be a one-woman man.”

“That shit went down at your fucking bachelor party?”

Who the hell was this guy? He’d always seemed to be a decent guy, but I’d gotten that character assessment completely wrong. I guess you learn more and more about people when you’re stuck living with them in a fucked-up situation for a week.

“She caught me for the fourth and final time after she sent a friend that I’d never met to the party to spy on me. Her friend followed me after I left with a few of girls who’d shown up at the bar.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t lie my way out of having my picture taken while checking into a hotel with my hand on some chicks’ asses.”

“No shit?” I humored him in disgust. He wasn’t an ugly guy, but never in a million years would I expect him to attract multiple women at once—unless he was paying them. “I don’t know who to blame in this scenario, you or your girl, who’d known that you’d already banged at least four other broads before her friend caught you on your bachelor night.”

“Kelly thought she could change me.” He arched his eyebrow. “Marriage isn’t the answer to that, you know. Maybe I’m a sex addict. Maybe I’m the one who needs therapy.”

You think?

I tapped on my glass and ordered another cocktail from the bartender. “Does therapy really help a man who brings his fiancé’s married friends to Jamaica for a massive orgy? And yes, you are a sick fuck.” There went our working relationship. “Excuses and self-diagnoses or not, you realize that this whole thing is another level of fucked-up, right? All of us are here on your honeymoon? I thought this was part of your broken-hearted groom’s getaway since your fiancé supposedly took her bridesmaids to Dubai.”

He sighed. “You clearly got it wrong.”

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