Page 13 of Doctor Daddy Dilemma

“So you’re not sleeping with her?”

I tried not to take the direct question as an affront and calmed myself. “No. I am not sleeping with her at all. She and I meet outside the office for her consultations and she comes here to my home office when she needs work.”

It irritated me that she had to ask, but it was better for me to be calm and explain rationally instead of being defensive and snapping at her for believing the tabloids. Charlie hardly knew me. I couldn’t fault her for naively believing the narrative someone else force-fed her.

“Good…” Her simple response was followed by a huge gulp of wine and before she changed her mind, I chose to move things in the direction I’d been waiting for.

“Should we take the bottle of wine and retire?” I asked, picking up the bottle as I stood.

A smirk flashed across her face and she rose with me, leaving her purse on the sofa. I took her hand and led her up the staircase and down the hall to my bedroom. Her eyes drank everything in as we walked. Every door we passed, every picture hung on the wall. My home seemed to her a museum of all things “Dr. Hartman” and she was a fanatic, eagerly devouring every morsel.

In the bedroom, I set the wine on the nightstand and realized I’d forgotten my glass. She carried hers in hand, so I led her to the bed and kissed her forehead. “Stay right there. I have to get my glass.”

“Mmm…don’t take too long.”

Her mewl of desire made my body flush with warmth. I hurried back downstairs to retrieve my glass, but when I came back, she was sitting cross-legged in her bra and panties on the bed, holding the framed photo from my nightstand in her hands. She looked up at me with curiosity as I approached her.

“Who’s this?”

My chest constricted as I walked toward her, knowing where this conversation was going. I kicked off my shoes, set my glass on the nightstand next to hers, then stripped off my tie and my shirt.

For a brief moment her eyes lingered on my body. It was a bit of an ego boost to see her flush with arousal, but I knew the mood would be broken for me if I answered the question. Still, I didn’t want her to think the only thing I was interested in was sex. My God was I interested in sex, but if I was ever going to break my streak of bad luck, I had to do things differently.

“That is a portrait of my parents.” I crawled onto the bed and lay down, curling my body around hers as she sat there. My legs pushed up along her thigh and my arm wrapped around her waist, resting on her middle.

“They look so happy.” She smiled and looked down at me, but I couldn’t really look at the image. It remained on my nightstand where I could see it and remind myself every time I looked at it what sort of person I wanted to be—the polar opposite of them.

“I think they were very good at wearing masks.” My sour comment made her grimace.

“That bad?” She set the picture back on the nightstand where it belonged and turned to face me.

My hand lingered on her thigh inches from her panties, but now any thought of intimacy with her was gone. She was going to ask about my childhood, and I was going to talk about it whether or not I wanted to.

“Off the record?”

Charlie held her hand up and said, “I swear.”

It took me a few seconds to muster the courage to speak without letting my temper get the better of me. I hated speaking of my childhood, and when I did I always felt so bitter and unpleasant. But I continued to remind myself that if I wanted this, I had to be open.

“Well, I was raised in money. My parents shipped me off to boarding schools and private institutions. I had nannies and butlers but no affection. I never learned how to form attachments or relationships, and I’m really messed up because of it. I’m not single because I choose to be. I’m single because I have issues and they all stem from a really messed-up childhood.”

Charlie didn’t respond the way I thought she would. This didn’t seem like the sort of topic that was appropriate for so early in a relationship, if that’s where we were headed. I thought she’d be uncomfortable, excuse herself even, or maybe she’d shy away from me for being creepy. But her hand cupped my cheek and she cooed.

“Oh, Lex… I’m so sorry. That had to have been horrible.”

And for the first time, instead of feeling angry and hostile about my upbringing, I felt comforted. It was such a shocking emotion to me that I couldn’t even put words to what I was feeling. I stared at her in disbelief as she just kept talking.

“I’m so sorry I brought that up. I didn’t know it was such a painful memory. We don’t have to talk about that. Here, let me get you a drink.” Charlie poured a glass full of wine, and for the next hour, we discussed how different our upbringings were.

I was neglected and distracted by material goods. She was nurtured in a barely livable home with two loving parents who gave her the best they could even though it was all hand-me-downs. I was given the best education on a silver platter, and she had to fight to get where she was, working hard to earn scholarships since her parents couldn’t afford a thing. It made me wish I’d grown up with her family too.

After the second bottle of wine was gone and my heart was trashed from talking about my parents, all I wanted to do was hold her. So I folded the blankets back and kissed her deeply, then asked her if it was okay if we just lay together.

She fell asleep in minutes, and I lay awake for hours, wondering how a talk like that could make me feel more complete and whole than a lifetime of sexual encounters.

Charlie Martinez had messed with my heart in such a good way, and I’d be damned if I let her slip through my fingers. This was a woman I wanted in my life, for the rest of my life, and I was determined to keep her here.

9

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