An Innocent Halloween (Holiday Heat Book 1) Read online

  “This isn’t personal,” Tommy replied. “I have it all well in hand. I’m at the top of my game, you know that.”

  “I trust you,” I said quickly, wanting to reassure him. It wasn’t that I didn’t. It was just, well, divorce and other personal issues could affect your professional life whether you meant them to or not, and Tommy’s divorce had been particularly nasty. His now ex-wife had taken a huge chunk of his fortune and even though it had been several years ago now… only now was Tommy finally really back in the game.

  This large merger would bring in a lot of profits to the partnership we’d established, but more importantly, it would get Tommy back at the level he’d been before the divorce. I just didn’t want him to get too invested in it all.

  “You shouldn’t be worrying about me,” Tommy said. “You’ve got enough on your plate. I’m a grown man, I can handle my own shit. You look after your little girl, okay? Leave the rest to me.”

  I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Thanks Tommy. I appreciate it.”

  “No worries. We’re in this together.” Apart from being my business partner, Tommy was my best friend and had been for well over a decade. “Tell Tabitha hi from LA.”

  “I will. Look after yourself. Keep me posted.”

  “I will.”

  After I hung up, I took a few deep breaths. Right. Tabitha.

  Running a billion-dollar empire was time-consuming even when I didn’t have any distractions. Of course, Tommy and anyone else who knew me would probably say that I had plenty of distractions, namely girls, parties, girls, events, and more girls. I’d been a connoisseur of women ever since I’d gotten to college, and I’d had the pleasure of wooing heiresses, fashion icons, models, actresses, artists, and every kind of woman in between. Tommy used to joke that when going to a social event it was easier to list the women there that I hadn’t slept with.

  But picking up a woman and having her in my life for a night or a few weeks, relaxing at a party or going to see a baseball game, none of those things were the same as having a child. It was like having a whole second job. I was trying to focus on Tabitha’s health, but it wasn’t easy to disconnect from my work. And I worried that both were going to suffer as a result.

  Pocketing my phone, I entered the hospital room again. I tried to at least keep business away from Tabitha. She deserved to have my full attention.

  Her eyes opened as I stepped in—the same light blue eyes as my sister. It made my chest ache all over again.

  My sister, Lacey, had been the star of every party. Vivacious, charming, hilarious, always with an entertaining story. I still couldn’t quite believe she was gone. Her husband, my brother-in-law Dan, had been the same. Gifted storyteller, always up for an adventure, that kind of thing.

  My sister and I had been… well, inseparable when we were younger. Lacey and Alex, Alex and Lacey, never leaving each other’s sides. But then I’d been kicked out by Dad, that old bastard, before I’d even finished high school. I’d always said that one stroke of bad luck turned into a run of good luck—I’d made friends with Tommy, and his parents, and they’d helped me finish high school and had paid for me to get into Harvard, gave me the money for my first start up. I owed them everything.

  But in the process I’d left my sister behind.

  Lacey had insisted that I hadn’t abandoned her, but that was how I’d felt. I’d done my best in the last few years to make up for it to her. Tried to take care of her.

  Their entire lives had changed when their daughter had been diagnosed with leukemia. There went the trips around the world, the parties, the skydiving. Instead they focused everything on getting her better. I had encouraged them to remember to look after themselves, that they couldn’t be the best parents to Tabitha if they didn’t take time for themselves as well.

  God, sometimes, in my darkest moments, I blamed myself. I had told them to go out to that party, I had told them to enjoy a night off and relax, I’d stay with Tabitha in the hospital that night, no big deal. My one consolation was that the drunk driver who’d hit them had also died in the crash. Lucky him. He didn’t have to face my wrath.

  So now I was Tabitha’s guardian. For the last year and a half I’d been staying in Boston with her. Boston had the best children’s hospital in the world, and I wasn’t going to scrimp on anything for Tabitha. She deserved the best. Poor thing had taken it all like a champ, but I knew she missed her parents. What child wouldn’t?

  I couldn’t help but feel like—when I looked at Tabitha—I was living that dark part of my life all over again, that time when I’d left my sister to fend for herself against an awful father, a father who drank and hit and screamed in our faces. I had failed Lacey, but I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, fail my niece.

  Tabitha gave me a wane smile. “You okay Uncle Alex?”

  Most people thought I was her father, and legally I now was, since I’d adopted her after Lacey and Dan’s deaths. I wasn’t going to just be her guardian, I was going to be her parent. If anything happened to me, most of my fortune would go to charity but a good amount of it would go to Tabitha. She’d be set for life. I didn’t want her to be abandoned in any way, not if I could help it.

  But even if I was her father legally, and even though most people seemed to assume that I was biologically as well, Tabitha called me Uncle Alex, and I wanted it that way. I never wanted to replace Dan, who’d loved her and been a loving and thoughtful father to her.

  Honestly, Dan should’ve been here. Lacey should’ve been here. Not me. I had no clue what I was doing. I just tried to be responsible and to love Tabitha as much as I could.

  People had commented on the change. On how I had shifted, how I was no longer the carefree partying playboy that I had once been. In the last year and a half I hadn’t been with a woman once, hadn’t gone to a single party, hadn’t even touched alcohol. I had to look after Tabitha. She was my world.

  Now I understood why Lacey and Dan had struggled to take time for themselves and to focus on anything else. Hell, I was struggling with the same damn thing. Tommy was forever telling me to take breaks, to go see a movie, to find a local bar and make friends, that kind of thing. I tried, I did, but it was hard. I was always worrying about Tabitha.

  “Yes, Ladybug?” I asked, sitting down on the side of her bed. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were still here, that’s all,” Tabitha says.

  “I’m definitely still here, Ladybug. I’ll always be here.” I took her hand. “How can I properly investigate the hospital vampires if I’m not here?”

  Tabitha giggled. It was a longstanding joke between us that there were non-human creatures in the hospital, ever since I’d made a joke that they were drawing blood from her to feed the vampires. The doctor had looked at me sharply in horror and disapproval but Tabitha had laughed, and ever since then she hadn’t been scared when they drew her blood, so I considered it a win.

  Maybe all kids were like this, or maybe Tabitha was just a little odd, but I had found that she embraced oddball answers to things, like treating the supernatural as if it was real. She wasn’t easily scared by those kinds of things, and far more easily scared by the idea of a disease ravaging her body. If she wanted to think that her illness was a werewolf curse and that the late-night hospital staff were zombies, then I was going to let her keep thinking that. It made her happy and kept her from being afraid, and that was what mattered.

  The door to her hospital room opened and a doctor walked in, one that I didn’t recognize.

  And holy shit.

  This woman was nothing short of stunning. She had deep, vibrant green eyes that started sharply at me from behind her glasses, and thick curling auburn hair pulled back, beautiful, pale skin and the kind of tight curves that always drove me wild.

  I’d been with award-winning models, the kind of women who ended up on the cover of magazines, and none of them had made my blood heat up like this woman did. If I’d seen her at a party I would hav
e walked right over and introduced myself.

  “Hello.” The woman smiled warmly at Tabitha, and then got a little more businesslike as she looked over at me. “I’m Dr. Montague, I’m going to be Tabitha’s doctor from now on. But you, little lady, can call me Claire.”

  “Are you a vampire?” Tabitha asked, very seriously.

  Claire lowered her voice. “No, the vampires all work on the thirteenth floor.”

  I couldn’t quite hold back my grin. Tabitha’s last doctor had rolled her eyes at all of this supernatural ‘nonsense’, as she’d put it. I was glad to see that Tabitha now had a doctor who knew how to play along and support her.

  Tabitha’s eyes went wide and she nodded solemnly. Claire smiled at her again, and I had to be honest—I was pretty damn smitten. I had never been this attracted to a woman before.

  I was in big trouble.

  2

  Claire

  Tabitha Collins was my newest patient, and I was determined to help her if I could. One of my colleagues had warned me that the girl was a little odd, but I didn’t care. And when Tabitha asked me about vampires, I almost laughed. That wasn’t odd, all kids had their fun fantasies and ideas.

  As focused on Tabitha as I was, I was still able to spare a glance at her father, and… wow. Tall, chiseled jaw, broad shoulders, hazel eyes and dark hair, with a smirk that made my knees weak… he looked like the kind of dashing older man who fucked you right, who knew what he was doing, and made you orgasm three times from his fingers alone.

  I had never been with a man, but I had fantasies, and I’d heard plenty of stories from my friends. And this guy was… wow. Just. Wow.

  I quickly focused back in on Tabitha. This was my patient, and I wanted to give her my full attention.

  “Now, I know you probably liked your last doctor, so if you have any questions at all, you can ask me, but we’re going to be continuing the same treatments we were before, okay? I have some stuff I’d like to try with you but that’ll be later, and we’ll talk about it all beforehand.”

  Tabitha nodded. She seemed to be used to this kind of thing, this talk about options and treatments, and it broke my heart. I supposed that it was better than the kid being confused and scared, but no child should have to get used to being sick, used to talking about the ways they might die or might, if things went just right, lived.

  “I have some questions,” Mr. Collins said.

  “Of course, naturally.” I’d been warned about him. Mr. Collins was, according to everyone else, a polite and thoughtful man, but devoted to his daughter one hundred percent. He would badger doctors a bit sometimes and always wanted to know every angle.

  Sure enough, the man launched into a laundry list of questions. I answered them all, prepared for it. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the parents who would come to me and yell in my face or would look down their nose at me because I was a woman or young. If I had a quarter for every time someone assumed that I was a nurse…

  “Our chief oncologist will go through the tests,” I explained to Mr. Collins. “He’ll discuss treatment options with you tomorrow. Right now we’re just going to run a few more scans.” I looked over at Tabitha. “Is that okay? We want to make sure everything’s going the way we think it is.”

  “It’s because of the full moon, isn’t it?” Tabitha asked me.

  “Exactly. Smart kid.” I winked at her.

  Tabitha tried to wink back, but just ended up blinking. It was adorable.

  The door behind me opened and I looked over my shoulder to see Pippa entering. “Ah, here’s the nurse. Pippa here is going to escort you to the MRI lab, okay? I promise she’s very skilled in vampire hunting.”

  Pippa gave me a weird look, but chatted up Tabitha and helped her get on the gurney to wheel her out.

  That just left me alone with Alex.

  I was nervous—a first for me. I hadn’t been nervous when talking with patients, or the families of patients, in all of my time at the hospital. If you were nervous, as a doctor, the patients and their families could sense it. It would make them nervous and unsure, make them more likely to doubt you and to freak out and get emotional.

  But this man—I felt drawn to him in a way that I hadn’t with anyone else. Moments of fleeting attraction were one thing but this was like I was a magnet, getting pulled in. I felt like even breathing was difficult, the tell-tale fluttering feeling erupting in my stomach like butterflies. I had always found it easy to focus on my job, to keep my head down, so to speak, but there was something about Mr. Collins that was just so distracting.

  “Dr. Montague,” he said, taking a step closer to me, and I swore I could feel the heat radiating off his body like a furnace. My gaze dropped to his mouth before I could stop myself and I had to wrench it back up, struggling to pay attention. “What’s your age, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Oh hell no. I straightened my spine. I was used to people thinking I wasn’t qualified because of my age, but I couldn’t stop the little twinge of disappointment in my chest at having this handsome man be one of those people. Hope that I hadn’t even realized I’d had, shriveled up and died inside of me.

  “My age has nothing to do with my ability to treat your daughter, I assure you,” I told him. “I’m a fully qualified doctor.”

  Mr. Collins gave me this—this infuriating smirk, and I couldn’t help but bristle a little. It was like he knew something that I didn’t, like he was amused by me. What, did he think that I was some kind of sideshow? Something hilarious to laugh at before he got the ‘real’ doctor? Why did men always think that women were unqualified? I was sick and tired of having to prove myself all the time.

  “Mr. Collins, if—”

  “Alex, please.” His smile was handsome and all the more infuriating for it. I hated my traitorous body for being attracted to him. “Call me Alex.”

  I took a deep breath. “Alex. If you have any concerns than you are more than welcome to discuss them with the chief oncologist.”

  Before he could respond, I turned and walked out, not wanting to give him the chance to argue with me or try to assert his authority. I had a medical degree and yet some men, who knew absolutely nothing, would try to act as though just doing a simple internet search qualified them to lecture me. I was not about that.

  Instead of the usual righteous indignatio that I usually felt, though, instead I just felt frustration and disappointment. I didn’t want him to be like most of the other men that I dealt with. I wanted him to be different. Better. And I hated myself for thinking that about someone that I had only just met, someone I was just stupidly attracted to.

  I picked up my head. I wouldn’t let this affect the rest of my shift. I was going to be cheerful and focus on the positive, and there was a lot of positive to focus on.

  Later on in the coffee room, drinking the sludge that the hospital liked to tell us was totally coffee, Pippa cornered me. “Did you see how handsome Tabitha’s father is?” she hissed.

  Pippa was much better with people than I was. She was two years younger but I felt like when it came to social situations she was far more mature. She was funny, outgoing, and super affectionate. I often struggled with those things. It was no wonder that Pippa had a ton of friends and boyfriends—although the latter probably were influenced by her blonde hair and blue eyes. Pippa was extremely pretty.

  I was glad that Pippa was my friend. She reminded me to relax and to have fun, and God knew I needed that reminder. Half the time I didn’t even know what having fun was, it felt like.

  But that didn’t mean I was going to join in the gossip about my patient’s father. Especially not one who thought I was underqualified, no matter how handsome he was. I just shrugged in response to Pippa’s cheery gossip.

  “Oh, come on,” Pippa nudged me. “You have to admit that he’s good-looking. And I mean seriously, ridiculously good looking. Holy shit.”

  “He might have a handsome face,” I said, “but I’m not all that thrilled about his attitud
e. And personality makes up a lot of what draws you to someone, not just facial features.”

  “You sound like a robot, Claire, I swear to God.” Pippa leaned her elbows back on the counter. “What do you mean, his attitude? What did he say?”

  “He asked me about my age, what else.” I rolled my eyes, finishing making my coffee and taking a sip. Ugh. Well, at least it had caffeine in it.

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him that if he had a problem with it that he could go and talk to my boss, what else was I supposed to say?”

  “Well did you ask him why he wanted to know your age?”

  I glanced over at her. “Well, what other reason would he want to know it?”

  Pippa… God that look on her face, that patient look, that meant that I might have missed something again. “Claire. There could be any number of reasons why he wanted to know how old you are. Including a reason that has to do with how gorgeous you look?”

  “Oh my God, Pippa, no, it’s… no.”

  “You didn’t give him a chance to respond, did you? So you don’t know. You can’t assume what someone is thinking or feeling.”

  “I…”

  “I’m just saying you have a chip on your shoulder about the age thing. And not without reason. But maybe… you should wait and make sure before you assume that someone’s thinking the worst, that’s all.”

  Shame crept up my stomach like bile and I had to shove it back down, my nerves jittering. “I’ve seen it too many times. People discounting me just because I’m young. He had this… you didn’t see it but he had this smirk on his face like he was amused by me. Like I was some cute little kid. It was infuriating!”

  Pippa hummed. “If you say so. I’m just saying… make sure before you jump to conclusions, not everyone is out to get you.”

  I wasn’t so sure. But… I couldn’t help but hope that I was wrong, that Pippa was right, that this guy really didn’t mind my age and I’d been jumping the gun about why he’d been asking.