Fated An Alpha Male Romance - K. Alex Walker Page 0,61
plenty of patients whose scars, whenever touched, were still tender. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I’d made fun of Kellen countless times but it now made complete sense why he’d ended up passed out drunk on the floor after the Trisha incident. It either took an incredible amount of strength to throw himself, whole-heartedly, back into relationships over and over again, or a heap of stupidity.
Through my open office door, I could see about fifty-percent of the front waiting area. It had been designed to look like a jungle: plastic vines hanging from the ceiling, a giant “tree” in the middle whose leaves were made up of thank-you notes we’d received from patients and parents, dark, soothing colors that were specially chosen for our patients with sensory disorders, and stuffed jungle animals. The best feature was the jungle mural on one of the walls that Gia had volunteered to paint about a year ago. It seamlessly integrated with the decorations, right down to the three-dimensional monkey hanging from a branch, smiling elephant, and bright-eyed tiger peeking over blade of grass. I would have never expected to have already been operating my own private practice at such a young age, but when opportunity had presented itself, I hadn’t hesitated to shake its hand. It also didn’t hurt to have a wealthy best friend as an investor.
A gust of air from the air-conditioning unit caused one corner of the envelope to flutter as though waving at me. My eyes went back to it on the desk and my thoughts back to my mother. I had no idea what she could have possibly wanted to say to me. Her actions were no clearer now than they’d been at six years old simply because they could not get any clearer. In the amount of time that she’d had to change her mind from doing what she’d done, at no point had her choice been me. She’d gone from drug addiction to male addiction, and I’d wondered, constantly, why she just couldn’t have been addicted to spending time with her only kid.
A piece of peeling paint on my far corner office wall caught my attention, and I sent a short email to my assistant, Anita, for her to arrange for someone to come out to repaint as soon as possible. I knew that my preoccupation with clean paint lines was directly related to John Ezra, and I hated the shackles, but I didn’t have the fortitude to deal with them.
Anita appeared in my doorway and I quickly replayed the email over in my head, prepared to apologize if it had somehow come out as convoluted as my current thoughts. She was petite, barely touching five-feet, with a shape that reminded me of an adolescent boy. As though someone had mentioned that same thing to her, a few months ago she began to wear belts cinched around her waist, makeup that accentuated her blue eyes, and had cut her dark hair up to her neck so that it had looked less stringy than before.
“Dr. Stewart, you have a visitor,” she announced. “I told him that you only had a few minutes down time and that I could schedule something, but he…insisted.”
The sunken, fearful look in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. “Roderick Hamilton?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her eyes widened. “How did you know? Did he have an appointment that I missed? I’m so sorry, Dr. Stewart.”
“No, he didn’t.” I attempted to reassure her with a laugh. “It’s okay, Anita. I could just tell. He has that kind of…presence. You can send him in.”
She turned to the side, nodded, and walked back to her desk. Roderick replaced her spot in my doorway dressed for an interview on Wall Street in a dark three-pieced suit, shiny loafers, and slicked back hair. I welcomed him inside and showed him to a chair in the seating area.
“Water?” I offered, moving around to lean against the edge of my desk.
He smirked. “No. No, thank you.”
“Well, what can I do for you then, Mr. Hamilton?”
“Rick is fine,” he corrected. Then, as though he’d suddenly grown uncomfortable with my standing over him, he got to his feet. “But, I just wanted to stop by and see if there was anything else that you needed help with for the race tomorrow.”
Somehow, that explanation seemed false, but I didn’t push it. “No, Alexandra’s actually got everything covered.”
“Oh, does she?” Another smirk skittered across his face. “I