would hope so. With all this extra overtime that she’s been putting in, you’d think that she was working on a political campaign.”
“In a way, she is,” I reminded. “This is for you, isn’t it?”
He grinned.
“I didn’t really come down here to talk politics,” he confessed, kicking an imaginary pebble with the toe of his shoe. The gesture seemed awkward and out of place for him. “I came down here to get your opinion on something.”
Anita breezed by the office door and I sent her a slight nod to let her know that everything was still okay.
“Well, you have my attention,” I said.
He took a deep breath and then pulled a small box from his pocket. I commanded every muscle in my body to remain in place instead of violently contracting like they wanted to.
“I’m planning to ask Alexandra to marry me,” he replied. “I just wanted to know when you think would be the best time to do that. I mean, we’ve always planned to get married right away, but I didn’t want to take her away from the practice during any time that might be considered busier than others. I’m shooting for an extended honeymoon so that it gives us more time for family planning.”
I wanted to punch this smug fucker in the face. Part of me knew that it was irrational because he was just going through the normal motions of a man that had given his time to a long relationship — albeit with the wrong woman — but there was something about the look in his eyes. It was almost as though he’d known about me and Alexandra and was using this precise moment to gloat. My gut was practically yelling that at me, but I knew that if I gave into that line of thinking, my anger would be unleashed. The primal instinct was thriving in my blood and my tacit ultimatum for Alexandra dropped to under forty-eight hours. If she wouldn’t tell him after that, then I simply would.
“I didn’t know you guys were discussing marriage,” I replied, sidestepping his question. “She never mentioned it.”
“Alexandra’s not very open,” he replied in a taunting “I know Alexandra better than you do,” tone. “She probably hasn’t even mentioned it to the people she’s close to like her sister and parents. Have you met them? Her parents, I mean.”
“Not formally,” I answered. As far as I knew, they thought of me as the physician Alexandra worked with.
“I was just having lunch with them,” he went on. “Had to get the old man’s permission, you know. I’ve never seen the man so happy. You know he almost never smiles, right?”
“So I’ve heard.”
The smirk damn near did a tap dance on his face. “Well, he was all smiles when I told him. He even said that I was always his only pick for the man who would be his daughter’s husband, and that I’d done him proud.”
His tone was now covered in slime, his face a full blown sneer. He knew. Either Alexandra had told him — finally — and she’d yet to relay that information to me, or he’d found out on his own. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it was by way of private investigator.
“And what about Alexandra’s choice?” I challenged. “Did you two discuss that when you were planning her future?”
He bit into his lip violently enough to draw blood. “Why wouldn’t she choose me?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I was just asking a question.”
“There are no more eligible men on her roster. I was her first and I will always be her only.”
A derisive scoff snuck its way out, but it wasn’t as though I’d tried very hard to contain it.
“What was that?” he asked.
At that point, I was done. “Nothing.”
“Fine.” He tugged on the lapels of his jacket. “Well, you still haven’t given me an answer on my proposal.”
“I don’t see you as the type of man needing my input.”
He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Do you believe in coincidences?”
I didn’t respond.
“I see that we’re finished here, but I wanted to leave you with this. Some of us mistakenly think that the circumstances that happen in our life, especially the sudden ones, are predestined or ordained. And while some things do happen by chance or fate, if you will, most of the time, it’s just a failure on our part to see exactly where something as simple as human error had an input.” He gave his jacket another