His Forbidden Love (Manhattan Billionaires #2) - Ava Ryan Page 0,4

and needed to take a leave of absence from my residency, which almost ruined my medical career.

It’s really unbelievable.

Ten seconds in Dr. Jamison’s presence and I’m right back to where I always was with him, badly shaken, buzzing with adrenaline and high from the fresh cedar scent of his cologne. He affects me that strongly.

I can’t fight the feeling that I’m seriously screwed here. It’s all I can do to repress a burble of hysterical laughter.

This whole situation is my own fault. I knew there was a possibility that Dr. Jamison (yes, I still call him Dr. Jamison or the Sphinx, even in the privacy of my own thoughts; old habits die hard) would show up tonight. I knew things could get awkward, in my head if nothing else. But Bruce lives in D.C., and this was his weekend to visit me here in the city. So what was I supposed to do? Ask him to sit home alone while I enjoy an elegant black-tie evening without him? That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing to strengthen our growing relationship.

Neither does discovering that I’m still wildly attracted to Dr. Jamison after all this time and that I’m still susceptible to flights of fancy about the way he may or may not be looking at me, for that matter.

Neither does realizing—I mean really realizing, for the first time ever—that Bruce looks like Dr. Jamison.

It’s one thing to swipe on Bruce’s profile on my dating app and think, Huh, yeah, tall, dark and handsome—maybe I have a type, and something else entirely to see the two men standing together as though they’re gauzy mirror images of each other.

And don’t get me started on the fact that my perfectly lovely Bruce now seems like a pale imitation of something I didn’t even know I was trying to copy. It’s like uprooting the reproduction of the Eiffel Tower from the Vegas Strip and planting it next to the original in Paris. Nothing like a side-by-side comparison to make you realize that, while the general effect is right, the two things aren’t the same.

They’re not the same at all.

Bruce? He’s handsome, sure, but he doesn’t possess Dr. Jamison’s quiet authority that allows him to command every room he walks into. Bruce’s brown eyes are kind and warm, not a piercing aquamarine that overflows with latent intensity. If someone wanted to give Bruce a nickname based on some mythological creature, I’m quite sure it would be something cute and fluffy rather than something filled with maddening silences and unfathomable secrets.

Like Dr. Jamison.

And I’m just now realizing—right this very second—that while Bruce can raise my heart rate if he really puts his back into it and occasionally borrows a forklift to help him out as needed, my heart rate will soar into the red zone if someone else so much as mentions Dr. Jamison’s name in my presence.

Those are all bad signs, aren’t they?

I try to pay attention to the proceedings, feeling increasingly flustered.

“Are you also a doc?” Dr. Jamison asks Bruce as he lets go of his hand.

“Corporate lawyer down in D.C.,” Bruce says with an exuberance that emphasizes that the beer in his hand is not his first of the night or even his third, blissfully unaware that he’s in the process of being graded on anything. “Up for the weekend.”

“Well.” Dr. Jamison’s attention leaves Bruce and returns to me. I experience that same undefinable jolt of something that I always feel when our gazes connect, despite the fact that his expression is as implacable as it ever was. The Sphinx remains true to form after all these years. As does my unsupported but persistent feeling that there are things he would tell me if only he could. Things he wants to tell me. “I’ll get out of your hair. Let you kids enjoy your date night.”

He nods and walks off, leaving me alone with Bruce while I wage a private battle with disappointment. If the part of me that wishes she’d never see Dr. Jamison again waged a battle with the part of me that wants to call him back and demand he finish asking me that question, I think they would kill each other in a draw.

But Bruce is watching me. I’m older and wiser now. I’m with an available man who genuinely cares about me. I refuse to let old patterns repeat themselves.

So I force myself to smile, an effort that requires every bit of my strength and control short of