Love Under Two Doctors
The Lusty, Texas Collection
Love Under Two Doctors
Jillian Gillespie adopted a no-more-men policy after her divorce. Yet there’s something about Drs. Robert and David Jessop that short-circuits her best intentions.
Robert and David recognize their soul mate in Jillian, a natural-born sub. They only have to convince her she is a sub and theirs.
Robert assures himself that he has his control issues under control. Mentoring with Jordan Fitzpatrick, owner of the private BDSM club Reckless Abandon, helped him find his balance. Besides, the real problem was back at that inner-city emergency room, where chaos too often reigned—not here in Lusty, Texas.
A woman who doesn’t believe in forever, and two Doms in need of inner peace. Will love be the answer?
Note: There is no sexual relationship or touching for titillation between or among siblings.
Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys
Length: 83,120 words
LOVE UNDER TWO DOCTORS
The Lusty, Texas Collection
Cara Covington
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
LOVE UNDER TWO DOCTORS
Copyright © 2012 by Cara Covington
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-366-9
First E-book Publication: September 2012
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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DEDICATION
To my husband, who continues to be my beta reader, and my biggest fan.
Copyright © 2012
Prologue
Autumn, 2009
Dr. Robert Jessop stood back and surveyed the patch of wall he’d been painting, and then looked over his shoulder to check his assistant’s progress. That young man, despite the earbuds connected to the MP3 player, and the bebopping of his body, seemed to be doing a hell of a lot better job than he himself was.
“Crap, you’re a lot better than I am at this, Bobby.”
The young man laughed, his cocoa-colored skin flecked with tiny dots of light green paint. He turned off his music and pulled out the earbuds. “Well, Doc, you got your talents and I got mine.” He turned and surveyed Robert’s handiwork. “And painting sure isn’t one of yours.”
“I know. Want a Coke?”
“Yeah and a something to eat, too, if you got anything. I’ll fix up your mess, here, don’t you worry about it. Hey, why are you bothering to paint the place, anyway, if you’re just renting it?”
A dozen possible answers flitted through Robert’s mind. He could have said that he and his brother were technically renting from themselves, but that answer, though accurate, wasn’t something either he or David wanted out there. This wasn’t Lusty, Texas, where everyone, practically, was family. So he said, “I have to live here, so I want where I live to look nice. It’s worth the cost of a bit of paint and work to freshen it up.”
“Ahh, I get it. The chicks will think you’re trainable and send those ‘com’on, baby, come get me’ looks at ya.”
Robert laughed as he set his roller back in its tray. “There is that, too.”
Robert threw together a plate of sandwiches, dumped some potato chips around them and pulled a couple of cold sodas from the fridge. He managed to carry everything into the dining room, and then thought better of the setting. He carried the food on through into the parlor—the room currently being repainted.
“Food,” he said and, because all the furniture was covered, sat down on the floor.
Robert knew he hadn’t overestimated the number when he’d made four sandwiches as soon as he saw the first one disappear into Bobby’s gullet in ten seconds, flat. The boy then grabbed some chips, munched them, and sucked back some of the soda, before he came up for air.
“I looked over that thing you gave me.”
Robert kept his tone casual. Bobby needed to keep believing that whatever he was offered, it was no big deal. “Oh, yeah? The scholarship application? What did you think?” Robert caught the tiny flicker of hope in the teen’s eyes before he masked it.
“What makes you think they’re going to give an inner-city kid like me, a kid with a juvie record who lives where I do, a shot at something like that?”
Because I’m the one financing it. “Because you’re a smart man, Bobby Barnes. It’s not a cakewalk, granted, and it won’t be easy. You get the first year, but that’s all you get if you fuck up. You have to stay clean and get good grades. I believe you can do both. In fact, I believe you can be anything you want to be. You just have to reach for it. You just have to work for it.”
“I never looked ahead, you know? And then last winter, I got shot, and mom was crying all over me. You fixed me in the ER, and I swear, my life has been different, since. I’ve been thinking a lot, since. My bros, they were no-fucking-where when I was lying on the ground, bleeding, ya know? How they figure they can ask it all from me when they don’t give jack shit back to me?”
And that, Robert thought, was the dilemma Bobby was stuck smack dab in the middle of trying to s
olve. His “bros”—his gang brothers—had given him something no one else had, and that was status. Belonging. Robert knew Bobby still hung out with the wrong kids. He knew his mother still worried about him. The woman worked two jobs just to make ends meet, and she did the best she could, but she wasn’t well equipped to handle a hard-ass sixteen-year-old like her oldest boy, Bobby.
To Robert, it looked as if Bobby was nearly where he needed to be, mentally and emotionally. He didn’t want to push the kid. Change, if change was to happen, had to come from Bobby himself. But Robert needed to help him as much as he could. So he said, simply, “Your future is in your hands, Bobby. It’s your choice. I’m hoping you make the one that will set you free. I’m really hoping you’ll go after that scholarship.”
“You think I can do it?”
“I know you can.”
Six hours later, Robert wondered what he could have done differently, what he could have said differently.
It all happened so fast, he barely had time to process it. He’d pulled the ER shift, 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., a shift that was anything but quiet in this Chicago hospital. They’d gotten the heads-up from the police—there’d been a gang shooting, and numerous ambulances, carrying dozens of casualties, were headed their way.
Robert had rallied his team, called for extra help from the other departments in the hospital, and put himself in the mental place he had to be to deal quickly and efficiently with numerous casualties.
He hadn’t seen Bobby at first. They’d set up a triage station right there in the waiting room, and he’d moved from stretcher to stretcher. Cops brought more wounded in their squad cars, and more cops came in, wearing riot gear, armed to keep the peace. The number of wounded grew, and two nurses and another resident began separating those they could help from those they could not.
Robert would never know why his eye was drawn to that particular stretcher, but it was. As he looked, as he recognized the young black man, eyes open in the vacancy of death, Robert’s heart broke—and then gunfire erupted.
He reacted fast, grabbing the volunteer next him, dragging her to the floor and covering her with his body, ordering her to stay still. There were enough police that the man who’d opened fire only got off a few shots, but it was enough. The whole damn scene had been enough.
There’d been more carnage to deal with in the aftermath. The pretty brunette beneath him hadn’t been hurt. He’d wondered, because when he’d covered her and ordered her to be still, she’d not even moved a tiny bit in protest. But she was fine, if shaken. She thanked him when he’d pulled her to her feet. She’d taken a look around the ER, and muttered something that sounded like, “Jordan’s going to be pissed.” She’d taken a moment, pulled out her cell phone, and sent a text. Then she’d turned to him and said, “What do you need me to do, doctor?”
He figured a woman with that much pluck could be useful. He’d had her follow him around as he’d assessed, assigned, and began working to repair the damage.
At one point he looked up and saw David across the room. Their gazes had met, and he mentally kicked himself for not thinking to text his own brother that he was okay—but he tended to leave his cell phone in his locker. And in the face of all these wounded, personal considerations hadn’t even occurred to him.
He didn’t watch the clock, but when the Head of Surgery told him he’d done enough, he surrendered the field.
Robert sighed when he stopped, looked around, and saw Lillian Barnes, clutching her hands before her, sitting in one of the chairs in the waiting room, silently rocking, her face ravaged by grief.
He went to her and sat down next to her. He didn’t know what to say. The times he’d had to comfort or inform next of kin all played before him, but this time, damn it all, this time was different.
Bobby had been different. Bobby, God help him, had been his, and Robert had failed him.
She didn’t wait for him to say anything. “He wasn’t even involved,” Lillian said. “He was on the corner, coming home, and a couple of his old friends stopped him, just to chat. And then…and then he was just gone.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Barnes.”
“The cops said I could sit here for a spell. I told them…I told them I wanted to thank you. For what you did for my Bobby. He talked about college. I was afraid to hope. But he kept talking about it.”
“I saw him this afternoon. I think he was going to apply for that scholarship. I think he was going to make you proud of him.”
She met his gaze, and then she reached out, touched his hand. He covered hers with his. “Thank you. Thank you. For bein’ a man who showed my boy he could be one, too.”
“Let me get you a ride home, Mrs. Barnes.”
“I…yes, please. I have to go home to Jimmy. I need to hold my Jimmy and tell him his brother is gone.”
For a long moment Robert just stood and stared at the doors, where he’d seen Lillian Barnes being helped—kindly, he noted—into an unmarked police car.
He couldn’t imagine the horror of losing a child. But he knew the horror of failure. He wondered if there was something he could have done differently. He felt raw, and on the edge of his limit.
It had slowly registered over the last half hour, that he could very well have been killed himself. That thug with the gun who had opened fire had been looking his way when he’d started shooting. Now that he thought about it, he’d heard the whiz of a bullet on a too-close trajectory.
Fuck, I have to get out of here.
He needed a few hours of blessed peace. He needed to decompress.
“Excuse me.”
Robert turned at the sound of the voice. The man, black hair and silver-gray eyes, met his gaze. He looked vaguely familiar, and Robert realized he’d seen him and another man rush through the doors before he’d noticed Lillian Barnes. They’d seemed frantic, until they’d spotted the volunteer who’d been working with him so tirelessly. He’d wondered at the time who the men were, for they weren’t from this neighborhood. They looked like they came from money.
“Yes?”
“Doctor Jessop, I’m Jordan Fitzpatrick, Chastity’s husband. Words aren’t adequate, but I wanted to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for saving my wife’s life last night.”
Crap, it is morning. Robert needed sleep. He brought his attention to the man standing before him, and his words. He started to protest the assumption—but then he realized that he had, indeed, done just that.
“No thanks are necessary, sir. Any gentleman would have done the same. Your wife has been a true angel of mercy this evening—a most valuable assistant.”
Fitzpatrick let that pass. He said, “You look exhausted.” Then he looked around the room. Cleaning crews had arrived, and the process had begun to return the ER to normal. “But then, who wouldn’t be after surviving a visit from Chaos.”
“It was all of that. I’ve been ordered out by my boss, so I will be getting rest, soon.”
David approached just then, and Robert introduced them. When Jordan looked behind him, the other man, who stood with his arm around Chastity Fitzpatrick, came forward.
Robert raised one eyebrow, because of the look that passed between the two men as Jordan introduced him as Marcus Jones-Fitzpatrick, his partner.
Jordan must have caught the expression on Robert’s face, for he said, “Did we just shock you, Dr. Jessop?”
Robert met David’s gaze. His brother nodded, telling him it was okay to be open. “Not at all, Mr. Fitzpatrick. David and I have two dads—they’re married to our mother. Where we come from, your family wouldn’t be considered odd at all.”
Fitzpatrick looked as if he was going to just end the conversation there, and Robert wouldn’t have blamed him in the least. His wife—their wife—appeared ready to collapse. But instead, Jordan surprised him. “Actually, I recognized the look on your face a bit ago as you headed toward that grieving woman. It’s a look that I used to see in the mirror often. Y
ou wore the look of a man who was having an understandable crisis—the kind that happens when the innate need to control meets the uncontrollable.” He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a card, quickly turned it over and wrote a number on it, then gave it to Robert.
“I can help you with that. That’s my cell number. Call me. Please.”
Robert thanked him, and once more stood and watched as people left the hospital.
“What’s on his card?”
Robert turned it over, and then showed it to David. He’d expected to see the man was an uptown psychiatrist. What he found couldn’t have been further from that.
Reckless Abandon
Jordan Fitzpatrick, Proprietor
The inscription struck a chord with Robert. He wondered why the name was familiar, and then he remembered where he’d heard it. Reckless Abandon was a very private, very exclusive BDSM club in a very upscale neighborhood in the city. Even as he recalled that, he had the sense that Mr. Fitzpatrick, whoever he was, represented yet another turning point in his life.
Chapter 1
Present day
Jillian Gillespie pulled her faithful purple Neon up to the curb and let her eyes take in the well-kept apartment building that would officially, in just a few minutes, become her new home.
She’d only been to this small Texas town a few times in her life before today. Her most recent visit had come just two weeks ago. Every occasion she’d come to Lusty had been to see her Aunt Shirley.
Most often over the past several years, her aunt had visited her in El Paso, or they had gotten together in either Houston or Dallas. She and Shirley would meet for their semiannual shopping excursions, and to catch up on each others’ busy lives.
Jillian sighed. She was really going to miss her Aunt Shirley.