Doctors in the Wedding

“And bringing you into it?”

He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

Her lips curved in response to the resigned look on his face. “The curse of being the firstborn,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t tell you how many times I turned to Meagan—my older sister—to solve problems for me. Especially when it was something I didn’t necessarily want my parents to know about.”

“The blessing of being the youngest,” he quipped back.

She slid a hand up his arm and down again, fingertips tracing the muscles beneath his skin. “So, do you want to keep talking about family and careers and other mundane stuff? Or would you rather focus on us and the time we have left together?”

He tossed his phone aside and stretched out on the bed, reaching for her. “Us,” he said firmly. “Definitely us.”

Smiling in satisfaction, she wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled closer to him. “Excellent choice.”

“I really need to be going.”

Though she hated to be reminded of anything as mundane as passing time during this magical night, Madison glanced at the luminous red digits on the bedside clock. 2:00 a.m. She sighed reluctantly. “I suppose you should.”

Propped on one elbow beside her, Jason stroked a strand of hair from her warm cheek. “I’ll leave very discreetly. You won’t have to worry about anyone seeing me slip out.”

She laughed softly. “Now you sound like a P.I. Or a cat burglar.”

Jason’s chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Nah. My dad and some of my other relatives are the P.I.s. Usually—when I’m not seducing beautiful women in my role as a daring adventurer, of course—I’m just a simple family doc.”

She was both flattered by being called beautiful, even teasingly, and intrigued by this new glimpse into his family, despite her reluctance earlier to talk about their real lives. “Seriously? Your dad is a private investigator?”

“BiBi didn’t mention that, I take it?”

“I think I remember her talking about family friends who owned an investigation agency. I guess she meant your family.”

“Yeah. My dad started the agency almost thirty years ago. Two of Mom’s brothers joined him in it a couple years later. Now it’s a fairly large investigation and security firm located here in Dallas with a branch in Houston. A few of my cousins work for Dee-Dub in various capacities, and my younger brother plans to work there as soon as he gets his bachelor’s degree next year. He didn’t actually want to go to college, hoping he could just go straight into the agency, but Mom and Dad insisted he get the degree first.”

“Dee-Dub?” she repeated, wondering if she’d heard him correctly.

His lips twitched. “The D’Alessandro-Walker Agency. Dee-Dub for short, to the family.”

“Ah. Sounds much less impressive that way.”

He nodded. “Which is why we keep the nickname in the family.”

“How did your dad feel about you going into medicine instead of following in his footsteps?”

Jason shrugged. “My folks have never really cared what careers we chose as long as we did our best in whatever field we entered. Laziness or mediocrity were not options in our family of overachievers.”

“So you chose medicine on your own.”

“It seemed to suit me. What about you?”

“I sort of followed my older siblings into it. Both of them are surgeons. I wouldn’t say I was pressured into medicine, but it was strongly suggested as a practical and worthwhile career. So—I chose what some consider one of the least practical aspects of medicine. Psychiatry. Oddly enough, no one seemed startled by my choice.”

“No one was surprised that I went into family practice, either,” he admitted somewhat ruefully. “As Carly said, it was just the field a ‘compulsive caregiver’ like me would be expected to enter.”

“A compulsive caregiver. Is that what you are?” She knew that other people saw him that way; was that the way he viewed himself?

“I guess,” he said after a momentary hesitation. “It seems to be a role I was born into.”

“Do you ever feel like telling everyone to take care of themselves and running off to do something wild and crazy?”

He laughed softly in response to her question. “Often. But I know I won’t. My life is here. My heart is here with my family and my patients. Guess I’m just not really the dashing, adventurous type.”