Suddenly Last Summer (O'Neil Brothers 3)

Sean almost drove the car into the ditch. Marriage? “I can tell you now that isn’t going to happen so you can let that drop right now.”

“A man can’t fool around forever.”

“I’m not fooling around. I love my work. I’m not prepared to compromise that for a relationship and no sane, self-respecting woman would put up with my hours.”

His grandfather ignored him. “I worked long hours. Your grandmother was very understanding. We’re a team. Always have been, right from day one.”

“Grams is a saint, we all know that.”

“It was a good party. Shame you had to leave so early the next day. Still, at least you came. Élise is a good dancer, isn’t she?”

Sean gritted his teeth.

His grandfather knew. Somehow, his grandfather knew.

Sweat pricked the back of his neck. He thought of Élise, her legs tangled with his, her mouth on his as the rain dripped through the canopy of the trees. “I had to leave. I’d fixed the deck and it was time to fix some patients.”

“If you’re fixing them on a Sunday morning I hope you’re charging them a lot. I guess you are or you wouldn’t be driving a car like this one.” His grandfather stroked his hand over the seat. “It’s not big enough for a family.”

“I don’t have a family.”

“Yet. When you do, you’re going to need to buy something bigger.”

“I don’t need anything bigger.” Remembering why he’d chosen to live in Boston, Sean punched the gas and headed toward Snow Crystal. “So the hospital doesn’t want to see you for another six weeks. That’s great news.”

It meant he had no reason to come back for six weeks. Six weeks was plenty of time to get back into the rhythm of his life.

“The doctors here are good. As good as any you’ll find in Boston. You should work here. Then you’d be closer to home. Maybe the hours wouldn’t be so long.”

It never ended. No matter how old he was, the pressure was always there. It was like being trapped under someone’s boot.

It had been like this for his father and he’d had it all the time with no respite.

His stomach felt hollow.

The desire to bring up the topic of the row fled. How could he talk about it when he was still angry inside? When the resentment was still there?

Instead, he kept to the subject of work. “You don’t understand anything about what I do.”

“So tell me.”

Sean was thrown because his grandfather so rarely asked for details about his life. The conversation was only ever about Snow Crystal. The business. The family. What he wasn’t doing.

He decided that anything was better than a conversation about marriage. “My department is at the forefront of innovation in ACL surgery.” Knowing that his grandfather, an experienced skier, would understand exactly what that meant, he didn’t bother simplifying it. Instead, he explained his research, his interests, what excited him. And his grandfather listened.

“So you’re stabilizing the knee and getting the patient active again. That’s good. Rewarding work.”

Sean relaxed slightly. “Yes.”

“So if you’re the one running it, you could run it from here.” His grandfather’s tone was innocent. “I don’t see why Boston should benefit from your skills. There are plenty of folks around here that would be happy to have you fix them when they’ve broken something and we have more skiing injuries than people in Boston. Last time I looked they didn’t have mountains there.”

They’d come full circle. “I deal with top athletes. They travel from all over to see me.”

“No reason why they couldn’t travel here. And they’d have the views, good food and fresh mountain air thrown in for nothing. If you worked here, you’d be able to live at Snow Crystal, help your brothers and see plenty of Élise.”

“Jesus, Gramps—” Sean slammed on the brakes and pulled the car into the entrance of the Carpenters’ apple farm, narrowly avoiding a deep rut in the road.

“Don’t use bad language. It upsets your grandmother.”