° Amelia °

Out of habit, I opened the glove compartment and was about to drop my wedding ring in it. But when I touched my ring finger, I was shocked to find that my ring was gone.

Oh no. I've had that ring for eleven years. How did I not notice that it had gone missing?

I searched the rental car frantically, looking under the seats and the trunk, and then back again between the seats. Where was it?

Sighing in frustration, I dropped my face against the steering wheel and accidentally ended up pressing the horn with my hand.

I jerked backward and at the same time, I heard nurse Brimmer's voice at the window next to the car. "First day back and you already don't want to come inside. What in the world did we do to you to make you hate your job?"

"Oh hey. I don't hate my job," I said, grabbing my bag and getting out of the car.

"You just hate the people you work with." She studied me as I locked the car and doubled checked to see if I'd parked correctly. I hadn't driven a car in a month and getting back behind the wheel had felt strange and oddly freeing.

I shook my head at nurse Brimmer's know-it-all attitude. "Enough of the assumptions. You've got it all wrong."

"Then why did you leave? Or better yet, why are you leaving us?"

So that's what this was about, I thought as we made our way through the hospital using our passes to get to the women's locker room.

"I'm leaving to go and work somewhere else. Not because I don't like it here but because they need me more over there."

"Your father told us it had to do with a filthy rich real estate mogul you met on St. Maarten. Did you marry him in secret?" She tucked her now longer hair behind her ears as her newsy blue eyes continued to scrutinize me.

"You spoke to my father?"

"He was here for a checkup with the specialist. You never told us he had MS? How is he? He didn't look too well the last time he was here." She stopped and whispered the following sentence. "I think he might be depressed as well."

I bit my tongue, unable to answer because I'd been staying in a hotel ever since I got back four days ago. So I lied. "My father's fine. It's just a normal flare up of his MS. He'll get used to it."

Nurse Brimmer nodded. "Tell me about this guy you married? I told you not to rush into marriage and you did the total opposite by eloping to paradise island with a rich hunk you know nothing about? And now you're leaving everything you know behind, including your poor sick father to go and live with this man? Your father is worried about you. He says you've been making rash decisions."

"My father is worried about himself, no one else."

Nurse Brimmer stared at me as if I had grown two heads on my shoulders. "What's going on Dr. Miller? You're a bit defensive today. You've never spoken ill of your father before."

"It's nothing," I said, getting into my scrubs. That's when I remembered putting my wedding band in the pocket of the scrubs I wore in St. Maarten to perform Bradley's surgery. I would never get it back now. It was gone with the wash, and if someone found it, they would recognize its value and keep it.

I still had the ring Bridgette had given to me, but I didn't feel comfortable wearing it. I hoped one day she'd change her mind and want the ring back.

The day went by quickly, even with nurse Brimmer breathing down my neck and asking me intrusive questions about my marriage. I used to do the same with hers, I gathered as we stood once again in the locker room at the end of our shifts.

Against my better judgment, I stopped to visit my father on my way to the hotel. Nurse Brimmer's words had been nagging at me all day.

The big house looked the same and his pickup was parked out front. The lights in the kitchen and the living room were on.

I knocked rapidly on the door although I still had my keys. A couple of shuffles later, the door swung open.

"Amy," my father said when he saw me. His face looked older, and his eyes appeared tired from behind his glasses. His belly was still huge although it looked like he'd lost some weight. "Why are you just standing there? Come in. What happened to your keys? And why didn't you let me know when you were coming back?"

"I'm not coming back."

"What do you mean you're not coming back? Where is your suitcase? And Oreo, he's with you?"

"Papa, stop. I'm just here to see how you're doing. I'm not coming in."

His face fell and his mouth turned up in a dirty grimace. "Don't let that man keep you away from me. It's what I was always afraid of. He's taken everything away from me, including your mother and my restaurant. I won't let him have you too. I won't."

"Willem had nothing to do with Mama's death," I said, coming to Willem's defense.

"You're blinded by this fool. By his money. Just like your mother. She thought he was a saint but he's nothing but a peacock. He's a ruthless showoff."

"And you're jealous that he has his shit together and you don't. It's been years, Papa, when are you going to get over it? And is that alcohol I smell on your breath?"

I moved in closer to inspect his eyes and his hand lifted as if to ward me off, but instead, he raised his hand to my face and slapped me.

I stood there, stunned, my cheek burning. I could feel his handprint getting warmer and warmer with each passing second.

"All I ever wanted was for you to be successful. You were supposed to save this family, Amelia. Not Willem. I never wanted his money, his charity." His voice was a mixture of regret, grief, and anger.

It occurred to me as I stood there on the doorstep of my childhood home how overprotective my father had always been. He used to check up on me constantly, calling my phone and my school and roommates when he couldn't reach me. He'd even chosen my friends until I didn't have any left. He never respected my privacy and was always reading my mails before me. He'd gone as far as keeping Willem's letters away from me.

I remembered how he always turned me away from dating, saying that books were more important. No wonder I always felt this excessive need to succeed. To forget about my marriage and Willem. I had one goal and that was to become the youngest pediatric surgeon in the Caribbean and make my parents proud. But I knew now I'd done it mostly for my father.

I finally got the courage to move my frozen body from the doorstep. "Willem's money paid to put me through medical school. I am where I am because of him. Not you. We're in this mess because of your poor money management skills. I don't ever want to see you again and I mean it. You're a hopeless, disgruntled old man with a money problem and I won't stick around to watch you burn this house and everything you own to the ground." I turned and started walking toward my car.

"Amelia! Get back here."

"Goodbye, Papa."

When I got to the hotel, I threw myself down on the bed to the sound of the neighbors having loud sex. I'd never seen them so I wasn't sure if it was them or the TV playing on blast.

Oreo jumped on the bed next to me, rubbing his fur along my arm. My phone rang in my hand. It was Willem calling me on a video call. I sat up and answered the phone with a smile, pushing what had just happened with my father to the back of my mind. The last thing I wanted to do was mope, which would only lead to tears.

The profound sadness in my soul was immediately replaced with a deep ache and longing at the sight of Willem's blondish curls and dimples appearing on my screen.

"Schatje, you look amused. Something tells me you've been panting next to the phone waiting for me to call you." He leaned back in his office chair and lifted his legs to the table. He'd already loosened his tie and it gave him that rugged, sexy businessman look that always made me swoon.

"Panting?" I questioned. "I don't pant."

"You don't. It's more like a soft purr."

I chuckled. "How was your day Mr. real estate mogul?"

"I'm missing you, craving you."

"That tells me nothing about your day," I chided playfully.

"But it does. I yearn for you constantly, every second I'm awake. I need you close to me so I can touch you and smell you. I spend a lot of my time thinking about how your body moves, especially with your clothes off."

"I feel the same. It's like this invisible thread between us has been broken. A thread I didn't even know was there. The only thing that makes it real is the way I crave to hear your voice and look into your eyes. To feel your hands on my body." I released a small desperate sigh as I watched his eyes go from a light to a dark grey color.

He cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably in the chair he was in. "You don't want to see the situation in my pants right now. I get so fucking hard when you talk like that."

"I don't?" I licked my lips at the thought of his erection straining behind his zipper waiting to be set free. "I know you're only saying that because you want me to see."

He laughed. "No and yes. I'd much rather you come and sit on it. But not here. And in that case, I'll just wait because I know it's going to feel so good when you finally do."

I couldn't help being drawn to him. It was more than physical. This unexplainable attraction. This intense need to have him in my space day and night. I was tempted to quit my job and catch a flight back to St. Maarten tonight. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was insanity.

"I might come just from standing in the same room with you," I said.

"That would be epic, baby." He placed the phone down on his desk and interlaced his hands behind his head. "How was your first day back? I know you want to talk about your kids."

"Don't get me started with the kids. You know I won't shut up once I start."

"That's fine. I love listening to you talk about them, about their dreams, and their crazy but so normal families. It makes me wonder how you're going to talk about our kids. If you can love kids belonging to a stranger the way you do, then I know our kids will get all the love in the world and that's important to me."

I lowered my voice. "If we keep having unprotected sex those kids you're talking about are going to be here sooner than we can blink."

"Did your period come?"

"It did."

"Well, that's too bad. We'll keep trying."

"Oh stop. We were never trying." I got up to feed Oreo when I noticed him watching me with hungry eyes.

"Something tells me you don't want my children." He made a sad face to exaggerate that I hurt his feelings.

"Realistically we've only known each other a month," I said filling Oreo's food dish with dry food and the bowl next to it with water.

"Only? Feels like a whole lot longer. I feel like we should have been on our third baby by now." He laughed.

"You're crazy. Any change with Bradley?"

"Still the same."

"It's only been a week. Any news from your parents?"

"I talked to my mother. She and Jan are getting marriage counseling on some Greek island for a month. Jan is the only man she's ever been with, did you know that?"

"No."

"I'm warning you now, Amelia. If I ever screw up like my father did, you leave me. You run. Don't stay because you're afraid to start over, because I'm familiar and life with me is easy and predictable."

I nodded. "And if I screw up?"

"You won't."

We stared at each other for a moment, lovingly, adoringly.

"Are your neighbors having loud sex again?" he asked.

"Yup." I opened the curtains to look outside. Behind the hotel was just bush and tall trees. There was nothing to see there. I stepped back and the curtains fell into place.

"Are you sure you don't want to move to one of my hotels?" Willem wanted to know. "They're classier and it won't cost you a thing."

"This hotel is the closest to the hospital and it's not that bad," I said, making my way back to the bed.

"Thinly isolated walls sound bad to me. I'm going to call the front desk and have them upgrade the pornstar people next door and then I'm going to buy the hotel and upgrade it to four stars." He spoke casually, as if he was merely ordering breakfast just how he liked it.

"Please don't do that. The parents from the hospital won't be able to afford it otherwise. A lot of them stay here when their children have to stay in the hospital for longer periods."

"I'll keep the price the same for the parents by allowing them to get a voucher at the hospital."

"You would do that?"

"I would do anything for you."

I didn't tell him about my father slapping me that night, but when I told him almost a week later, he was livid.

"Nobody touches you in anger, nobody! Not even him," he said over the video call we were on. I could feel his anger through the screen. "You don't plan on seeing him again? Do you?"

I shook my head. "No. Not for a long time."

"Good, how about never again. I don't want him or Jan around our family, our kids. We don't need them for anything."

I bit my lip. A small part of me didn't want to give up on my father. Overprotective parents were only that way because they loved their children. They just had a horrible way of showing it.

I would give my father space for now, but I couldn't promise to never see him again or not let him meet his grandchildren in the future.

Willem was still angry about Jan's betrayal, so I got why he wouldn't want to see his father ever again. My father was hurting and he needed time to heal. And when the right time came along, I planned to sit down with him and have a conversation about what our relationship would look like moving firward. As for right now, he was too angry to talk to, and I was too hurt to not respond with contempt.

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