MARRIED TO MY RIVAL DOCTOR

chapter one

Run

Emily

I didn't cry on the plane.

I'd promised myself that much, at least. Two years of my life packed into a relationship that ended with another woman's laugh bleeding through a phone speaker, and I wasn't going to give Tristan the satisfaction of knowing I'd fallen apart somewhere over three states, sandwiched between a stranger's elbow and a window seat.

I saved that for the moment I stepped off the plane and heard my grandmother's voice.

"My darling."

Two words, and eleven years of practiced composure cracked straight down the middle.

I dropped my bag the second I saw her waiting outside the airport, arms already open like she'd known exactly which flight I'd be on, exactly how I'd look walking off it. I didn't bother wiping my face before I reached her.

"I'm not okay, Grandma," I admitted into her shoulder, the words coming out smaller than I meant them to.

"I know, my darling. I know."

She didn't ask what happened. Not yet. She just held on, the way she always had, since I was a girl bringing home skinned knees instead of a shattered engagement I hadn't even realized I'd been planning in my head.

By the time we reached her house, I'd told her everything. The two years. The lies. The woman on speaker who wasn't, apparently, anyone's sister. She listened without interrupting, her jaw tightening at all the right moments, and when I finally ran out of words, she simply reached over and squeezed my hand.

"He was never good enough to deserve the version of you that stayed."

I managed something close to a laugh. "You're required to say that. You're my grandmother."

"I'm required to love you," she corrected. "Everything else I say, I mean."

That, at least, pulled a real smile out of me, the first one in what felt like days.

I told myself I'd stay a week. Clear my head, remember how to breathe without checking my phone every four minutes, then fly back to the city and bury myself in work the way I always did when life became too loud to sit still inside of.

I didn't expect the town to already be talking about someone else entirely.

"You'll never guess who's coming," Grandma said the next morning, far too pleased with herself as she poured tea into the good cups, the ones she only used for occasions she'd already decided were important.

"I don't want to guess."

"Dr. Seth Hernandez."

I paused with my cup halfway to my mouth. "Should that name mean something to me?"

She gave me a look somewhere between disbelief and delight. "You truly haven't heard of him? He's all anyone in this town has talked about for a week. Bringing his whole team down for a free medical outreach. Cardiology, no less. Apparently he's brilliant. And," she added, entirely too casually, "very handsome, according to half the women at church."

"Wonderful," I said flatly. "A doctor with a fan club."

"Don't be like that."

"Like what? Uninterested?" I set my cup down. "I didn't come here to hear about some hotshot cardiologist playing savior for a week before he flies back to whatever glass tower he lives in."

Grandma's lips curved, the particular smile she wore whenever she'd already decided something I hadn't agreed to yet.

"Well. You're coming with me to the outreach on Thursday regardless."

"Absolutely not."

"I already told the coordinator you'd be assisting."

"Grandma."

"I'm old, Emily. I require supervision." She sipped her tea, entirely too satisfied with herself. "You wouldn't leave your own grandmother unsupervised around all these doctors, would you?"

I stared at her, torn between exasperation and the reluctant, traitorous affection that always won whenever she pulled this particular brand of manipulation.

"You're supervised by an actual physician daily. Me."

"A biased one. I want a second opinion."

I opened my mouth to argue further and found, annoyingly, that I didn't have one ready. She'd already won, the way she always did, and we both knew it.

"Fine," I muttered. "But I'm not staying long. And I have zero interest in meeting the town's favorite cardiologist."

"Of course not, darling." She patted my hand, entirely too pleased with herself. "Zero interest at all."

I chose to ignore the way her eyes glittered with something that looked suspiciously like a plan already in motion.

Thursday couldn't come fast enough, if only to prove her wrong.

I had no idea, sitting there with my tea going cold and my heart still bruised from a betrayal I hadn't fully processed, that in three days my quiet, uneventful week of healing would collide, quite literally, with the one man in this town I'd sworn I had no interest in meeting.