“No,” he said with a laugh. “All the equipment works just fine, thank you, with no medication required. But I suspect I’m a hell of a lot older than you are.”

“I’m thirty-six.”

“That’s sixteen years.”

“A doctor who can also add.” She fanned her face dramatically. “You don’t find that every day.”

She was cute and sexy and funny and lovely. And young. Too young for him, but he’d gone hard as stone at the thought of taking her to bed. The confident way in which she’d propositioned him was a huge turn-on. He was forever counseling his female patients to take control of their own sexuality. To find a woman who clearly owned her sexuality was incredibly hot.

“So what do you say, Doc? Would you like to come home with me tonight?”

He’d never once, in thirty years together, been unfaithful to Deb. But his marriage was over and she’d moved on with someone else. There was no reason he couldn’t do the same. Under the bar, he slid the wedding ring off his finger and stashed it in his back pocket. “Yes, I believe I would.”

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The final week before the wedding passed in a flurry of activity that left Paul’s head spinning with details and emotions and despair so deep and so pervasive, he wondered if he’d ever recover from losing Hope and Ethan, not to mention the sudden and painful removal of his mother from her home.

David’s phone calls on their behalf had yielded immediate results. A memory care facility on the mainland had an opening that had become available after a patient died. They could take Marion as soon as Paul and Alex could get her there. David had urged them not to say no, since it could be months before another spot would open up.

Paul and his brother had gone round and round about whether they should wait until after the wedding to move her, but in the end, they’d decided to go forth sooner rather than later. The wedding would be confusing to her, and as much as Alex wanted her there, he’d chosen to do what was best for her rather than him.

In a way, Paul was relieved that she wouldn’t be there to potentially disrupt his brother’s big day. As soon as he had that thought, he hated himself for it. But ever since she’d slapped Hope, Paul had found it more difficult to separate the illness from the mother he loved. Something had changed that day—the day that Hope became more important to him than his own mother.