Megan Hart - Lovely Wild

His father would’ve been ashamed of him.

Oh, it wasn’t like they’d ever been close. Ryan had been his mother’s son, her pride and joy. Her best work, she liked to say, which was sort of a laugh since she hadn’t ever had a job. It had just been the two of them for a lot of years while his father spent hours at work. In the lab, with patients. His research. He’d left his wife and son to their own devices, showing up late for dinner or not at all, completely clueless and unaware of the silence in the house that grew over congealing meatloaf and cold mashed potatoes. When he did show up, he talked about himself, his discoveries, his breakthroughs and his studies. Always himself.

Eventually, Ryan’s mother had simply stopped setting a place for her husband. More than once, Ryan had come into the kitchen at night for a bedtime snack to find his father standing at the sink, a plate of leftovers in one hand and a beer in the other.

They’d never been close, but it hadn’t been a terrible relationship. When Ryan decided to go into psychiatry, Dad had been there to support and advise him, steering him away from the world of academia and into a more practical path.

“It’s where the money is,” Dad had told him over glasses of decent Scotch that Ryan was too young to drink, one night late after Mom had gone to bed. “You’re going off to college, then med school, that’s great. But don’t end up like me, begging for scraps to keep working. Don’t be a researcher.”

It was the first time Ryan had tasted liquor. The taste of it would always bring back the memory of that night, the first time his dad had talked to him man-to-man. His father’s hand clapped to his shoulder. Dad’s bleary gaze. The feeling the entire world was opening up to him, just turned eighteen and ready to conquer.

And now look at him. What the hell had happened? What had he done?

He’d messed up. Big-time.

But...the book.

His father had spent years on research. Compiling data, theories, proving them right. Or wrong. He’d scrabbled for money to fund his work and in the end had made almost nothing from it. But he had left behind a legacy.

Ryan sat back again, thinking hard. Excitement stirred inside him, tender shooting sprouts that promised to grow into something more. A book about his father’s work was a sure thing. Guaranteed to be a bestseller, he knew it.

Beside him on the bench, the paper bag rustled. With a frown, Ryan poked it. He had the right to share his father’s work with the world, no question of that. But did he have the right to share the story of his dad’s greatest success?

It wasn’t Ryan’s story to tell. It was Mari’s. If he asked her, he thought, picking up the crumpled paper lunch sack, she would certainly say yes.

But if he didn’t ask her, she couldn’t say no.

The man who shuffled up to him then looked homeless. Wild hair, scruffy beard on pale cheeks. Cargo pants loose on his hips and hanging low, no belt, mismatched shirt. Ryan flinched automatically, expecting a wave of stink, but this guy didn’t reek of booze or piss. That was something to be thankful for, anyway. The guy looked hungry, though.

Ryan wasn’t in the habit of giving handouts, especially cash. Let them buy their booze and drugs on someone else’s dime. He held up the lunch bag, though, thinking he could do a good deed and then have an excuse to grab some lunch that suited him better.

“Hey, buddy. My wife packed this for me, but you can have it.”

“My wife used to pack me lunch.” The man’s gravelly voice rasped on Ryan’s ears. “What do you think of that?”

Ryan’s fingers crumpled the brown paper lunch bag. Shit. Why’d he always manage to attract the confrontational ones? “I don’t—”

The man laughed, tossing back his head for only a couple seconds before fixing Ryan with a fierce glare. “You don’t have a clue who I am. Do you?”

Uncomfortably Ryan looked from side to side, but if anyone in the park was bearing witness to this drama they had the good sense to pretend otherwise. Also, he noticed uneasily that the man looked unkempt, but not necessarily unhinged. “Should I?”

“You should, since you screwed my wife and then killed her.”

Shit. Shit and damn and double damn. Ryan stood, lunch bag forgotten. He towered over Gerry Somers, but the other man didn’t even back up enough to give Ryan room to take a step. Trapped between his former patient’s husband and the bench, Ryan had the sick feeling he was going to have to get physical.

“I didn’t kill your wife.”

“You might as well have. What the hell kind of doctor are you, anyway?” Gerry spat to the side before fixing Ryan with another long, hard stare. “You knew all about her. Knew her problems. And you screwed her, anyway. What did you think would happen?”

Ryan flashed back to a memory of Annette, naked, breasts pendulous and swaying as he watched her in the mirror. Taking her from behind. Then with her on top. She’d gripped him with her insides, riding him frantically, shouting when she climaxed. A slow trickle of sweat slid down his spine.

“Your wife had a lot of problems. I wasn’t her first doctor. She came to me with a lot of issues, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help her with them.” Ryan swallowed and looked into the man’s eyes. “But it’s not my fault she killed herself. She was no longer in my care at the time and hadn’t been for six months.”

Gerry blinked rapidly without moving away. Ryan pushed gently past him to put distance between them. The man turned to follow him, grabbed at Ryan’s sleeve to stop him.

“She said she was going to leave me for you. Did you know that?”

Ryan had not. He swallowed again, thick saliva against an uprush of bile painting the back of his tongue. “She was delusional. She had transference issues. She’d had them before. You know she did. If you know anything about her at all...”

“I knew everything about her! I knew when she came home stinking of you!” Gerry leaned to sniff dramatically at Ryan’s neck. “Fancy-ass cologne. How much you pay for that?”

“I’m really sorry about your wife, but I can’t talk to you any more about this. My lawyer—”

“Oh, right. Your lawyer. Well, let me tell you something, Dr. Calder. Your lawyer isn’t going to be able to do shit for you. I’m going to take everything you have. I’m going to ruin you.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Ryan said without much heat.

Gerry laughed and backed up, finally. His eyes gleamed. He scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “No threat. The truth. You’re going to pay for what you did. I’m going to see to it.”

Gerry took another few steps back, then turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Ryan to stare after him. The sun beat down, suddenly too much. His stomach lurched again. He tossed the uneaten lunch into the trash and headed back to his office.

In the waiting room, neutral beige and hung with paintings of seascapes, Ryan found out just how determined Gerry Somers was. Normally after lunch there were at least three or four patients waiting their turn in the sea-foam green and mauve chairs. Not today. Today Ceci was sobbing quietly behind the glass window while Ryan’s partner Jack Kastabian patted her shoulder. Two cops with notepads turned when Ryan opened the door.

Someone, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who, had spray painted Dr. Ryan Calder Is A in red, dripping letters on the waiting room wall. Across one of the bland seascapes, he’d scrawled Wife Fucker.

Ryan felt his knees wanting to go weak, but he locked them to keep from sinking into one of the chairs. The world went a little gray around the edges of his vision. He heard the roaring of surf that had nothing to do with the ocean.