A lot of ifs.
“You’re not working today?” he asked Steve.
“Kate volunteered to cover for me.”
Steve and Katie shared medical rooms in Maroubra. They’d met as interns, and upon graduating, had opened the GP practice together.
Tyler knew that starting her own practice had always been Katie’s dream. She’d worked tirelessly to get a good education, taken on part-time jobs to pay for medical school and worked herself to a standstill to maintain her grades. The medical practice was the undisputed fruit of her labor and she took great pride in it. Finding Steve, a man with a similar vision who could help build her dream, was, as Katie had put it, a match made in heaven.
Career-wise, Tyler thought grimly. Nothing more.
“She’s seeing your patients and hers today?” Tyler asked. That was a substantial caseload. More than one doctor should handle, but Katie had taken it on. She was hiding from him. Good.
Steve held up his hands in defense. “Kate thought it important for you and me to spend some quality male bonding time together.” He chuckled. “Her words, not mine.”
Tyler laughed, easily able to imagine Katie saying something like that. He idly wondered if she’d offer him the same opportunity with her? A chance to renew their old friendship? Then he lost his humor.
Bonding time for Steve and him? Ironic figure of speech when he’d come home to see if there was any possibility Katie might still love him.
Damn, when did Steve decide to propose, anyway? How had it all come about? He needed answers. “So,” he said conversationally, “you did it.”
Steve didn’t blink or ask for clarification. He answered Tyler as though they’d been discussing the subject for the last ten minutes.
“Yep. I did.” He set the paper down and raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
Tyler hesitated. “Honestly?”
“Is there any other way?”
He frowned to himself. There were degrees of honesty. He could rein in his jealousy and answer like an adult like a friend. Or he could lay into his buddy and smash his nose into the back of his head.
He chose the adult option. Perhaps if he handled this entire complicated scenario like an adult, his and Steve’s friendship would escape unscathed.
Perhaps neither he nor Steve would get hurt in the process.
Or perhaps not.
“I was surprised.” Gutted would be more accurate, but Steve had no way of knowing that.
“That I proposed? Or that she said yes?”
He smiled. “Both, I guess.” He hadn’t seen it coming. Hadn’t thought for one second Steve would make a move on Katie. They were friends and business partners. Not lovers and certainly not husband-and-wife material.
“Me too,” Steve admitted. “But you know what? It felt right at the time, so I went with it. It must have felt right to Kate also, because she went for it too.”
“Do you love her?” The words, though spoken calmly, tore through his throat, leaving it raw and stinging. He didn’t want to know the answer. Didn’t want to hear that Steve loved her.
Steve smiled and answered without answering. “What’s not to love?”
“Not a thing.” Not one damn thing. He kept his tone neutral, inquisitive. “Why Katie? Of all the women you could have picked?”
One thing about Steve, there’d never been a shortage of women. In the past, there was only one he’d ever cared about, but there were hundreds out there waiting to pick up any scraps he was willing to throw out. For a while, after Penelope, he’d thrown scraps all over the place, slept with anyone he found vaguely attractive but none of them had meant anything to him. Until now.
Still, why Katie?
“Because we’re friends. Because she gets me. Because she’s beautiful. Because I know the two of us can be happy together, and so does she.”
Fuck, he did not want to hear it. The only man he wanted Katie to be happy with was himself. “She gets you?” He laughed.
“She always has. She gets my humor, she gets my thought processes. Kate understands me.”
“Yep.” There’d always been a connection between them. They had similar dreams, similar goals. They’d opened a practice together, for God’s sake. They had endless philosophical discussions about God and the meaning of life and reincarnation. More than anything else though, more than any of their mutual likes and dislikes, mutual goals and work ethic, they shared a deep sense of respect and affection for each other.
They were in short, the perfect couple.
Except they weren’t. Katie was with the wrong man.
Sure, Katie’s friendship with Tyler might be different from her one with Steve, but it was just as personal, just as intense, maybe even more so.
Tyler and Katie had always been able to talk about anything and everything and when the chatter died down there’d been comfort in their silence, in just being together. They shared a sense of adventure, and of daring although Katie would probably be a little shocked when she realized just how daring he’d become. The two of them laughed at the same jokes and watched the same movies. Together they’d seen every live concert and musical in Sydney, and spent endless summer days on the beach and in the sun.
And then there was the attraction. The lust and the hunger. The undeniable spark between them. A flame that had never flared between Katie and Steve.
His chest burned. Christ, he hoped the flame had never flared between them.
Tyler had hashed his plans out in his head a million times, but the preparation did not make the reality any easier. If Katie gave any indication whatsoever that she still had feelings for him, he would challenge his best friend for the woman he loved. There would be no quick remedy for the damage he would cause in the process.
Guilt and uncertainty sat like a rock on his chest.
“You know, Ty,” Steve said, “after you left, Kate and I became real close. We didn’t have a choice. Without you, and without Pen, it was just the two of us. We adjusted and carried on. Together. We’re not the same people anymore. Times change. We changed.”
Was that a warning? Tyler wondered briefly, but rejected the idea almost immediately. Steve did not yet know he might be threatened.
The evidence that nothing had stayed the same since he’d left was agonizing.
His best friend had fallen for the woman he loved. The woman he loved was engaged to his best friend, and he couldn’t blame either of them. He’d left.
He’d given them the opportunity. If he’d never made the decision to climb on that plane, it wouldn’t have happened.
But he had. He alone had decided to leave Sydney.
Besides, Steve and Katie weren’t the only ones who’d changed. His own life had undergone a radical transformation. His past would always remain the same, but his present and his future were now his own. He’d never thought he had a future before now he had one to mold as he saw fit. The comprehension was both powerful and exhilarating. It was also a little terrifying.
The question was, would he be able to create the future he’d always dreamed about, and if so, could he do it without destroying his best friend’s life?
He thought it might be possible. If everything went according to plan, everyone involved might end up happy. If anything went wrong however, lifelong friendships and relationships could implode and the blame would fall squarely on his shoulders.
“Katie’s different?” He had to ask, had to know everything about her, everything he’d missed out on in the last two years. He chuckled.
“Her cooking sure hasn’t changed.”
Steve laughed out loud. “Takeaways. They’re a brilliant invention.”
Then his mood sobered. “You wouldn’t know this, Ty. You weren’t here to see it happen, but yeah, Kate’s different. She’s changed a lot.”
“What are you talking about?” His spine stiffened. What the hell had happened to his sweet Katie?
Steve stretched, then lay back down with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. “Around the time you left, Kate got her heart broken badly. She fell hard for some dickhead who up and left her.”
Tyler swallowed down a painful lump and wished again he’d had the courage to give her reasonable justification for his departure, something that would have taken the sting out of her loss. The idea of hurting Katie, even the littlest bit, gnawed away at him. “Who was he?”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t know. She outright refused to tell me, even asked me not to push her on the issue. But she was pretty beat up about the whole thing. Spent months putting her life back together afterwards.”
Tyler went cold. He could sort out Steve’s confusion in a sentence.
He could tell him the truth, but he didn’t. Steve couldn’t know about his and Katie’s affair. Not yet.
“She even took up running.”
“Katie?” His woman despised exercise.
“I think it was her way of working through her anger. She really dug the guy, Ty. His disappearing act pissed her off, big-time. I’ve never seen her so furious.”
Jesus. He knew he’d hurt Katie. He had to know he’d experienced the same devastation at losing her. Yet hearing Steve voice it out loud was a knife in his chest. It cut straight through him, bringing back the raw loss he’d lived with as he attempted to rebuild his life in London.
Steve frowned. “You know what the amazing thing is? No matter how much he hurt her, and no matter how mad she got, she never said one bad thing about him. Ever. If I try to badmouth the dickhead, she cuts me off cold. Refuses to hear it.”
“Sounds odd,” Tyler said in a gruff voice.
“Yeah. No matter what he did to her, she has this strong sense of loyalty to him. Doesn’t make sense.”
Yes, it did. Katie would never let Steve slate his best friend, even if he did so unwittingly. She wouldn’t criticize him either. No matter how much he might have hurt her, the friendships between all three of them would always be more important than anything else.
Only they weren’t for him, right? If they were, he wouldn’t be here now, preparing to challenge his best friend for his fiancé. Preparing to possibly decimate their circle of three. What the hell kind of friend was he anyway?
One that knew Steve was with the wrong woman, that’s what kind.
“That’s when it all began for Kate and me. She was busted up over this guy. I was all fucked up because of” he paused, looked at Tyler and grimaced.
“Because of Penelope.” He shrugged. “We turned to each other. We got each other through it.”
Tyler had left, and Steve and Katie had turned to each other.
Perfect. Just fucking perfect. He’d set the whole thing up. Practically pushed them together. And why? All because he’d believed he had to go. “Steve?”
“Yeah?” Steve turned to look at him.
It was all he could do to maintain eye contact. He felt like the lowest form of slime. “What if Katie’s dickhead came back?” He let the Penelope comment slide. For now.
His friend didn’t hesitate. He stared Tyler straight in the eye and said, “I’d beat the crap out of him.”
Tyler took in the lean, hard muscle of Steve’s biceps with muted apprehension. Perhaps he deserved the thrashing.
“No one gets to hurt Kate like that, and get away with it.” Steve’s face reflected the conviction of his words. “No one!”
No one had gotten away with it. Tyler had spent two years in hell trying to get over her. Having the crap beaten out of him would hurt significantly less than beating himself up about it every day of his life.
“Did I tell you we’re going to have kids soon?” Steve asked.
The question slammed him in the solar plexus.
“I’m not getting any younger, mate,” Steve said. “Kate and I are both thirty-two, and I’d like to have a family someday. I don’t want my kids to have an old man for a dad. Know what I mean?”
Tyler winced. The words hit him like physical blows.
“Kate would make a great mom. Don’t you think?”
How could Tyler discuss Katie and Steve’s children? How?
“I want two kids. She wants four. Two boys. Two girls. We compromised on three. Either sex, I don’t care, so long as they’re healthy.”
Healthy kids. Their healthy kids. Tyler swallowed hard on the squall that raged in his chest.
“How’d ya feel about being a godfather?”
He made himself answer. “Not as good as you’d feel about being a father, obviously.” Oh Jesus, he hadn’t meant to sound so bitter. It wasn’t Steve’s fault they were in this situation.
“Yeah, mate.” Steve shot him a boyish grin, missing the acridity of his response. “I can’t wait.”
Enough. He couldn’t discuss this anymore. Tyler took a deep breath and dug into the recesses of his semi-tortured mind. He pulled out his one seed of hope for all of them. “Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“What about Pen?”
His friend’s smile faltered and disappeared. For a full minute he didn’t respond. The question hung in the air between them. Silence punctuated its brutality.
Finally, Steve shrugged and said, “Pen who?”
Crap! What kind of a response was that? It gave him no answers or direction.
No idea how Steve now felt about the woman he’d once loved so completely.
Tyler wanted to press him harder, force a proper answer out of him. He didn’t.
Instead, he shook his head and put the seed back in its warm, dark hiding place. “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Anything.”
“You free tomorrow?”
“Sure am. We’re closing the practice for the weekend.”
“Good. I could use your help.”
“With what?”
“Something I need.”
“I’ll do my best,” Steve assured him. “Whatever it is, you can rely on me to help you get it.”
“Feeling a little distracted?”
“Huh?” Katie put down the folder she held and focused on her receptionist, the woman who single-handedly managed her and Steve’s medical practice.
“You just called me Tyler again.”
“I did not,” Katie said, aghast.
“It’s okay. It’s only the third time this afternoon.” The woman gave her a gentle smile.
“Tina. I am so sorry.” She hadn’t been thinking straight the whole day. When Tyler had walked through customs, her world had moved out of kilter. Even now, she was going through her files making sure she hadn’t made any dumb mistakes. She’d had a devil of a time concentrating, and she owed it to her patients to make doubly sure she’d done right by them. She hadn’t worked her whole life to build this practice just to destroy it in one afternoon.