Chapter Three

~ Zaq ~

I smiled as I watched Patrick's eyes sparkled as he talked about his career. I'd been working in the medical field long enough to differentiate between people that became doctors because of the money they could make and people that did it because they truly loved it.

Patrick loved it.

I could tell.

"So, what are you going to do once you're no longer the hospital administrator?"

Patrick shrugged. "Not sure yet. I'm going to take a couple of months off to think about my next move. I do know I still want to practice medicine though. I'm done with the paper part of all of this. I'm not cut out to be an administrator."

"Peter wants me..." I grimaced. "Peter wanted me to quit after we got married."

"Why?"

"He said it wasn't proper for his husband to be working as a nurse. Unfortunately, my father backs him up all the way."

"That doesn't make sense. Nurses are some of the hardest workers in the medical field. Doctors might do the big stuff like surgery and such, but the nurses are the ones on the ground keeping everything going. That's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Preaching to the choir here," I replied. "I love what I do, the day to day caring for my patients, watching the joy on their family's faces when they get batter and are able to go home. I just wished my father saw it the same way I did instead of looking down on me because I didn't go into the family business or become a doctor."

"He wanted you to become a doctor?"

"No, but a doctor would have been more acceptable for the son of Oscar Dinh than a nurse. According to my father, only girls become nurses."

"Bullshit."

I snorted out a laugh. I felt pretty much the same way. "He said it made sense that I became a nurse after he discovered that I was gay since, you know, I was basically a girl."

Patrick's eyes rolled.

"I could introduce you to a lot of men that are captains of their industries," he said. "All of them are gay and none of them are girls. They don't even look like girls."

Patrick dug out his cell phone and opened his picture gallery, swiping through it until he came to a picture with several guys all holding beers in their hands.

"This is us the last time we all got together."

Yeah, he was right. Not a single one of them looked like the flamboyant gay stereotype my father seemed to think all gay men looked like.

I, unfortunately, fell into the stereotype.

I stood a hair under five feet ten inches tall and was more on the slender delicate side of things. I'd inherited my mother's blond hair, which looked exotic when next to my almond shaped brown eyes and pale skin.

"So, what are you going to do now?" Patrick asked as he put his phone away. "I have to be honest here. I don't think Peter is coming back."

"I no longer care if Peter comes back. I'm more concerned with how freaked out my parents are going to be that I'm not getting married than I am that he left me. If he wants to pull something like this on the day of our wedding, then I feel as if I dodged a bullet."

"This is probably totally inappropriate to ask, but did you love my brother?"

I winced. "No, but I did like him. He was very charming when we first met. I didn't really want to get married, but I was under a lot of pressure from my parents. I figured I could do worse." I widened my eyes dramatically. "Guess I was wrong."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, Patrick. This all lies at the feet of that brother of yours."

"He's no brother of mine," Patrick retorted vehemently. "I cut ties with Peter ten years ago. I only agreed to attend the wedding for my parents."

"I'm sure they appreciate it."

Patrick's eyes rolled once again. "They are totally convinced that their perfect little golden boy has cold feet and he'll come back."

I snorted rudely. "Wouldn't matter if he came back crawling on his hands and knees and begging for my forgiveness. I wouldn't marry him, not after this."

There was only so far I was willing to forgive someone and the groom standing me up on my wedding day crossed the line. There was no way I'd ever forgive Peter and take him back.

"You could always marry me."

I tilted my head, leaning closer because I was positive I'd misheard Patrick. "Come again?"

"Well, I just figured, since your father is so insistent that you get married and marry someone from my family, I'd fit the bill. Besides, we obviously have similar interests. I'd never belittle you or ask you to quit your job."

"Yeah, but—"

"There's just one little thing."

Here it comes.

"I'd need you to move to New York."

My eyebrows lifted. "New York City?"

"Yeah, as soon as my two weeks are up, I'm moving to New York. I already have a place waiting for me."

"Where do you live now?"

"Texas."

Enough said.

"So, New York City, huh?"

Patrick shrugged. "I have a lot of friends there so it made sense."

I stared at Patrick, wondering why I was even considering this. I should be laughing him out of the room. Not contemplating if he was being serious or not.

"I'd want a pre-nup."

Maybe that would throw him off.

"I'm okay with that," Patrick replied.

"With a fidelity clause."

"I'm okay with that, too." Patrick smiled. "I'm actually in favor of it."

Considering what I told him about my parents' marriage, that made sense.

"Are you really serious about this?" I had to be sure. Apparently, I'd been fooled before.

"I am," Patrick admitted. "Besides, we have a perfectly good wedding already set up." He reached up and tugged at his bowtie. "And I'm already dressed for it, so..."

"You don't think it'll be a little weird for me to be engaged to one brother and marry the other one? I mean, what will the guests think?"

"We'll tell them that there was a mess-up at the printers and they printed the wrong name on the wedding invitations. No one has to know that you weren't supposed to marry me."

People would know. I was sure of it.

"What about Peter's friends? I'm sure they'd know."

"Do you really think Peter's friends are going to show up for a wedding where he isn't the groom?"

Well, now that he mentioned it...

"I'm sure Peter has already contacted his friends—if he has any—and told them the wedding was cancelled. They are probably sitting somewhere with that woman he's fooling around with laughing their asses off."

I grimaced at that thought. While I hadn't been in love with Peter, I had liked him and had accepted that I would be spending my life with him. It smarted a little that he had left me for someone else, and a woman at that. If he had been so disgusted that I was gay, he shouldn't have even started dating me.

"How do we get a pre-nup set up?" I asked.

"I need a computer and then I can call a friend of mine who is a lawyer. He can write something up and we can sign it electronically."

"Is that legal?"

"It is," Patrick replied. "The one thing I'm worried about is the marriage license. It's in Peter's name, not mine."

"Couldn't we have the ceremony now and then turn in the marriage papers later?" I wasn't sure how else to get around that.

"Yeah, that might work," Patrick agreed. "We can go to the courthouse as soon as the reception is over. No one has to know except us that we don't have the papers yet."

I took a couple of deep breaths before asking, "Are we really going to do this?"

"I think we can," Patrick answered.

I wasn't so sure.

"Are you going to have an issue about me being engaged to your brother in the future?" I could just imagine what a battlefield that would make our married life.

"Do you love him?"

My eyebrows snapped together. "I already told you that I didn't."

"Do you think, once you get to know me, we might be able to establish a real relationship between us?"

I stared at Patrick in bewilderment. "You mean like a real marriage?"

"Yes," he answered with no hesitation.

"I mean, anything is possible, right?" We didn't know each other except in passing when we had been in high school. Patrick had been a couple of grades ahead of me and terribly shy.

"You're an attractive man and we do seem to have some interests in common. I think, given some time for us to get to know each other, there might be a possibility of us growing closer."

"Then I don't see what the problem is. We're not friends yet, but we're not enemies either. Maybe, given enough time, we'll find that we do like each other. If not, I'm willing to accept you as my friend. There's no pressure and no hurry. We'll just take each day as it comes."

Was this guy for real?

"You're seriously willing to marry me with a fidelity clause in the pre-nup knowing that we might not ever be anything more than friends?"

"Sex is great and all, but I don't need that to make me happy. I prefer the closeness of a relationship, even if it's simply friendship, more than a one simply based on sex."

I liked that answer.

"I do have one request," I stated.

"And what might that be?"

"If at any time you feel that you need out of the marriage, we discuss it openly and honestly. I hate liars." It was one of the many reasons I no longer wanted anything to do with Peter."

"I can agree to that, but I ask that you do the same. I also ask that you give us an honest chance. Like I said, there is no hurry. We can take the time to get to know each other. Beyond us getting married today, no other decisions have to be made right now."

"I can do that."

I was seriously considering this.

I had to be crazy.