"Have you lost your damn mind?" Gregory Astor bellowed as he swept everything within reach from his desk, sending files, a crystal decanter and a framed photograph crashing across the floor.
Alex watched from the other side of the office without reacting. Anger was predictable and occasionally useful, but after a certain point it became noise, and his father had crossed that point minutes ago.
"Last I checked, my mind's intact. I just spent eight hours repairing a ruptured artery in a seventy-two-year-old with three prior chest surgeries. There were no complications, and he was off the ventilator this morning."
"You think that makes last night disappear?" Gregory's face had turned an alarming shade of red. "I sent you to that gala to represent this hospital, and you put Preston Whitaker in the ICU. His father is one of our largest donors. They're threatening charges, threatening to pull funding, threatening everything. I practically had to beg them not to drag this hospital through court."
"He grabbed my arm. I considered him a threat and dealt with it."
"Dealt with it?" Gregory gave a humorless laugh. "You crushed his larynx. He's on a ventilator, and you call that defense?"
"His larynx was displaced, not crushed. The injury looks worse than it is, and he'll recover."
Gregory stared at him for a long second. "You're unbelievable. You will apologize to him personally. Today."
"I won't. The apology would be insincere, Preston would recognize that immediately, and so would everyone else. There's no practical benefit."
Gregory crossed the space between them and slapped him.
Alex's head shifted with the impact, but he gave his father nothing else. He simply straightened the collar of his white coat and smoothed his sleeve as the office door opened.
"Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Astor." The secretary hesitated when she noticed the wreckage scattered across the floor. "There's a Mr. Harper here to see you."
Gregory adjusted his tie and forced some control back into his voice. "Send him in." Then he turned to Alex. "Get out. You disgust me. I should have sent Anthony."
That earned the faintest trace of a smile. "Yes. You should have sent your favorite son."
Alex rose and was adjusting the sleeves of his coat when the door opened wider and Dashiell Harper walked in.
He had expected someone larger.
Dashiell couldn't have been much taller than five-seven, with a slim build beneath his tailored shirt and slacks, light brown waves framing high cheekbones and warm hazel eyes. There was something almost delicate about him until Alex looked at his face properly and decided, with mild irritation, that the man was unfairly handsome.
Gregory seemed equally surprised, though for a different reason. "Oh. It's you, Dashiell. I thought you were your father."
Dashiell gave Alex a brief, assessing look before turning to Gregory. "I'd like to marry your son, Mr. Astor. In place of my sister."
Alex stopped on his way to the door.
Gregory stared at him. "What?"
"My sister refused him, and I have no issue taking her place."
That was enough to keep Alex in the room.
Gregory leaned back in his chair, studying Dashiell as though trying to determine whether this was some elaborate joke. "And you're assuming my son is interested in men? What if he isn't?"
"Based on his dating history, Mr. Astor Jr. doesn't appear to have an exclusive preference for either gender."
A disbelieving laugh escaped Alex. "You cannot be serious."
Dashiell barely acknowledged him. "For what it's worth, I'm a pediatric neurologist. I'm competent, employed, and more useful than my sister, whose primary occupation appears to be documenting her life online."
Gregory actually laughed at that. "You've definitely made a better case than she did. Fine. You can have him."
"I'm standing right here," Alex said. "Do I have no say in this?"
"Not currently. You can marry him if he agrees to work at Astor Medical Center."
The condition wiped some of the certainty from Dashiell's face. Leaving Harper Regional meant abandoning routines he had spent years building, along with the familiarity and predictability he depended on, but with the hospital struggling, he didn't need long to make the decision.
"I'll do it."
"Excellent. Wedding tomorrow."
Dashiell turned fully toward Alex for the first time and reached into his pocket, producing a simple platinum band. "Will you marry me?"
Alex looked at the ring resting on his palm before meeting those hazel eyes again. "Do I have a choice?"
"It doesn't appear that either of us does."
Before Alex could decide whether that qualified as an answer, Dashiell took his hand and slid the band onto his finger with surprising confidence.
Then he smiled.
It was small and warm, without a trace of the nervousness Alex would have expected from someone who had just volunteered to marry a near stranger and change hospitals in the same conversation.
Alex looked down at the platinum band now sitting on his finger.
He should have left the office when his father told him to.
Instead, he found himself studying the man he was apparently marrying tomorrow and wondering what, exactly, Dashiell Harper had just gotten himself into.