Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“You should find the time with Dad.” Stevie jerks her thumb toward Berk. “I’ve been playing with him. If I can beat him, I know you can.”
The sound of a phone ringing fills the air.
Almost everyone at the table drops their gaze to search for their device.
“It’s me.” Eloise is already halfway out of her chair. “I’ll take it in the other room.”
“It’s a boy,” Stevie surmises. “She told me that she broke up with Philip, so I think she’ll have a new boyfriend today or tomorrow. She’s so pretty.”
That she is.
I follow Eloise with my gaze as she disappears out of view.
I’m tempted to stand too with an excuse that I need to check on a patient, but I keep my ass where it is because Stevie has already dove into another pressing question from the list on a paper set next to her plate.
“Why did you become a doctor?”
Berk’s gaze meet mine and he tosses me a look that I’ve seen before. It’s apologetic and sympathetic at the same time.
He knows my past. He wasn’t always around to walk through it with me, but when I needed an ear, he made the time to listen, just as I did when he lost his wife and had to piece his life back together.
“He likes helping people,” he answers for me. “I was there the day he graduated from medical school.”
“You were?” Stevie’s gaze darts to her dad. “Do you have a picture from that day?”
“Plenty,” he says. “’I’ve got a great one of the four of us.”
Stevie looks beyond her dad to where Sinclair and Keats are. “You were there too?”
Sinclair is a decade younger than I am, but I remember fondly her gift on the day I graduated med school. She’s a published writer now, but her love of the craft was present even then, so she prepared a mini handwritten autobiography for me of my life up to that point.
It wasn’t complete by any means because no one knows all the details of the life I’ve lived. Not even Berk.
“We were all front and center that day,” Keats tells her.
“I’m sorry,” Eloise says as she steps back into the room. “I have to run. A friend needs me.”
A look of alarm crosses Stevie’s expression. She’s up and on her way toward Eloise in no time flat. “Is it Penny? Is she all right?”
“She’s good.” Eloise skims a hand over Stevie’s head. “It’s another friend. He needs help with something.”
He.
Again, that fucking jealousy itch is back.
The only way I know how to scratch the goddamn thing is to bury myself inside of her.
She won’t make eye contact with me, so I drop my gaze back to the bowl of beans. Stevie was right. They’re not good.
“It was great seeing all of you,” Eloise says to the room. “Dinner was amazing as usual, Astrid.”
“Thank Keats for that.”
Keats glances over his shoulder at Eloise. “I can’t and won’t take credit for those beans. Those were fucking awful.”
“You owe a hundred to the fund,” a chorus of voices unites to say that, including Eloise’s and mine.
It’s a Morgan family tradition that if anyone swears, they need to donate a hundred dollars to a charity founded by Berk in honor of his late wife and Stevie’s mom.
I finally sense Eloise’s eyes on me so I look up.
I want to ask where the hell she’s going, but I don’t own her time. We’re not committed.
“I’ll help Mom find a new bean recipe,” Stevie announces to everyone in the room before she grabs ahold of Eloise’s hand. “You’ll call me about taking my measurements, right?”
“Tomorrow,” she promises with a kiss to Stevie’s forehead.
They share a hug then, followed by a smile before Astrid, Maren, and Sinclair trail Eloise out of the room.
“She’s going to knit me a special dress for the school dance,” Stevie tells Berk, Keats, Jameson, and me. “She’s a pretty cool kind of aunt, or cousin. She’s my friend. Eloise is my friend.”
I envy the kid for finding one word to describe her connection to Eloise.
I could toss out a million of them, and not one would describe what’s happening between us and, more importantly, what can never happen between my lamb and me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Eloise
I sit at a table in a coffee shop in midtown facing a man I didn’t know had my number. That’s a total of two men who have gotten their hands on my phone number without me being aware of it.
I make a mental note to ask Gaines why he saved my number in his phone when he heard Astrid sharing it with Stevie. That was over a month ago, well before I saw him at Atlas 22.
“Like I said on the phone, I’m nervous, Els.”
I look at Daxton. He’s dressed similarly to the way Gaines was dressed tonight. Both men chose jeans, and gray T-shirts. But Dax has a blue hoodie on. Dr. Morgan was wearing a navy blue blazer with the thinnest pinstripe running through the fabric.