“Yeah. A lot, actually.” Enough that he was getting worried. He didn’t want to end up back in the same boat he’d been in—the one where he invested himself in someone who didn’t like him back.
“And you believe you could be good for each other?”
“I do.”
CeCe sucked air through her teeth. “Then don’t wait! I’d known your father three days when I decided I was going to marry that man. But now everybody thinks they need time. Time, time, time!”
“I specifically remember you telling Joel and Rachel not to rush into relationships.”
“That’s when Joel was trying to date that older girl in high school who was much too experienced. And when Rachel wanted to date that awful man who was living off the government’s charity and was named after a Hawaiian island.”
“Same principle applies here, though. It’s good to take time.”
“This is a completely different circumstance than with Joel and Rachel. I can see with my own eyes, as clear as day, that girl is perfect for you. If you wait too long, someone else is going to snap her up.”
He hated the idea of Akira with another man.
His mom lifted the cake from the entry table and pushed it into his hands. “There’s a fine line between biding your time and becoming a little old man at the old folks’ home who doesn’t have any visitors.”
Ben didn’t see that as a fine line. He saw that as a gigantic line, fifty years thick in his case.
“How many of the women that you’ve dated have I liked?” she asked.
“None.”
She could raise one eyebrow and narrow her stare better than anyone. “Well. This one, I like.”
When Luke left prison, all he’d wanted was a quiet, simple life.
His life had been getting less quiet and less simple ever since he’d started work at the Center.
With a groan, he answered the knocking on his apartment door around one p.m. on Sunday.
Ben, Sebastian, Natasha, and Genevieve stood there. The women were each holding a handle of a picnic basket. Sebastian had a cooler. Ben carried a circular container.
“Surprise!” Natasha said.
“Mmm.”
“We couldn’t get you to commit to having lunch with us,” Ben explained, “so we brought lunch to you.”
“Mmm.”
“The good news is that we have excellent food here,” Ben said. “My mom’s chocolate cake.”
“Sam made chicken curry salad sandwiches,” Genevieve added.
“Fruit.” Natasha gave him a persuasive lift of her brows. “Potato chips. Cashews baked with my own rosemary salt blend.”
Luke sighed.
“Step aside,” Sebastian ordered, “and let us in.”
Luke held the doctor’s gaze. “I’m not your patient.”
“If you were, I’d have given you a heart that actually worked by now.”
For a moment they faced off, but then Sebastian startled Luke by grinning.
