You got yourself into this situation by leaping before you look, she scolded herself. Just because he was hotter than hell and happened to make her want to go down on all fours for him didnotmean she should just throw herself at him.
“I don’t want to bother you, really,” River said and with great effort stood up from her chair.
Daniel lunged to his feet, hands held up apologetically.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was too forward of me. I didn’t mean to upset you or make you uncomfortable, it’s just that you seem like you need someone to talk to. I shouldn’t have presumed...”
“Please don’t be sorry, it’s not you. It’s me,” River said taking a deep breath and trying not to cry. “Oh great, now I sound like a breakup cliché.”
“Well I hope you aren’t breaking up with me. I haven’t evenhad the chance to ask you out yet,” Daniel quipped.
River couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh God, I am such a mess,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Come on, I’ll close the office and we can have what’s left of the mulled wine that Betty made for me. It won’t take a minute to heat up and you really look like you need a drink,” Daniel offered.
“I really do,” River admitted. “And Betty’s mulled wine is pretty good.”
Daniel frowned slightly. “You’ve had Betty’s mulled wine? I thought you were new in town.”
“I’m her niece,” River replied.
“Of course! She said you were coming to stay. River, right? Now things make sense. Come on, this way.”
He paused to hang a note on the door saying he would be back in an hour and there was a number listed for emergencies and then turned to her with a smile. River allowed Daniel to lead her out of the doctor’s office and up the stairs to his private rooms.
“So if I remember rightly, Betty said you were a vet,” Daniel said as he turned on the gas burner under a metal pot that he’d emptied the last of the mulled wine into.
“Yes. Or at least, I was,” she said with a sigh. “You aren’t much of anything without a job.”
“Well, come sit down, and you can tell me about why you aren’t a vet anymore,” Daniel replied and indicated through an archway to where a large sofa and two chairs were positioned infront of a stone fireplace.
There were four rooms as close as River could tell. The kitchen, which was where the stairs led to from the doctor’s office below. It had a small round dining table, a small island, a rather lavish oven, complete with six industrial gas burners, a refrigerator, a deep freeze, and a few cupboard that had solid oak doors and a marble counter top.
Daniel was clearly a man of excellent taste.
Then there was the living room that was through the archway from the kitchen. River thought it was odd to have a fireplace on the second floor, but as this was where he lived, she guessed it made sense in some respect. There was a door from the living room that River assumed led to the bedroom and that the bathroom would be beyond that.
As she sat down in one of the chairs, she made sure her back was to the bedroom door. She didn’t need any more temptation than she already felt around the irresistible doctor.
It didn’t take long for the mulled wine to warm through, and Daniel served it in a mug rather than a glass.
“I’ve always thought that Betty’s mulled wine had too much kick to be safe in a glass,” Daniel smiled as River looked at the rich, red liquid in the mug.
“You’re probably right,” River replied with a slight smile and sipped with the mug. The moment the flavorful liquid touched her lips, she felt a lot better than she had in days.
Daniel sat in the other chair and a comfortable silence fell between them. He sipped on his mulled wine slowly and River got the sense he was waiting for her to be ready to talk. It was nice that he cared, that she wasn’t being rushed, for once. Shetook her time, taking deep breaths and sipping her mulled wine, until she was, eventually, ready.
“About a year ago, I met this guy,” she began, wondering just how much she should tell the doctor. His face was so open, so inviting, that she found herself wanting to tell him everything, the whole sorry story. “He’d moved to town and was looking at running a horse breeding business. I’ve always loved animals; it’s why I became a vet, and I found him interesting. As it turned out, he was less interested in animals and more interested in money. After six months together, I found out he’d been stealing from me. He’d emptied my savings account, somehow managed to convince my landlord to change the name on the lease to his, and to take me off it, and that my security deposit was his. I then tried to leave him, only to find that I didn’t have any money to go anywhere. I had my car and my bike, and that was it.”
She hadn’t spoken to anyone about everything that had happened and the weight of it had been crushing her. More than she’d even known. It wasn’t until the words spilled out of her that she realized just how much it had been weighing her down. Stifling her.
“What about your job?” Daniel asked.
“He started telling people about my mistreatment of animals, and people stopped coming to see me.” Her lips pressed together in anger at the memory. As if she would ever hurt an innocent, and worse, he’d known it. He’d known it would hurt her more than anything else he’d done, and he’d done it anyway. “The practice let me go, and I had no money coming in. That took another five months. He tried to sell my car and my bike, but I reported them stolen the moment he took the keys from me. The cops picked him up and he got locked up pending trial. Legal aid told me I don’t have much of a case, so I sold my car and usedthe money to come up here with everything I could stuff onto my bike.”
Daniel was looking at her with a great deal of sympathy and seemed to be at a loss as to what to say. He put down his mug and leaned forward, his arms on his knees.
