Her words are a gut punch, and I’m too exhausted to pretend they aren’t. The look on my face must give me away, because her gaze softens, and she reaches an arm out to rest on my knee. “Colt, I swear it’s okay. I’ll be fine. It’s not your fault I have diabetes.”
It’s not, but it is my fault that she worked so hard. It’s my fault she didn’t get to take a proper lunch break or even get a snack to keep her sugars stable. The schedule I’ve had her on for the last few months would wreak havoc on the system of someone who is impeccably healthy, let alone someone who has to work harder to stay balanced.
“If you want to help, you can take my mind off of it.”
My mind goes to a thousand ways I want to distract her, and I clear my throat roughly. “And how do I do that?”
She pulls her hand off my knee, and I immediately miss her warmth. She tucks her arm back under the blankets and gazes at me with her beautiful chocolate eyes. “Tell me why you have the most gorgeous soaker tub known to man, yet you’ve never used it.”
I chuckle as I move to sit on the other end of the sectional to face her. I prop my feet up, and our toes nearly touch. “I like to have nice things.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” She gestures around to my condo. “You have every state-of-the-art anything that anyone could ask for.”
I look around the room, nodding in agreement, but wondering to myself why it still feels like I need more. Why it never feels like it’s enough. Never complete. “It’s alright, I guess. I have plans to make this place even better than it is.”
She scoffs. “What else could you possibly need?”
I tell her to hold on, and I leave the couch to jog to my office, my bare feet padding along the heated floors. I rifle through my cabinets, pulling out the most updated blueprint. I twist off the rubber band and unfold the prints the closer I get to the living room.
She’s sitting up with the blanket draped over her legs, watching me as I return; her brows pull together when she sees the prints in my hands.
I lay them out on the ottoman in front of her, and she glances over. “What am I looking at?”
I raise an arm over my shoulder and point to the corner of the living room where the wall to wall windows end. “Imagine a sweeping spiral staircase in that corner that leads upstairs.”
“You own the upstairs, too?”
“Not yet. But the tenant who’s living directly above me will sell within the next year. I’ve already made plans to buy it. ”
Her eyes bulge at the plans in front of me. They volley back and forth between the blueprints in front of her and my face, likely counting the number of rooms that will make up my two-story penthouse. “What are you going to do with all of this?”
“I think the upstairs will be the master bedroom and guest rooms. Maybe my office. Then the downstairs part I’ll expand on what I currently have. My kitchen, for one, it—”
“Your kitchen?” she squawks. “You’re looking to expand the kitchen? The one with the literal walk-in fridge and that you probably don’t even cook in?”
I laugh at her shock, carefully rolling up the blueprints and fastening with the band. “Work hard, play hard. Money is meant to be spent, Sparky.”
“Yeah, but why do you need two giant condos for one person? Why don’t you go on lavish vacations or find a mistress like all of the other surgeons you work with do?”
“I’ve been to California a few times for conferences. Once in Punta Cana. It was fine, not really my thing I guess.” I shrug as I casually avoid the mistress comment.
“If you’ve been to a tropical resort and think it’s not your thing, then you were doing it all wrong. Let me take you somewhere warm, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
An image flashes in my mind of Annaliese lying on a white sunchair with a margarita in one hand and a smutty book in the other. The sun beams down on us, warming my skin just as the wind kicks up, and she lifts a hand to hold onto her sunhat, smiling at me in the process.
”How do you afford all of this?” she asks, drawing me back to the present. “It’s probably rude to ask about money, but you nearly killed me today so you owe me.”
“I invest most of my salary. After basic living expenses, I have some money in real estate, even a few rental properties.”
“Ahh, that explains the exciting books on property tax.”
She reaches for the blueprints, and I roll them open again, handing her the top one to study. I watch her trace the lines that will soon be the walls of my master bedroom, noting that the ensuite alone will be larger than her entire studio apartment that I saw earlier.
“How did you learn all of this stuff anyways? Unless things have changed since you were in school, med classes didn’t mention anything about real estate.” Once satisfied with her look, she hands the blueprints back to me, and I roll them together again before carefully applying the band.
I stand, tapping the rolled end against my palm a few times. “Everything I know, I’ve learned from your dad.” And that’s in regards to my medical, business, and personal life.
“Ahh, gotcha.” She reaches for her glass of water from the side table, taking a long, awkward sip. “At least he raised one of us.”
