The words hung in the air for a moment, and my mind immediately conjured an image of him from the night before—methodically going through my room, unruffled and in charge. He’d teased me at first, but there really was something reassuring about him.
“You work in the ER.”
“Yup.”
The thought of him in a hectic ER—focused, commanding, maybe even saving lives… Honestly? It suited him. I could easily imagine him working under pressure, ordering medical tests while tending to a patient who’d been injured in a car accident, was having a heart attack, or…
Had broken her hip?
“Which hospital?” I asked.
He grimaced. “Beacon Hill General.” He crossed his arms, and his hands, which had been so relaxed a few seconds before, were now digging into his biceps.
Not, I realized, a result of the snow-covered road outside.
Beacon Hill General wasn’t the hospital where my mom had had her surgery. But I’d heard of it, and I think it was one of the largest hospitals in New England.
“What about you?” he asked suddenly, turning my line of questioning back on me.
And, crazy thing, I wasn’t sure anymore…
“It’s complicated,” I said at last.
“Going somewhere?” Noah glanced down at his watch, the movement pulling my attention to his forearm.
A perfectly ordinary forearm, I told myself. Except…not.
I forced my gaze back up. “Am I going somewhere, you mean…now?”
He tilted his head toward the window. “Unless you’d rather not talk about it, we’ve got plenty of time for you to explain ‘complicated.’”
My mouth opened, then closed again, words fumbling behind my lips.
He wasn’t pressing, exactly, just patient in a way that kind of disarmed me.
I sighed, leaning back, My time with all these people was limited to twelve days, and for the first time since the YouTube channel took off, I was pretty much…anonymous. No one here knew all the gritty details of my life story; no one here watched in real-time as Leo proposed in the middle of an episode all those months ago, or followed our attempts at planning a wedding, gossiping about “how cute we were together” and our compatibility as a couple (or lack thereof).
“I’m the cook,” I finally answered. Not an appliance at all.
It was who I was, but also what I did…
“Like, professionally,” I added.
I intentionally left out the celebrity part. And since I’d never been properly trained at a culinary institute—like Leo had—I wasn’t comfortable calling myself an actual chef.
Straightening my back, I waited to hear the inevitable judgment.
I could not tell you how many times I’d had to defend my career choice, to my own parents, especially my mom, but also to total strangers. And Noah Grady was a doctor; he could easily turn this into a whole thing if he wanted.
“Huh,” he said. “What’s your favorite thing to make?”
I blinked.
I laughed, surprised. “That’s like asking if I have a favorite child.”
“Do you?”
“Have kids? No, I’ve never— We didn’t—” I stopped and face palmed myself. “You mean recipes. But…no? I mean…most of them are a version of my gran’s old recipes. So… It’s hard to pick just one.”
