Chapter 19
Rowan turned into the shopping center where the dental clinic was located and pulled around back to the employee parking. She’d taken Claudia and Maria’s suggestion to stay home yesterday and relax, but it had been a miserable failure. Instead of relaxing, she’d analyzed and reanalyzed everything about her relationship with Michael and where it had gone so wrong that he’d been able to walk away. She’d analyzed her non-relationship with Luke and why, after all these years, he’d come back into it—in the middle of her wedding no less. More than anything, she’d wondered what it was about her that made it so easy for the men who supposedly loved her to walk away.
All the avoidance she’d managed had come crashing down like a house of cards. No amount of ice cream was going to fix that. She needed to be busy—to have something to occupy her mind so she couldn’t think because now that she’d started to think, she couldn’t stop.
Flipping down the sun visor, she checked her makeup one last time. It had taken forever to cover up the circles under her eyes. Now she only looked slightly tired instead of like she hadn’t slept in four days.
Grabbing her bag from the passenger seat, she exited the car and used the remote to lock the car.
“There she is!”
She looked over her shoulder at the shout. A group of people with cameras rushed toward her from the parking lot of the sports bar directly across from the clinic. She glanced around to see who they were talking about before she realized they were talking about her.
Damn it. They must have found out where she worked from her Facebook profile. Never, ever again would she be so careless with her profile. She was still considering deleting it and being done with it completely. Direct messages from people she hadn’t spoken to since high school—hell, half of them she’d never spoken toinhigh school. Complete strangers asking her personal questions she would think twice about asking her best friends. What was wrong with people?
She tucked her head down and made a beeline for the door of the clinic.
“Rowan! Rowan! Did you marry Luke Stone?”
“Rowan! Are you pregnant?”
“Rowan! How do you feel about getting left at the altar?”
“Who were you cheating on? Luke or your fiancé?”
Her mother’s voice rang in her ears.A lady does not point fingers.She may not have been talking about the middle finger at the time, but the lesson was fitting for the situation. Besides, Rowan didn’t want to give them any more reason to post unflattering pictures of her on the internet—she could only imagine what these would look like.
Not giving them the satisfaction of an answer, she swung the door to the clinic open and slipped inside, pulling it tight behind her.
“You’re here.” Sierra stared wide-eyed at her.
“I’m sure you’ve heard there was no honeymoon,” she said.
“Yeah. I…uh. Sorry? I mean…let me go get Doctor Joyce. She’ll want to talk to you.” Sierra scurried around the desk without making eye contact.
Rowan watched her leave, then turned back to Rosie, the clinic’s receptionist. “What was that about?”
“The paparazzi have been all over this clinic since we opened yesterday,” she said.
Her shoulders sagged. “Awesome.”
“It got so bad Doc J had to call the police to get them to vacate the premises.”
“Wonderful.” She crossed the reception area and pushed through the door to the examination rooms and headed directly to the lead dentist’s office. There was no point in putting her things in her locker—she had a feeling she was going to have to take her time off whether she wanted it or not.
Sierra exited the office as Rowan approached and gave her a half smile, half wince. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“It’s okay. I should have expected something like this,” Rowan said.
She knocked on the open door and stepped in.
Joyce came around her desk. “Rowan, why don’t you close the door and have a seat?”
Doing as she was asked, Rowan sat on the edge of the cushioned chair.
“I know you’ve had some upheaval in your life over the last few days, weeks really with your mom’s health scare, and I’m truly sorry for that. But this is a family business and some clients have expressed concerns about the type of attention this situation has brought to the clinic,” Joyce said.
“What type of attention?” Rowan was confused. What had she missed?
