Vincent’s lips twitched with a laugh.
“Sometimes, the distributor I worked with would send me home with gardening-related magazines—the kind that really helped me make the switch from bumbling apprentice to someone who knew what the heck he was doing.” Mal twitched his nose. There’d been nights when, while the knob of his bedroom door jiggled, he’d distract himself with articles about maintaining soil pH, or how best to shape a topiary. They were skills he’d never need again, but they’d saved him from exhaustive fear, and he appreciated them for it. “There was this one column I liked to read that showcased different ornamental gardens. Whenever I got my hands on one of the magazines, I’d read the article and imagine what it was like to visit those places. Castles, estates, art installations… and then one month, it featured the rooftop terrace of Bistro Chatelaine. According to the article, the owner was a former gardener who’d decided to unite his passion of plants with his culinary prowess. At the time, he was the gardener responsible for the ornamental displays here, but since then, I’ve heard he’s retired, and a gardener has been hired on. I regret not having been able to visit it before the garden changed hands, but I’m really glad to be here now. The garden is stunning.”
“How long ago did the change-over happen?” Vincent asked.
Mal scrunched his nose. “Ten years, I think, and I first heard about Bistro Chatelaine ten years before that. I can’t believe it’s been so long.”
“Time’s a finicky thing, isn’t it?” Vincent folded his arms on the table, glanced down at his arms, then looked at Mal again. “Every year that passes, I wonder where the time went… and why I feel the same when everyone else has changed.”
“God, tell me about it.” Mal laughed and pushed a hand through his hair, more at ease with Vincent than he’d been with anyone for a long time. “I’m still partially convinced that I’m stuck in some kind of time loop. I look after kids part-time, and seeing them grow up, get married, and have kids of their own while I’m stuck the same old me I was the year before has convinced me that there’s something I’m missing, like I’m driving around in a roundabout and missing the exit over and over.”
“I know how you feel. I have a daughter who’ll be six this month, and I just…” Vincent chuckled and shook his head. “I look at her and think, ‘Six? Yesterday I was changing your diapers.’”
“A daughter?” The change of surname tugged at the back of Mal’s mind, demanding an explanation. Usually, alphas didn’t change their names after marriage, but it wouldn’t surprise Mal if someone like Vincent was progressive enough to have done so.
“Hard to believe, right?” Their menus arrived, as did ice water, and the conversation tapered to a natural stop while everything was distributed. Then, when the waiter left, Vincent picked up from where he’d left off. When he spoke, there was fondness in his voice that Mal recognized—it was the same kind he saw in the eyes of new parents, pride and love and amazement all melded into one. The way it painted Vincent’s face left him more gorgeous than he’d been before, both soft and sturdy, rugged, yet unafraid to emote. To Mal, there was no more attractive a quality. “Her name is Nikki, and she’s the smartest, sweetest, sassiest little thing I’ve ever known. Easily the most important person in my life.” Vincent cast the menu a quick look, then set it down. “The last few years have been hard on her while her mother and I divorced, but she’s held on like a warrior, and she impresses me every day with her strength and determination. When I feel low, like I have no more fight left, she’s the thing that keeps me going.”
A divorce. Maybe the business card Vincent had given him was old. It didn’t explain why he would have changed his name, unless his ex was giving him so much grief that he’d done it for the sake of anonymity. What a horror that had to be. No wonder Vincent had packed up and moved thousands of miles away. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It happened a few years ago—it’s okay.” Vincent flashed him a reassuring grin that managed to lift Mal’s spirits. “Things between us ended because they needed to end. I regret that we had to put Nikki in the middle of it, but I don’t regret that I’ve broken off and started my life over. It’s healthier for me this way. I wasn’t true to myself while I was with her, and I couldn’t keep living a lie. In the end, all of us are better off—Nikki will grow up in two happy households instead of a single toxic one. It’s worth the fight if only for that.”
“Is that why you’re here in Aurora, now?” Mal asked, then paused and refocused his question. “You said you wanted to start fresh.”
“More or less.” An introspective look muted some of Vincent’s enthusiasm, and he glanced down at the menu again. “Work offered to transfer me to its sister location in Aurora. I was unhappy back home, so I decided to go for it. Melissa—Nikki’s mom—was less than thrilled, but we worked out a custody arrangement that all three of us agreed was fair, and I packed up and moved with Nikki. It’s only been two weeks, and the house is still in boxes, but I’m happier than I’ve been in a very long time.” Vincent lifted his gaze from the menu and met Mal’s eyes. “Thank you for coming out with me tonight.”
The words were ice water on a hot summer’s day. They tumbled through Mal, contouring his throat, his lungs, and his heart, until he was so aware of himself that even the gentle breeze that stirred the hairs on the back of his neck sent goosebumps plunging down his arms. “You’re welcome.”
The air had changed. It had happened in gradual, unhurried moments, in subtle ways that left Mal unaware of what was happening until he was in too deep to escape it. What had started as a casual conversation had become charged with meaning. The chemistry he’d felt in the storage closet, when Vincent had pinned him to the wall and expertly guided him through the early stages of his heat, had returned. It filled Mal with the same kind of delightful chill, constricted the muscles in his back and chest in the same, delicate way, and opened his mind to the possibility that the impossible might not stay that way for much longer.
He wanted to speak—to tell Vincent how glad he was that Vincent had found his way back to Aurora—but before he could, the waiter returned. Scrambling, Mal selected something at random off the menu, prayed he’d like it, and waited until the man had gone to return his attention to Vincent. By then, the charge in the air had lessened, although it hadn’t completely vanished.
Mal didn’t think it ever would.
“But, while we’re on the topic of work…” Vincent folded his arms on the table and leaned forward just enough so that he looked comfortable. “If I’m being honest, I invited you out tonight because I wanted to talk about the trial.”
Oh.
Of course.
Mal swallowed the saliva that had pooled in his mouth from out of nowhere and nodded. It made sense that Vincent would want to talk business. Mal hadn’t anticipated meeting him at the clinic, and he was sure that it had to be an awkward situation for Vincent, who hadn’t been expecting him, either.
“Right. I understand.” Mal offered him a reassuring smile despite the compacting sense of defeat that flattened his enthusiasm. “It’s a little awkward.”
“I want to be clear with you, not to frighten you, and not to make you feel indebted to me…” Vincent’s lips twitched with hesitance, like he was afraid if he spoke too soon, he’d say the wrong thing and ruin everything. “… but to make sure that you understand where I’m coming from, and why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
Mal said nothing. He couldn’t. A feeling lingered in the air that told him Vincent had left words unspoken. He’d wait for them.
“I should have had you excused from the trial,” Vincent said. Tension pinched his shoulders, disrupting his cool, composed appearance. “There needs to be a divide between physician and patient, and what we shared at the wedding… well…” He sighed. “As much as I’d like to argue that it’s an ambiguous gray area, I’m not sure the policing party from the Science and Ethics Advisory Group would say the same.”
Try as he might, Mal couldn’t stop his heart from leaping into his throat. Vincent had said “should,” but the idea that he might be denied the treatment he wanted because he’d shared a moment of passion with a stranger was too cruel to shoulder.
Vincent continued before he could speak. “I chose not to say anything.”
Mal looked him over, searching his face for clues as to what was coming next. To know that the fate of his future had been in jeopardy earlier that afternoon was jarring. The happiness he wanted was so close, but it wasn’t certain. Mal had to remember it.
He did his best to work himself down from his fear while Vincent expounded on what he’d said.
“I remembered how you were in the storage closet,” Vincent admitted. He reached for his glass of water and set it in front of him, tracing his fingers around the perimeter of the glass. “In heat, desperate, clearly prepared for what was to come, but still willing to risk being out in public… and when I read your medical charts, and I saw what you’d been through…”
