And listening for her soft snores in the next room.
“Sadie!”Naomi whispered in surprise when she answered my tap at her bedroom window. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”
It was so late, I’d expected to have to wake her up from a dead sleep. But her eyes were bright and alert on the other sideof her now opened window, and her delicate face was haloed by a strange, faint light—something cool and blue that couldn’t possibly be candle glow. I blinked at it, confused.
“Sadie?” Naomi asked again. “Everything okay? I haven’t seen you since spring. Your mom just kept saying you were too busy to come to church or see anybody.”
My eyes swung back to hers, the reason I’d come echoing louder than my curiosity about the blue glow.
Anywhere but here.
“I want to sign up, too,” I told her on a great burst of breath, fingering the baby wolf in my pocket. The only one left.
“I want to sign up for the Bridal Exchange.”
No, Thank You
Claudine
Claudine hadn’t meantto end up at a hotel bar in Toronto, celebrating her big news alone—but there she was, in scrubs, ordering something called a Kir Royale while a Sarah McLachlan song about remembering played overhead.
“You passed one of those nursing exams that come with a big pay raise, didn’t you?” the bartender guessed when he set down a tall flute filled with a bubbly dark-red drink.
Claudine raised an eyebrow. “What gave me away?”
He grinned. “The badge. And the drink order. Pretty girl like you orders her own bubbly drink—means she’s got something she really wants to celebrate.”
With a chagrinned glance down, Claudine realized she was still wearing her RN badge. She’d just come off a twelve-hour shift at Toronto General when she found the letter from the CNO—the regulatory body that administered NP licenses—waiting in her mailbox.
She wasn’t in the habit of smiling back at flirty men in service jobs, but she couldn’t stop herself from preening a little as sheinformed him, “Just found out I passed the Nurse Practitioner exam on my first try.”
“Then you definitely deserve this drink. Congratulations!” The bartender offered her a wink that started off complimentary but turned into a leering up-and-down look. “But you’re celebrating alone? No boyfriend?”
“No boyfriend,” she confirmed. Her lips tightened as she picked up the flute, averting her eyes so this guy wouldn’t mistake her answer for having a chance with her.
“The devil done cursed ya with that kind of face dutty boys like,”her mother had warned Claudine before she left Kingston for the University of Toronto. “Be careful up there in Canada now, Deenie. Find yourself a nice, stable doctor, and don’t go messing about with any those rude boys.”
Good advice. That she’d followed. Until her perfect med-student boyfriend disappeared from her life with nothing but a cryptic email. No dating after that.
And, she’d quickly learned that her kind of singular focus didn’t attract girlfriends. Most women her age were more concerned with work gossip and TV dramas than their life trajectories. No other RN in the Critical Care Department had mapped out a 25-year plan to become a hospital director.
And since her mother would have already gone to bed back in Jamaica, there was no one who understood her enough to celebrate her achieving the second step of that plan tonight.
Not that it mattered.
Another piece of her mother’s guidance echoed in her head:All ya need is you, Deenie. Make that a stone ya keep in your pocket.
Mentally rubbing the pebble she always kept in the pocket of her scrubs, Claudine raised her glass to the bartender to let him know, “All I need is me.”
“Feminist, huh?” The bartender huffed, but then the lothario look came right on back. “How about letting me buy you that drink anyway?”
Claudine fingered her silver cross, her face hardening. Apparently, he had managed to mistake her declaration of independence and a clipped two-word answer to his question about whether or not she had a boyfriend for an invitation.
“No, thank you.” She set the no longer quite so delicious drink down. Why did men have to ruin everything?
“I insist.” He slid a cocktail napkin toward her. “And if you want to thank me, you can write down your number. I get off in a couple of hours.”
Claudine opened her mouth to inform him she had cash to pay for her drink—and zero desire to thank him.
