Her giggles had me doing the same until I glanced around and noticed we’d caught the bartender’s eye again. I kept staring this time, and he winked before grinning and turning toward the opposite end of the bar. Mina watched the exchange as I shook my head and took another mimosa from the flight. This one was green with a cherry and orange slice on the rim.
“I would love the spicy details, of course. Did his possessiveness fully emerge during naughty time, or did you see an undiscovered tender side that only your touch could reveal?”
“My touch? You could write romance, saying stuff like that.”
“Now there’s an idea.” Mina wiped underneath her eyes, frowning at the smudge of mascara from laughing, before tapping her pointer finger to her lips. “An exotic romance ina tropical paradise. Maybe a murder mystery with a side of gruesome shark attacks and ending with a threesome.”
“That’s quite the synopsis, but I’ll bet you could pull it off,” I said, finishing my last bite and setting my fork on the empty plate.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Now, ready to share the nitty-gritty details?”
“Maybe not all the details,” I said, finishing the mimosa and pushing the flight toward Mina so she could have the last one. “But I don’t know where to go from here.”
“I get it. Let’s talk.”
She pushed her plate away and leaned forward, like I was about to share a scandalous secret. I bit the inside of my cheek as I worked through my thoughts, grateful I’d made a friend I felt comfortable sharing with, even if she planned to leave the country soon. It didn’t mean we had to stop talking, only that we’d have to be mindful of time zones. The choice was easy, and as I started filling her in, waving my hands around like a lunatic, I knew it was the right one.
Chapter 24
“The doctor guycalled for you,” Dad said before I’d even opened the front door all the way and stepped inside. My shoulders slumped, and any lingering euphoria I felt frombrunch faded. “I said you’d call him later. He seemed eager to talk. Whatever you did, keep doing it.”
“Daaaaad,” I chastised, stretching out the word in the hopes he’d understand my frustration. “We barely spoke, and I never agreed to call him in the first place.”
“Oh? Because he said your conversation at the bakery was too short for his liking.” Dad glanced up from his recliner, pausing the television like he expected me to go all weak in the knees.
“For his liking? Really? What about my liking?”
No thanks. Let’s leave that drama nonsense to Mina’s first bestseller.
I grimaced and shook my head, laying my purse on the table by the door and putting my keys and the twenty different travel brochures Mina shoved into my hands into the giant scallop shell my middle sister had brought Dad from some exotic island she visited with her husband.
“The conversation lacked, and I couldn’t even remember his first name. I don’t plan on calling him back, Dad. Please drop this.”
He didn’t.
“But I only want what’s best for you, and who’s better than a heart surgeon?”
I sighed, sitting on the couch as he turned to face me, scowling. My fingers pressed against my temple, and I closed my eyes, pushing his expression from my mind.
“How about someone I have a connection with? Someone I’m attracted to? Perhaps someone I share interests with?”
Someone who kept my bed warm last night?
I kept my eyes closed and leaned against the back of the sofa, letting the soft cushion help melt the tension in my shoulders.
“Well, you didn’t pick so well the first time and it’s not like you have a connection with anyone else right now,” he huffed,and I cracked an eye open, watching as he snatched the remote from the side table but didn’t take the TV off mute.
“Thanks for that lovely reminder that I wasted the last decade of my life, Dad. Listen, I’m not going to argue with you, but I would appreciate you leaving this thing with your doctor alone. I’m so far from interested I might as well be in Antarctica. Now, I have a couple hours’ worth of work to finish, so I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be back to fix your lunch later.”
“Oh, I have lunch taken care of,” a familiar voice called from the kitchen. “But I would like to know why it sounds so grumpy in there. I thought you were going to explain squash to me, Cam, even though it sounds too much like tennis for my liking.” Bev stepped into the living room, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen and tugging off an oven mitt.
“Hey there, Summer. I made low-sugar cinnamon rolls with honey ham and cheese sliders.”
“More like low-flavor rolls,” Dad said, crossing his arms.
“Enough from the peanut gallery. Have you finished your leg exercises?” she asked, propping a hand on her hip and arching a brow in an eerily similar gesture to someone I’d recently become intimately acquainted with.
“Yeah. They’re done. I’m going to need a damn massage or pain killers now, though.”
