“Well, next time you go, let me know. Their chicken puffy tacos are the best I’ve ever had. I could eat them every day.”
“Then you’d get sick of them and they wouldn’t be as special,” commented Mitch as he started to clear away the remnants of their dinner.
Nadia stood and started to help him but he pushed her hands away. “I should clean up, I mean you cooked, after all,” she joked.
“Nope, not happening. You’re injured so you need to rest.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m fine. I haven’t had a dizzy spell all night, not to mention my head doesn’t ache at all. I can handle a few takeout boxes and bags.”
“How about we do it together?”
“Okay, that sounds like a plan.” Nadia grabbed the bag the food came in so that the empty containers could be put in it, but Mitch beat her to it and had three of the five containers in the bag before she could blink. “Hey, I thought we were doing it together.”
Mitch shrugged and added the other two boxes, before collecting the plates they’d used to eat off. “You’re supervising.”
Nadia opened her mouth to protest more, but gave up. What was the point? It wasn’t a big deal so she didn’t know why she making it out to be one. Having someone do things for her was strange.
After reaching the age of thirteen in her family, her mom taught all the kids how to do their own laundry and they all had to cook one meal a night. In the end mom hardly ever ended up cooking, Nadia was sure that was why she’d have preferred her to stay at home and try and find a job in another Boston hospital after the one she wanted didn’t work out. Not because Mom wanted the best for her, but because Nadia could cook a couple meals a week. Not sure how that would’ve worked out with the shifts she would’ve had at a busy hospital, but her mom hadn’t thought that far ahead. She loved her mom, but her mom really disliked cooking. Her parents probably ate out every night, now.
The only reason Nadia had chosen to go to a Boston based college and medical school was because her parents offered to help pay for her school expenses. Of course, her older siblings had all over-achieved and had received full ride scholarships to their colleges of choice. Nadia was smart, just not the level of her brothers and sister. But she’d worked hard and got her degree and was a damn good doctor if she did say so herself.
“Boston, are you okay?” Mitch’s concerned voice penetrated her mind and snapped her out of her trip down memory lane.
“What? Yeah fine. Just thinking about…” Mitch didn’t need to know her thoughts about her family.
“Thinking about?” He waved his hand in the air in aplease continuemotion.
“Nothing much, just my family.”
Mitch canted his head to the side. “Oh, did you call them to let them know you were in the hospital? Are they going to come and visit you?”
“Yes and no.” The conversation she’d had with her parents had been short and brief. She’d assured them that she was fine, and she really was. Her plan was to go back tomorrow afternoon for her scheduled shift. She’d visit Cerise in the morning but she didn’t need any time off to recover.
“Did you want them to visit?” he asked and she examined the question closely. Had she wanted her parents to come out?
Yes. Yes, she would have.
Nadia wanted to show them around the cute house she shared with Cerise. Show her parents the state-of-the-art facility she worked in. Prove to them she didn’t live or work in a hick town. That it wasn’t a one building hospital and she hadn’t made the biggest mistake of her career. They hadn’t come out and said it to her face, but she knew they thought it.
One of the reasons she’d taken the job was because of the opportunity to work with more serious cases than the vomiting adults and children she would’ve likely dealt with in Boston. Her diagnostic skills had improved in the six months she’d been in Kerrville and she could admit to herself that she really liked living in a small town. Kerrville had everything she needed and if she wanted to go to a bigger city San Antonio and Austin were both only an hour or so away. She loved Boston, but the traffic and cost of living was getting so out of hand. If she hadn’tbeen living at home, she’d be living in a small one-bedroom apartment, probably not in a good part of town.
“I gather from your silence you don’t have a great relationship with your family?” Mitch asked when the silence dragged on between them.
“It’s not that, it’s just, I’m enjoying finding myself out of the shadows of my brothers and sister.”
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
Nadia laughed softly. “Isn’t there with every family?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” Mitch glanced at his watch and Nadia didn’t want him to go. She wanted him to stay a little longer.
“Can I get you another drink?” she asked in the hopes he’d say yes.
Her heart dropped when he shook his head. “I’d like to but I can’t. I need to get back to the ranch. Dawn comes early and I need to catch up on what I didn’t do today.”
Guilt hit her, the reason he hadn’t been able to work today was because of her. She walked over to him, went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for giving up your day today and looking after me. You didn’t have to.”
Mitch slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, she relished the way he held her. “It wasn’t a hardship.”
