“You don’t eat Danishes?”
“I eat savory and not sweet,” he said as he pulled to a stop in front of the doctor’s office.
Before I could reply to his crazy comment, he was out of the truck and rounding the hood again.
When he arrived at my door, he pulled it open and reached for my nursing bag with my lunch and a change of clothes, just in case I had a similar day to yesterday.
With everything in his hands but my coffee, he walked with me to the door and waited with me while I unlocked the door.
He walked inside with me, set all of my stuff down on the staff counter in the breakroom, and then turned to me.
Before I could tell him thank you for the help, he had my coffee on the counter next to the other stuff I’d brought and had me backed against said counter. His body pinned mine there as he cupped my face and studied me with expressive eyes.
“I don’t know what has you stressing,” he said. “But I’ll figure it out.”
I refused to show any weakness. Or let him know what was actually stressing me out.
Instead I said, “I promise, I’m fine.”
He snorted and pressed a kiss to my mouth.
I sank into the kiss, unable to stop myself.
We only pulled away because a throat was cleared behind us. “Gentry, this is a location where children are present. You can’t have sex here.”
Gentry pulled back at Odin’s words, a grin on his perfect mouth. “We weren’t going to go that far, bud. But if we ever do, we’ll be sure to keep it to after hours.”
He winked at me as he walked away, clapping Odin on the back as he left.
Odin studied me for a long moment before he said, “It’s good to see my friend happy.”
Startled, I met Odin’s eyes and said, “What?”
“He’s happy,” he repeated. “Only known him since we all started our new lives over here, but he’d never smiled until you got here.”
My shoulders sank. “I’m the reason he didn’t smile.”
Odin shrugged. “You might be part of the reason. Or the instigating factor. But from what he’s shared, you were the one getting attacked at the time. Any man that’s a man at all, he’ll save a woman from getting attacked. His course was set the moment he came outside and saw what was happening. It’s just unfortunate that the man that retaliated didn’t have a conscience. Man deserves to be dead for killing his kid.”
I rubbed at my chest. “He does.”
“But we choose our battles,” Odin added. “And doesn’t look like Gentry’s battling anything anymore.”
With those parting words, our day started.
But his words didn’t leave me all morning.
Having a bit of downtime before we started for the day, I hopped into the patient records room and started to look around.
Armed with a list of names that I’d pulled out of a file folder on Gentry’s kitchen table that morning, I started to look through the records, hoping to find the kids that’d disappeared in our area’s names.
I struck gold with the first two and the last one on the list.
I’d just headed out of the records room when I ran into Bernice. “Hey.”
She looked worn out, like me but worse.
“You okay?” I asked.
