Page 61 of Late Harvest

“Meds? Are you managing a chronic condition? Anything I can help with? I can get you in with our best specialists⁠—”

Bash laughed, holding up a hand. “Easy there, Scrub Angel. Simmer down. Remember I told you I have ADHD?” She nodded, the frown still there. He wanted to kiss it away almost as much as he wanted to kiss her pursed lips. Almost. “The story is, I diagnosed myself as an adult one day on set. One of my co-stars had just had her kid diagnosed. Poor little guy sounded just like me in grade school. I was curious, so I read up on it. Turns out I’d been living with ADHD, and managing through it—unmedicated—my entire life.

“As I read more and learned more, it was a fucking epiphany. You know in school where there’s this hard concept and you can’t figure it out? And then someone explains it the right way, and suddenly it all makes sense and you wonder why you couldn’t see it before? That’s what happened to me. At thirty-two.

“Got in with a doctor, she verified the diagnosis, we tested some meds until I found what worked best…and Bob’s your uncle.”

“Bob’s my…what?” Arabella was just watching him, brows nearing her hairline, a look of amazement on her face. “Did you say all that in two breaths?”

“Maybe? Anyhow, Bob’s your uncle. It just means ‘and there you have it.’”

“Why the hell wouldn’t you just say that?” she grumbled.

“Because what’s the fun in saying that when you can say things like Bob’s your uncle? I mean, c’mon, that’s a great phrase.” He grinned and winked. It was fun to yank her chain.

“If you say so.” Arabella rolled her eyes—she’d sprain her optic nerve at the rate she was going with him—and made a note on whatever she was working on, her fingers flying across the keys in a pleasing tapping sound.

She nodded at her note—adorable—and looked back up. “I wondered if that’s what it was. Well, in good news for you, thankfully a lot of the stigma is gone. We’re normalizing all the different patterns of healthy brains. We all work differently—there’s finally recognition of that. Interesting though. I don’t remember reading about you having ADHD.”

Now Bash’s eyebrows flew up. “You go on entertainment sites?”

“Pfffft.” Arabella waved a hand. “No. But we have a variety of magazines in the surgeons’ lounge. Sometimes if I have a gap between cases and I need to breathe, it’s just the thing to help me unhook my mind. Although, I don’t know ninety percent of the people they talk about. All these reality stars and whatnot. But I pay attention when some of the, uh,”—she bit her lip—“older actors are highlighted.”

“Arabella Remington, are you calling me…le gasp…old?” He clutched his pretend pearls.

She kicked at him with her foot and he grabbed it, then slowly began kneading the smooth skin across the ball of her foot.

“What are you—oooh, that feels good.” She sunk down a bit and he applied both hands to the effort. Arabella’s eyes rolled back and she closed them. “Why does that feel sooooo gooood?” she moaned. “Don’t stop, Sebastian. Please...”

Bash’s poor cock, already randy and deprived, kicked up a mad storm in his pants, trying to get in on the action. “One of my vows was to always rub your feet, Arabella,” he teased. “I know the long hours you have on your feet, and a foot massage makes all the difference.”

“Mmmm,” she moaned. “How do you know this wizardry?”

Bash laughed. “Remember the day I met you? The greatest day of my life, by the way. When I told you I played a surgeon?”

Arabella cocked her head and smiled. Bash could only hope she wasn’t remembering the ‘happy surgerying’ comment that had fallen so tragically out of his mouth.

“I interviewed a few surgeons as research. One told me her feet ached horribly at the end of a long day and her wife always rubbed them for her. It was part of their love language. I pay attention.” He pressed his thumbs into her arch and her back mirrored her foot, lifting off the couch.

“Sebassstian,” she moaned again.

Trying to keep his focus so he didn’t leap across the couch, rip her clothes off, and bury his face in her pussy, he cast around for something to say. Anything. “It’s how I learned the heinie-lick.”

Her eyes drifted open, the corners of her mouth lifting. “I hope you’re kidding with that.”

“Of course I am.” He played up his pretend umbrage, making her laugh. “But I really did learn the Heimlich. The whole premise was that I was a surgeon who saved my hospital from a mass shooter, but in an early scene, I had to perform the Heimlich. I wanted to be authentic in the depiction, and I figured it was a useful skill to have.”

Arabella pulled her foot away and Bash pouted at the loss. “So that’s what the headline meant from last week, after the restaurant. About life imitating art.”

He nodded, pulling her foot back and resuming his ministrations. “When I realized you were choking, I just…sprang into action. I think it was muscle memory.”

She bit the inside of her lip. “I’m grateful, Sebastian. Even though you looked amazing in that photo and I looked like a koi fish begging for snacks.”

Bash snickered and she joined in, mumbling ‘heinie-lick’ to herself and chuckling.

“I’m good at that too.”

“At what?”