Page 12 of Touch of Class

“Great.” Izzy squeezed him tightly with one arm as she reached past him with the other to snag a piece of chicken off the counter. “I’m going to go out for the fencing team.”

“The fencing team?” He stood back to look her up and down dramatically, and Daphne did her best to wait patiently for her hug. “Why yes, fencing, of course. Why have I never seen it before? You’re perfect for the sport. Between your mother’s speed and intuition and my own rapier wit, I think you were born for it.”

“Papa.” Izzy rolled her eyes but grinned. “I thought you said I was born for horseback riding.”

He dropped a kiss atop her head. “Greatness can come in many arenas. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some—”

“—have greatness thrust upon them,” she finished for him with a little laugh. “I know. Shakespeare. What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken and mushroom puff pies.”

Izzy’s eyes went wide. “Really? Why?”

“Because it’s my favorite,” Daphne said, “and hello, nothing to see here, just your mother still unhugged.”

Izzy managed to look mildly chagrinned as she wrapped her arms around Daphne’s waist. Daphne rested her chin lightly against her daughter’s dark curls, so much like her own, and noticed, not for the first time, that she no longer had to stoop over to do so.

Izzy stood back and met her eyes. “Did something happen?”

“What? No.”

“It’s okay,” Izzy said, the exuberance filling her voice a moment earlier now gone. “I know Papa always makes your favorite foods to perk you up. Was it a bad day?”

Daphne’s chest tightened, both at the assumption and the truth behind it. It felt entirely too close to assumptions Gillian had likely made, and while she could rail against hers, she had no defense against Izzy’s. Right or wrong, the opinion of her little girl meant the world, so she straightened and caught her by the shoulders. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Izzy eyed her with more suspicion than belief.

“Seriously, something did happen, but it was funny. I had a little kerfuffle getting the mattress into the office, and I had to ask my new neighbor to help me, and it fell over, taking us with it.”

Izzy smiled slightly. “Are they okay?”

“Oh yeah. Better than okay,” Daphne admitted, as if the fact didn’t still burn a little. “She didn’t even mess up her hair. I was in the midst of noticing how completely great she looked, given the circumstances, when I realized I’d seen her somewhere before.”

“Where?” Izzy asked at the same time Hugh said, “You left out the good-looking part earlier.”

“School.” Daphne focused solely on her daughter, realizing she’d been only a year or two older than Izzy the first time she’d seen Gillian.

“Were you friends?”

She shook her head slightly, not wanting to dive back into negativity. “Nope, Gillian and I didn’t run with the same crowds. We’re very different people, but you know what?”

“What?”

She forced a smile. “Sometimes different is a good thing.”

“That session was a triumph, and what’s more—” Robin burst through the door to the waiting room already rolling at full steam.

Gillian glanced up, no longer caught off guard by her energy or her ability to commandeer the attention of everyone in any room. Besides, it wasn’t like she’d interrupted anything enthralling. Eight o’clock on a Thursday night was not exactly party time in a therapy practice. Gillian would’ve already been out the door if not for her complete lack of motivation to move. Instead, she, Tegan, and Brooke had mostly been unwinding in silence.

“I saw our new neighbor,” Robin continued excitedly. “She’s setting up a bed across the hall. Let’s all go make friends, because I think things are about to get freaky up in here.”

Brooke and Tegan exchanged a quick look, then hopped up, but Gillian sank deeper into the reception desk chair. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been anticipating this moment since yesterday. Her friends were bound to meet Daphne eventually, but as much as she’d tried to tell herself everything from “it didn’t matter” to “it might be best to get introductions out of the way” to “no problem could be addressed until it was faced,” nothing offered any peace. And now that the moment had arrived, she battled fight-or-flight instincts pulling her in opposite directions as she weighed her options.

Staying professionally distant seemed the safest choice by far, but she doubted she had it in her to leave questions about the whole “professional cuddler” across the hall eternally unanswered. And not just any professional cuddler, because apparently this was an actual thing more than one person did, but Daphne Milner.

If it had been anyone else, any stranger, she would’ve already initiated a serious conversation, or multiples of them. Questions would be asked, concerns expressed, doubts and boundaries made abundantly clear. She’d never been one to shy away from important dialogue, or even monologues, if need be, but with Daphne … Gillian sighed as she realized she didn’t even know how to characterize the woman in her own brain, much less to the colleagues traipsing across the hall to meet her.

As if to prove her point, Brooke turned back and arched an eyebrow in silent question.