Page 86 of Spiced!

“Of course it is.” She looked back at the cabinet one more time. “You alphabetized it, Brendan. The gauze is now between ‘forceps’ and ‘gloves.’ That’s not even a medically useful order, which tells me you were thinking about something else entirely while you were doing it.”

I looked past her to the cabinet. She was right. The gauze was between the forceps and the gloves.

“I’ll fix it later,” I said.

“No, you won’t. I’ll fix it,” she said. “You do whatever it is you do to prepare for your routine vaccination appointment with a very cute patient and an even cuter owner.” She pushed off the doorframe. Diane’s cackle followed her down the hallway.

At four-fifteen, I washed my hands, checked my jacket pocket for the framed print, and went to wait for my four-thirty. The exam went well. Mofongo was healthy and growing and adorable.

The kiss I planted on Adrian’s lips surprised us both. That had not been part of my plan. When we pulled back, he looked at me like a man who had misplaced every word he’d ever known, which was its own specific reward.

I told him I’d missed him.

That hadn’t been part of the plan either.

Then I asked if I could see him later that night.

He said yes in multiple languages, none of them in the right order, and I kissed him once more, soft and unhurried, savoring the taste of him on my tongue. Then I followed Mofongo and Adrian to the waiting room. Marcus was at the counter chatting with Diane. The moment we appeared, their conversation stopped, and the pair looked our way.

“Have a good evening, Mr. Voss,” Diane said, in a voice that contained an entire document’s worth of information and released none of it.

When the door closed, there was approximately four seconds of blessed silence before Marcus picked up a pen and made a note on something. Diane looked at me standing in the hallway and said nothing, which was louder than anything she could have said. I stepped into an exam room and called my mom.

“Hello, dear,” she answered.

“It’s tonight,” I said without preamble. “I need to know if Stavros—”

“Already handled.”

I stopped. “What do you mean? How could it be already handled?”

“I called him Sunday.”

“Mom.”

“You decide things on Sundays, Brendan. You have decided things on Sundays your entire life. I called Stavros Sunday evening because I knew you’d call me one day this week in a panic. I didn’t want Stavros to be the reason this went sideways.”

She let the silence stretch, rich with maternal satisfaction.

“How did the kiss go?”

“I didn’t say anything about a kiss.”

“No, you didn’t.” She sounded enormously pleased with herself. “You called me from the exam room before you’d even left the building, didn’t you? I know that echo. The scent of sanitizer and dog fur is practically flowing through the phone line. That tells me everything I need to know about how the kiss went.”

“Mom . . . I . . . how . . . I just called you about Stavros.”

“You called me about Stavros because you needed something practical to focus on after something very impractical happened to you.” Another pause. “It was that good, was it?”

“Mom.”

“I’m just asking.”

“I’m not discussing it.”

“You don’t have to discuss it. I’m your mother. I know everything. Besides, your voice is doing the thing.”

I blew out a breath and banged my forehead against the nearest wall. “It’s not doing a thing.”