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“He mentioned that he’s planning to attend your Thanksgiving dinner at the Bouncing Ball. Said he’s always gone out for dinner on Thanksgiving, usually invited clients, but with the baby... He doesn’t want Diamond Rose to spend any holidays without family.”
Tamara would be at her parents’. She’d told him that when he’d invited her to accompany him to Mallory’s dinner—since she and Mallory were friends and all.
Things were just getting too complicated. She couldn’t not go to her parents. And she absolutely could not take Flint there with her, Diamond Rose aside, even if she wanted to.
“You’re thirty-three, Mal. You want a family of your own. And there’s no reason you can’t have ten children if you want them. But you need to get started.”
“You seriously want me to ask him out?” Mallory asked again.
“At least try to spend some time with him at dinner on Thanksgiving. Ask him to help. He’s a great cook.”
“He’s cooked for you?”
Tamara ignored that. “I think the two of you are perfect for each other.”
“Seriously?” Mallory repeated, leaning forward, looking her in the eye.
“Yes.” She didn’t hesitate. This was the right thing to do. “Unless... I mean, depending on... My dad is still afraid that he’s the one who stole from him.”
“What do you think?”
Shrugging, Tamara took a sip of her wine. “The whole way he is with the baby and all, which has nothing to do with this, but... I don’t see it,” she said. “At the same time, there’s absolutely nothing popping up on anyone else.”
“So what do you do now? Hire a detective?”
“I tried to get my dad to do that. He’s adamantly against bringing in anyone else. The thief, whoever it is, hasn’t done anything in over a month. Dad had some special notification put on one of his passwords, and the second anyone signs in as him, he’ll know. But he’s hoping it doesn’t come to that.”
“How much longer are you going to be at the company?”
“I’m about done there.” Which was another reason she had to get Flint and Mallory together.
“So you won’t be seeing Flint anymore.”
“I don’t see him much at the office anyway. We’re on different floors.”
“Do you see him outside the office?”
“Only as a kind of informant,” she said, confessing what bothered her the most. “I ask him questions about the business, in my efficiency expert role.”
“But he thinks it’s more than that.”
“Just friends.” Tamara sat back and drank some of her wine. Thought maybe they should look at their menus so their waitress would realize they’d be ready to order soon. They’d sent her off the first time she’d asked. “I swear. Nothing’s happened between us. I’m not kidding. I’ve been thinking all along that you and he belong together. You’d love him if you got to know him. And you already love his little girl.”
Which Tamara could never do.
Even if she wanted to try, she knew she’d go into emotional shutdown.
“You’re falling for him.”
“I am not! How could I? I only met him a few weeks ago.”
“I knew I was in love with Braden the first night I met him.”
A love that had been blown apart, for both of them, by the death of their five-month-old son. They’d been divorced for three years and had found a way to build a good, solid friendship between them.
“And now it’s time for you to find someone else to love,” Tamara said. “To share your life with.”
“Maybe the one it’s time for is you.”
