AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It sounds as if you’ve made your decision.”
“I just…I don’t know.” She massaged her brow. “Feeling this discombobulated is completely foreign to me, and I do not like it one bit. I pride myself on having my shit together at all times, but not these days. And now I have this thing with my dad to contend with.”
Drew frowned. “I thought you were done with your dad?”
“So did I.” She swirled her spoon around in the cold bisque, but didn’t sample it. “April texted me while I was in surgery. She said that Kenneth wants to meet with me, to talk things over.” She hunched her shoulders. “Maybe me calling him an asshole to his face affected him more than I first thought.” She finally took a spoonful of the bisque. “Oh, yeah, I can definitely get used to this. This is delicious.”
She alternated between the crepe and the soup. After taking a sip of sparkling grape juice from the champagne glass, she asked, “Are you really willing to move back to Austin just to be with me?”
“You ask that as if it isn’t reason enough. It is, London.”
An unhurried smile slowly made its way across her lips. “Liking you is a lot more enjoyable than not liking you,” she said.
Drew swallowed past the lump that lingered in his throat before asking, “How do you feel about loving me?”
Her pause was agonizingly long, but then her smile broadened. “It doesn’t feel nearly as scary as I thought it would,” she finally answered.
The intense, vibrant emotions that crashed into him left him breathless. Drew braced his hands on the table and leaned over it, then captured her lips in a slow, deep, decadent kiss.
“I’ve been in love with the idea of you for more than a decade,” he whispered against her lips. “But now, after getting to know therealyou, to say I’m in love feels inadequate. I’m not sure what the words are for how I feel, I just know it’s a feeling I never want to lose.”
34
Drew blew across his steaming cup of black coffee before taking a sip. He felt a breeze whiz past his head as Samantha Gomez’s pacing increased. She and the rest of the team had been camped out in his apartment since seven this morning. They’d entered the phase of an audit when everything feels out of sorts yet as if it is all coming together at the same time. There was no getting around the intensity of this point in the process.
Yet his mind repeatedly wandered to the condo listings his Realtor had forwarded him last night. All he could think about was finding a place to live that would keep him as close as possible to London.
Focus.
He could not allow any distractions to knock him off his game, even one as tempting as London. He and his team had poured hundreds of hours into examining Travis County Hospital’s finances and operations. Now they were barreling toward the finish line and praying for no stumbling blocks during this final stretch. He owed them his full attention.
“Who’s running the numbers on the recommended equipment purchases for the ortho lab?” Samantha asked.
Drew reached for his iPad and pulled up the spreadsheet he’d received via email this morning. He held it aloft.
“Here you go,” he said.
Samantha took the iPad from his hand and continued her pacing.
“Calm down,” Drew said over his shoulder. “You always get like this toward the end of a project, but there’s no need to worry, Sam. The numbers tell the story, and the story is a good one.”
“I know that we’ve done good work here,” she said. “But I can’t help being nervous. It’s just my nature, okay? I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Stop inviting trouble.” Drew caught her arm, putting a halt to her frenetic pacing. “This team has worked its ass off for the past month. Travis County Hospital was on the verge of being sold, and with the recommendations we’re making, not only will they be able to function as the low-cost health-care provider this area needs, but they’ll be able to provide even better services for the entire community. That’s something to be proud of.”
If even one family could be spared the heartache of losing a loved one due to a late diagnosis or inadequate care, his hard work here would have been worth it. It would be a small tribute to his mother’s legacy. If he could save someone else from a similar fate, her dying so young wouldn’t be in vain.
“What the fuck!”
All eyes turned to Josh Hall, who stared intently at his computer with a look of horrified astonishment.
“Oh goodness,” Samantha said. “Is it the other shoe dropping?”
“More like the other Timberland boot,” he said. “And it’s dropping right on our necks.”
Drew pushed back from the table. “What’s the matter?” he asked as he rounded Josh’s seat and looked at his laptop.
Josh set two copies of the document to print before closing out the dialog box, and then he pointed at the text on the screen.
