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I froze for a second, wondering exactly who he meant. It could’ve been any one of my three new boyfriends. Or old boyfriends, as the case may be.
“Which one?” I joked, though I wasn’t joking.
“Tall as a building?” Emmett answered. “Crazy blonde hair?”
“Ah, yes. Luke.”
“He works at the garage, doesn’t he? Tommy’s?”
“It’s not Tommy’s anymore,” I told him. “And he doesn’t just work there, he actually owns it.”
“Ah, a businessman,” Emmett grunted approvingly. He poked me with the pencil he usually kept behind his ear. “You’ll make a good team, the two of you.”
He glanced up at the clock, which I’d made a mental note needed to be replaced as well. It wasn’t as old as the building itself, but it was definitely older than me.
“Might as well finish cleaning the examination room and take off then,” he told me. “I can do the rest.”
“You sure?”
“You wanna argue with an old man?”
“Always,” I poked him back with a fingernail. “Just not about this.”
Less than an hour later I was bidding Emmett goodbye, and reminding him about the new key one last time. Then I was out on the street, making my way to the curb. I hopped into my pale blue Subaru and patted the dash with a happy hand.
“Hello Brenda.”
My car had been one of the only things I brought back with me from California, other than my wardrobe. And most of my surfer girl, endless summer wardrobe wasn’t going to hack it this far north, up here in Washington state.
“Let’s go home.”
I pulled a U-turn and headed downtown, in the direction of the boys’ apartment. I’d been bouncing around between there, Adrian’s new place, and of course, the garage.
You really need your own space though, Kayla.
That I did. Because as much fun as it was spending the night in Warren or Luke or Adrian’s bed — and sometimes more than one in a single night — I still felt disjointed and displaced. I didn’t have a closet, I didn’t have a home, I didn’t have a space I could call my own… and that part kinda sucked.
Know what doesn’t suck though? Having three boyfriends.
I smiled, swinging the wheel to the left. It had been a pretty wild two weeks. A crazy whirlwind of old connections and new beginnings. Of double-dates and triple-dates and satisfying the needs of all three of the gorgeous men in my life… all while trying to fall back into my old job and re-registering with school.
School…
Just walking the campus again had me beaming with happiness and nostalgia.
Hell yes!
Getting back on the path to completing my degree in veterinary medicine had been one of the two stipulations Emmett had given me upon my return. The other: that I allow him to pay for at least part of it.
“I won’t be around forever,” he’d grunted, pointing out the obvious. “And I’m going to needsomeoneto sell this place to when I retire.”
It was an idea he’d always thrown around, back when I worked at the hospital so many years ago. Back then I was far too young to take him seriously, and Emmett still had more dark hairs instead of grey. Running a business wasn’t something I even considered, much lessbuyingone. Especially since I had nothing to offer.
Now however…
Now I could almost see myself taking over and buying the old man out. Running the place exactly the way I’d always imagined it should be, and making all the decisions he never wanted to make. The hospital needed an overhaul, a website, and a decent social media presence. Some local advertising. A few fundraisers and free clinics offered at adoption drives, where I could expand on the client base in ways Emmett never bothered to try.
It wasn’t that he was stubborn, which he was of course. It was more that he was too set in his old ways. Too tired and out of the loop to try new things, which made me the perfect candidate for taking things over, somewhere down the line.
