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Chapter Eighteen
Cole chopped vegetables against the cutting board on the kitchen island while Eva tried to figure out how to make soup from the Eazy Bakez recipe book. “No wonder your momma didn’t want me helping her with Thanksgiving dinner,” she muttered. “I can’t even make a broth.”
He held out his hand. “Let me see.”
Eva slid the book under him, her shoulder heating his, though their arms didn’t meet. “The thing is…” Eva’s lashes rose so that he could see the sincerity in her expression. “I want to be this amazing cook, but, well, you tried my waffles earlier. I’m so sorry about that. MaybeafterI’m married…”
He hated hearing about her glowing dreams of the future, knowing that she’d never reach them with West. The problem was that it seemed the more Cole tried to talk sense into her, the more she dug in her heels.
He’d done what he could. It was none of Cole’s business anyway.
He’d known that from the beginning.
Maybe that was the reason that he was kicking himself right now. He didn’t care about looking stupid, but hedidcare about ruining their friendship. If she was marrying West, she was at least going to be in their lives for a few years until the inevitable divorce. West didn’t have the best track record. He’d stepped out on Liv before they’d called it quits, and Cole didn’t see any sign of West changing his ways.
Cole studied the cheerful highlights of Eva’s hair as they caught the sun, his throat constricting.
He still hadn’t pulled out the big guns yet.
Should he?
It didn’t seem right to air out West’s dirty laundry. Cole was never one for causing pain to avoid more pain later. It just wasn’t his style. His brother Hudson was the one who was born for resetting dislocated shoulders in his veterinarian work, isolating hurt animals and breaking bones so that they would heal right. But Cole? He never had the heart for it.
He groaned and picked up the recipe book. “How hard can following a recipe be?” he asked. They’d have to do their own Thanksgiving dinner this year. He’d thought about just ordering pizza, if his momma was on the mend… but if she wasn’t, then he wouldn’t even bother doing that.
His heart fluttered at the thought of losing her. The afternoon had worn on with no word about his mother’s surgery one way or the other. So far, he carefully kept his thoughts away from anything that hinged on uncertainty. Concentrating on Eva’s troubles had kept his worries off his momma’s survival, strangely enough.
“Is West making it here for Thanksgiving?” he asked, trying to keep his voice disinterested.
She shrugged. “I haven’t heard back from him yet.”
Of course she hadn’t. Eva must’ve read his annoyed look, because she quickly ran to his brother’s defense. “He’s a horrible texter. You know that.”
“You mind if I text him something real quick?”
She pushed her phone at him. “Go for it. He has to look at his texts sometime.”
Cole took a deep breath, trying to dig inside himself to figure out what he really wanted to know. Finally, he just kept it simple: “Hey, this is Cole. What’s the word on Momma?”
The reply was almost immediate: “The surgeon keeps us updated every few hours. There are some complications, but nothing serious.”
Complications?
Cole was trying to keep Eva’s advice close to his heart, and trying not to worry until… well, until he had no choice except to face something bad, but he didn’t like to hear about complications.
“What are the complications?”
“Bleeding, that kind of thing. They say it’s under control.”
He nodded and gave Eva back her phone. He read over her shoulder what she wrote as she texted West back: “This is Eva again. How are you doing? Do you need anything?”
West didn’t write back. She slipped her phone back into her pocket, looking unconcerned, probably to prove to Cole that she and West had the kind of “understanding that went beyond words.” Personally, if Cole was in her shoes, he’d be annoyed at being taken for granted. And worse, he knew that Eva was a romantic. He hated getting a glimpse at her dreams and seeing West take a torch to them.
Cole reached over her head to pull the broth from the top shelf. “How about you use this?”
Her eyes filled with gratitude, and she began to work on the soup, sliding the vegetables that Cole cut up into the pot.
“Be sure to put lots of Slade beef in that,” Cole said. They had a ton; they might as well use it. “No family recipe of ours would be complete without it.”
