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As Skylar placed an order for the third book in the series, Carly still felt on edge. Skylar now knew—how much longer before everyone else figured it out?
CHAPTER NINE
DR. ANNLIVEDONthe eastern coast of Port Serenity, directly across from the lighthouse on a small inlet that was easier to get to by boat than car. She claimed to love the solitude and being surrounded by nature. She had a simple motorboat that she used to get back and forth to work every day, but Oliver opted for the dirt side road path to the woman’s house that evening for their taco Tuesday nondate.
In the passenger seat, Tess bounced as they traversed the bumpy, uneven terrain. “The boat would have been easier,” she said.
“Off-roading’s fun,” he countered.
“Tell that to my bladder,” she said, squeezing her knees together and doing a squirmy-looking dance.
Oliver laughed. “Hey, you were the one who wanted to do this, remember?” He wouldn’t admit that the ride was doing a number on his bladder as well. Only his sweating over the fact that he was being ambushed into his first evening with a woman in years made him forget that he too had to pee.
Tess turned in the seat to scan him and frowned. “You didn’t put gel in your hair like I told you to.”
“I was out,” he said. He hadn’t put gel in his hair for three years. The old container sitting in the bathroom drawer was probably sticky goo by now.
His daughter leaned closer and sniffed him. “You didn’t put on cologne either,” she scolded.
He sighed. “Are you saying I stink?” He refused to act like he understood where this was coming from. She wanted him to look nice, smell nice, for Dr. Ann... Because she wanted this to be a date. Oliver was determined to keep it as platonic as possible.
“Dad! You need to put some effort in.”
“Actually, I don’t.” He pulled the truck into the lot next to Dr. Ann’s modest bungalow and cut the engine. “I know what you’re trying to do, Tess, but it’s not going to work.”
She pouted, but then her little face lit up with a mischievous grin.
Damn, he’d just inadvertently issued a challenge to his ten-year-old.
“Come on. Let’s go,” he said. The faster they could eat, the faster he could make a polite excuse to call it a night.
It had been a day—with the property developer’s untimely visit and finding the romance novel in Tess’s room—and he wasn’t exactly in the mood for this.
As he climbed out of the truck, he saw Tess lean around the seat to grab something from the back. When she emerged, her face was covered by the biggest bouquet of wildflowers he’d ever seen, fastened with her hair ribbon. “Where did they come from?”
“I picked them from the yard.” She tried to force them into his hands but Oliver refused.
“You picked them. You can give them to her.”
He was already regretting this evening. He pulled at the collar of the shirt Tess insisted he wear. He should have continued to ignore her suggestions and gone with his comfy cotton T-shirt. The dress shirt, the flowers—it was already too much.
How was he ever going to start dating again when right now just looking presentable and being polite for an evening with a woman was more than he was comfortable with?
Dr. Ann opened the door with a wide smile. She was wearing a T-shirt and casual-looking lounge pants and Oliver had never felt so relieved in his life. She hadn’t dressed up for the occasion. He sniffed the air around her—no perfume and no extra makeup beyond what she’d been wearing when he’d picked Tess up from camp. All good signs. “Hi. Come on in.”
“Hi, Dr. Ann,” he said.
“Oh please—just Ann,” she said.
Tess entered first, handing her the flowers. “These are from Dad,” she said.
Ann took them and smiled, smelling them. She winked at him over the bouquet. “Thank you, Oliver. Very kind.”
Now he felt bad that they weren’t from him and she knew they weren’t from him.
They were just flowers. People brought flowers to other people for lots of different reasons. Anniversaries, birthdays, Mother’s Day...funerals.
His gut tightened as his real aversion to the flowers emerged.
