AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She laughed, a sexy, musical sound that drew him in in spite of himself. “I was worried about you.”
“I was fine. By morning anyway. There was nothing fine about me the night of the wedding. I should never have gone to your place.”
“No worries. I invited you. Seems like a good thing you didn’t try to walk the rest of the way home.”
It was probably true, and wasn’t that admirable too? Sawyer’s embarrassment flared.
“I’m never drinking tequila again,” he said. “I’m old enough to know better and then some.”
“So you said Saturday night,” Mariah said lightly. “About thirty times.”
He shook his head.
“Hey,” she said, and she startled him by hooking her arm through his. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. We drank too much. We had fun. No one got hurt. It’s all good.”
He wished he could take it so lightly. She made it tempting to figure out how to let it go.
Mariah didn’t immediately release her arm, and though he shouldn’t, Sawyer savored her touch. Just for a couple of minutes, he told himself.
The silence stretched on as they walked the last block, and he became aware of how close they were and how bad of an idea that was. He slowed and took his cell phone out of his pocket. As he’d hoped, she put space between them and let go of his arm.
“Thought I had a text,” he said. “I might have to go check on a patient yet tonight.”
Which wasn’t entirely true. Yeah, he was throwing up roadblocks. Being with her made his poor judgment, his regret impossible to ignore. A lot of guys wouldn’t think twice about being an idiot for a night, but he wasn’t a lot of guys.
He was supposed to be upping his life game. Getting his shit together. His general surgery position was decent, but he was from a family of overachievers, and even his little sister was primed to leave him in the dust. His mom had gone out on a limb to give him an in, a connection that could help land him a better job with more responsibility. He was past the point of wild partying and impetuous decisions. In theory.
The plan was to handle his fuck-up like a man, apologize to Mariah, and get on with his life, but he found it hard to say no to this redhead.
4
They arrived at the juice bar. Sawyer opened the door for Mariah and avoided catching her scent as she passed so closely.
“What’s good?” he asked her as she went straight to the clerk at the counter with no hesitation about her order.
“Almost everything. I’m getting the Triple Berry Crush.”
“Make it two.”
“I know you,” the scrawny teenaged boy behind the counter said to Sawyer. “You’re my mom’s surgeon.”
Sawyer scanned his memory to match the face with a patient. “Beverly Adams is your mom, right?”
“Yeah.” The kid grinned. “She sings your praises to all her friends, man. She’s like a new person. Like an alien took over her body or something. In a good way, I mean.”
“As long as it’s a good way,” Sawyer said with a smile. Procedures like the one Bev Adams had tended to give people a new attitude, he found.
“So two Triple Berry Crushes, right?”
“Thanks, Tanner,” Mariah, obviously a regular, said.
Sawyer was watching the boy prepare their concoctions, mildly curious what he’d ordered, when he realized Mariah was eyeing him from the side. He silently questioned her with a dip of his brows. She shrugged and smiled, ignoring his query and getting them both straws from the dispenser.
As Tanner finished up their drinks on the blender, Sawyer pulled out his wallet. He wasn’t able to date this woman, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to make her pay for his drink.
“Thank you,” Mariah said as they turned away from the counter. “Next one’s on me.”
And … he needed to clear up the misconception that there’d be a next one. “Mariah…”
