Adore Me (Austin Singles 3)

“No one is to go into my office.”

Her cheeks blushed. It was Grace who had let Mr. Phillips in this morning.

Once I was in the elevator, I pulled up my text messages from Morgan. The last one said she had one more patient. A new patient. I knew she would most likely not be finished until after lunch, but I sent her a text anyway.

Me: I can’t stop thinking about you. About last night. About the last few days. Will you come over to my place and stay the night?

I pushed one hand through my hair as I used the other one to shove my phone into my pocket.

I needed to see her. Feel her against my body. It was driving me insane. All of it. The way I felt about her. The need to protect her, figure out how to make both of us let go of the past and focus on the future. On us. The hardest thing right now was trying to figure out a way to tell her about the baby and the night my mother died.

“Shit.” I mumbled as the elevator doors opened. I walked out and across the lobby to the Starbucks. Nash was sitting at a table, staring out over Congress Avenue. He wasn’t people watching. He was lost in thought.

“Hey,” I said, slipping into a chair.

He turned, and gave me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Sliding the coffee to me, he let out a breath.

“You’ve got to explain this, Nash, because I cannot wrap my head around why you didn’t tell Morgan about the baby.”

His face went pale, and he looked down at the table.

“I told her I loved her last night.”

Nash’s head jerked up, and he pulled his brows in tight. “Why would you do that?”

I let out a harsh laugh. “Because I do love her.”

“You love her? You know after a few weeks? Hell, two months ago you were chasing skirts, and now you say you love my sister.”

Anger pulsed through my veins. “You don’t fucking know what I was doing two months ago. Or four months or, hell, four years ago. I already told you, I think I fell in love with her the first time I met her.”

He stared at me before exhaling. I could

tell he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. I could only imagine the guilt he, himself, was dealing with by withholding the truth about Mike’s baby.

“I’m sorry. It’s just—she’s my sister, and I care about her.”

“And I care about her too. That’s why I can’t keep this from her, Nash. I vowed to her we wouldn’t keep things from each other. I need you to give me a damn good reason you didn’t tell her.”

Nash turned and looked out the window. He shook his head and closed his eyes. What he said next caught me totally by surprise.

LISA PRICE, A new patient of mine, sat in front of a canvas and moved her brush with ease. She wasn’t the best of painters, but she was trying. As she painted, I sat off to the side, working on the painting of Blake in the gazebo. Most of the patients took a few sessions before they opened up to me. Hell, before they even uttered one word, but Lisa soon set her brush down and stared out the large picture window. I had a bird feeder outside the studio window, and the patients seemed to be calmed by the birds and their singing.

Following her gaze, I smiled at the blue jay sitting on the very top of the feeder. He swooped down and got a piece of corn that was on the ground. I loved birds, and I might have been slightly obsessed with feeders, but my patients enjoyed watching them, too, and many ended up painting the birds. It was a win-win for me.

Picking up where I left off on the painting, I waited patiently while I worked. Then out of the blue, Lisa started to talk.

“I loved being his wife.”

Stopping what I was doing, I quietly set my brush down. When she’d made the initial appointment, she had told me she hadn’t served in the military, but that her husband had served. She had gotten my name from a friend whose husband was a current patient of mine. She opted not to give me the name of the referral, and I had thought that was strange, but I let it go.

“How long have you been married?”

“It would have been ten years this July. He died six years ago.”

“I’m so sorry, Lisa.”

She smiled and shrugged. “I have these dreams he’s standing over my bed with this big smile on his face. I sit up and ask if he’s come back, and before he answers, he looks to the right and sees another man in my bed. Then he turns and walks away from me.”