The Doctor’s Simple Life (Love Heals All Wounds #3)

8. Sienna

CHAPTER 8

SIENNA

“ L et me stay tonight,” I say as firmly as I can.

But nothing is firm enough for Gramma. She shakes her head. “Don’t be silly. You’ve got an early morning. You don’t need to waste your time fussing over me, honey.”

We’re in the dining room now. Gramma insisted she was feeling okay enough to move and refused to let Reece leave until she’d fed him. Usually, I find the way she looks after people endearing. It was part of why I became a nurse, after all.

But right now, it’s infuriating.

“Gramma, please don’t fight me on this one. I’m staying.”

“I can look after myself just fine.”

“I know you can, but?—”

She interrupts me sternly. It’s hard to be stern with the person who taught you how to do a stern voice to begin with. “Why don’t you walk young Dr. Westbrook home?”

“He lives just around the corner, Gramma. He can walk himself down.”

“Where are your manners?” she scolds me, just a shade above wagging her finger. “It’s only polite to escort him back after he came all this way just for me.”

I decide not to argue with her any further. This is the kind of fight that I never end up winning. I’ll come back later anyway. She can’t really stop me. I don’t want her to be on her own tonight. And whatever she tries to tell me, I know she doesn’t want to be alone either.

“Come on, then.” I sigh, getting to my feet.

“It was lovely to meet you, Mrs. Hale,” says Reece, holding out his hand to shake hers. This polite, kind young man is giving me whiplash. “Don’t think twice about calling if you need me, okay?”

“Thank you,” she says, then waggles her eyebrows at me.

I groan and walk away.

We head out into the night. “I’m sorry,” I say, finally. “Gramma kind of has some old-fashioned ideals.”

“Not that much,” he says, and I frown.

“What? It was pretty old-fashioned to insist that I walk you home.”

“Old-fashioned would have insisted I walk you ,” he says with a shrug.

I haven’t really got an argument for that, so I just say, “Thank you for coming, anyway. You didn’t need to, and I really appreciate it. I’m sorry to have interrupted your evening.”

“Not at all,” he says with a distant smile. “It was better than cable TV.”

“You’re watching cable?” I scoff. Even in this town, I didn’t think anyone still used cable.

“The internet out here is total garbage,” he huffs. “I can’t get any good TV to stream at all.”

“You can’t have it set up right then, can you? The rest of us manage just fine.”

He makes a face of contempt at me. “Do you?”

I feel a sudden urge to laugh at him, but in a friendly kind of way, the kind of teasing you do with people you’re close to.

Close isn’t something that Reece and I could ever be described as, and yet…

In a weird way, tonight has brought us together. I’ve seen a better side of him, and I guess he’s seen a human, family side of me. We’ve both exposed a part of ourselves that I don’t think we wanted the other to see.

“Next, you’ll be telling me I have to buy DVDs,” he mutters, breaking the moment.

“Nobody uses DVDs anymore,” I assure him. “Not even us backward country folk.”

“You’re not backward.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t and keep walking. It’s a nice night. The dark has drawn in, leaving us in the orange glow of the streetlights. This road is never busy, so we drift into the middle of it, listening to the summer crickets chirping around us, filling in the silence.

“Your grandma is great,” Reece says suddenly, cutting through the dark.

“She’s the best, isn’t she?” I say with a grin. “I’m lucky I’ve got her. I don’t know what I would do without her.”

Reece hums thoughtfully, and I have to stop myself before I can ask him what’s on his mind. He doesn’t need me prying into his personal business.

Anyway, I know exactly what kind of look that is. That’s the kind of face that people who aren’t particularly close with their families make when they’re faced with people who love their families very much. I’ve seen it plenty of times before. I know exactly how lucky I am to have Gramma. I know my parents loved me, even though they died when I was little.

There are so many people in this world who don’t have that, and I am thankful every single day that I do have the kind of relationship with my gramma that some people could only dream of having with their family.

And I guess for Reece, it must hurt that he doesn’t.

The more time that passes with him here, the more intrigued I am about him. I don’t want to get to know him exactly. I have no intention of ever getting close to him, but he is fascinating. I bet some psychologists could do a really good case study on him.

He acts like he’s this big, aloof guy, as if he knows exactly how handsome and smart he is, but there seems to be some part of him that’s craving something that he can’t name. Like there’s a primal want inside him that isn’t being met.

And if I cared at all, I’d ask him what it was, but I don’t.

I only have three weeks left with this guy, and then I never have to think about him again.

That is definitely what I want, isn’t it?

We don’t say much else until we reach his door. He unlocks it, opens it, then leaves it ajar as he turns to me. “It seems wrong to let a lady walk home by herself,” he says with a grin.

“Don’t start that,” I scoff. “I’m perfectly capable of walking back to my grandmother’s house alone.”

“I thought you were heading home?” he says.

“So does she, but I can’t leave her like this. I know she’s fine, but God, if something were to happen… I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I wasn’t there. At least if I’m in the house, there’s a chance I might be able to do something.”

“I get that,” he says. “I’m sure she will be fine, though. These things sometimes just happen, especially the older a person gets. But you should let me know if it happens again.”

“Thank you,” I say, leaning in towards him slightly.

We’re so close now that I can see the rise and fall of his chest, and I’m noticing the patterns of blue in his eyes, the way his pupils are dilated ever so slightly. It’s just the proximity, but I feel my heart rate spike. If I just moved in a little more, if he dipped his head, if I reached up…

And then I pull away.

What is wrong with me?

“Anyway,” I say with an awkward chuckle, running my hand through my hair. “I should get going.”

“Of course,” he says, straightening up too. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked almost a little disappointed. But it can’t be. We’re both just reeling from the high emotion of the night. How could it be anything else?

“Thanks again,” I say. He smiles and dips his head, and I mirror the gesture. We stare at each other for a long moment, like there are more words crackling in the space between us, but if there are, I can’t say any of them.

Then I turn on my heel and walk away. A couple of times, I glance back over my shoulder, and every time I do, Reece is still standing there in his doorway, watching me go until I round the corner, out of sight.