Been There Done That (Leffersbee #1) - Hope Ellis Page 0,10

to pull on. The T-shirt and stretchy pants couldn’t hide the soft fullness of her stupendous, ripe curves.

The years had fallen away in a moment and I was, once again, that lovesick teenager.

Fuck.

“Uh, hello? Nick? You still there?”

I shifted in the booth, clearing my throat before responding. “We ran into some snags on the development end. Then realized we hadn’t thought through some of the clinic issues. It’s what happens when you break into a new industry.” When I’d heard our marketing department was piloting our new app in a small town with a moderate-sized, university-affiliated teaching hospital, I’d thought it was a great idea. When they’d set their sights on Green Valley and its closest hospital in Knoxville, well, I couldn’t stay away.

“Sure. Fine. But why do you have to be there?” Eddie’s impatient tone cracked through the line.

I evaded the question by responding, “You know why. We’re working it out. The hospital and their partners at the university’s med school are walking us through it.”

My business had brought me to the very same place where the woman I’d once loved more than anything now lived. I’d known Zora was there; I’d followed all the moves of her schooling and career, even after she’d sent me back my ring.

Hardly a day ever passed when I didn’t think of her and wonder, Why had she returned the ring the way she did? And with that cryptic note? How had she known where to find me? Had her parents ever told her why I left? Had they told her anything? And if she’d known where I was all that time, why didn’t she ever write me? Call? Reach out?

Did she even care? Did she ever?

“Give it air so it can heal, baby.” That’s what my mama had always said, her nimble fingers ripping at whatever bandage I’d slapped over a scab. It was true in this case. This thing had eaten at a corner of my gut for years and needed to be aired out. I just needed to fucking know, once and for all. I needed to face Zora and the promises never kept by either of us. So, here I was.

But Eddie didn’t need to know any of this. “It’s essential that I stay. I’m not planning on micromanaging our very capable team. But wrinkles in the implementation surfaced and I needed to be here on the ground. The changes will make it a better product going forward.” I spoke the truth, just not all of it.

I hadn’t planned to see her right away. I’d spent weeks considering what I’d say to Zora when I saw her, and a few more weeks trying to figure out how to maneuver a meeting between us. All it took was the slightest prompting on my part for that Nellie woman to bring up Dr. Zora Leffersbee. Then, Dr. Gould had realized Zora and her research were essential to our app, and they—I—needed her help smoothing out the details, telling us what we didn’t know to ask. Suddenly, I had my opportunity much sooner than I’d expected.

I took it.

And then I crashed and burned.

“You think you need to be there? That’s all well and good, but I need you in New York. We’ve got a board meeting coming up—a shareholders’ meeting next week. I need you here, being the silver-tongued bastard you are.”

“I’ll fly back for those,” I answered easily. “I’ve got one of the planes in Knoxville. I can get back whenever you need.”

“But then you’re going back there. For what could be a month?”

“Yeah.”

“Since when is this app a priority? Don’t you think you’re stretching yourself a bit thin?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. When I’d first met Edward Holt as a freshman at the University of Michigan, he’d embodied all the stereotypes I’d initially had of folks from the West Coast. Having never left Green Valley before, relying only on television and the scornful commentary heard from others, I’d already had a certain stereotype in mind when I finally sat down to a conversation with long-haired, laid back Eddie, who’d sported psychedelic, homemade tie-dyed shirts with slogans such “Make Peace, Not War” and “Find Yourself in Stillness” written in a childish hand. The computer engineering freshman mixer promised an awkward conversation.

But when he mentioned how his mother read auras for a living, I’d felt an unexpected stirring of identification. Here might be someone who understood.

“That can’t pay much,” I’d said, by then long accustomed to a painful preoccupation with