woman who kept looking at another guy—a super-hot guy. So that was fair.
After he walked away, I grabbed my glass of wine and headed over to Dex.
That was when I noticed another woman headed his way—clearly to make a move.
Damn, she didn’t waste any time.
I raced her to the table and purposely cut her off so Dex wouldn’t be able to see her behind me. “Mind if I join you?”
He turned away from the window and looked up at me, and a nice smile spread over his lips, the first genuine one he’d shown that night in the bar. His eyes lit up too, even though it didn’t last long. “Please.”
The woman behind me released a loud and exaggerated sigh so I would hear her before she walked away.
I ignored her and fell into the chair across from him.
He looked me over before he took a drink, as if he were checking me out but didn’t care if I knew what he was doing. “Here with some friends?”
“A date, actually.”
He nodded slowly. “I’m guessing that date didn’t end well.”
I shrugged it off. “He wasn’t my type anyway.”
“What is your type?”
I stared at him for a few seconds, looking into those stunning rich brown eyes, seeing the inherent kindness in his gaze, his good heart. “Um…a good person.”
He grabbed his bottle and took a drink. “Good answer. I don’t hear that often.”
After sleeping with a married man, I had very different priorities. “How are you? How’s the lab?”
“It’s fine.” He took another drink. “Normal hours and good pay.”
It didn’t sound like he enjoyed the job at all. “No plumbing problems?”
He chuckled, his expression relaxing at my joke. “That’s a major upgrade.”
“What kind of lab work do you do?”
“Chemical titrations, mixing solutions for medical-grade products, just a bunch of mindless mumbo jumbo.”
That didn’t sound mindless to me at all, but I thought it was sexy that he never took himself too seriously. My date acted like he won a Nobel by opening his own construction company and couldn’t stop bragging about his success, but Dex was interested in topics outside his livelihood. He was the humblest guy I’d ever met. But a lion didn’t know they were a lion, right?
“It’s not the same without you.”
“Cleo will find my replacement overnight. Hopefully, the residents lay off the viruses for a bit before that happens.” He grabbed his beer and took another drink, his eyes slightly melancholy like something popped into his head. Underneath his collar, a thick vein ran up his neck, like everything underneath his clothes was so hard and tight that veins bulged everywhere.
“She’s been down lately.”
He lifted his chin and looked at me again, his eyes freezing on my face. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Really down. I didn’t ask her what’s wrong because it’s none of my business, but she’s not herself. I think it’s something personal because when her husband comes to her desk, they hardly say two words to each other. They just aren’t the lovey-dovey couple they usually are.”
He released a quiet breath before he turned his head to look out the window, his expression blank but his eyes pained. He held that position for a long time, looking into the night as if I weren’t there anymore.
Watching him made me realize I was missing a piece of his puzzle, that there was more to him I’d never noticed before. Cleo asked me to work for him if she could convince him to go back to his practice, but I just assumed she was invested in everyone she cared about. Now I wondered if that wasn’t the case. “She’s more than your boss, isn’t she?”
He turned back to me, to look at me head on.
And that was when I saw it—those features and the hint of a smile that I’d seen in another face.
“She’s my mom.”
I felt a quick moment of humiliation that I processed in private, thinking about what I’d confessed a few days ago. I’d even told her that Dex was hot…like an idiot. She seemed cool with it, but it was still a bit embarrassing. “Why did you keep that a secret?”
“She didn’t want people to suspect nepotism.”
“But if you grew up in that building…”
“Matt is the only one who knows because he’s worked with my mom forever. Everyone else is relatively new.”
When Tony screamed at Dex and me, and Cleo put him in his place, I realized that really was a mama bear coming out with teeth and claws. I remembered the way she would smile