than bring you to my hometown.”
No, she shouldn’t bring Rodney with her. Blake wanted to meet her family, see where she’d grown up, figure out what it was about her hometown that made a woman he admired for her confidence so unsure of herself.
Darby was his partner and she needed his help. More than she even realized. Whatever her issues were with her hometown, he’d help her. He owed her that for keeping him on task throughout his residency and the beginning of his medical career.
“I can behave myself. Even in a place named Armadillo Lake.” He chuckled, letting the name roll off his tongue. “Sounds like a fun place to grow up. Is there really a lake?”
“Yes.”
“And armadillos?”
“Yes.”
“Your school team were the Armadillos?”
She gritted her teeth. “Yes.”
“Let me guess—your school mascot was a giant armadillo?”
Gaze lowered to her plate, Darby nodded.
“Bet that went over great at football games.” He chuckled. “An armadillo.”
Darby had grown still. She looked as if she were praying he wouldn’t put two and two together. Where Darby was concerned Blake always put two and two together. He grinned.
“You were the mascot, weren’t you?”
The next morning Darby had barely climbed out of her car before Blake fell into step beside her in the clinic’s employee parking lot. “I checked on Mr. Hill this morning. He’s insisting on going home, and he’s only been there one night.”
She ignored him, just as she’d been ignoring him since he’d burst out laughing at her admission she’d once worn an armadillo suit to all major school sport events.
Not a cute little armadillo suit that showed off her legs—if such a suit even existed. No, she’d been in a full-bodied, hot-as-Hades, head-to-toe vinyl Armadillo suit that looked like something straight off a cheap Godzilla movie. And all to impress a guy—to prove that she was more than a brainy girl, that she had a sense of humor and could be fun. What had she been thinking?
“He’s giving the nurses a hard time.” With his usual persistence, Blake continued, following her down the clinic’s hallway toward their offices. “The night nurse said he pulled out his IV line. She put the line back in, and threatened to strap his hands to the bedrails if he pulls it out again.”
Darby already knew all this. She’d visited Mr. Hill, too. Blake had beaten her to the hospital, thanks to her sleeping late, but she had checked on her two patients this morning.
No wonder she’d overslept. Most of the night she’d lain in bed having nightmares about the upcoming weekend. Nightmares in which she’d shown up at the reunion not decked out to the nines as planned, in the new killer dress she’d bought, but wearing that awful armadillo suit. Trey hadn’t been the one laughing at her. Blake had been the one shaking his head, pointing his finger, not understanding her desire to fit in. Not understanding how she desperately wanted him to notice that she was alive. The truth, she’d realized, was that this weekend was more about him than her class reunion.
She’d awakened in a cold sweat, certain she’d made a grave miscalculation—that thinking she could make Blake notice her as a woman was as foolish as wearing that armadillo suit had been.
Despite having sent in her RSVP, she didn’t have to go. Most likely no one would even notice if she was there or not.
No, that wasn’t true.
Mandy would know. Wasn’t that why she’d sent Darby’s invitation late?
If she didn’t go, she was saying that she was okay with her and Blake’s relationship never being more than what it was. And, although what they had was wonderful, Darby wanted more.
She was going.
Not only was she going, but she was going to have fun.
And in the process of making Blake notice her she’d make Trey eat his heart out because he’d chosen the head cheerleader over the geeky, too-smart-to-be-understood school mascot. What had he been thinking?
She’d risen beyond her high school experiences and was a desirable woman who held the power over her life. Wasn’t that what her wannabe-shrink roommate during her first four years at university had said—making Darby repeat the phrase while looking in the mirror each morning, insisting Darby go for formal self-confidence-boosting therapy?
She was in charge of her life. Dr. Darby Phillips, a woman worthy of respect and admiration. A woman who’d come a long way from wearing a dumpy armadillo suit and longing for a man she couldn’t have.
Her gaze fell on the man keeping stride next to her.
Well, no one could accuse her classy navy pants and cream-colored blouse of looking like a scaly animal, at any rate.
“Ah, come on, Dilly, surely you aren’t still mad at me?”
Why had she told him the mascot’s name?
Blake being Blake, of course he’d tease her, call her by that name. She spun to where he’d followed her into her office.
Knocking his hand away from her plastic heart model, she straightened to her full five feet three inches and poked his thick chest. “Don’t you ever make fun of my having been an armadillo again—do you hear?”
His eyes widened slightly at her outburst, but a smile curved his full lips. “Ah, Darby, come on. I’m sure you were a cute armadillo.”
She glared. He was supposed to be groveling, shaking in fear, apologizing, not still laughing.
“Too bad I didn’t go to your school.” He tweaked her chin, his fingers sending shivers over her flesh. “I’d like to have seen you in that costume. Maybe you could wear it for me this weekend? I promise to show my school spirit.”
Couldn’t he be serious? Or at least pretend as if he felt threatened? Of course he couldn’t. Blake was one of those annoying perpetually positive folks. As much as that did annoy her at times like these, his disposition was also one of the things she liked most about him. One of the things that had always drawn her to him.
He made her laugh. Had from the moment they’d met. She’d been so serious, so determined never to let a man make a fool of her again, so focused on getting her medical degree, she’d forgotten how to laugh until she and Blake had been assigned an emergency room rotation together. She might have been up to her eyeballs in work, but one wink from Blake could reenergize her sleep-deprived body and have her smiling from the inside out.
No one had ever been able to make her feel good the way he could.
Fighting to hang on to her angry bravado, she rolled her eyes. “The only costume you need to see me in is a white lab coat.” She forced her brows into a scowl. “Isn’t it time for us to get started seeing patients?”
He sighed with exaggerated
