.
depends on who I’m with,” he said, and his cheeky smile said that once again they were no longer talking about food. But she’d sort of walked into that one, hadn’t she?
Why did he have to be so damned adorable, with his stubbled chin and dark, rumpled hair? The soft waves begged to be combed back by her willing fingers and his hazel eyes smoldered, though they looked more whiskey-colored in this light. He’d loosened his lopsided tie and opened the top button on his dress shirt...
“Have you lived in Royal your whole life?” he asked her.
Jarred by the sudden change of subject, she realized she was staring at his chest and lifted her gaze to his handsome face instead. Which was just as bad, if not worse. Sometimes when she was sitting at the nurses’ station and he was nearby she would watch him in her peripheral vision. He had such a nice face to look at.
“I moved here to live with my aunt about a year after nursing school,” she told him.
“Where are you from originally?”
“My parents own a horse farm about an hour from here. Five of my siblings work there.”
He blinked. “Five? How many siblings do you have?”
“Seven. All older. Three boys, four girls.”
“Wow.” He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s a lot of kids.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Catholic?”
“No, just very traditional. My mom has six siblings and my dad has four. They both grew up on farms.”
“What about your siblings. Do they have kids?”
“As of last month I have twenty-two nieces and nephews, and two great-nieces on the way.”
“Wow. That is a big family. And you’re the baby?”
There was nothing more annoying than being referred to as the baby by her family. It was their way of pushing her down and keeping her in her place. But when Parker said it, with that teasing smile, it wasn’t demeaning at all.
“I’m the youngest, yes.”
“Were you spoiled?”
As if. “My parents were pretty burned out by the time I came along. As long as I did my chores and kept my grades up they pretty much left me alone. I would rather be invisible than get sucked into all the family drama.”
“I used to wish that I had a big family.”
“Do you have siblings?” she asked him.
“Only child.”
“I had a friend in school who was an only child and I was always so envious.”
Emily returned to the table with their food and Clare’s stomach howled. Though getting a salad had been the responsible thing to do, Parker’s juicy burger and greasy fries beckoned her.
“Well, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said, popping a fry in his mouth, and when he offered her one, she couldn’t resist. Her mouth watered as the greasy, salty goodness sent her taste buds into overload.
She looked at her plate, then his, and thought, Man, I should have ordered a burger.
“Growing up I always wanted siblings,” Parker said, pushing his plate toward her, gesturing to her to take more.
“I had to share a room with three of my sisters. I had no privacy whatsoever.” There hadn’t even been anyone who’d keep things in confidence. If one sibling knew, they all knew. Because of that it had always been difficult for her to trust people to keep her secrets. Her aunt was the only person in her life she could be totally honest with.
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t either,” he said, and she watched his lips move. She loved looking at his lips. It was always the first place her eyes landed.
“My father was very strict throughout my entire childhood,” Parker said. “He controlled pretty much every aspect of my life, like which friends I was allowed to have, what books I was allowed to read. He even chose the classes I took in high school. He was grooming me to take over his business. I always thought that if he had another child he might not be so focused on my every move.”
“What does he do?”
“He was a financial tycoon. He passed away last year.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“We had a very tenuous relationship. I had no interest in finance, and he considered practicing medicine beneath me. He agreed to pay for medical school, but only if I studied to be a cosmetic surgeon. He even set up a job for me with his own cosmetic surgeon when I graduated.”
As amazing as he was with children, that would have been a terrible waste. “Clearly you changed his mind.”
“It was Luc Wakefield who talked me into standing up to my father.”
“How did that go over?”
“There was a lot of shouting and threats. He said he would disown and disinherit me. I said go for it. At that point I was so sick of being controlled I honestly didn’t care.”
Her family may have been a ginormous pain, but his father sounded a million times worse. “What did your mom have to say about it?”
“Not much,” he said, and his casual reply belied the flash of something dark and sad in his eyes. But as soon as it was there, it was gone again. “She wasn’t around.”
For whatever reason, she had just assumed that someone as successful as Parker would come from a well-adjusted and happy home. She imagined him as the golden child, probably captain of the football team, valedictorian and loved by all.
It would appear that she was wrong. Again. That’s what she got for drawing conclusions without facts.
“Have I got something between my teeth?” Parker asked suddenly.
She blinked. “No. Why?”
“Are you sure? Because you haven’t stopped staring at my mouth.”
Her cheeks went hot with embarrassment. Was she really doing that?
“It’s either that, or you’re thinking about kissing me.”
She was almost always thinking about kissing him. She really had to be more careful in the future where she let her eyes wander. And her thoughts.
* * *
“I don’t suppose you played football in high school?” Clare asked, and Parker laughed.
“No, I didn’t. But if I had, boy, my father would have loved that.” The only thing that would have pleased his dad more than Parker taking over the family business was if he’d become a professional athlete. But it had been obvious from a very early age that Parker had no interest, and more important, no natural talent.
He was barely out of diapers when his father began pushing him into various sports. First soccer, then T-ball, but he’d sucked at them both. He’d been more interested in sitting on the sidelines, searching the grass for bugs and snakes.
His dad had enrolled him in tag football when Parker was six, and had forced him to stay for the entire season. Luckily Parker had had a sympathetic coach who’d let him spend most of his time on the bench. Because as fanatical as his father had been about his son’s physical abilities, he’d never once made it to a practice or even a game.
Swimming lessons had come next, but Parker got so many ear infections as a result that the doctor told his father the lessons had to stop. Parker’s equestrian training was probably the least horrible thing he’d been forced into, and though being so high up on the horse’s back had always made him nervous, he loved animals. Until his horse was spooked and threw him, and nearly trampled him to death. That was the last time he’d