The Best Catch in Texas

“Do you have siblings?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I wish. It’s hell being an only child.”

Nicolette munched the chip, then said, “I wouldn’t know what being an only child would feel like. I have a younger brother and sister. So my mother spreads her attention among all of us.”

“Lucky you,” he muttered and his features tightened as he reached for his tea. “Don’t get me wrong, Nicolette. My mother is a loving person in her own way. But she can be smothering. It was really hard on her when I left for college and medical school. She, uh, you see, my father is always working. Always. So I guess she used me to fill the vacant spot.”

Nicolette was beginning to get the picture and it wasn’t a pretty one. “What do your parents think about you moving to this area?”

A sardonic expression twisted his features. “My father refuses to say more than hello to me. And my mother still believes I’ll change my mind and return to Houston. One of these days she’s going to realize that will never happen.”

“You sound sure of that.”

His brown eyes hardened with conviction. “Never been more sure of anything, Nicolette. When you grow up watching your parents do everything wrong, you grow up determined to be different.”

She could feel the undercurrent of tension in his voice and it told her the issues he had with his family were not small matters. The urge to ask him more questions surged up in her, but she bit them back. It wouldn’t do to let him think she was that interested. She didn’t want to give him any reason to think she was looking at him as a man rather than a doctor and colleague.

Thankfully, the waitress arrived with their meal, and they spent the next few minutes digging into their food and exchanging small talk about the clinic.

In spite of it being eons since she’d sat across the table from a man other than her brother or cousins, Nicolette began to relax. It was nice to be out, to be talking, to have a man looking at her as though she were lovely and interesting.

“Tell me, Nicolette—”

“Nicci,” she interrupted. “Everyone calls me Nicci, so you might as well, too. My name got cut short as a child and it stuck.”

He grinned and his eyes twinkled teasingly as they roamed her face. “Little Nicci. Sounds tomboyish. Were you?”

Her cheeks warm, she chuckled softly. “Terribly. I cried when Mother made me wear a dress to church.”

“Well, you obviously grew out of it,” he said as he recalled her long, beautiful legs exposed beneath the hem of her skirt and the sexy high heels on her feet. She was the essence of femininity and every inch of her pulled on him like a mighty magnet.