The woman was obviously pleased to play her part in coaxing the good-looking doctor back.
“Maybe,” she agreed, flashing a bright, hopeful smile at Everett.
“I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Everett told Lila when they were back in her car again. “That was quick thinking,” he complimented her.
Lila was hardly aware of shrugging. “I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I didn’t want to set a precedent, either. Having you take it seemed like the only logical way out.”
“Still wouldn’t have thought of it,” he told her.
“Sure you would have,” she countered. “You’re the smartest man I know.”
No I’m not, he thought. He could cite a time when he’d been downright stupid.
Like thirteen years ago.
Everett studied her quietly as she drove. In his opinion, Lila had blossomed in the intervening years. She was no longer that stricken young girl who’d told him she never wanted to see him again. She’d become a self-assured woman who obviously had a mission in life. A mission she was passionate about, and that passion made her particularly compelling and exciting.
He found himself being attracted to Lila all over again and even more strongly this time than he had the first time around.
“Can you clock out once we get back to the Foundation?” he asked suddenly, breaking the heavy silence in the car.
“This actually is the official end of my day, so yes, I can clock out.”
“And we’re still on for dinner?” he asked, not wanting to come across as if he was taking anything for granted. He knew that winning Lila back was going to take time and patience—and he very much intended to win her back.
“If you still want to have dinner with me, then yes, we’re still on,” she answered cautiously. She made a right turn, pulling into the parking lot. “Are you sure this won’t interfere with you getting back to Houston? I feel guilty about keeping you away from your practice for so long.”
“Nothing to feel guilty about,” he assured her. “The choice was mine. And my practice is part of a group. We all pitch in and cover for one another if something comes up.”
“And this qualifies as ‘something?’” she asked him, a touch of amusement entering her voice.
“Oh, most definitely ‘something,’” Everett assured her.
My lord, she was flirting with him, Lila realized. She really wasn’t herself.
The next moment, there was further proof. “Lila, you’re passing my car,” Everett pointed out.
Preoccupied and trying to get a grip on herself, she hadn’t realized that she had driven right by the navy blue sedan.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “Just double-checking the schedule in my head.”
“Schedule?” he questioned. But she’d said there was no one left on today’s list, didn’t she? Was there some secondary list he didn’t know about?
“The list of patients,” she clarified.
“Did we miss anyone?” he asked, wondering if she was going to find some excuse to turn him down at the last minute.
She wished she didn’t feel as if her brain had a fog machine operating right inside her head. It was getting harder and harder for her to think straight.
“Lila?”
She realized that Everett was waiting for her to answer him. “Oh, no, we didn’t. We saw everyone on the list. I was just thinking about tomorrow,” she lied. “Let’s go have dinner.”
“Sounds good to me,” he replied, silently adding, Anything that has to do with you sounds good to me.
Chapter Nine
“On second thought, maybe I should drive,” Everett said to her just as Lila started her car up again.
Putting her foot on the brake now, Lila looked at Everett, confused.
“Why?” she wanted to know. “I know the city better than you do. You said so yourself.”
“True, but I’ve been able to find my way around without much trouble and I don’t mind driving. To be honest, you look like you’re rather tired and you don’t want to push yourself too hard,” Everett stressed.
He was right. She was tired, Lila thought, but her pride kept her from admitting it. Her self-image dictated that she was supposed to be untiring, with boundless energy.
“Is that your professional opinion?” she asked.
“Professional and personal,” Everett replied quietly.
There was that calming bedside manner of his again, Lila thought. But she wasn’t a patient, she reminded herself.
“Tough to argue with that,” she responded. “But you’ll have to drive me back here after dinner so I can pick up my car.”
Everett had already taken that into account. “No problem,” he assured her. Getting out of her car, he took a few steps, then stood waiting for her to follow suit.
After a moment, Lila sighed, surrendering. Since she hadn’t pulled out of the parking space yet, she left her car as it was and got out.
Crossing to his car, Everett unlocked it and then held the passenger side door open for her. After Lila got in, he closed the door and got in behind the wheel. He looked at her and smiled just before he started his car.
Was that smug satisfaction she saw, or something else? Lila wondered. “What?” she asked him.
“I thought you’d put up more of a fight,” he confessed as he started up his vehicle. Within moments, they were on the road.
Lila lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. She realized that her shoulder felt heavy for some reason, like someone was pushing down on it. After dinner, she was heading straight for bed, she promised herself.
“I guess I’m more tired than I thought,” she told Everett.
He accepted her excuse. “You in the mood for Chinese or Italian?” he asked, offering her a choice of the first two restaurants he thought of. He favored both.
“The Italian place is closer,” Lila told him.
And in this case, he thought, closer seemed to mean better, otherwise she would have cited a different criterion first.
“Italian it is.” He spared her one quick glance, coupled with a grin. “Now all you have to do is give me the address.”
Lila dug in just for a second. “I thought you said you knew your way around.”
“I do,” he assured her, then added, “Once I have an address.”
She laughed shortly. “That’s cheating,” Lila accused.
“I’d rather think of it as being creative,” he told her, then asked again, “The address?”
She was much too tired to engage in any sort of a war of resistance. With a sigh, she rattled off the address to the Italian restaurant.
Everett immediately knew where it was. “You’re right, that is close,” he acknowledged.
They were there in less than ten minutes. As luck would have it, someone in the first row of the parking lot was just pulling out and Everett smoothly slipped right into the spot.
Shutting off his engine, he quickly came around to Lila’s side.
Aware that Everett had opened the door for her, she felt a little woozy and it took her a moment to focus and swing her legs out. She really would have rathered that Everett wasn’t holding the door open for her so he wouldn’t see just how unsteady she was.
“You know, I have learned how to open my own door,” she told him defensively.
If she was trying to antagonize him, Everett thought, he wasn’t taking the bait.
“I know,” he responded cheerfully. “I’ve seen you. But I like doing this,” he told her, putting out his hand to her. “It makes me feel like a gentleman.”
The wooziness retreated. Lila wrapped her fingers around his hand with confidence. Maybe she was worrying for no reason.
“Then I guess I’ll humor you,” she said, “seeing what an asset you were yesterday and today.”
His smile sank deep into her very soul as he helped her out of the vehicle. “Whatever works.”
Closing the door behind her, they crossed to the restaurant.
The homey, family-style restaurant was beginning to fill up, but there were still a number of empty tables available. The hostess seated them immediately and gave them menus.
“Do you come here often?” Everett asked Lila when they were alone.
“Often enough to know that they have good food,” Lila answered.
Everett nodded. “Good, then I’ll let you do the ordering,” he told her, placing his menu on the table.
That surprised her. “Well, you certainly have changed,” she couldn’t help observing. When he raised an inquisitive eyebrow, she said, “There was a time when you took charge of everything.”
He couldn’t very well argue the point. He remembered that all too well.
“I’ve learned to relax and take things light,” he explained. “Somebody once told me I’d live a lot longer that way—or maybe it would just seem longer,” he added with a laugh.
As their server approached the table Lila asked, “Were you serious about my doing the ordering for you?”
“Very.”
Lila proceeded to order. “We’ll have two servings of chicken Alfredo,” she told the young woman. “And he’ll have a side dish of stuffed mushrooms.”
“And you?” the young woman asked, her finger hovering over her tablet.
“No mushrooms for me,” Lila answered.
“And what would you like to drink?” the server asked, looking from Lila to the man she was sitting with.
“I’ll have a glass of water,” Lila answered, then looked at Everett, waiting for him to make a choice himself. She remembered he liked having wine with his meals, but maybe that had changed, too, along with his attitude.
“Make that two,” Everett told the server, then handed over his unopened menu to her.
Lila surrendered hers after a beat.
“I’ll be back with your bread and waters,” the server told them.
“Sounds more like a prison diet than something from a homey-looking restaurant,” Everett commented.
“That’s probably what she thought, too,” Lila said. “She looked like she was trying not to laugh.” She looked around the large room. More patrons had come in moments after they did. “Certainly filled up fast,” she observed, saying the words more to herself than to Everett.
“Worried about my being seen with you?” Everett asked, amused.
“No.” She was actually thinking about how all those bodies were generating heat. “Does it seem rather warm in here to you?”
“Well, when you have this many bodies occupy a relatively small space, it’s bound to feel somewhat warm,” he speculated. And then he smiled. “You remembered I liked mushrooms,” he said, clearly surprised.
“I remember a lot of things,” she said, and then the next moment regretted it. “Like quadratic equations,” she added glibly.
Everett laughed. And then he looked at her more closely. There was a line of perspiration on her forehead, seeping through her auburn bangs and pasting them to her forehead. “It’s not warm enough in here to cause you to perspire,” Everett observed.
“Maybe you make me nervous,” Lila said flippantly.
“If that were the case, then you wouldn’t have agreed to dinner,” he pointed out. The woman he knew wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want to.
Lila shifted in her chair, growing progressively more uncomfortable. “It seemed impolite to turn you down after you went out of your way to be my white knight.”
Her terminology intrigued him. “Is that what I am? Your white knight?” he asked.
“Did I say white knight?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard herself call Everett that. “I meant Don Quixote, not white knight. I always manage to get those two mixed-up,” she said.
“I’ve been called worse,” he said with a tolerant laugh.
Their server returned with their glasses of water and a basket of garlic bread sticks. “I’ll be back with your dinners soon,” she told them, placing the items on the table and withdrawing.
Everett noticed that Lila immediately picked up her glass of water. Drinking, she practically drained the entire contents in one long swallow.
Seeing that Everett was watching her, Lila shrugged self-consciously. “I guess I was thirstier than I thought.”
“I guess you were,” he agreed good-naturedly. Something was up, but he wasn’t about to press. He didn’t want to ruin their dinner. Spending time with Lila like this was far too precious to him. Having taken a bread stick, he pushed the basket toward her. “Have one. They’re still warm.”
He watched her take a bread stick, but instead of taking a bite, she just put it on her plate and left it there, untouched.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You always loved bread sticks, especially garlic bread sticks.”
“I still do,” she answered defensively. And then she relented. “I guess I’m just not hungry.”
Something was definitely off. “I’ve been with you all day. You haven’t eaten since you came in—that’s assuming that you did eat before you came in this morning.”
Lila shrugged, then grew annoyed with herself for doing it. She wished that he’d stop asking questions. Most of all, she wished that she was home in bed.
“I’m not hungry,” she snapped. “What do you want me to say?”
This was not like her. His eyes met hers. “The truth,” Everett told her simply.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lila retorted, irritated. “I’m just not hungry. That’s not a crime,” she protested.
It felt as if her emotions were going every which way at the same time.
“Look, maybe we should—”
Without thinking, Lila started to get up—which was when the world decided to launch itself into a tailspin all around her. She grabbed the edge of the table, afraid that she would suddenly go down and find herself unceremoniously sitting on the floor. The table wobbled as she grabbed it and she stifled a cry, sitting down again.
Everett reached across the table and put the back of his hand against her forehead. Lila pulled her head away. She regretted the movement immediately because the spinning in her head just intensified.
Her forehead was hot, Everett thought. That and the sharp intake of breath he’d just heard her make gave him all the input he needed.
“Dinner is canceled,” he told her. “I’m taking you home and putting you to bed.”
“If that’s your idea of a seductive proposition, you just washed out,” she informed him, struggling very hard to keep the world in focus.
“No, that’s my idea of putting a sick woman to bed where she belongs.” He looked around and signaled to the server. The latter was just approaching them with their orders. “Change of plans,” he told her. “We have to leave.”
Without missing a beat, the young woman told him, “I can have these wrapped to go in a few minutes.”
Everett was about to tell the woman that they wouldn’t be taking the meals home with them, but then he had a change of heart. Lila was going to need something to eat once she was feeling better. As for him, he was hungry and he could always take the food to eat later once he had Lila situated.
“There’s an extra tip in it for you if you can get it back here in two minutes,” Everett told her.
Taking his words to heart, the server was gone before he finished his sentence.
“You’re making a scene,” Lila protested weakly.
“No,” he retorted. “I’m trying to prevent making a scene. You’re sick, Lila. I should have seen the signs. But I was so eager just to have dinner with you, I missed the fact that you were steadily growing paler all day.”
Just then, th
e server returned. She had their dinners and bread sticks packed in two rather large paper sacks.
“Your salad is packed on top,” she told him.
“Great.” Taking out his wallet, Everett handed the young woman a twenty, then put a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “This should cover it,” he told the server. When he turned to look at Lila, his concern grew. She was almost pasty. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can,” Lila retorted just before she stood up—and pitched forward.
Thanks to his quick reflexes, Everett managed to catch her just in time. Had he hesitated even for just half a second, Lila’s head would have had an unfortunate meeting with the floor.
The server stared at them, wide-eyed. “Is she all right?” she asked, clearly concerned.
“She will be,” Everett told her. He had perfected sounding confident, even when he wasn’t. “I think she just has the flu,” he added. In one clean, swift movement, he picked Lila up in his arms as if she was weightless. Turning toward the server, he requested, “If you could hand me her purse.”
The woman had already gathered Lila’s purse. “Don’t worry, I’ll take it and your dinners and follow you to your car,” she volunteered. Looking at Lila, who was unconscious, she asked again, “You’re sure she’ll be all right?”
Reading between the lines, Everett told her, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything she had here.” Then he made his way to the front entrance.
Seeing them, the hostess at the reservation desk hurried to open the front door for them, holding it open with her back. “Is everything all right?” she asked Everett.
“She has the flu. She’ll be fine,” he answered crisply. “You do know how to make an exit,” he whispered to Lila in a hushed voice. Speaking up, he said, “The car’s right in front,” directing the server who was hurrying alongside of him.
Still holding Lila in his arms, Everett managed to reach into his pocket and press the key fob to open the car doors.
Summer of Love Page 8