The Strength of the Pack (Suncoast Society #30)(14)

The beeper in Scrye’s hand started blinking. “Oh, we’re up. Excellent.”

They ended up in a large booth. Eva opted to slide inside first and fought the urge to snuggle against Nate.

Now with him, his calm, soothing nature drew her in. As she studied the menu, she had to fight to keep her focus on that and not on him sitting right next to her.

When the waitress came to take their drink orders, Nate automatically told her that Eva was on his check.

It was a stupid little detail but it still sent a warm shiver through her. “Thank you,” she said when the waitress left. “You didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it.”

“Hey, my treat. I’m glad I could have dinner with you.”

“I feel like I should be buying you dinner because you had to run the gauntlet.”

“It’s all right. Besides, it allowed me to get one over on my little sister for a change.”

“Cherise?”

“Yeah.”

“Still, I’ll buy the next one.”

“Maybe another time. It’s okay. I prefer to buy the first dinner, anyway.”

“Why?”

He smiled. “Because that way, if I make a total ass out of myself and you hate me, at least I can feel better that I paid for dinner.”

Scrye laughed. “You are a wise man.”

“Hey, I raised a little sister. I’m no idiot.”





Yes, Nate could tell Eva felt far more nervous about tonight than he did. Did he hope it went well? Of course. He got the impression, however, that this date was a personal test of sorts for her. Maybe even in a way Tilly and the others didn’t know.

In fact, if he were a betting man, he would wager good money on Eva having a whopper of a secret vault inside her, holding something really bad that few people even saw.

Jesse and Leo knew it, most likely. It wasn’t just parental responsibilities and an unfortunate accident that kept the two men living with Eva. There was more there, far more. A deep, protective energy the men had for her. He could feel it when around all three of them at the club.

And it had to be a huge, dark emotional matter for Jesse, the new one in the dynamic, to feel as strongly about protecting her as Leo did.

Nate also knew Tilly was good about doing her research. She wouldn’t have fixed him up with a total train wreck. There might be things Tilly didn’t know about Eva, but unless Tilly thought the overall odds were heavily in favor of success, she wouldn’t stick her neck on the line and risk friendships pairing people up she thought would implode.

Everyone had their quirks and issues and emotional baggage. Some more than others, but it didn’t usually keep them from being a functional human being.

Whether or not the baggage Eva lugged around with her would be too much for Nate to deal with remained to be seen. The only expectation he had for tonight was a pleasant dinner and conversation with friends.

Nothing else.

Was he attracted to Eva? Yes. Physically and mentally.

Whether he’d allow that to develop into more…

He wouldn’t venture to guess.

He felt Eva relax as the evening went on. She had what she labeled a terminally dull job as a claims rep at a call center for an insurance company, but she seemed satisfied enough with it.

Her daughter, however, was another topic entirely.

She could talk forever about Laurel. With June and Scrye also swapping parental stories, at least in this way he didn’t feel left out. He’d shifted roles from being Cherise’s big brother to being her dad in an instant.

To this day, he felt grateful he’d been there with her at the air show, and shuddered to think what might have happened if he hadn’t.

How the outcome could have been far more tragic—and perhaps his life could have taken a completely different and infinitely worse course—had he stayed home that day instead of dragging himself out of bed to go with them at Cherise’s request.

“I bet you see an interesting cross-section of clientele,” June said to him.

“I do. It’s never boring. Even if I have a string of appointments of clients all coming in for the same issue, they’re all different. Different causes. Different treatment modes. I have to custom tailor what I do.”

“How did you get into that, anyway?” Scrye asked.

“My step-dad had back pain,” Nate explained. “One of my mom’s friends, her husband was a DO and doctor of Chinese medicine and offered to do acupuncture on him. He only went through with it to humor my mom. It actually helped him, where the base doctors just wanted to prescribe him meds and told him to lose weight, which he really didn’t need to do. When I saw that, how it really helped him when he was a skeptic, I realized it was something I wanted to be able to do. Fortunately, it was an easier course of studies than full-on medical school would have been once I had custody of Cherise. I would have had to drop out of school if I was a med student.”

“You and your sister seem very close,” June said.

“We are. I know this might sound weird, but I think of her more as my daughter than my sister in some ways.”

“No, it makes perfect sense,” Scrye said. “You didn’t have any other family who could take her?”

“Not close family. No one she would have known. I couldn’t have done that to her anyway. I helped raise her. Mom and Ken were still active duty when she was born. Well, Ken was. Mom went back after maternity leave and I did a lot of babysitting, changed a lot of diapers.”