The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove #1)(25)

“My mom wants to meet the woman willing to put up with me. She wants her to come to their fortieth anniversary dinner.”

“Again, not seeing how this is my problem.” Just thinking about it had licks of panic racing through her, even while being fascinated by this family of his.

“It’d be just one family dinner.”

“Oh no,” she said, snorting to hide her rising horror. “No, no, no.”

“Okay, great. So you’ll think about it.”

She had to laugh. “So your Male Selective Hearing is intact.”

“Well, I am a male, so . . .” With a smile, he stood. “Take your time, the dinner’s not for three weeks.” And then he took his sexy ass—yes, it was indeed very sexy—and walked off. He passed the table of gawking nurses and winked at them. “She’s thinking about it,” he said conspiratorially.

In unison the whole table swiveled their heads and stared at Jane.

“No,” she said. “I’m not.”

“Can we then?” Sandra asked.

Jane thunked her head on the table.

THE NEXT MORNING when Jane’s alarm went off at four forty-five, she was still doing nothing but thinking about it. She didn’t have to be at work until eight, but she still got up, showered, and hit the Stovetop Diner by five.

The early bird always gets the worm.

That’s what her grandpa used to say. Which was why she was really here. Not just the diner, but Lake Tahoe in general.

Last year she’d been here for the ski season as usual, and she’d caught sight of her grandpa in this very diner. At the time, she’d been too shocked to talk to him. She wasn’t proud of it, but she’d ducked out before he could see her.

She hadn’t been ready to make contact. Hurt and resentment and her ever-present fear of rejection had ensured that. Complicating things was that her grandpa also inspired some of the best memories of her childhood.

This year, she still felt the same roller coaster of emotions, so she was no closer to making a decision about talking to him.

But none of that stopped her from wanting a peek at him. So she parked at the diner, because if she knew one thing about her grandpa, it was that he was a creature of habit.

The building had been constructed just after the Prohibition era, standing tall as a distillery for decades. In the 1950s, it’d been bought and turned into the first diner on all of the North Shore, complete with black-and-white-checkered floor tiles, red vinyl booths, and jukeboxes. The look had since lost some of its luster, but the food was amazing, ensuring that the place remained a mainstay for the area.

The alcohol license didn’t hurt.

She eyed the table across the room, where indeed her grandpa sat with his cronies drinking their morning espresso and telling stories about growing up here in Tahoe before it’d become a popular tourist destination. “Back in the day . . .” one of them was saying, “you could jump off the cliff at Hidden Falls and not get in trouble.”

Her grandpa chuckled. “Back in the day, Secret Cove was still a nudie beach that no one had ever heard of except for us locals. Watch out for the geese, though—they like to nibble at the frank and beans.”

Jane watched him, heart torn between love and hurt as she sipped her coffee in disguise; her ski hat pulled low, scarf wrapped around her neck, and coat still on to hide her scrubs. She was in an out-of-the-way booth, not easily seen, sitting with a spare to-go coffee to take to Charlotte at work—unless she ended up drinking both out of sheer nerves.

Her grandpa tipped back his head and laughed heartily at something one of the men said, and it both hurt and felt good to hear it. She’d spent a lot of years suppressing her emotions, so the waves of nostalgia, heartbreak, and guilt hit hard.

When someone unexpectedly sat at her table, Jane nearly jumped right out of her skin.

“Some PI you are,” Charlotte said, stealing Jane’s coffee. She was in her usual scrubs and her ridiculous pink down jacket. “You didn’t even see me coming.”

“You need a bell around your neck. And hey, the one in the to-go cup is yours.”

Charlotte took both, looking pleased with herself. “I’m stealth, baby. Ask me how stealth.”

Jane eyed her warily. “How stealth?”

“Stealth enough to know that a hot guy brought you a cupcake to work yesterday, and that you had lunch with him.”

Jane gaped.

“And that he asked you something and you’re thinking about it.”

“How in the world . . . ?”

Charlotte grinned. “Heard it from an intern, who heard it from a lab tech, who heard it from Radiology, who heard it from a nurse who was at the table with Sandra.”

“Wow.” Jane shook her head. “And you’re missing a whole bunch of details. Your sources are slipping.”

“Actually, their exact words were that you were caught sharing a postcoital lunch with Sexy Gondola Guy.” She leaned in, hands on the table. “Let’s discuss.”

“Sure,” Jane said. “We’ll discuss as soon as you discuss our very handsome next-door neighbor—also your coworker—and why you pretended to not like him this whole time when you secretly do.”

CHARLOTTE CHOKED ON her sip of coffee and nearly snorted it out of her nose. But that wasn’t what had her heart pounding. Pretending she hadn’t just burned her windpipe, she leaned casually back as she studied her best friend. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”