The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove #1)(43)

“What?”

“I’m just sitting here thinking you’re one of the most fascinating, amazing women I’ve ever met. I guess I’m just stunned that you’re . . . available.”

Her lips quirked. “Are you asking me why I’m single?”

“If you’re willing to answer, then yes,” he said. “Why are you single?”

“You mean other than most men suck?”

He smiled. “It’s true, but I suspect you’ve always known that. So . . . ?”

“So . . .” She lifted a shoulder. “I spend nine months of the year in other parts of the world dealing with real people with real problems, and at the end of the day, it makes dating seem . . .” She searched for a word. “Frivolous, I guess.”

This made sense, but it gave him a pang deep in his chest for her. She reached for the iPad, but he gently pushed it away. “I want to get to know the real you, Jane, not how you would answer an impersonal website survey.”

She leaned back, picked up one of the shots of beer, took a sip, put it down. Straightened her silverware.

“You’re nervous,” he realized.

“Am not.”

He put his hand over hers. “I was nervous tonight too. Until I saw you.”

She gave a small smile. “It’s actually the opposite for me. I wasn’t nervous until I saw you. Good thing this is only pretend, right?”

He gave her fingers a squeeze. “We’ll start easy, okay? Tell me something about your day.”

“About my day? I don’t know . . . it was pretty ordinary.” She thought about it. “I did meet someone new at lunch. I usually try to eat alone because it’s nice to get a minute of downtime between the rush of patients. But today this woman asked if she could sit with me. At first I was irritated.”

“Not you . . .”

She snorted. “But she was really nice. We actually exchanged numbers. She loves martinis, which I’ve never had, so we’re going to go for martinis soon. She’s a single mom, getting a divorce, loves skiing . . . Tess something or another.”

Levi froze. No. No, it couldn’t possibly be . . . “Tess,” he repeated, trying to hide his sheer disbelief.

“Yeah. Her daughter’s school and after-school program is across the street from the hospital. She was very chatty. Her daughter thinks she’s a fairy princess. Oh, and she has a totally annoying brother.”

“Really,” he said dryly. “That must suck for her.” He really should’ve seen this coming, but his sister, and undoubtedly his mom as well, had clearly been cyberstalking Jane. He shouldn’t be so stunned at the level of duplicity and lengths they’d gone to in order to butt their noses into his business, but he was.

And they wondered why he’d chosen to live in San Francisco.

“Yeah, I guess he’s home for a bit,” Jane said, “and he acts like he’s still a teenager, leaving his clothes everywhere and dirty dishes in the sink. I never had any siblings, so it must be really hard to have to deal with that.”

Oh, goody. They were still talking about him. “Must be,” he managed.

Her smile faded a bit. “How big is your family again?”

“There’s five of us,” he said. “Though sometimes it seems like triple that.”

She didn’t smile, his first clue something was wrong.

“And they’re . . . nice?” she asked.

She was anxious about meeting them. “They’re going to be really nice to you, and very busy trying to figure out why you’re with me.”

She did give him a small smile at that, and he paused before bringing up her family again. “You’ve not said much about growing up, other than you were passed around a lot. You’re not close to your family, I take it.”

“No.” She pushed around the empty glass. “My mom was a teenager when she got pregnant and my dad didn’t stick around, so it’s an understatement to say she wasn’t ready to take care of a baby. It was tough for her to keep up with school and have a life, so we bounced around for a while, stayed with friends or family friends.”

“Not family?”

“Not then,” she said. “She’d burned some bridges.”

“And you? What happened to you?”

“I don’t remember much of this, but apparently when I was two, my mom got an opportunity to go away to college. I was sent to my mom’s older sister, Aunt Viv. But she had five kids of her own and worked all the time, so I ended up at my grandma’s sister’s daughter’s. I stayed there a bit, until she got married and wanted to start a family of her own.”

“What was wrong with keeping you too?”

“I was a needy thing.” She shrugged. “Got sick a lot.”

Levi shook his head. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”

“I was fine, I don’t really even remember much of it,” she said quickly, as if she didn’t want him to feel angry on her behalf, or worse, sorry for her. “And anyway, that’s when my grandparents took me in. And that was . . .” She smiled a little, as some of the fond memories appeared to beat back her bad ones. “The best. They lived here in Sunrise Cove in a tiny cabin. I loved everything about that time.”