The Best Catch in Texas

Nicolette sipped from a glass of water the waitress had left behind. “He told me that you want him to take a look at his livestock. That was a nice gesture. It made him feel important. Now that his wife has passed on, the man doesn’t have anyone, except for his housekeeper.”

“I wasn’t doing it just to make him feel important,” he said. “He has years of experience and knowledge with cattle and horses. I would value his opinion and advice and be glad to pay him for it.”

Once again he’d revealed that he wasn’t above asking for help. Apparently he wasn’t one of those guys that thought he knew more than everyone else on every subject under the sun the way her ex-husband had. During their marriage, Bill had worked as an executive for an insurance firm in San Antonio and he’d been good at his job. Yet the man had been hopelessly lacking with manual tasks of any kind. Even so, he’d found it offensive if she’d suggested he get help from a mechanic for an ailing car, or a plumber to replace a leaky faucet.

“I’m sure Dan will be more than glad to help you,” Nicolette commented.

He started to make some sort of reply when he suddenly frowned and reached to his shirt pocket for his vibrating cell phone.

“Excuse me,” he said as he flipped open the phone to identify the caller.

Nicolette watched the frown deepen on his face as he snapped the phone shut and drop it back into his pocket.

“Not an emergency?”

“She probably thinks it is,” he answered. “That was my mother.”

“Oh. Well don’t let me intrude. If you need to talk to her it won’t bother me.”

He sighed. “Thanks, but it isn’t necessary. I already know what the call is about. A big fund-raiser is being held back in Houston this coming weekend for a congressman in my parents’ district. She wants me to attend and refuses to accept that I won’t be there.”

She studied him thoughtfully. “You don’t like politics?”

He released a humorless laugh. “Politics has nothing to do with it. I don’t want to spend my free time at big social galas of any sort. I have more important things to do.”

Nicolette was digesting his comment when the waitress arrived with tortilla chips, hot salsa and tall drinks of iced tea. After the young woman had served them, Nicolette plucked a chip from the basket and dipped it into the salsa.

“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.

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