Page 121 of Clara Knows Best

“Clara—” he began.

“Just hold on. I need real estate advice. Don’t hang up.”

“Is this about that stupid cabin?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“You aren’t trying to buy it, are you?”

“No, of course not. Memo said I could spruce it up a little. Strip the honey oak everywhere, and redo the siding, and a little staging? And then we can raise the price and we’ll both make a ton of money.”

“Assuming you can find a buyer.”

“Hart, he didn’t list it with an agent,” she said excitedly. “They were trying to sell it through word of mouth. No one from Austin or Dallas ever even saw it!”

Hart said nothing, which was a good sign.

“I figure with a little facelift and a wider reach we can raise the price by a hundred thousand, easy. And he said he’d split the difference with me, fifty-fifty.”

“You’ve never done a renovation before,” he pointed out. “I can guarantee it’s not that easy.”

A little flattery never hurt. “But I’ll haveyouadvising me. And you could find a buyer in your sleep.”

“Was this your idea or Memo’s?”

“Both. It’s good, isn’t it? Admit it.”

He was silent for several seconds, and then he said, “I don’t like fifty-fifty when we’re assuming all the risk. I’m going to give Memo a call.”

This was just what she needed, Clara told herself. A daring and exhausting project to distract her from Jesse Flores.

50

If I moved back to Austin, would you hang out with me?

He’d told her no. But if she did move back—say, to live with Eve or Hart for a while—she would probably insist on seeing him every so often.

Maybe she would insist on hugging him every time.

He’d been back from Romeo almost two months now, and he was starting to feel pathetic. Why was he sitting around trying to think of ways to get Clara to put her arms around him? But ever since he’d realized that no one ever hugged him in his daily life, he couldn’t forget it.

He’d started following her fashion blog account, and it was the first thing he checked every morning. He didn’t care about her clothes, but he liked the confident way she posed in them and the breezy, knowledgeable way she described each item. Sometimes he even read her replies to her followers’ comments, and caught himself thinking smarmy things about how she saw the best in people.

Was he turning into a DeWitt Petty? He needed a girlfriend. A not-Clara girlfriend—maybe a blonde. Maybe another doctor, one who would understand the demands of his job. They could go to movies together and play tennis with Harry and talk to each other about their high-powered careers. It would be whatever the opposite of crushingly lonely was.

But he didn’twanta not-Clara girlfriend. He wanted Clara, and it was freaking him out.

“Dr. Flores,” Margo said, sounding mysteriously happy.

“What?” he asked, wishing he didn’t sound so depressed.

“Grisham wants to see you,” she singsonged.

That got his attention. Grisham was the chief medical officer—the one in charge of promoting one of the trauma surgeons to unit chief once old Pat Paterson finally retired.

“You think it’s about the promotion?” he asked.

“What else?”

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