Page 38 of All I Need

“STOP FIDGETING. YOU’RE NOT HERE for a date. You’re here because Walker’s a nice guy and he offered you a job so you wouldn’t be a free loading off Miss Polly forever,” I remind myself as I sit in my car outside Walker’s vet clinic.

A side door opens and out walks Grayson. He really could pass for Walker’s son and it makes me wonder if Walker gets his looks from his dad, as if the gene pool is so strong it passes through the generations. I imagine flipping through pages and pages of photo albums, the only way to tell the difference among the McKinstry men, the decades separating them.

My heart squeezes at the thought of never having that. Pictures of a childhood to look back on, comparing then and now. I have no family to speak of. Heck, no real friends. Sure, there’s Allison. But I met her through Crystal and even though Crystal proved to be a piece of crap for a friend, I can’t imagine that Allison would choose me over her. They’ve known each other forever. Never mind the fact that I’m never going back to that life again. She texted me a few times after I left on Saturday and I replied, letting her know I was okay and safe, but that’s about it. She also texted me last night, just a few hours after I got back home to Miss Polly’s from getting all my stuff from Gary’s.

She said she heard I moved out and asked if she could visit me some time. I figured she heard because Crystal must have told her, which means Gary told Crystal. I replied to Allison, let her know I was happy and maybe we’d catch up, but gave her no indication of where I am. I don’t need that information trail making its way to Gary. He’s butt hurt enough about him being a jackass and blames me for not getting his inheritance, that it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he decided to pay me a visit one more time to see if he could convince me.

Idiot.

Grayson stops walking and turns his head, a smile stretching across his face when he spots me sitting in my car. He strides over to me and opens my door for me, stepping back to make room for me to get out.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were stalking me,” he teases, a boyish twinkle in his eye.

“You caught me,” I joke back.

He smirks. “Don’t tell my uncle you’re here for me instead of him. I think you’d break his heart.”

I roll my eyes but can’t help my pulse from spiking at the thought of Walker being excited to see me. Right or wrong considering I just got out of a relationship, there’s something about him that I can’t stop thinking about.

Working for him is probably the biggest mistake I could possibly make but yet here I sit. I’m not sure there’s a single thing that I could find out about this job that would make me turn down his offer.

“Right. Because he needs me to work for him.”

“Sure, let’s go with that,” he chuckles. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to Linda and show you around a little bit. Walker’s in surgery right now so it will be a little bit before he’s available.”

I gasp and stop walking. “Surgery? Is he okay?”

He gives me an odd look then it dawns on me that he meant he was the one doing the operating. On animals. Because he’s a veterinarian. And I’m an idiot.

I blow out a breath and close my eyes. “By your reaction to thinking Walker was under the knife, I’d say I don’t have a chance.”

A giggle bursts out of me when I see the look on his face. “That, and the fact that you’re about twenty years my junior.”

He shrugs his shoulders, the shirt that looks like it was once a t-shirt but he cut out the arms and parts of the sides showing off the way his body is growing to look even more like his uncle. “Eh, semantics.”

“You’re terrible.”

He grins, one side of his mouth turning up in a boyish way. “That’s what all the girls say.”

“Oh you’re trouble, too.”

He waggles his eyebrows then takes me by the elbow and guides me to the back door of the clinic.

“So you’re here to stay, huh?”

“For a while, anyway.”

“Uncle Walker said he helped you move your things to Miss Polly’s?”

“Yeah. Yesterday he came with me. I don’t know what I would have done without his help,” I tell him as he leads me into a back room full of cages and larger kennels. Only a few are filled with dogs, a few cats and one bunny, which makes me smile. They all seem happy, content even. None of them making a ruckus like they want out.

“He’s a good guy. The best, actually. I’m glad he could be there to help you.”

I wonder how much of yesterday he knows about. If Walker told Grayson about Gary.

“Me too,” I say quietly.

He looks at me for a few moments before he throws an arm out. “This is the room we have for our vacationers.”

---