Page 41 of Chocolate Cherry Cabin

“I brought it from San Antonio. Should still be warm.”

She opened the box and almost gasped when steam escaped. “It is! But…the city’s over an hour’s drive!”

“Who said I drove?” He grinned and started heaping their plates with food. Then he leaned close and dropped a kiss on her lips. Short. Sweet. And unexpected enough that she didn’t have time to react. Then he sat at the table as if nothing had happened.

With her eyes sparkling, she shook her head, muttering to herself, “He flew to work. Heflew. Towork. Talk about an alternate universe.”

Louis chuckled. He could see his life from her point of view. He worked with famous hockey players and commuted in a plane. He spent a lot of time traipsing across the continent for games, too. Romantic, unsettled, full of adventure.

But sometimes a man just wanted a home to come to at the end of the day. A partner who’d help him unburden. Who’d share laughs and meals, and basically help it all mean something.

“Do you like Exploding Kittens?” he asked, using a fork to eat his lemon chicken.

“The card game? Thomas adores it. Wade not so much.”

“Yes, but doyou?”

Hannah shrugged. “Wade tends to get close to meltdown whenever he picks up the exploding kitten and doesn’t have a diffuse card. He’s still unfamiliar with the art of losing gracefully. Sometimes playing the game requires a lot of parenting.”

“Want to play?” Louis waved the box of cards as she joined him at the table with chopsticks instead of a fork.

Her chair wobbled as she pulled it closer to the table, and he apologized, suddenly wishing he’d put some of his salary into appearances and newer furniture.

“It’s reassuring.” When he stared at her in confusion, she explained, “Your house and life are perfect and so different from mine. It’s nice that there is something…I don’t know…real.”

“Ah.”

She took a mouthful of chop suey before grabbing the deck to deal their cards. “First one to explode loses!”

Obi trotted over and dropped at her feet, his eyebrows doing a dance as he watched first Louis, then her.

As they played, they ate, the food going down fast. “I haven’t had Chinese in over a year,” she said.

“Hmm.” He stretched one socked foot out, letting it rest against Hannah’s. She didn’t move hers away and he caressed the side of it with his toes.

She pulled her foot back. “That tickles.”

“Sorry.” He glanced under the table, but it was now out of reach.

Partway through the game, Louis pushed his empty plate aside and asked, “Why did you want to become a doctor?”

Hannah shrugged, keeping her eyes on her cards as she reached down to massage behind Obi’s ears.

“Afraid to tell me?” he asked casually. He’d picked up an exploding kitten and groaned. He had a defuse card, though, putting the kitten back into play and saving him from losing the game.

“It was just something I wanted,” she said, matching his easy tone. “You know how teens are.”

“Teens want to help sick people?”

“Being able to heal someone is a big deal. When else do you get to positively influence someone’s life in such a way? You get to help return them to normal after something as potentially massive as a brush with death.”

They played another few turns before he said, “You must’ve been devastated, not going to med school.”

She tucked her lower lip into her mouth. He could see that the loss of her dream still stung.

Maybe, like he suspected, nothing had filled the hole left behind.

“You know, nobody seemed to even notice or care when I changed my dreams.” Hannah folded her cards facedown on the table. “I expected it to be this big deal, and everybody just kind of acted like...like nothing had happened. Like it was a relief I was getting married instead and that it wasbetterthat I wasn’t going to med school.”

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