Page 84 of Gloves Off

Georgia gives her mom a tight smile. “I didn’t want anything too flashy. It would cut up the gloves at work.”

“That makes perfect sense,” Cece says.

I have to give Cece credit—she’s a lot more polite than my mom was.You want to keep her?my mom said.Spoil her.

That won’t be happening. Before, I would have said the doctor spoils herself enough, but now I don’t know.

I look around at this house. I don’t know anything anymore.

“Alexei, do your parents live local?” Shane asks.

I nod, trying to focus. “My dad’s a mechanic and my mom is a florist.”

Cece frowns. “Wait. What’s your mom’s name?”

“Maria.”

Her jaw drops. “Shut up.” She starts to grin, and again, I see resemblance to Georgia in her smile. “Shutup.” They even sound the same. “I know Maria. I go to her shop all the time.” She nudges Shane. “Maria’s Flowers.”

Georgia and I glance at each other with concerned expressions. “You know my mom?”

“She said her son was a hockey player and I didn’t put two and two together.” She gives me a good-natured shrug. “Shane’s the hockey fan. I don’t really follow it.”

Shane shakes his head. “What a small world.”

Georgia and I look at each other in shock. Our parents are alreadyfriends?

I don’t like this.

“We’ll have to all go to a game together,” her dad says, and her mom lights up.

The doorbell rings and her parents excuse themselves to answer it, leaving my wife and me alone. She leads me to the living room, where people are gathered. A few say hello and introduce themselves. Photos sit on shelves, hanging from the wall, and I have the urge to study each one, gathering more clues about the woman who I clearly don’t know anything about.

This doesn’t add up. I stare at her, as if her thick lashes and the freckles across her nose and cheekbones hold clues.

My hand comes around her waist. The leather is warm from her skin, and there’s a dip above her hip where my hand fits perfectly. Our eyes meet and we both look away fast.

“Did your parents have you when they were twelve?” I ask.

“Close. Seventeen.”

They had her atseventeen? My expression must show my disbelief because she tilts her chin at a nearby photo of a very young version of her father holding her. He looks like a teenager.

“You don’t have to keep a hand on me at all times, you know.”

“We need to look married,” I mutter. And I... just want to. I look around at their house again. “I thought you came from money.”

She snorts. “With two teenage parents trying to raise a baby and finish school?”

“So you’re not from those Greenes. Who’s the inheritance from?”

“My grandfather, one ofthoseGreenes.” She presses her lips together, gaze darting to mine. “He cut my dad off when my mom got pregnant with me and my dad stayed with her,” she admits.

What an asshole. Between that and the clause in his will, no wonder she’s always calling me controlling.

The bad feeling intensifies. The spoiled, self-centered, superficial picture I’ve built of Dr. Georgia Greene begins to disintegrate.

“But your shoes.”

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