“I didn’t realize I owed you a report,” Gray snapped, losing his temper.
“Don’t get snippy with Mama Dalton,” Will said. “You’re the one cavorting around with your secretary on a Friday night, chopping off her fingers.”
“Yeah, how is it that you ended up spending Friday night with my sister?” Brynn asked, stopping her pacing for the first time since arriving.
“Oh, here we go,” Will said, noisily crunching his M&M’s.
Gray avoided Brynn’s accusing look. He hadn’t expected to see his ex-girlfriend again, and definitely lacked the quick thinking to smooth over the situation.
What the hell am I doing here? Just when Gray was about to make a cowardly exit, the doctor finally came out. Frankly, Gray couldn’t understand why they’d all been banished to the waiting room in the first place. It wasn’t like privacy was needed to sew up a couple of fingers.
“Hi, everyone, thanks for waiting,” the doctor said somberly, as though he’d just finished rebuilding Sophie’s spleen from scratch.
Dr. Hoyne shook Sophie’s dad’s hand. “I have some good news. Sophie’s going to be just fine.”
“Oh good, we were so worried,” Will said, earning a punch from Brynn.
“Will she have any permanent nerve damage?” Marnie asked, her hand pressed against her lips.
Seeing the genuine maternal concern, Gray felt some of his irritation fade. Yes, in the grand scheme of medical emergencies, this was barely a blip on the radar. But to the Daltons, one of their own was wounded.
Hell, Gray felt like one of his own was wounded. Not that Sophie was his, even if it had felt that way for a few strange moments in his condo.
However, surrounded by her family and friends, who really knew her, he suddenly felt out of place. At the end of the day, he was just her boss. And no matter how blatantly the attention-starved little minx had flirted with him, he wouldn’t be the one she wanted to see right now.
“Which one of you is Mr. Wyatt?” the doctor asked Will and Gray.
Will pointed to Gray and grinned as if he were a sixth grader passing the blame for some pulling a girl’s hair.
“Great, come with me,” the doctor said. “Sophie’s asking to see you.”
Silence settled over the group.
And just like that, Gray no longer felt out of place. He felt like grinning. Sophie wanted to see him. Even after he’d flirted with her, made her help him cook, and then barely spoken to her while they waited for her name to be called, she was asking for him.
Of course, she probably hadn’t realized yet that she had an entire get-well committee on hand. Swallowing awkwardly, he followed the doctor down the sterile hallway.
All boyish hopes that Sophie might anxiously be waiting on the hospital bed for Gray to check on her faded when he heard her laugh all the way down the hall. Instead of finding a wounded bird holding a broken wing, he found a preening peacock, sitting hip to hip with an elderly man, giggling over what appeared to be an ancient photo album.
“Oh, Gray!” she said, her face glowing and smiling, instead of somber and in pain. “Meet my new friend, Mr. Bronson. He was just showing me pictures of when he and his wife went to the circus in Paris and the baby elephant escaped.”
Gray couldn’t figure out if he wanted to smile or just walk away in exasperation. He’d spent the past twenty minutes enduring glares from her overbearing family, and she was in here discussing baby circus animals with a man who looked like Santa Claus.
Her gaze fell on the doorway behind him and her smile faltered slightly.
“Mom? Dad? What…Wow, everyone’s here. What’s going on?”
“We came to see if you were all right, of course!” Marnie said, dashing to her daughter’s side and grabbing for her wrist. “Oh gosh, what a huge bandage.”
“Mom, seriously, it’s just a few stitches on each finger. I’ll be completely back to normal before my next dump.”
Everybody except Mr. Bronson winced. The old man patted her knee. “It’s good to be regular, dear.”
Sophie’s welcoming smile was long gone, and she fixed Gray with a glare. “Really? You called my entire family because of a little cut finger?”
“Oh no, that was me, dear,” said the plump redheaded nurse who had just entered the room. “I just sent your parents a text message to say how pretty you’d gotten over the years! I wasn’t thinking that they’d probably freak out that an emergency room nurse was seeing their daughter. Sorry, everyone. I just didn’t think…”
“Obviously,” Gray muttered.