But when she glanced over her shoulder at the man watching us with a quizzical expression and then turned back to me with a tiny sigh that mostly read as resignation, I was reminded of why she wasn’t.
Why she never would be.
She did not want to introduce me to this dude.
Or, at least, she didn’t want me to be introduced looking the way I did now and in circumstances that weren’t easy to explain away.
She was a smart woman, though. She’d find a way.
“Dr. Abbott!” she exclaimed, pulling me toward the man, who had stepped fully back into the lobby by this point. “Wasn’t I just telling you about my son the other day? About how he has been traveling! And look, he’s decided to surprise me!Ça va, mon fils?”
“Ça va,” I answered automatically. Mindlessly.
Traveling was an interesting spin to working on a cruise ship, which was what she probably thought I was still doing, given that the last time we’d communicated was December 23.
When I’d called her onourbirthday.
And now that I thought about it, that call had gone to voicemail, so actually… I didn’t know when we’d last spoken.
Huh.
While I’d been having this realization, she was gripping my upper arm, her short but polished nails—sensible for a plastic surgeon—digging into the skin as she chattered on and on about her darling son and his adventurous streak.
“When did you move?” I asked suddenly, unwilling and unable to engage in this song and dance with her.
“Oh, I know,” she said emphatically, deploying her best smile at both of—no. She was including Dick—who was listening raptly, so I supposed it was meant for all three of us—in this too.
I steeled myself and tuned back in to her bullshit at random.
“—this place lovely? I got so incredibly lucky with finding somewhere so close to the hospital! I’d been working myself to the absolute bone this past year.C’est la vie,” she added with a little shrug, then nudged the guy standing beside her, who was giving her sympathetic, love-stricken eyes.
“Remember when I told you about the time that I nearly fell asleep crossing the bridge after those four back-to-back cleft-lip repairs on those precious babies?” She turned her gaze to Dick, who nodded, also love stricken, and then continued, “The hospital does an amazing job of scheduling those pro bono cases on the same day, but my staff were all so worried and fussing at me to take better care. It felt like a sign when this space became available so close to the hospital.” She sighed deeply, as if lost in the splendor of their (her) generosity.
She was truly a master.
If I were to push again, the line could be easily drawn that I hate babies or don’t care for my mother’s welfare. Or both.
Probably both.
“Anyway, enough about that. Cody, dear, I am so glad to see you. Let me properly introduce you!” She nodded to the man beside her. “Dr. Gerard Abbott, please meet my son, Cody Cormier.”
He reached out to shake my hand, and I took it but couldn’t stop my gaze from marking the exits. There were the glass doors that led to the street and then the ones to my left that entered a breezeway to the parking garage, and I could make it back to my truck using either.
My wandering gaze probably made me look shifty as hell, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t care that she’d used my old last name. I’d legally been Cody Desmond since I turned eighteen and had used it as my last name since I was fifteen.
And if the dude said anything before or after dropping my hand, I hadn’t heard a word of it.
A thick silence that could very quickly have snowballed into unbearably uncomfortable threatened, but Mom curtailed it by deploying another sympathetic gaze, this one aimed at me.
“Honey, you must be so tired. Why don’t you take my key up to the penthouse and have a lie down?”
“You have a new home here in a safe harbor. Rest until sunrise.”
Her words were so similar to Liem’s but nowhere near the same.
He wanted me well.
She wanted me out of sight.
