Page 70 of Seven of Hearts

“Have you had dinner, Leah?”

I shook my head. “Could I steal some leftovers? And maybe the recipe? It just smells so good and I think the baby agrees.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Well, then. I can’t say no to that, can I?”

Dr. Mehta sent me waddling back to my unit with my bowl piled high, and a handwritten recipe for fish curry and lentils. The first bite as I walked by the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall was heaven. I did a little dance and hummed as I downed a second bite because I was the happiest little pregnant lady on earth.

And then that happiness crash-landed in a blazing inferno.

“Mom.”

Luckily, I didn’t lose the bowl in my jolt of shock. My mother stood at my door, still in her perfunctory office attire of a bleak gray pantsuit, uptight blouse, and sensible pumps.

“Well, don’t stand there gaping like a fish. It’s rude,” she clipped.

Instead of closing my mouth, apologizing, or crying, I clutched my bowl, stormed into my apartment, and slammed the door in her face.

I had just shoveled in a third bite when the knock sounded. I yanked the door open. “You’ve ruined not one, but two dinners by pissing me off before I could eat. If you attempt to go for a hat-trick, there’s no coming back from that. All I want to do right now is eat my damn dinner in peace, and you are the opposite of peace.”

Now she was the one who was slack-jawed. “Leah!” she gasped.

I slammed the door and didn’t feel the least bit bad about it. The pause gave me a chance to shovel in bites four and five before she knocked again.

I yanked it open and waited for her to get her foot out of her mouth.

“That was incredibly rude. I raised you better than to?—”

I slammed the door again, but she wedged her foot into the doorframe to stop it from closing again.

“Wait!”

“What,” I said as I shoved an aggressive bite into my mouth.

She huffed and brushed back her hair as the door slowly eased open. “I wanted to come by and see how you are.”

“Well, considering you haven’t cared at all since I told you I was pregnant and you haven’t talked to me in two weeks, it seems like a weird time to start.”

She pursed her lips, but didn’t take the bait. “I’m self-aware enough to admit that I did not handle your...situation well, and that I owe you an apology.”

She sounded exactly like my ex—clinical and far too objective. Loaded with knowledge and completely lacking in humanity. Just some of the many reasons that relationship ended.

“See, you have the words, but you don’t have the music. But if you’re in the apologizing mood, you owe Logan a big one.”

She craned her neck over the threshold and peered around. “Is he here?”

“No,” I clipped.

I wasn’t sure why she looked so surprised. “Did something happen?”

“What? No.” I sneered at the ridiculousness of it all. “He and his brother, Hunter, hung out this morning and then he had a...” I didn’t know how to explain what he was doing. “He had a family thing tonight.”

“Afamilything?” she countered, as if I was speaking a different language. “That he didn’t take you to?”

“He went to visit his dad.”

Her eyes widened. “His dad . . . Hisfather?”

“Yes, those are synonyms,” I clipped as I shoveled in another bite.

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